Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic. No, not really. It’s not very nice out there. I have no idea why that song came into my mind. Pretty darn random. It happens a lot. I guess life with me would be a lot more boring if it wasn’t filled with this random stuff. I keep singing it now and THG has taken her cup of coffee into another room!
God it’s orrible out there. People reading this stuff in hundreds of years time, assuming the human race still exists, will at least have a good understanding of the weather at the time. No need to look up those bland, tedious reports in the weather archives. I mean when did the BBC weather forecast ever tell you god it’s orrible. Or bloody freezin. Or cold enough to freeze yer knackers off.
In other non news, not seen the muntjac deer for a while. Wonder if they are ok. I don’t think they hibernate. Maybe gone somewhere warmer for the worst part of the winter. The fox still comes, increasingly during daylight hours it feels. Before the lake cam alerted me to the fact I can’t say we have ever seen, or at least noticed a fox in the back garden but now I spot it when I’m sat in the shed or, as was the case the other day, on the way to the shed.
Today, btw, I am going to pot the chilli seeds wot our Tom bought me for Christmas. Just been waiting for a bag of seed compost to magically appear which it did yesterday. Won’t be long either before I can get going on the raised bed THG has requested in front of the kitchen window. Handily placed to nip out and pull some veg fresh for Sunday dinner etc. Our rosemary bush is now a good size down by the greenhouse and the thyme plant is also doing well. The knack is to not over harvest them in the early years to let them get established.
At some stage soon I will need to procure some water based plants for the lake. I realise that given time they will naturally establish themselves but impatient me doesn’t want to wait the decades it will take. I daresay Brian the fishing gnome will appreciate some more cover when he gets black from Barbados or wherever he is right now in da Caribbean, maan.
Yesterday I spent a chunk of the afternoon poring through the Episcopal Register of St David’s for 1397/98. It is an interesting read. The new bishop, Guy Mone was put in place on 11th November 1397 but the selfish bastard took the money and stayed in an inn on the Strand in London for most of the time. He didn’t set foot in Wales until the following September when he went to St Davids on a short visit for his enthronement. In his first year he gave leave of absence to 15 of his parish clergy for a year’s “sabbatical”. They didn’t call it a sabbatical in those days but my point is most of these men were English and took the job just to cream off any tithe income that came into the parish coffers. Not much of it would have been in cash form in those days. Basically a tenth of the harvest, but they probs sold the surplus left from what they needed to eat themselves. In their absence from the parish they would slip a few quid to local and almost certainly barely literate curate to look after the spiritual needs of the flock.
There was a lot of croneyism going on in those days (as well) and old bish Mone in his first year on the job gave one parish living to someone called Sir William Mone. Coincidence ou quoi? Woteva. The fact that Wales eventually became a hotbed of religious dissent was largely down to absenteeism by the local, non native, clergy. The Welsh found an outlet in dissent because the independents, baptists et al ministered to their religious needs in the absence of instruments of the established church.
Thursdays in the Davies household have a fairly relaxed start. If I did yoga that is what I would now do but I don’t. Instead I’m off to pot some seeds. Ciao teddy bears…