Blue Witch

If you are a judge fussing about 1cm on what was otherwise an excellent picture...

... best not live in a glass house:

Definitely autumnal here now. And definitely some weird things happening - crocosmia that have somehow grown to 7' tall, but biennials like teasels that are in their second year but are still large rosettes with not a sign of seed heads. And runner beans very late - we have only 3 bags blanched and in the freezer (we only freeze when we have surplus over our immediate needs). No early frosts please or we won't have enough to last through the winter.

The far distant landscape has gone from straw golden and/or parched to green again with just a week or so of intermittent light rain. Our lawn grass and the cut grass paths in the orchard/wildflower meadow never went brown in the heat as it's 'the right type of grass' for extreme climate - aka ancient upland sheep pasture.

A Grand Day Out

On the way:

We had a pleasant day out at the local Country Show, sadly minus sheep (usually half of the show) which were cancelled at the eleventh hour due to the advancing proximity of bluetongue (nowt to do with me guv, honest).

Over previous days the weather forecast had gone from showers to thunderstorms to cloud, so we packed brollies and wellies, but actually needed sun cream for most of the day and the showers never arrived.

We definitely had the most interest of all the old cars, which included, for some inexplicable reason, a 58 plate Volvo estate that the owner thought others might like to look at, so parked with the classic cars rather than in the car park with all the other 'modern' cars. I suspect it was all to do with getting a free entry ticket, and the new organiser of that section is a young female who (I was told) has little interest or knowledge of old vehicles, so failed to register that the car was only from 2008.

Many young children seemed to have never seen an old car before, and I enjoyed telling them, "She's 93 you know!" and then watching their faces as their accompanying adults attempted to give them some context, "That's even older than great granny!" "That's three times older than me and 15 times older than you!" etc etc.

Early in the day some people came up and seemed to bend down and look across the roof line. Mr BW was talking to someone else at the time so couldn't ask or see what they were looking at.

Later on an older couple seemed to be doing the exact same thing. Again they were bending down to the top of the door with their eye line straight over the roof. Mr BW suddenly realised what they were doing: they were sniffing through the gap left open at the top of the driver's door.

Mr BW spoke to them and the man confided, "That is just how an old car should smell, it beings back memories of my old A7 from the 60s!" A long chat about 3 generations and 5 up in an A7 heading to the seaside for a week ensued. How I wish we'd written down all the tales of A7 ownership we've heard from visitors we've met at shows over the years.

It is said that memories are triggered by our senses and that smell is the strongest, but this was a first for us; strange that it should happen twice in one day in our 19th year of Mi1dred custodianship.

You don't get timber felling displays 'through the ages' at most Country Shows.

UPDATE: Sunday 30.08.26 - I treated it like a cut flower: cut off the bottom inch of the stem and kept it in a bowl of cold water in a cool place. It has continued to grow. I have been nibbling the little florets as they have sprouted, but now that they have all been cut off, it is definitely a cauliflower.

Caulbrolli!

The end of summer

Today has been a glorious late summer day, full of beautiful sunlight, warm but not overly hot temperatures, and harvesting and preserving.

Tonight I am sleeping in Bri@n.

I would love to go somewhere in Bri@n for a couple of days, but there are far too many pesky tourists around. 8 more days and they should all be back at work and in school and we can venture out again. Last Tuesday it took me 40 minutes to get into the nearest small town because of weight of traffic. I blame Robson and Vera.

But, until then, I am sleeping in Bri@n, because, after all, our countryside is better than countryside polluted by tourists.

And I can use the facilities indoors.

A new sport

If your energy distribution company set up a new service with a ridiculous name to support those customers (like us) who have frequent and prolonged power cuts, send out an email announcing the service containing nothing but buzzwords (eg “two‑way communication strategy” and “bridging a gap”) without explaining how and when they operate and what they will do or how their involvement will be monitored or evaluated, it's fun and extremely time-saving to get your AI to battle their AI.

The difference being that you actually read what your AI suggests and get it to modify and refine its suggestions, rather than just sending the first thing that it suggests, even if it completely non-sensical and contains even more gobbledegook than the original message.

I've tried every other witch way to get them to listen already...

If you have a glut of cucumbers... and it's hot hot hot...

