Tuesday 4 April 2023
Our first visitor by car, Nicky, arrived yesterday shortly before 18:00. As soon as she had parked up and brought her stuff in, we all went up the garden. A beautiful, sunny, mild evening, hardly a breeze. Nicky and I carried on walking, going up one of the logging tracks, walking straight into the setting sun. The forests and hills looked their best. It’s great to feel proud of your surroundings and to take pleasure in someone seeing it for the first time and sharing your sense of wonder at how peaceful and beautiful it is. As Nicky and I walked back down the track towards the road, it was Nicky who commented in surprise at the first car passing by. We had a lovely, chilled evening, chatting around the kitchen table. Sausage, mash, sauted onions and peas for dinner. The traybake chocolate concoctions we bought in Selkirk were delicious but Chris and Nicky ate a whole one each, I wisely stopped half way. Nicky and Chris went ever so quiet and Nicky paled. Bit much, the (very heavy) slabs of chocolate and caramel and stuff. I smugly wrapped up my remaining half.
Before Nicky’s arrival, I caught up on the things I had wanted to get done yesterday. After a late lunch, I went out for my patrol, stopping to chat to the neighbours. I ended up chatting for maybe even two hours with one of our neighbours, who then helped me make a hole for the spike of our new rotary dryer. It took a lot longer than you’d expect. There are rocks everywhere beneath the grass and moss. Our first attempt only bent the bottom of the spiked holder. I say “our”, it was our neighbour who did all the hard work, I merely ‘supervised’. He has tools and useful things. We don’t. He said that there are always problems getting anything dug because of the stones and the possibility of various pipes and cables beneath the surface. We traced all possible pipe lines and found a second site to try for the hole, the neighbour having noticed that the first location would once have been a track up the forest (still a ‘road’, impossibly, on Google Maps) thus with more stones than the rest of the ground. Result. Second hole made, spike fitted and rotary dryer in place. I know I did next to nothing but it was incredibly satisfying when the rotary dryer was in. It was a real joy being outdoors all that time, comfortably warm with just a jumper on top. I was also reminded, and prior to Nicky having arrived, how good it is to chat to other people, not just the one or ones you live with.
It was lovely to be able to show Nicky around and sit around chatting and catching up. Today, possibly the sunniest of the two full days she’ll be here, I imagine Nicky and I will go for a long walk while Chris has the short straw of waiting in for our two new-old chairs to arrive.
