I’m feeling a little shell-shocked at the moment after gaining access to the new bungalow yesterday. It’s been eight years since I last visited and it isn’t quite as I remember it. There’s more lawn than I remember, for one thing, and more wooden fencing (which all looks as though it needs painting). I remember two sides of the back garden being brick walls but in fact only half the back wall is brick and the rest is wood. Two self-seeded trees have been allowed to grow, the shed is rotting and rampant ivy is assailing us from all sides. Even if I had been thinking of what to do in retirement (which I haven’t) I now have the answer. I’m going to be gardening. Fortunately it’s good for you to get outside and get your hands in the soil while doing gentle exercise, so it’s not a problem.

Our first test run was rather too hot.

Inside needs a bit of work too, but that’s mainly minor stuff, with the exception of the leaking conservatory roof, and I knew that was a problem we would have to fix. I’m torn between annoyance at having a large bill for repairs (currently waiting for quotes, but it’s bound to be large, or probably even larger) and wonder that I actually have a conservatory. A good portion of my early years were spent living in a corner shop in Blackburn, where we only had an outside toilet. I think I must be from the last generation where it was possible to grow up without indoor sanitation. My Dad, a generation earlier, had clogs. They are something worn by clog dancers these days, but they were the footwear of the poor in the 1930s. They are still used as industrial footwear and you  buy them from workwear shops when I lived in Preston in the 1980s.

How times change. A conservatory . . .

I’ve also had another poem accepted, but that’s not as amazing as owning a conservatory.

Piccalilli

Pictures are more from October 2014 – the first month of the blog. Header shows the mobile bread oven being stoked up for a school demonstration.