Stories · from · the · Stone · Caravan

It rained in the night - heavily enough to flatten most of grass in the yard.

The damp brings the slugs out. Lots and lots of slugs. Shiny pitch black ones, as big as my thumb. Hundreds of them.
In one square metre of turf I counted 11 of them, curled and twisted like half sucked licorice chews.

I have a nicely impressive set of cuts on my wrist from the talons of a startled barn owl.

I was at a supper party last night, a farmers' fundraiser for the local agricultural show; cheese, bread, wine and a raffle, and one of the locals brought his owl along. Naturally enough it attracted a lot of attention...

I stayed a few feet back, wine glass in hand. Owl are lovely things, but don't seem to get any particular gratification from being stroked and chucked under the chin, so I didn't feel any need to do so. They are patient beast; this one, 13 months old, had been raised from the egg submitted to the many caresses with only a slightly harassed look. Occasionally it eyed the petting hands as if were so many plump white mice, nicely crunchy and only just out of reach.

At some point it all got to much for Wol, and he launched himself into the air, talons extended, jesses slipping - and landed on my wrist, just abaft the glass.

I felt nothing but the lightest brush of a claw before he had been scooped up again, back on the handlers hand.

But my arm felt suddenly wet. I looked down. Blood was running freely over my hand.
Those talons are like the razor of a Brighton Racetrack thug - bright, fast and very very fast.

A horsefly bite is more painful - but an owl strike is pretty spectacular.

There is a toad crouched just 10 inches from my toes, a gorgeous warty ochre thing, spoldged with black, about 4 inches long. It has clear decided that disguise is the best defence against this curious forked thing which almost stood on it in the long grass, and so it has frozen in place. Actually, it first tried to crouch in full sunlight, which I thought was probably not a good idea for a nice damp toad, so I tickled it with a grass stem until it flopped into a shaded patch, where it still sits, pretending to ignore me.

I'm on the doorstep again. Did I say this was a quiet spot? I was lying. The toad is quiet enough, but the honeysuckle hums with bees, the grass throbs with crickets, the field are full of the conversations of ewes and lambs, and the stream is constant babble.

The swallows are gone, I think for good. Fledged and away in a single week.

The toad has also just slipped away into the grass.

PS - I found out how the visitors got in during the winter. The windowsill into the privy has rotted away, leaving the window swinging free. The work of a moment to slide through, and into the porch. The Privy is now bolted from the outside, so that route is blocked.

I don't know about everyone else, but I guard my phone numbers quite carefully. Unsolicited calls from private numbers are very disruptive, and, if travelling aboard, expensive. Frankly, its bad enough having double glazing firms and fake lotteries ringing my work line (my predecessor used the number a little too liberally on line) without them calling me as I struggle on and off the tube, while I write at lunchtime (my phone on in case work need me) or in the peace of the Stone Caravan.
But now a company, acting within the letter of the laws on privacy and data-protection, but certainly not the spirit, plans to publish all our mobile phone numbers to anyone who has a name and a vague location for us, and £1 to spare.

Here is the BBC report with more details.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/8091621.stm

And here is the website of the offending spam-enablers.
http://www.118800.co.uk/

The good news is - you can opt out - but you need to act before the service goes live next week...

The bad news is - as of Thursday July 9th the website displays only the following information:

The 118 800 service for mobile phone connections is currently
unavailable - from this website and by phone - whilst we undertake
major developments to our 'Beta Service' to improve the experience
for our customers. We'll be back as soon as possible with the new
improved service.

All ex-directory requests made by people in our directory to date
are being processed. There will be no need to resend these requests.
And we will take further ex-directory requests when the service
resumes. We will not be taking ex-directory requests by phone or
text whilst the service is not operational.

Please do not call us on 118 800 for anything other than landline
directory enquiry requests as you will be charged for the call.

Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

So, in other words, they have removed the opportunity to remove a number *before* they make it available to the first set of sticky-fingered stinking spammers and stalkers to line up on Day One of their vile "service".

In a way I am disappointed.  This would be an ideal time of year to get
my immunity to this years flu over and done with, in a cool and green
and shady part of the world, disturbed only by the fussing of ewes over
adolescent lambs.  36 hours of misery, and 4 days of snoozing and
company.



Now I will probably go down with lurgy in the Autumn, in London, and be
shut indoors for a week.

Mama Swallow is fledging her brood in my living room. They fly in circles under the beams, trying to aim for the open window - then one by one disappear. All is silent for twenty minutes, and then with a bucketful of adolescent swallow chatter they are back, ready to start all over again.