Make cucumber and gin sorbet.

100g of sugar is more than enough and no need to use the liquid glucose if you add 1tsp of glycerine. Actually, given the amount of gin, probably no need to add that either.

Utterly divine.

And a beautiful colour.

Astronomical Update

Monday 10th August, soon after midnight - Clear skies: Milky Way, 3 satellites, no Perseid meteors.

Tuesday 11th August, 2am - Crystal clear skies: Milky Way as good as we have ever seen, 9 satellites, no meteors.

Tuesday 11th August, 4.30am - Cloudy: couldn't see the 6 planet alignment.

Wednesday 12th August, 1am - Clear skies: 3 satellites, 3 aeroplanes, 7 meteors in 5 minutes, including one that streaked right across the sky with a long tail and another very large and very bright.

Wednesday 12th August - Cloudy most of the day but 28°C: at 5pm we considered driving south as far as we could get but quickly decided against it (dinner and wine in the orchard watching the new children and the western horizon trumped lots of driving with no guarantees), then the skies cleared high up at 5.45pm, but were still cloudy lower down, obscuring the view as the Sun descended, and so it was cloudy for the The Crucial 15 Minutes around 7.00pm. The Big Telescope with Sun filter tracked the Sun, but refused to focus through the cloud, the eclipse glasses proved far too dark (they were made in the US where litigation is a big thing, rather than in China where it isn't), so the rectangles of welding glass saved the day after all. It got noticeably cooler, and slightly darker, but the hens didn't seem to notice and weren't fooled into going to bed early. The Unspeakable started shooting the Inedible part way through (it is The Glorious Twelfth after all, although I doubt there are any grouse in those woods), and two combine harvesters clattered by on their way to harvest the wheat fields a couple of miles away. The Sun attempted to redeem itself by trying a nice sunset but the cloud intervened again. Nevertheless, we saw most of it and had a very pleasant evening.

What about you?

Bang, bang, the mighty fall

The other evening we were in bed watching TV. I can't recall what we were watching, as there are so many mediocre detective/crime series these days that I can't keep up with them all, and I choose not to use my few remaining braincells to remember their uninspiring titles or usually even their plots. Hence Mr BW records a whole 6 part series onto hard drive (yes, we are that old fashioned) so we can watch it, skipping over the adverts, over 3 mights of 2 episodes per night.

Anyway, all of a sudden there was a massive explosion right outside the house - it sounded like an extremely loud gunshot, which was instantly followed by the sound of breaking glass.

The man who shoots crows for the local farm manager hadn't told us he would be around shooting, and he'd only shot 250 crows 10 days ago, so the remaining 2,000 were still too jumpy to venture back.

I thought that some miscreant must have been shooting something else with a shot gun, and had missed, sending the bullet through our very large arched window. I got to the hallway/atrium seconds before Mr BW, because my side of the bed is closer to it than his, thinking on the way that it was either the window that had exploded, or that the pendant light that hangs through the double-storey had fallen down.

That light was not put up by Mr BW, and hangs on very long metal strings, so I have absolutely no confidence that it is actually properly attached. I cannot remember if The Toon were playing on the evening the young electrician fitted it, but if they were, there is even more reason for my concern as he always rushed to get away so he could get to the match early.

Noting that the window was intact and the light was still dangling in its usual central place, I moved to the kitchen.

It was here that I saw what had exploded, and noted some sad victims - 3 sheep.

The previous evening I had put a plastic 2 litre bottle of Schweppes slimline lemonade in the big chest freezer in the garage to cool down quickly for a second glass of Pimms. In the eventuality, we didn't have that second glass and the plastic bottle got left in. I found the bottle in the morning, full of white ice flakes.

I have forgotten about bottles placed in the freezer to cool rapidly before, but these have always been glass wine bottles with corks, and the ice has simply pushed the cork out. But, this time the bottle was intact, so I simply moved it to the larder fridge in the kitchen to defrost.

And there it had stayed, perfectly fine until the evening, when it exploded, causing the tall fridge door to burst open and three of our own fused glass sheep fridge magnets to fall of the side of the fridge. The magnets came off the back of the glass shapes, and two of the sheep are smashed. But, they can go back in the kiln to repair themselves next time we have it on.

