Treated like a criminal

On Saturday Sophie and I went up to London for the day, for Sophie to attend a photoshoot for the Miss Teen World 2008 comp, she is through to the 2nd heat.

We travelled by train,· We arrived at B station just before 10am, we parked the car and got the Pay and display ticket, then went to the Ticket Office, only to find it was closed. A notice was stuck to the door stating “ Due to unforeseen circumstances this ticket office is closed today……”
· We went over to the Automatic Ticket machine, there was a very long queue and people seemed to be struggling to get money to be accepted, by now the train was approaching, there were still 4 people in the queue in front of us so we went to the platform.
· I thought we could get a Permit to travel, there used to be a little machine for that purpose on the platform, but it was no longer there. The train was in by now so we jumped on the train.
· We looked for the conductor but could not find him during our time on this leg of the journey, it was a very long train. We had to get off at T B to change for L B. The train arrived at T B slightly delayed and we only had about 6 minutes to go under the platform and over to the next platform, there was no time to go to the ticket office at this stage as we would have missed our connection, I was getting panicky about not having got our tickets yet but thought we would be ok to buy them on the next train.We got on the 10.42 to L B and didn’t see the conductor immediately, but then he came , I got my purse out ready to hand him my credit card and explained we had not been able to purchase out tickets earlier, but he told us that was not acceptable and he had to issue us with penalty fares, I tried to explain that we hadn't had any opportunity to get the ticket but he was a total jobsworth and wouldn't listen. So we had to pay the fare of single ticket and the penalty is double that, then had to buy ticket to our next destination and buy singles to get home. I'm appealing , I feel I've been treated like a common criminal!! I'm livid!

The photoshoot went well and we 've got some great photos. Sophie will be on the website next month and I hope I can ask Purplecooers to have a look and vote for her to get her into the next round.

The room looking more like home again

Well, we're nearly there, I keep saying that, yet another week has gone by and I still cannot totally get the room back to normal, because the other tradesman has not come back to put the skirting on. He said he would come Saturday but then he forgot! So he has promised to be here monday at 8am............... I wait and see. X fingers.

If you look closely you will see Stan's chair, it is covered with a dark red throw. It's an old leather recliner and it has seen better days, the laether is all damaged and torn, but he won't let me get rid of it, but it really lets the room down! It will look even worse when I get my new leather corner unit, but he is adamanant it has to stay!! Pity me!

The sitting room is almost done!

Some of you may remember that we got caught in the floods of July, not as bad as the poor people in Gloucester and Hull, but all the same it was bad enough to warrant our insurance company assessor proposing that the walls of sitting room needed replastering and then redecorating as well as having the flooring replaced.

It has been a long drawn out process, of drying out and repairs. So it has been absolute chaos here, with all the furniture from sitting room having to be piled up in the dining room and in bedrooms and eventually had to put the sofas and dresser in the workshop to get the floor done. The only room downstairs that has kept functioning properly is the kitchen, and a very small space around my desk in the dining room so I can still work and get on the computer.

The replastering commenced on 9 October , but we got of to a bad start as when he removed one huge patch of plaster he discovered it was filled totally with gunk that absorbed water and the wall underneath was soaked, apparently a "cowboy" job had been done just to patch up that area. So we then had to let that all dry, Stan brought his diesel Space heater in and for 2 days we lived as in a sauna whilst the wall dried out! The plasterer came back and did all the plastering and he calculated he would be back to paint on the on the Monday, but when monday came the plaster wasn't dry enough, so away he went leaving me to ring him when it was dry.

Well, I thought it was pretty dry by the Thursday so rang him, but he couldn't make it till the Monday of the next week, and we were going away for half term break, so it was left again until we came back. On our return I phoned him and he agreed to come on Friday.

But Friday came and he didn't..............his child was ill and he was needed to look after her. So we agreed Monday29 Oct.

