View From The WIndow

Believe it or not the sun is shining through the window and I have had to roll the blind down to see the screen. I could have put my desk in such a way that the sun would not shine on it of course, but as 'Jack' converted the two cottages into one there are no straight lines, floors or ceilings and where the desk is now is the only position in the room where the drawers do not want to suddenly open of their own volition. And if the Jack reference is too old for you you might get the fact that they brought their own horses.

The kitchen is 97% finished, the building of not the painting, that along with the rest of the house will be done in another week or so, my people are still talking to the missus' people on how much of the decorating I promised to pay for in order to get out of doing it myself. The original two rooms now turning into three rooms, the stairs and the landing. What I was unaware of with a new kitchen is that it requires a deep clean after every cup of tea, every use of a utensil and a tidy up on opening a drawer, and everything now has its place and if it is not in its place I am kept abreast of this with "Geeeeeoooooorrrrggggeeeeee".

I am getting ahead of myself, what is outside, well, nothing, it is early and sunny but no doubt very crisp, Washington House has still not sold for all you people down south with oodles of cash looking for the county idyll and the good life. New neighbours have still not turned up around the corner and the big house down the road still has scaffolding around it, in all the months it has been there I have only ever seen one person up there and it looked like the owner in overalls, if that is the case I suspect it will become a permanent fixture.

The village is to lose its transport in a month or so, at the moment we have several large buses a day which cause mayhem when their time tables ensure they meet right outside the Post Office at least three times a day. I am unsure if we will still get one or two a day but the way people are talking the whole service may stop, it would seem our taxes are required elsewhere in the area, probably for the vital monitoring of carbon output or ensuring we understand diversity in our everyday lives and keeping services open for all the minority me, me, me groups. Transport, who needs transport.

The gardening club have a speaker coming to inform them on green stuff or suchlike and the dear is environmentally aware, so she will be taking the train instead of driving and insists on being picked up, presumably by car and not a tandem, then returned by said vehicle to again catch the carbon emission free train back home. Now, at a doubtful stretch that may be caring for the planet but it is pretty insensitive towards other human beings. In the old days when our main priority was to remain alive and survive past 22 years there were none of these kinds of people around, we were too busy to bother about nonesense, and as for the lesser spotted newt we would have eaten it, not given it half of East Anglia to live in.

If you were confronted by razor wire and a line of riot police who were not only doing their jobs but were probably personally against you trying to bulldoze your way into their country would you have a child in your arms while you confronted them, swept along in a largely antagonistic male crowd, no, neither would I. But if you listened to the BBC news it was all the fault of the police trying to do their job. I watched the 'man in the blue jacket' being shot with a gas canister throughout the newscasters rant, for some time before he was shot he had been lobbing rocks at close range at the policeman who shot him. The shot did not seem to disable him in any way just in case you are interested.

No matter what your views on UKIP are they are a recognised legitimate political party, I suspect no better and no worse than what already masquerades as our leaders or potential leaders whether blue or red. But for a young lad of fifteen to be questioned by police officers for looking at UKIP's completely legal website is lunacy in any normal persons book and we should be very afraid that that kind of thing now seems perfectly normal in our society.

I was away last weekend, I drove down to Swindon and it was a chore, four hours turned into five and a bit due to an avoidable accident on the M6, if you do travel up and down the country, especially from just north of Manchester you quickly realise we have too many cars and not enough road. The week before a one and a half hour journey home from our sons turned into five hours, this time by a tragic accident which was down to bad driving. The miles and miles of roadworks also did not help and it seemed to me that my whole journey was made at fifty miles an hour due to average speed cameras, I am a big supporter of an eighty mile an hour limit on motorways but having made several journeys lately this is pie in the sky. This won't please the eco warrior above but I would spend the HS2 money and the actual road tax on four lane motorways from John O'Groat's to Lands End, it is 2016, the car is here to stay.