You can see the force of the explosion from the tortured state of the plastic:

Luckily (and amazingly) nothing in the fridge was damaged, and it was easy to clean up the lemonade as it was still in white ice flakes.

I have a bit of a feeling that it could have been an accidentally auto-generated spell gone awry as I'd noted as I put the frozen bottle in that the lower fridge shelves needed a good clean.

Now we are off to get four more children.

Border Reivers

We have spent most of the week electrifying our boundaries against unwanted intruders in varying colours and coats.

It's hard work coping with the onslaughts of living in the middle of nowhere.

Unlike those in these parts defending against invaders in the past, at least we can order all the necessary supplies for delivery. And the AI can tell us how to defend in the best way.

I know several people who are vehemently against AI because, according to them, it uses huge amounts of energy unnecessarily. But, to do the amount of research that would have been involved in designing the system and sourcing the parts would have taken me hours on my computer. Several hours on my computer uses a lot more energy than 20 minutes researching and then cross-checking via AI.

A friend who was an early adopter of AI gave me some good advice months ago when AI started proliferating in early 2025: "Talk to it like you'd talk to a friend, tell it what level of knowledge you want it to give you (eg 'a beginner's guide', 'university professor level', 'information from published papers', 'information to present to a council meeting', 'information for a class of 8 year olds'), and if you don't like the answers it gives you, tell it, and question it further on specifics and sources, then get it to cross-check its own assertions against other named sources you supply."

I've added an extra bit - and then put what one AI has told you into another AI and ask the second AI to evaluate the first AI's work, pointing out strengths and weaknesses.

Anyone else using AI for 'serious' purposes? Anyone got any other hints on how to get the best from it to share?

Far from feeling my brain is being dumbed-down by using AI for research, now that I am a 'confident user' I feel my critical thinking and questioning skills are given an excellent workout every time I use it. Which wasn't at all what I expected.

I give the survival of most entry-level clerical/admin jobs about 5 years. What will all those people do for work then? Andy Burnham had better get on with his re-industrialisation programme....

In a new light

Very autumnal here this morning - light and dew and temperature - for the first time.

Enough rain has fallen on and off this week to be useful, but the ground is still rock solid.

Bugger

No £40.

The bloke to fit the new electricity meter turned up within the quoted 2 hour window - although he required a last 5 miles 'talk in' as apparently his satnav took him about 20 miles off his direct route and ran out 2 miles from here - and the new meter finally connected after 6 hours.

"This meter looks new!" he said. "Yeah, it's only 4 years and 2 months old" I said. "No new wiring to do, a simple job, I'm happy!" he said.

Mind you, I booked a "8am - 12pm" slot and was given an 11.33am to 1.33pm slot and he turned up at 1.10pm and went at 2.05pm, so I have no idea how that works.

I'm told that we had an RF meter before, and apparently now the North is allowed 4G meters, we have one of those, which should be more reliable.

Rain showers off and on today. The water butts are pretty full. Yet another 'garden dinner' tonight. I'm happy.

Free waterbutt refill service in operation

Ah, rain. We’ve had rain on and off all night, and it continues now.

Long may it last. It won't, but here's hoping.

I think it's the first serious rain here since a thunderstorm on Saturday 11th July. There was a dribble overnight on 25th/26th and 27th/28th, but nothing that made any difference. The paths cut into the wildflower meadow orchard are greening up again already, after just a few hours of moisture.

St Swithin got it wrong again. Thankfully.

It's currently looking OK here for the partial eclipse next week. The UK's biggest solar eclipse since 1999, and the next totality here isn't until 7th October 2135, so I shan't be around to see it. 90+% where we are. I know people who are off to Greenland, Iceland and Mallorca, hoping to see totality. I'm hoping they aren't disappointed.

I don't like peering at the sun through Mr BW's rectangles of welding glass, so I finally got around to ordering a couple of pairs of eclipse glasses yesterday. I'm sure they are cheaper now than they were in 1999. Even if it's cloudy on 12th, they will have 2 more potential outings in the next 18 months (August 2, 2027 and January 26, 2028).

August 12th is set to be a night of 'astronomical wonders': the eclipse occurs at New Moon, resulting in perfectly dark skies later that night - which is the peak of the Perseid meter shower. There is also a six-planet alignment before sunrise that morning. And Saturn (my favourite planet) is visible for the first time in ages.

