Tuesday 20 June 2023
After the rain of Saturday night, I walked around the garden and round the forestry track and back along the road, my ‘patrol’ route of around 1,500 steps. The bottom of my trousers, in fact up to above my knees, got wet. I stood by the river bank for a while admiring the far healthier water level of the river and enjoying the sound of the water. It is incredible how much water can be produced from ‘just’ a few hours of rain. I have yet to go up to our water tank this morning though. I know that isn’t going to be filling up.
Chris and I are useless about going into lofts. I know if I had to, I would. Him, less likely due to the added hindrance of his bad knees. So Mitch went up there to investigate. We wanted to know what is in the attic, assuming it to be birds and mice. The birds, it would appear, are between the roof and the attic structure, so no birds in there. He did, however, express a degree of surprise about the number of mice that had been around. They appear to have been nesting in a cosy area of that familiar yellow candy-floss-like fiberglass. There are definitely mice in the roof but I don’t know that there are as many as perhaps there once were. We still have our Stop Mouse Pro sonar thing up there. As Mitch was moving to exit the attic and I was asking about a huge lump of stones in the attic (the former walls of the house), he saw that on top of the stones were signs of another big mouse colony, though he said it looked abandoned. The sonar is near that colony. I am wildly hopeful the sonar is at least controlling mouse numbers.
The mouse/attic thing has reinforced something that is obvious but which I’m trying to ignore, namely that when you live out here, to get things done you pretty much need to do them yourself if you can. Otherwise, they won’t get done. The thought of going into the attic fills me with dread, but an overcomable dread. I think it would be good to try to clear up some of the mouse-dropping remains and maybe move the sonar somewhere else, nearer the more current nesting site.
For now, I have a genuine excuse for not doing it. I have managed to pull something in my lower back. The actual pulling event happened while I was hanging some washing, not even a dramatic stretch, but I had a think about what I’d done out of the ordinary and I had been sitting on very uncomfortable chairs at the book festival on Sunday and unable to move, fidget and sit how I normally would (which is cross-legged and in various different positions for the entirety of the sitting time).
I’m off to fidget before an otherwise largely desk-based day.
