Days of contrasts

It's funny how days contrast each other.

The last few stand alone.

Today was to be a quiet day, no chain saw means no wood cutting and so we had a quiet leisurely one in prospect.

It would of course have been a help had one of us bothered to read the letter from the little school, we would have known about the inset day for the teachers and the closed school.

That would have good to include in plans..

So this morning we fell out the door on firewood bent, not cutting but bringing into the house and stacking in the dry ready for the forecast rain.

Then it was out for the day shopping.

An 8 and 10 year old in tow did nothing to enhance the experience.

There is some clown out there who says inflation is 2-3%; they are telling porkies.

Our food bill has really climbed this year and it was starting to hurt.

So it was into the wholesaler this morning and clear the shelves of stuff that was on end of life discount.

Ten loaves of bread for 21p each all destined for the freezer, far preferable to over a pound at Tesco.

2 percent?

You having a laugh?

Bread has really jumped this year!

Catering packs of short date chicken and turkey for under ten pounds.

Enough to deliver a lot of meals for not a lot of money.

There is a kind of inverse logic to this.

When food was relatively cheap we ate a lot more processed and prepared food.

Now it is dear we cook food and the quality of the menu has gone through the ceiling.

Even burgers are far nicer if you make them than if you buy them.

Today, it was big slices of chicken breast rolled around cheese with smoked bacon on the outside.

All held together with a skewer lightly coated with olive oil (French import) and baked in the Aga.

Set off with roast potatoes (5 pounds a bag) and

Fried shallots and mushrooms completed the meal and frankly; wow, it was great.

This was, of course the managements contribution.

I have a few recipes of my own, we used to holiday working in a restaurant in Brittany and I would commend that to all.

The ability to cook is a priceless skill and an endless pleasure.

Something we would both observe though.

Go to your local supermarket tomorrow and set out to cook a meal.

Oh yes chicken ding you can do:

Five minute microwave - ding and done.

Go to your supermarket to get ingredients to cook a meal and I bet you will find the range limited and selection poor.

We are headed for factory food.

Depressing eh??

Depressing too that our Vic was again remanded.

She is remanded til just before crimbo, no chance she will be out before the yule being realistic.

How the system works, or rather does not.

Not so depressing the weather.

There are people who live for hot weather.

Tonight the gale crashes into our house dumping it's rain to batter my bedroom velux.

A rattle of rain will light my night.

Off to watch the Tudors on beeb one.

R

bedsteads and broomhandles.

There are doubtless great charms to living in the country on top of a hill.

Summer sunshine dances in through the door and invites us to walk out and partake of the view which is truly breathtaking.

The house is for sale too by the way.....

Winters offer a far more savage beauty yesterday winter rain hurled itself viciously against the patio doors driven by a brutal gale.

Management, bless her had abandoned me, off to trudge mountains, fell trees and brave the wild elements.

This in turn left me in charge of housework of which I took great care to do neither too much nor too well. After all I could not have her thinking she was not indispensable.

And of course my main function, keeping the home fires burning in the log stove.

This in turn meant a frantic break from cover to fill the wood basket a feat achieved at no small cost in the getting wet and windswept stakes.

Still as I sat there basking in warmth, I spared a thought for her on top of her woody hill near Cardigan, felling mighty oaks and enjoying the breeze.

I did consider phoning her to tell her of some crisis that required her immediate attendance but thought that would just spoil her fun.

Teatime came and hot on collecting the childer, cold home came management.

I have heard of people having the blues but the mistress of all we owe money on truly was blue.

Several hours in a hot bath were indicated so several hours of hither and thither around the family were done instead.

Today is a different day' a lovely crisp midwinter sun day.

Getting the firewood was a brave T shirt wearing affair, I almost envy her the woodland.

Me? I get to demolish our old bed.

A heroic divan that has defied many trampolining children over the years Until last week when Gwion and Tiger managed what none before had done. They broke it.

Now, I am a natural recycler and, being not much over 3o years old I suggested repair, but profligate management would had none of it and a brand new bed and mattress have been delivered this very minute.

Still ours is not to reason, certainly not with the MD it isn't......