Best dust off The Big Telescope then...

Not reading

How long should an electricity smart meter last? More than just over 4 years I'd think.

Our meter, installed in 2022 during the final phase of the building work to replace the 40 year old one - with dials! - that came with the house, lost connectivity in the middle of July and has failed to reconnect itself.

I noticed as the daily readings on the online portal have been similar, even on days when we weren't here. Unlike our last electricity supplier, the current supplier displays assumed daily usage when there is no transmitted usage, to keep the monthly usage total going, rather than just using a zero read. Luckily I had already discovered this a few weeks back during a 12 hour power cut on the hottest day of the year.

I got an email from our electricity supplier on Saturday (1st August) telling me that I needed to submit a manual reading this month as our meter was offline. This confirmed my suspicions, so yesterday I got Google's AI to research the current regs regarding this and discovered that smart meters that have gone dumb now have to be fixed within 90 days, and I accepted its request to write a formal email for me to send to our supplier setting out my understanding of the situation and what I expected to be done to remedy it.

I copied and pasted this and sent it in reply to the supplier's email requesting I submit a manual reading. I received an almost instant reply saying that they would wait until the end of August to see if the meter reconnected itself.

I asked the AI what it thought of that reply and it told me that this was the maximum time (6 weeks) that the supplier was allowed to wait, and suggested that I request that they "initiate a manual remote network reboot/refresh via the DCC user interface immediately, rather than waiting for the automated 6-week timeout loop to expire."

I then got another prompt reply telling me that they would instead replace the meter but wanted to first wait another 2 days just to see if the meter would reconnect itself. I replied suggesting that they initiate the meter replacement immediately and that if the meter did miraculously reconnect itself, the replacement appointment could be cancelled. They agreed.

This morning I got a request to book the appointment and, expecting something weeks away, found I could have any day from tomorrow onward! Mr BW is out tomorrow and as I have already had two lifetime's worth of BS and misogyny from northern workmen, I have booked it for Wednesday when 'Shaun' who will be attending can be dealt with by both of us if needed.

I'm impressed that this problem is being resolved by my supplier in 3 days (and it could have been 2), one of which was a Sunday I'm also impressed that, thanks to the AI, it took me all of 20 minutes to research my consumer rights and write my emails. Pre-AI (unbelievably just 14 months ago now) such a task would have taken several hours.

During this process I've discovered that around 10% of smart meters go dumb. Clearly they are not as smart as they should be.

Has anyone else had this problem? If so, how long did your supplier take to resolve it?

14 heads and counting

This sunflower is taller than me and is right outside the kitchen window.

I fear it is a cross-continent spell gone wrong.

BW observes

This year's word of the year seems likely to be 'hydrate'.

BW observes

Manchester is not The North.

Fencing

Last autumn Mr BW replaced the old fence that forms the top edge of our property. When he had finished, he scattered some surplus flower seeds we had collected from our garden plants over the past few years into the rough grass. Mostly poppies, but also some lupins, forget-me-nots and other assorted things that were unlabelled so will be a surprise if/when they appear.

This is how it looks now:


Replacing the old fence was a huge job as the uprights were in gigantic lumps of concrete, and many bits had rotted off at ground level, so it all had to be dug out with a kango hammer.

For once, we wanted to get someone in to do the job, but none of the local fencers would agree to replace the style we had, and they all wanted huuuuge money and would only agree to do the job with untreated all-wood, which would rot off again in a few years. We wanted metal uprights and concrete gravel boards, and galvanised anti-bunny mesh, which would last many years, and hopefully see us out, but they wanted to guarantee themselves work in perpetuity. We decided we didn't need the upheaval or the expense every few years.

We considered a metal fence, but decided it looked too industrial, and out of keeping with the rural landscape, plus it was £13,000 and looked (from the sample in the salesman's car) like the surface would scratch and the sections would rust through in about 3 years. Plus he wouldn't guarantee that the workmen would keep out of my flowerbeds.

We considered making the fence into a drystone wall, and approached the company who put up the summerhouse/museum, but they wanted £17,000 for 22 metres, plus another couple for the top stones, which would have to be specially worked, and that was just silly.

