It was raining when I went out earlier this morning but the weather has brightened considerably since then. Perhaps my granddaughter might have her planned birthday walk to Heights Church after all.
Yesterday we took advantage of the sunshine, when it appeared late in the morning, to head off up the hill and then back home along the Donkey Line. We wanted to check what has been going on there.
On Monday as I ran along the Donkey Line I began to think I must be hallucinating; I was sure I could hear a motor behind me. Eventually I turned round to look. Yes! There was a car chugging along quietly behind me! Maybe it was an electric vehicle, it was so quiet. It was clearly an official vehicle as the driver had the keys to open the gates at the midpoint between the two sections of path. I expressed my surprise to the driver, who told me that he only needed to check a small section of the path and it seemed a long way to walk for such a small piece of work. Softie!
On Tuesday, as I approached the first of the two old tunnels, someone warned me that I might not be able to get through as they were resurfacing under the next tunnel. Indeed, there was a truck and a digger taking up just about all space under the tunnel. So I turned off and took a detour.
On Wednesday, heading for the market at Uppermill, I had to squeeze past a lorry on the Donkey Line. There was only just room for me and my trusty bike. Like buses, you don’t see any vehicles at all ever and then there are three on the run, on three consecutive days,
Yesterday there were no vehicles, but a lot of evidence of resurfacing work having been attempted. A mix of sand and gravel has been spread over most of the muddiest places, although there was one place where puddles were already re-establishing themselves. Some clearing of side channels has also taken place. Fortunately they had not dug up the frogs’ stretch of water. The frogs, which were extremely vocal on Monday and Tuesday, seem to have finished their business there now. Masses of frogspawn but not a frog in sight. Not even a croak or a ribbit to be heard. Where do frogs go when they have finished mating? One of life’s mysteries! Another one: how do they know to go back to the place where they were spawned?
In a couple of weeks we’ll be permitted to eat out, but only literally out! I was about to say that it still seems a bit chilly to me but I suppose that on a sunny day in a sheltered spot it could be quite pleasant. The pub next door to us seems to have been doing a certain amount of construction work over the last week in their car-park-converted-into-a-garden-seating-area, probably ensuring that there are out-of-the-wind nooks for customers to sit in. According the the Guardian’s restaurant critic, Grace Dent, they are not the only establishment doing that sort of thing. However, she also points out that many places for eating out are already fully booked until the autumn.
I am still reading Alice Monro at the moment. Here’s a sample, writing about her grandfather:
“He too was a great reader. (... ) he never talked about what he read, but the whole community knew about it. And respected him for it. That is an odd thing - there was a woman too who read, she got books from the library all the time, and nobody respected her in the least. The talk was always about how the dust grew under her beds and her husband ate a cold dinner. Perhaps it was because she read novels, stories, and the books my grandfather read were heavy.”
An interesting bit of sexism there! Suspicion of the intellectual female who doesn’t “do her duty”. To some extent we women are still trained or conditioned not to “waste time” or at least not until we’ve done the housework. I’ve almost got over it but not quite. And I can still remember my amazement, back when our children were tiny, at a neighbour’s ability to sit in the middle of chaos, lost in her book, with her two small children rampaging around. Nowadays, however, I can happily leave the shopping in its bags, waiting to be put away, while I check my mail or read an article online or finish the latest chapter on my novel.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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