I think Julia just arrived home. Either that or there is a massive urban fox wrestling with the wheelie bin in the driveway. I do hope it’s Julia, as I’m not sure I can cope with a massive fox.

I suppose that’s why the British are slowly declining. It isn’t the soft living caused by central heating or the constant drip of criticism by academics blaming us for an Evil Empire, it’s the lack of challenging wildlife. We’d have to up our game if there was a chance of a snake or a bear in the driveway. When Tim found the beehives on the farm had been raided by a woodpecker over winter, that was as bad as beekeeping in England got. It’s a lot less fraught than beekeeping in America.

It’s also less of a problem running a cafe in UK than in Canada. We have a few health regulations, but there’s a lot more to think about in other places. I’ve just been reading about how to run a restaurant in Whistler BC. There are parts of their staff training that I never had to do on the farm. You don’t , for instance, have to worry about blocking the exit route of a mouse, which was the biggest thing I had a problem with.

It was Julia. She just came in and muttered. Now she has disappeared to do something mysterious in the house, which will probably involve moving something of mine so I can’t find it. I’m not sure which is worse, the muttering or the random moving of things that were perfectly fine where I put them.

My sort of bear