These photos are from this time last year when the slate roof on the original two-storey part of the house was being replaced, and shows the old fence, propped up with supports made from the old roof removed and saved when the single-storey part of the old house was redeveloped. I might have given up writing words about our projects, but I will never give up taking pictures, and a picture is worth hundreds of words.


This is the fence part-way through Mr BW's replacement:


Anyway, Mr BW did a fantastic job (much better than any workmen ever would), no trees or plants were harmed and no creatures got into the garden, and the whole area looks nice and natural now. While we agonised over the colour to paint the fence, the dark grey we eventually chose (which I was originally convinced would be too 'trendy' and/or 'urban') blends into the landscape and is a perfect foil to both the grasses and poppies outside, and the cottage garden plants inside:

Now, this autumn's job is the back stretch. Fortunately, 'out of sight out of mind' currently, but double the length. We need to hire a bulldozer to shift around the soil, stone and rubble pile in the orchard that was left by the builders, and Mr BW has found a local company that hires ground hole boring attachments for bulldozers that will make digging the holes much easier.

And that's how you get from a post that was going to be about bricks found on beaches, to replacement fences, when you alight on a photo that you just think, "Oh that can be the first photo." Ah well, the bricks will keep for another time...

Karma

To punish me for gloating about cooler temperatures in the North, at ten to eight this morning our power went off.

It's still off now.

It has been 32.5°C today, the hottest day so far, and all I can say is thank goodness for generators and changeover switches. It started as 'restoration due between 9 and 10', and now, by hour stages, is estimating 18:15. I'll believe it when I see it.

No reason has been given or is apparent for the power outage, which is very localised - it was 73 properties, but is now down to 22, but those are spread over 20 square miles, so we're not high priority. We've not had thunderstorms, and had 6 drops of rain at 8am and 106 drops half an hour ago.

As I said, thank goodness for generators, because we would potentially have lost a lot of fridge and freezer food today.

As it is, I've made lemon sorbet - if the generator is running, it costs little (if any) more to run the ice cream maker. It joins the other home-made flavours in the freezer: mango and lime sorbet, mint choc chip, ginger, apricot and pistachio, vanilla, rhubarb and orange and maybe a couple of others I've forgetten. All very low-sugar and with no nasty ingredients.

I didn't tell you before, but on Wednesday we had no water for most of the day, having had very low water pressure since the previous Thursday. It is likely this was due to a demolish-and- rebuild project on the top of a hill a few miles away, but their workmen won't admit to having gone through our water supply pipes while putting in a new septic tank. But, one of them has previous: he went through our telephone line while installing our gigabit broadband a couple of years ago. This was the water from our taps as it eventually returned:


Oh, the joys of rural living.

Is it hot enough for you?

Our 'in the shade' thermometer tells us that the temperature has been:

Tuesday: 31.8°C
Wednesday: 31.9°C
Thursday: 32.1°C

The in-the-sun wall thermometer has been in the mid-40s, but unlike Mr BW, I pay no heed to that.

However, my daily records since we moved here show that these dates in 2021, 2022, and 2023 were within 2 degrees of these temperatures. Mind you, this time last year we had the main house roof off and it was ten degrees cooler and we were worried about impending rain.

The seventeenth and eighteenth century Northern farmers understood the climate. In these parts they built their houses of thick local stone on high ridges on a north/south axis. Prop open a front door, prop open a back door and even when there is no breeze, there is a cool current. Bliss.

I don't watch the news on television, but occasionally we accidentally catch a few minutes while lining up programmes to watch that have been recorded. "What we need is to be looking at air conditioning!" declared one interviewee. Erm, no, what we need is to build every new home, social building, industrial building and warehouse with enough solar panels and grey water storage/recycling to meet its own needs, and to design houses to cope with the rising temperatures of a changing climate rather than just to build them as cheaply as possible. And we need to teach people how to use curtains and blinds and differentially open windows for temperature control.

Friends from down south sent an email saying it was too hot for them. These are the people who have taken 10 flights each in the last year. I can't be bothered to reply to them.

I remember saying to Dave (he of the self-confessed-in-the-comments dubious habits) who lives about 30 miles east of us, but used to live in London, that the only thing that worried me about moving North was the cooler summer climate. He said to me that I would find it pleasant compared to the South. He wasn't wrong.