At LAST on Monday he came and did the painting, he was rather shocked at my choice of colour, I choose "Roasted Red" paint which is a stunning rich red and I so desperately wanted to make the room feel warmer and cosier. The girls all agreed with my choice, but Stan was horrified. But as I pointed out he had forgone his opportunity of an opinion as he had been very stupid, driving his lorry into the drive and broke the cesspit cover, sending the huge concrete block into the depths of the cesspit! He then proceeded to drop the tape measure down the cesspit too, when he was measuring up for a new lid! So I got my red paint. And actually i think it looks pretty good. What do you think?

Then comes the exciting bit the laying of our slate floor. Even before the flood Stan had got it into his head that he wanted a flagstone floor and I had been looking into costs and it seemed very expensive, but after the flood the insurance company agreed to give us the equivalent to the cost of a new carpet to get the flooring of our choice. The Insurance contractors quoted an exhortionate amount of money over £2000 above the cost of carpet, so we said no way and I went to my kind and friendly handy man in the village and asked him to quote, this turned out so much cheaper. I managed to buy the slate tiles on ebay for a very reasonable price and this last week HM & his mate have been here laying the flooring. Now HM is a gorgeous man and I can't help looking at him, he works in shorts and has lovely legs, tall, fit and trim with floppy blond hair . Yummy!!


He'll be back tomorrow to do the grouting and that will be the end of the job, but I am already preparing my list of little jobs that just need a handy man!!

Beth

Bewitched

Deer Hunting

I've been wanting to talk about this subject for some time but somehow I've stopped myself as I'm not totally sure how I feel about it, but maybe it will make a subject for discussion. I imagine you may have very strong views on the subject and I don't want to cause disharmony in the ranks.

I am surrounded by beautiful woodland and in the woods live many deer, I think they are Roe Deer, they are of average size and quite dark tan/red. I think they are beautiful and I feel a real pleasure seeing them as I walk through the meadow and wood with Beth each day. They do get in my garden and eat my plants, I caught sight of one in there yesterday morning, she quickly leaped over the fence and away into the wood again. What with rabbits and deer my poor plants suffer enornmously, but I love being surrounded by wild life.

The man who manages the wood, I'll call him Dick, is an avid hunter, I think he sees himself as a game keeper.
When we first moved in, he obviously didn't know us and we didn't know him and so he was cautious of letting me know of his activities.

One spring evening in the first year of living here, I heard a tremendously loud shot, not the ordinary rabbit shooting shots, but something deafening and eerrie. A short while after i was watching out of my bedroom window which looks down the road along the side of the wood, and I saw Dick in the hedge dragging something huge out of the wood into his truck, on closer inspection i could see it was a deer. I was shocked, I'd not seen this happen before.

Later that week I was walking through the wood and met Dick, he was very anxious to tell me that the deer he had shot was injured, it had been hit by a car , he told me. Reassured I told Stan this.

But as time went on and I got to know Dick well and realised that he did infact hunt the deer, no crime in it, he has permission from the wood owner and the deer are on his land.

But what I do find disconcerting, is his now blaze outlook on letting me see all that goes on. I walk through the wood regularly, there is a public footpath through it, and on many occasions Beth will start sniffing the air and gets excited, I will look and suddenly find a whole deer carcass hanging from a tree, drying I assume. First time I saw it I was horrified and couldn't get over it for ages, but the worst is the trophy heads. Dick hangs all the heads up in the wood.
This is most scarry and disconcerting, yesterday I walked into the wood and Beth immediately started sniffing the air, and looking up, I couldn't see anything to start with, but as I peered into the wood I saw this beautiful big deer head starring at me from a tree, it looked so proud and bright eyed but it was dead and just a head. How grotesque is that!

Whenever , I think about deers being hunted it always takes me back to being a little girl and watching "Bambi"for the first time and being so upset when Bambi's mother is shot.

I'm not totally anti hunting, I have a dog that catches and kills rabbits and pheasants, but it just upsets me to think about deer being hunted, because they are so beautiful. Incongruous I know.

What do you think??