Different perspectives.

Hers: One 30 foot bean trench will produce about 40 lbs of beans.

His: A 30 foot bean trench dug out to 2 foot depth then filled with soil manure and compost is a hell of a lot of digging....

R

Weather lovely weather.....

I woke this morning to the patter of rain on the window.

No weather to be outside waving a pick axe at the soil and tearing off the top layers. Singind a happy tune I headed off for breakfast looking forwards to having an easy day.

So of course management singing a happy tune likewise confirmed the lack of digging and said instead we could go over to the stables and get some manure.

Hitching the big trailer to the Xantia off we went to the stables. Yes of course we could have manure said the cheery horsey person, help ourselves she told us, she hoped we had bought shovels because her husband who normally drives the digger was away.

So much for not digging.....

About an hour singing our favourite song:

"I'm digging in the rain just digging in the rain,

What a glorious felling I'm shoveling again.

How joyus our wit

To be shoveling mud

Just digging and digging in the raaaaaiiiiinnnn.."

We had a trailer pretty much full of very good well rotted manure. Which is where the fun really started.

Of course I am very used to towing that trailer loaded, a little jaunt to the woodland barely a mile away. This was several miles and on top of another mountain as well.

So coming home was down a mile at about 10% up a mile at 10% - so far so good.

Then down a few miles at 5 % down a kilometer at 25% with the trailer most definately urging us on......

What fun, I thought, but better was to come. Up the hill to the house, about 2 km of steady grinding first gear pull. Till approaching the top of the hill the tyres were definately scrabbling for grip. With visions of us screaching backwards out of control like the guys with the renault 5 and caravan on you tube, we finally made the brow.

This was about as much excitement as a man needs for a day.

If she wants any more of that stuff she can damn well get it herself.....

R

Death by garden.....

Now things are really starting to move on the garden front.

Management has marked out a series of beds up the field she nuked earlier. This has required stripping off of the top layers of dead grass carting that off to compost and then turning the field over ready to plant.

This has translated into rather a lot of work for Green Goddess tools and lots of stuff being carted round.

Management has been busy with the rotivator I bought her for her birthday some years back and I have been allowed to use the pick.

I think this is some sort of attempt to cash in my life assurance. If I never post again it will be because I am dead......

Still she has mentioned a need to water stuff in. I had better get Gloria out and head off down to the hydrant.

R

The inspectors are coming......

Now, when you work in social care, every so often there is an inspection.

This means that you get descended on from on high, people come with questionnaire's with loads of tick boxes and depending on how many boxes they tick you get told how well you deliver for children.

Our poor naive imported social worker has been soo relieved she has been given the extra work hours to make sure that Big D's file is all up to date.

She has not realised that her manager noted that the Care Standards questionnaire landed on her desk asking about a named child.

Then suddenly she gets the time to put his file in order.

Last week it was another social worker who suddenly remembered so many things that needed doing for another child.

Monday - good lord we have a social worker landing to complete some detail about child three.

This will of course have nothing to do with the questionnaire that landed on our mat last week.....

Festering, god bless them have felt no need to be so well engaged.

Because of course if the service they give to out of county carers gets slated, well they can simply dump those carers.

They did however email out a statement of purpose for the service a few days back and of course a load of print it yourself cards so we know about their out of hours service - just to make sure the boxes are ticked.

In the midst and middle of this are young people placed here some years back because this was what they needed then and have come to expect. Now they are less than at the front of their "parents" thinking.

I wonder how this would all look if the corporate parent was subjected to the "good enough parent" filter.

R

Reply for Tina's comment.

Yes Tina you are right it seems T has to get permission to help P's mum.

Things took the turn even dafter today, P's SW phoned. Now it just so happens she is popping down to see P on Monday, so it had "just" occured to her that she could take him back to Daycastle and save T a trip out.

Wasn't that thoughtful?

T of course was grateful for the offer, unfortunately T has two stat review meetings on Tuesday so she might as well take him then. She added it was important she went and dropped P off because she promised to help his mum move.

Funny, the SW did not thank her for walking the extra mile......

Bless - she must have forgotten.

R

The path of true love.

They says it's great to tb truly loved by someone and today management was in a particularly loving mood.

With someone barely having driven up the drive after a visit to the Green Goddess store I was sitting there musing what to do and as it happens counting money.

Filled with the joy of love my darling insisted it was too lovely a day to stay home and furthermore there was no one on the planet she would rather be out with than me.

So I dutifully got in the car and off we set.

I wondered where her love would take us;

A pleasant walk along the beach?

An idyllic valley ramble?

A country pub for lunch?

No, she showed her love by taking me to the garden centre where she lovingly took my money and spent it on plants and fertilizer.

She shows her love in funny ways sometimes.....

At least I get her "proper" loving gifts like the socket set I have on order...

R

Day in the life....

So of course today I was off to uni, in our one working vehicle so this morning was a blur of kids to school then hurling myself to uni.

Naturally, I came screaming over the brow of a hill and there was the nice man waiting to take my photo. By shear luck this was on a T junction and this guy had just pulled out so I was able to put him between me an David Bailey while some serious braking went on.

By the time I pulled out for the overtake I was doing quite a lot less. I just hope he didn't catch me first time...

But i digress into uni and I did a lot of professional work.

But with me off earning good money and the car off the run, management was at home.

So when the phone rang at 11.30.....

Oh yes, it was a Wednesday when we are not here so our link worker phoned.

Unfortunately for her the management was home and even less fortunately she picked up the phone.

I will not bore you with the content but here's a little snippet. P's mum is moving next week and management will be in Daycastle anyway so she is popping over to help her move the fridge and the larger items into her flat. This it would seem is a problem, management should contact P's SW to seek permission, make sure she is happy with this, there might be issues.

This from the same people who were breathtakingly blase when my daughters went with D so he could meet his father, the sex offender.

I am not sure, but is there not maybe some sort of lack of logic here.

There is a plus to everything though, by the time the red mist had cleared she has not half planted some spuds...


R