a twenty twenty-two note

Right then: twenty twenty two. And winter doesn't get any easier even though we don't get so much as a dusting of snow (to date). I for one feel cheated. 

Never mind: plans are afoot, ideas are stirring, the minds are pondering the choices and challenges… there is soon, a proposal, a projection, a preference for a travelling away from here, driving on the right to a greater light… if the ongoing plague can be negotiated again.

Meanwhile, one sends birthday greetings, rides the reopened 'Dartmoor Line' en famille, makes the 2022 marmalade, walks the fields… begins to spot the first signs of spring…  One also gets one motor MoT'd, and the other cleared of rodent infestation. The boiler is serviced, the winter oil consumption has left its mark so the tank is recharged and at triple cost to that of the 2020 fill…  A pre-owned smartphone has also been purchased… and returned with full refund, being unserviceable in the battery department. Another better phone is gifted to me, so it's win win I guess. 

… and just maybe I can look forward to no longer feeling as though someone might have set about me with a sand filled sock, sometime back around  the 2021 winter equinox, quite as much as I do at the moment.  

Now it is (as I scribe this) oh two oh two twenty twenty two or 02/02/2022 if you prefer. January is done with. February is now all the rage. My birth month. Shortest month of the year, any year. 

The month of the snowdrop.

So time to make pilgrimage to the north cornwall coast, taking in the last resting place of SS Bellem and expanding the lungs to suck up the saline freshness of a favourite environment, so long neglected. No falls, no slips, no wettings; and the company of like minds. This was 03/02/22. One thousand, three hundred and fifty eight days since last I walked this shoreline. Sobering, and much missed. A lovely looking number though, don't you think?

That's Jensen Text Italic you know. 

A week later a totter round a bit of the Moor, still wintery looking as far as the place can without the snow supplement. Hot tea from the good Doctor's flask and a couple of beers with our lunch in the Tor Inn upon retreat. I can't recall the skies being quite as blue as these snaps suggest… behaps I was too intent on looking where I was putting my feet… it's an age thing. No falls no slips and nil abrasions… how about that?

After the Dartmoor perambulation there is my significant February date of course, three quarters towards the century I am not remotely expecting (or hoping) to clock up. Sobering! Tsch! Fie!!! 

Diary entry, if I kept such a thing, would comment on flying visit of younger bro-and-sis-in-law to Bullsmead Barracks the day before the tempest called Eunice that has ruffled the nation takes charge as it passes over the Kingdom, dumping trees, roofs and detritus thither and yon. We suffer nothing much beyond a further tile slippage and rather a lot of birch twiglets, even though we are in the red warning area. Oh, and loss of the interweb-u-like, naturally. But the wind did roar mightily. I learn there are trees blocking roads hereabouts.  The son-and-heir cannot return to the bosom of his family on account of the none running of the trains. It's that bad. 

Franklin follows Eunice and inflicts more distress on our gables. Now we do need a roofer…… we think we have one…… but the wait might be long…… meantime guess who has to patch 'the thatch'? Ladder work. My favourite. 

Roof put back, and patched, in not very friendly conditions, and a week without any internet connection until today although I note the notice advising the month fee-take is as efficiently delivered as ever.  Only as we recover something like normal connection do I get to see the sickening horror of what Putin is dong to Ukraine. Could someone just blow him away please?