pumpkinstrokemarrow

In the event, it did one day hot, three days cold and one day sandwiches. Very good cold it was too so we never got as far as the anticipated rissoles.

Rats winning so far and continue to tunnel at the back of the compost heap despite regular smashings up with a spade. Bacon didn't seem to interest them and they got the bread crusts off the traps without springing them. So have had to move onto poison, interesting blue dyed grains of wheat from Rentokil in a container consisting of 2 feet of eight by two with the lid of a toffee tin screwed onto it. The idea being that the weight of the eight by two will stop the tray being overturned by eager rats . Rather expensive at £7.50 or so for 400 grams of the stuff when one can easily use 50 grams a go and curiously the container informs one that the product is not suitable for use by professional rodent operatives: amateurs only. Don't have to worry about collateral damage as only rats and mice are going to work their way into the compost heap.

Now moved onto the second potato trench. Dug something over a third and started on its four barrows of leaf mould. Must get on as only a month to go before it will be time to start on broad beans again.

Went to Beowulf last week. Off to a very bad start with half an hour of very loud and brash advertisements which almost had us walking out. They must have got a lot louder over the years when our failing hearing is taken into account. And most of the very thin audience had huge tubs of popcorn with which to provide a bit of background munching noise. Presumably a fair amount of litter is generated from same. Lucky old cleaners. Film itself rather like a 70's horror film with superior special effects and carried along by the wheeze of having the hero strike a Faustian bargain with the golden lady representative of the devil. But it did have the virtue of propelling me back to the original (with which the film did have some connection) - at least a translation of the original - and a world where the higher classes at least were very preoccupied with deeds of valour and treasure. Not a very nice world really - given that deeds of valour were, almost by definition, fatal for someone. A world of tribes large and small, riven by bloody feuds. So we have moved on a bit: we have, at least, devised other ways of acquiring status than bashing each other. Status being important to Beowolf and his friends as they were not really signed up to heaven and status was needed in order to acquire the immortality of appearing in songs and stories. About where we have got back to as it happens, with heaven's run of around 2,000 years coming to an end.