Meadow Brown

 As a child I imagined that when I was old enough to live on my own and do my own shopping I would have the opportunity to buy all those products with really interesting packaging that appeared just perfect for building space ships and alien weapons out of. Now I'm older I realise that life didn't turn out that way.

Small Blue

 A village donkey dropped its foal two hundred yards from my house on Thursday. I met it still shocked; slick with amneotic fluid, already on social media judging by the number of phones present. On my way back from the village, fifteen minutes later, it was trying to get up on its feet. Three legs went well, the fourth was still a hurdle. Mum encouraged it, carefully.

Peacock

After some roadworks outside my house this morning, I had to straighten a couple of the pictures that hang in the lounge this evening.

Brimstone

 Much to my surprise, I've agreed to buy my fourth home. After 29 years, time to move on.

Counselling

In as much as it is possible to say that counselling (or therapy) is over, I have completed a period of support from New Forest Therapy.

I initiated this with no previous experience of counselling and few preconceived ideas how, or whether it could help me. I received outstanding help and treatment, and can't recommend the service highly enough.

Old School

I was walking past the site of my closed infant school in Highcliffe today, and walked through to the car park at the rear, where I said hello to a tree I've not touched since I was six years old. It looked strong and healthy, and strangely slightly smaller than it was more than fifty years ago.

Farewell to an old friend

Much though I'd come to love my central heating boiler, I knew that anyone in a mind to consider buying my house would not have similar feelings. Though it was still working, after last year's heavy surgery, it was time for a new.

My theory, that the fundamental problem with the old device was a leak between the in and out, concentric, tubes of the flu was starkly confirmed when the central pipe was revealed to have holes I could almost fit my hand through. No doubt these were contributing to the excess of moisture arriving at the top of the casing, and also to a certain drop in efficiency, and probably somewhat to a lack of safety in operation.

The new boiler, a Worchester, makes strange noises. It's interesting to see the evolution of design and manufacture from the old, early, Glowworm Energy Saver. That inner flu is now plastic, and the whole water jacket is inverted, with the ignition at the top - the fan now controlling the flame entirely rather than simply pumping the flue gas.

Warm I may be, but my feelings for this efficient new model will never equal the old.