Wednesday 26 April 2023
It’s the second consecutive day of frost. Fortunately, when I needed a reliable and continuous WiFi connection for work yesterday, the silicon glue connecting our exposed WiFi cable coped fine with the frost and hail. There was hail in the gutter this morning and apparently it’s minus 2°C; sub-[expletive]-zero. Frost barely crosses my radar in London. Neither do I wear long johns in London. Today is the second consecutive day of my using them again, having optimistically put them away for the summer. I got my Oodie out yesterday morning just in case, but normal layers just about kept me warm enough. I am seeing the timeframe for warmth in this house/Scottish Borders as being less than the six months I naively thought it would be warm. I am well aware I have become a weather and heating bore. Take note, this is what happens to people who move from new flats in London to old houses in rural Scotland.
Friends and random people are increasingly asking us what we’re growing in the garden. I am developing feelings of gardening inadequacy. My answer is, Er, nothing. I love the idea of gardening, I love being outdoors and I love healthy plants. I have had an allotment, my mum has always been a keen gardener and I enjoy being in gardens. My allotment in Mottingham, southeast London, was a real pleasure and we had many very happy days there, often with friends. I was never good at the daily tending of the allotment though, in part because I could only get there by driving. I do not have a history of tending things with regularity. I also find gardening overwhelming for there being more to learn and know about than I feel I could ever learn. When I say ‘gardening’, I am thinking just of edible plants, I can’t be dealing with myriad flowers and foliage. My goal is merely to try to keep the garden we have been left with pretty much as it is. I also have some dahlia bulbs my friend Fiona gave me and a small evening primrose plant my mum gave me. They will all go out once frost season is over and done with. I am also conscious that a lot of things won’t grow in a windy, wet, chilly valley in Scottish Borders.
I did my patrol yesterday, happy to go outdoors after a very uncomfortable working morning (a story even less interesting than my weather and heating tangents). Some massive rocks had appeared along the edge of a forest track. Once I got to the road, I saw a new sign. Apparently, there’s going to be a rally, Brick & Steel Border Counties Rally, on Saturday 6 May. I’m fine with rallies but I’m annoyed that nowhere can I find the route or the times; the location of the big rocks on a bend just off our road and the location of the sign suggests the cars may actually go on our road. I’d like to know if and when that might happen as there’s no way I want to be caught up rallying in my Skoda estate. I spoke to the neighbour about it. He said it’s noisy and quite a few cars race along the road in the lead-up to it as practice (I made a ‘joke’ to Chris a few days ago about the road being a rally track as I saw two rally cars pelting along – little did I know). The neighbour said there may also be a cycling race that passes by, which he seemed to suggest was more disruptive, particularly as there are not many areas of the road you can comfortably/safely overtake fast-moving cyclists. Oh well, this could be my summer fixation, users of the road, instead of heating and weather.