We've been less hot than we often were in a 'normal' summer down south prior to 2020. But, we have planned for these conditions. We now have storage for 7.5 cubic metres of rainwater to use for watering our veggies (of which there is perhaps currently a half left). We have spray bottles of cold water (repurposed plastic bottles from cleaning products) to mist ourselves or greenhouse plants, bottles of tap water cooling in the fridge, and outdoor chairs in north-facing places to enable us to be outside but avoid the sun.

We haven't had any rain for a couple of weeks and I expect the predicted thunderstorms over the next couple of days will avoid us. But, the forecast is for ten degrees less from next week.

And I remember the summer of 1976. In fact, we saw a programme about it recently.

How's it been where you are?

Missing identity

Despite all banks repeatedly telling us as customers about being wary of unexpected calls, and not giving out personal information, I was dismayed to receive yet another phone call a couple of weeks ago from A Bank, who expected me to give out security information before they would say what the call was about, and refused to answer a question to enable me to be sure it was actually A Bank calling.

I had an identical problem with this type of out-of-the-blue call from them wanting my security details before they would tell me anything at all, maybe 8 or 9 years ago, and think I raised a complaint about it at the time, but was fobbed off with a 'that's our system and if you don't like it, you can take your banking elsewhere' type response. I have had an account with A Bank since they first started over 35 years ago now (although I do now have several other current accounts to keep my options open as I feel their service has deteriorated hugely over recent years).

The conversation went something like this:

Me (answering my ringing personal mobile phone): Hello?

Bank: Hello, this is Fliss from A Bank. I have some information for you, but I need to take you through security first.

Me: Hmmmm, yes, that's what all scammers say. I'm not expecting your call, so I am not going to do that.

Bank: I quite understand. It's OK, I'll give you part of some information we have, and you can give me the rest. For instance, if I say your birth day is the 9th, you can give me the month and year...

Me: But don't you understand that that is exactly what a scammer would do, to cross-check or complete partial information they have already obtained somewhere?! I've got a better idea, I'll ask you a question that only my bank would know and you can give me the answer to reassure me it is actually you.

Bank: I wouldn't be able to do that.

Me: Why?

Bank: Our systems won't allow me to.

Me: OK, well tell me what the call is about or which department you are from. I'm concerned now.

Bank: I can't do that until you have passed security.

Me: OK, I'm in front of my computer, please just send me a quick email with A Bank branding and your name and details, to the email address registered on my account and I'll quickly check the properties to determine you are who you say you are.

Bank: I can't do that.

Me: So, let me get this straight. You are calling me on my personal mobile phone, claiming to be from my bank, and I am not expecting your call. All you will give me is your first name, you won't send me an email to confirm you are genuine, and you expect me to give you my security information before you will tell me anything else?

Bank: You have to pass security first.

Me: Ah, wait, I am registered for Voice ID, so not only are you calling me on my personal mobile phone, you can also get your system to identify my voice.

Bank: We don't do that on outgoing calls.

Me: Why not?

Bank: It's not something we do.

Me: So, you won't talk to me because I won't give you my security details because you banks always tell us customers not to give our details to people who ring out of the blue claiming to be a bank they bank with? Can you not see how stupid this is?

Bank: Well, I'll leave notes on your account and you can ring back on a number you are comfortable with and the advisor will be be able to tell you what it was about.

Me: No, I'm not going to do that. The advisor will not know what it is about - I've had many past bad experience of this type of thing. You will have to write to me, or send me an email about whatever it is that you want to tell me.

Bank: I can't do that.

Me: Do you know how stupid this sounds to me? Scammer. (put phone down)

Surely, in this day and age, banks should be doing better than this? What do you think?

I have, in the past, had similar calls from other financial institutions, but not recently - I thought they had all stopped this kind of silliness. I do think this call was probably from A Bank, but I've heard no more and I couldn't be bothered to ring them to try to find out what they wanted to tell me.

Only 4 hours of night tonight

Happy Solstice.
Happy Midsummer.
Happy Longest Day.

