ALARMS AND EXCURSIONS

The day dawned fresh and fair.....it was unfortunately all down hill from there! Pa had a hospital appointment and there was much ado getting him ready to go. Breakfast was late in consequence and in two sittings,always a nuisance.

We were expecting the gas fitter to come and service the boiler at some stage and I hoped that during the day there would be time for me to do a little gardening....some hope!!!!!

My son and I had barely finished breakfast when the sound of strimmers was heard coming from the churchyard behind our house. Quick as a flash I was on my scooter and what I found made my incandescent with rage. The meadow was being strimmed out just as the cow parsley was coming into flower.

Two men with strimmers were perpetrating this crime,for crime it was, and on the back of a truck six loutish young men sat smoking and laughing. I asked the men to stop,they refused and the young men became threatening,I deployed my walking stick and drove them down in order to reach the strimmers,finally they stopped work.

I explained patiently at first that the area was now a nature preserve and should not be touched, the man became truculent and the leering youths came back for a second go.

It was at this point that the Vicar arrived,it must be said that our Vicar has no knowledge of wild life what so ever and is far more concerned with keeping in with the Parochial Church Council than she is in dealing with these matters, and I pointed this out to her in in uncertain terms.

To cut a long story short they stopped,packed up and left having at least realised that they were not only in the wrong but that they cold be facing a heavy fine.

On my return home |I fired off a vitriolic email to the department concerned and then went in to the garden. It was then that a party of workers arrived to deal with the drainage problems and the rat hole at the back of the house. I had just finished dealing with this when the boiler man arrived,I had spent a grand total of twenty minutes in the garden.

By the time the workers departed it was four forty-five,every cup and mug in the place had been used and the cake tin was empty.

I really do not mind the tea and cake bit ,but oh how I would have loved to spend a little of this lovely day dealing with my long neglected garden.

As for tomorrow,Pa is off to Guy,s Hospital at nine in the morning,the men working on the drains will be back in force and the boiler repair man will need to return as he needs to fit a new part to out antique water heater.

I feel sometimes like putting up a sign such as Lucy did in the “Charlie Brown” carton saying”the Doctor s Out.”