I will have to find a way of dissuading Mama next year - swallows are lovely, but swallow lime is very caustic, and I have shovel loads of it on the staircase, lifting the paint. I like to leave the windows open when the cottage is unoccupied, to improve air flow and reduce damp. I have bars to prevent human intruders, but nothing to stop swallows. Fruit netting perhaps? Or folding trellis? I could wedge expanding trellis in the gap between window and sill...

It's hard to know where to start with the cleaning in the knowledge that there is building work taking place (fingers crossed) in the very near future - so more dust and grime and disruption to come.

But I am having great success removing the black mould from the casein lime paint - I paint it with bleach, which kills the mould and removed the stain, wash with water - et voilà - white walls again.

The kitchen-scullery will soon be cleaner than it ever was before - it is the only part of the cottage which has its original stone flag floor, and I am determined to get down on my hands and (dammit!) knees and scrub them bright clean.
Ah - the weasel has left some mice living! One just peered under the front door at me (I'm sitting on the doorstep enjoying the open air). I wonder how many generations have passed since I left wool under the Christmas tree for mouse nests?

I can't make the cottage homely right now - so the solution is probably to invest in a sleeping bag and a primus stove, and camp in the single upper room until the building work is done.

I made Rillettes last night; 1lb pork shoulder, 1lb pork belly, sliced and simmered overnight in the back of the aga, with cloves, bay leaves, thyme, until almost melted away, then shredded, seasoned (heavily) with salt, pepper and nutmeg and packed in pots, under a cap of clean white fat.
Not for the faint of heart, or those not willing to spend a week on celery to work off the extra calories - but - but -
in a few days time - pure pink poetry, sliced and spread on crusty bread with tiny pickled cornichons and a glass of cider....

This is blissfully boring. 

I am trying to keep up with work, but I the wireless signal is pretty
ropey and moves around the house, so I spend part of the day in weird
positions on the stairs, or in the bathroom, catching emails like
butterflies on the wing. Then I make coffee.  And read. 



It's been raining hard, so the cottage is sort out of reach, and I can
be sort of useful here; there is one recovering patient and two
hyperactive toddlers in the house.



So time is spent making shortbread (yummy and just hands on enough for
a three year old) and drawing pizza (which involved me drawing a circle
in crayon which is coloured in with a menu of exotic toppings.  The
latest creation had melon, strawberries, cheese and marmalade.  Anyone
want to try it out?



Actually, a sweet pizza would work pretty well - shortbread base,
mascepone or ricotta topping, crushed strawberries, melon slices...
and, hmmm - marmalade.

The swallows at the top of the stairs eat the flies.
The weasels under the stairs eat the mice.
I eat shortbread and drink coffee and squint at the bit of wall I have scrubbed clean.

We are all happy and getting fatter.

Except, sadly, the mice.

I'm setting up to work remotely.  This maybe a bit of a challenge; most
of my work is based in the office, and I have been provided with no
remote toys - no laptop or VPN access, no phone, no blackberry, so I
have no make do with  an elderly mobile, a dodgy  signal, an even more
dodgy charger and webmail. And they will have to buy their own coffee.



The mobile is already been ringing off the hook (or rather, off the
pile of books that is holding it and the charger together!)



My mother (who is already planning her own escape from quarantine, via
a tunnel, seems to think that I have been is some kind of school
holiday, of the sort where she gets to make a nest of cushions on the
sofa and force feed her captiv...  sorry, patient, tea and toast
fingers.  (She always rather enjoyed the milder childhood illnesses).



To be honest, at this stage I rather I get the bloody flu, and
get it over with, otherwise I'll be stuck here, until 7 days after the
last victim has recovered, and then still have to worry about catching
it from someone else!

I'm setting up to work remotely.  This maybe a bit of a challenge; most
of my work is based in the office, and I have been provided with no
remote toys - no laptop or VPN access, no phone, no blackberry, so I
have no make do with  an elderly mobile, a dodgy  signal, an even more
dodgy charger and webmail. And they will have to buy their own coffee.



The mobile is already been ringing off the hook (or rather, off the
pile of books that is holding it and the charger together!



My mother (who is already planning her own escape from quarantine, via
a tunnel under the fence and an ingenious method of distributing the
excavated earth in the pockets of her jeans),  seems to imagine that I
am on some kind of extended school holiday, with a sick note.



To be honest, at this stage I rather hope I get the bloody thing, and
get it over with, otherwise I'll be stuck here, until 7 days after the
last victim has recovered, and then still have to worry about catching
it from someone else.