Now we are 6

Six years ago today we were on the A1, travelling north, towing Bri@n, who contained a few basic things to get us through the first week. Sometime early afternoon we got a phone call, just as we were passing the Angel of the North, confirming that we were now the owners of a new home. A house in a beautiful position on a windy ridge that needed an awful lot of work before it was comfortably habitable and could be future-proofed to meet our needs for our retirement.

That was ten days before the first Covid lockdown. Nothing could have prepared us, newly returned from South Africa where we had spent a tense month on holiday, planned a year before, for what would follow.

It feels very similar now - no idea what the next few weeks and months will hold; the world in uncertainty.

But, this time, rather than being in the grip of a virus of unknown origin, potency or magnitude, where everyone seemed to be on the same side, this time we are being held ransom by our dependence on Gulf Oil and a load of foreign megalomaniac men who are playing "my dick's bigger than your dick" with the future of humanity.

And then, if there is anything left once they have finished, the joy of a world controlled by out-of-control machines, who have been learning from their own misguided and misaligned information.

Honestly, I despair. There is so much that needs saying, but I honestly do not have the strength or stamina any more to say it.

Unpowerful

Today Radio 4 and the government finally caught up with me on oil prices.

The owner of our nearest petrol station (13 miles away) told me on Saturday that he is expecting a litre of petrol to cost £1.74 by this coming weekend. It was then £1.379. That is $8.85 and $6.52 respectively per US gallon.

But, as Mr BW reminded me, 4 years ago, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the litre price was well over £2 a litre for several months. Now Russia are offering to help Europe out with supply of oil, providing the agreement is long-term. Well, that will be interesting...

No supplier will currently deliver heating oil in this area, at any price. Luckily we don't need any urgently - with the central heating off now I think we are OK for about 30 weeks - but it might be a long time before this war is over, given that the population of Iran is around 93 million people (the 17th country globally in population and the sixth-largest country in Asia). The population is largely urbanized (over 73%) with a median age of around 32 years.

I always believed that our own North Sea oil was the 'wrong kind' of oil for most uses. I'm sure that is what we were told last century. Well, that is what I have written (from the blackboard) in my 3rd year geography exercise book. Miss Agnew must have got it wrong. Now it seems that the reason 80% of our own oil production is shipped abroad is simply because we don't have the refinery capacity to process the raw product in the UK. Given that last November the UK government effectively banned new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, our dependence on other countries for the power we need is very scary in these times.

Over the past few days, I've asked everyone I've encountered about the past history of oil and petrol shortages in this area, and have been told that panic buying and queues at petrol stations have never been seen - compared to what happens in the south east - but times are different now, so I shall be watching closely.

From warm to cold

Heating oil price is up again to 142.20ppl today.

That is ridiculous given that petrol is 135.9ppl and a lot of that price is fuel duty and 20% VAT, whereas only 5% of the heating oil price is VAT.

Boiler Juice have answered the obvious question, Why doesn’t heating oil move in line with crude oil or petrol prices?

"Heating oil prices do not always rise or fall at the same rate as petrol, diesel, or crude oil. The delivered price of heating oil includes several additional factors, such as:

Because the heating oil market is more localised and less standardised than petrol, prices can move faster or appear more volatile."

Yeah yeah, if you say so. We never buy from Boiler Juice (although it's the easiest site for checking prices), not least because they charge a £12.99 service charge on every order, no matter what size. We are part of a local group who place an order on the last Friday of the month and generally get a better price than I, as an individual, can We did feel sorry for the new-to-the-area person who last month wondered aloud if he could place less than the minimum order of 500 litres because he didn't have the money to pay for that amount. I guess he's very cold right now.

We have discovered that, at this time of year, our now super-insulated house (well, as far as we can be in a property made of stone with its origins in the 17th century) can maintain a temperature of 17°C at this time of year, despite an outside temperature of 6°C maximum, given that the Aga is in the central part (that's not going off), and provided we have the wood burner alight down the far end. That is more than acceptable.

After a few days of warm weather, including glorious sun and 18 degrees yesterday, it was around zero overnight with flurries of snow (which didn't settle) this morning. We could see snow on the other (north) side of the valley (about 30 miles away), which is a hundred or so feet higher than us, until late afternoon.