And I have put the cordless on charge ready for when I get back from town fetching her axe.

Axe?

Yes full of the spirit of romance I bought my beloved a felling axe as an early Xmas present, to go with the shovel and the jigsaw I bought her on previous years.

Xmas is a long way off, but it is time to cast about for a suitably romantic yultetide token of love, I was thinking about a cement mixer......

Mundane day in store.

It is great sometimes to have a day you know will be fairly quiet.

The weeks travails have taken their toll and the chainsaw is refusing to.

Refusing to saw that is, the continuous unfeasably hard oak cutting has blunted it to a point where chain file might be a better name, so in the interests of interest me and er are off this morning to arrange a sharpening.

Whilst I was outside yesterday waving an axe about management managed to get an update on the Vic.

She is in court again on Friday, or not, as maybe there will be no psychiatric reports that the judge ordered for him to look at.

Personally, I have a bad feeling about this. I think he will just pot her anyway.

The baby remains with his dad amid "increasing concerns" due to dad having more form than ladbrookes.

The leaving care SW had that tone of detachment which says it won't be her decision and she will make sure everyone knows it wasn't...

But of course "increasing concerns" are natural, babies can be taken into care and easily adopted and that is a number on the annual tick box report of Children's Services.

Or put another way whiping this child out and having him adopted will look good on paper.

Do his best interests figure in there any where?

You tell me......

R

The times they are a changing.....

Now for many years I have lived with the notion of step kids.

Foster kids are hard work but well at the end of the day you can always deliver them back to the district office and their world with them.

Step kids are a different matter they are still there in the morning.

To be fair,

With her Git, Serenity delivered hours of amusement.

Perfecto had been perfect entertainment.

But alas all has changed.

Serenity has a new boyfriend who sounds like he would not turn up at your house only because there is no beer at his.

Perfecto's girlfriend is a really nice girl.

Though I must say, since he has had a girlfriend the local sheep look a lot more relaxed.

Far be it for me to suggest.......


R

Caring society

We live as we all know in a caring society.

Let me introduce you to D

At age 12 his mum took up with a child sex offender, lots of people seem to have known this at the time but no one had 20 p so they could not pick up the fone.

4 years went on and this CHILD kept himself and his sister safe, he was truly heroic.

Came 16 and, very much traumatised the young person bails out from home and comes up as homeless. The caring services leave him in a B&B where he rapidly sinks into a life of drugs and petty crime which duly results in a call to explain himself to the magistrates.

This in turn means a supervised living placement with two elderly people, for the first time in years he feels safe, engages and begins to be the person he could be.

So of course soon his probation order ends, and back to B&B he goes.

One wonders when the abuse will end....


R

Fun days......

So anyway having chopped up a forest of oak for firewood the management went off for her weekly rest days in the forestry.

As she arrived they announced her task for the day would be:

To fell a couple of oak trees........

She did not actually burst into tears but....

Much later she came home and was like a corpse walking.

Today she has gone again, apparently they need a few more trees chopping down....

This has left me alone to face the onslaught of social workers on statutory review bent.

Naturally, the wind has changed direction and neither log stove is particularly keen to play.

So instead of welcoming warmth they will be greeted by smoking sulkiness.

So I am fighting to keep them going whilst at the same time clearing up and of course dealing with da man who went outside this morning and was there maybe a touch too long as he now seems to need significant reassurance.

R

endangered species

Now, global warming has put at risk many native species around the globe.

But now I introduce another source of danger, the new UK Children's Act.

This act will send to extinction the out of county foster carer, people just like me.

Traditionally thinking about children in care has wavered and vascilated blown hither and thither on the winds of care fashion.

Huge barracks, little barracks, adoption, fostering, all have been in and out of vogue.

The thinking for distance foster care was the concept of a new start, a clean break.

Now there is a mythology around care, Social Work with problem families improves outcome for children. There is prescious little evidence to support this.

But the great and the good have had their thought and, for the future, the practice of moving kids round the country will cease.

Everyone will be brought up in the same neighborhood as they were taken into care from.

Whether another one size fits all policy will work only time will tell.

And me? Like the dodo and the dinosaur, I will be extinct......

R