First snowdrops appeared here on 21st January. First Iris Reticula soon after, first crocuses last week, and the first daffodils at the beginning of this week And, exactly a year after the first paths were cut in the orchard by Vroom Vroom, the (then) new ride-on lawn mower, I re-cut those paths yesterday. Let's gloss over how I got VV stuck in the b33 enclosure, so that Mr BW had to remove the grass box and then lift it round so that I could get it back out. Oops. Luckily those b33s flying were in a good mood and didn't give me any trouble.

Shep and I are having a competition to see who is most lacking in energy this week. I'm not sure who is winning.

Up up up

Heating oil is 134.90 pence per litre this morning. Up from 57.00 pence per litre two weeks ago.

Right, the central heating is already off, but water heating now changes to electric for a while at The Coven. Thank goodness we have a huge wood pile (the old roof timbers) and are on a fixed price electric tariff until November.

We were planning to have a week in the Scottish Highlands at the end of the month. I think that's getting cancelled now, as, even from here, it is a 500 mile round trip, and fuel stations are few and far between and may not have fuel by then. I wonder how delivery companies are going to cope?

We haven't been out to know if petrol and diesel have gone up in price at the pumps. The internet says that petrol is averaging 132.9ppl, but that seems like last week's price (plus much of the price of petrol is tax anyway). Maybe it's just the heating oil suppliers who are profiteering?

Tuesday

Lovely and sunny and warm here today - which is just as well as the heating oil price has gone up from 57.0ppl a week ago to 61.0ppl last Friday to an unbelievable 102.18ppl today! Time to turn off the heating methinks.

Shep doesn't have any interest in sheep, or rounding things up, unlike any collie I have ever met.

Marching on

We managed to see Neptune Uranus and the Orion Nebula through The Big Telescope on Saturday night. Unfortunately the 4 planets meant to be visible in alignment on the western horizon proved invisible behind the only cloud - a low band.

Today we had to take Mr BW's Broom (one year and one day old) for its first service. "Do you like it?" asked the service desk woman. "No, I hate it, it's too bossy in its on-screen messaging, you can't turn the so-called lane assist off permanently, and if you play with the radio's tuning from the passenger seat it tells you to keep your eyes on the road and locks the radio until you stop, turn off the engine, get out, lock it, wait 5 minutes, then get back in again."

I suspect that all modern cars are as bad though. Thank goodness for the simpler cars of yesteryear. Mi1dred is 93 in a few months' time. We've just bought her 5 new tyres as the ones she has on are about 40 years old. Fitting those will keep Mr BW occupied for a few days. Given that he has 10 tonnes of 20mm gravel (or 'stone' as they call it in these parts) delivered last week, to move, by the wheelbarrow, round to behind the Big Greenhouse (to tidy that area up), he probably isn't short of things to do.

We went to a couple of seasides on our way to the service garage. We are slowly discovering all the lovely small beaches that most people never find. Luckily we didn't take Shep (as he was feeling quite fragile) as we might have felt the need to put him in the new doggy launderette. Do watch the short video in that link. It is hilarious - and probably not for the intended reasons.

Nine quid for a 10 minute DIY dog hosedown on the seafront. Sheesh. Mind you, I can see stag parties finding this a fun thing to do.

A quick post before February is out

I have been hibernating.

Not since 2011 has the winter seemed so long, so bleak, so grey, so wet, and so dismal.

From 2012 to 2020 we spent an increasing amount of time during The Dark Weeks in South Africa, then we were busy doing renovations and extensions up north, and finally (in autumn 2024) finishing relocating, so this is the first year for 13 years that we have had nothing major going on at this time of year to distract us. I did not enjoy it.

We have occasionally ventured out to collect glass (beautiful remnants of the north's industrial past), on beaches, from junk shops and from auctions. And we've been making our own marbles to make up for the lost ones.

Mr BW is currently outside triangulating his new all-singing all-dancing auto-finding, auto-tracking telescope - which arrived on 18th January - to see tonight's planetary alignment. This is only the third night in the last 6 weeks that the skies have been clear enough to see anything.

The amaryllis (*nods down*) has only just finished flowering. 5 blooms on one stalk and one on another. 2 months. Must be a record.

We have also adopted a dog. An old collie, that I found sadly abandoned in a cardboard box in a big shed. Mr BW has named it Shep.