pumpkinstrokemarrow

First item was a sorry tale of a girl who had just got the plaster off her broken arm when she fell off a ladder at school and broke it again. Report a bit short on facts but one suspects that there was failure on both sides, it generally taking more than one failure to break the sort of system that I imagine is in place to stop this sort of thing - the point here being that the girl should not have been doing physicals at all. First breaks only just healing up. But the bit of the system that does work is that we are now into sue the council for negligence mode. OK, so the school probably missed a few beats, but is suing the best way we can find to deal with the problem? Unimpressed of Epsom.

Next the eye wandered down to the trade announcements. Reliable roofer. Discrete divorcée. First thought was that trades people with attitude think it a bit low to advertise: if you were any good you wouldn't have to. Second thought was that it is quite an expense, say £50 per week per title (Epsom, Twickenham, Selhurst etc). One would need to have it in for a bit to know whether it was doing any good and that is going to be a fair chunk. And if you are not getting the work and hav'n't got many chunks, always tempting to carry on. Maybe this week I'll hit the jack pot. And so the debts pile up.

From where we moved onto the housing pages. Lots of full and half page ads for this or that development. Buy now because it is selling fast and you may be too late. But what caught the eye was a couple of small display ads from estate agents, presumably acting for mortgage companies repossessing someone or other. Another sad story behind the ad. The form of which seemed to be that we have an offer of £X for property Y. If you get in with a better offer before we exchange we will look at it. Both X's seemed very low, without actually going as far as to check prices in the localities in question. Presumably all the mortgage company cares about is getting the thing off its books: good to get its money back but it is not going to lift a finger, let alone bust a gut, to do the best it can for the poor old dispossessed.

I learn that one side effect of all this is that the market for rented accommodation is booming. All those young professionals who can't stump up a deposit. Which ought to push a bit of life back into the market. Market forces pushing in the right direction perhaps?

Nearer home I am pleased to report that I am not the only person with residential rats in the garden. A house up the road has had pallets full of some kind of fake stone slabs on its front verge - the bit on its side of the foot path that is - for weeks if not months. The other day they were removed revealing four or five splendid rat holes underneath, the pallets having provided sufficient protection of home and hearth against marauding foxes. Or maybe cats. I dare say a hungry cat would go for a rat but most of the ones that I see look far too lazy. And the plump one that had a go at a squirrel the other day was more comic than lethal.

Ditto the blue tits. I have had a bit of gammon skin hung up from the garage fascia for three days now and not a blue tit to be seen. Perhaps they have no sense of smell. Or perhaps they don't like the salt. I did not think to rinse or soak the gammon before using it and the lentil soup was, in consequence, rather more salty than I care for. Not to mention the blood pressure. On the other hand there were very few of those black, fly like specks floating on the surface. Another interesting feature, perhaps to do with the salt, was that when cold the soup set to a soft jelly consistency. With a bit of trouble I might have been able to get it erect onto a plate.

The good news is that the jelly lichen has sprung up nicely with the warm damp weather we have been having over the last couple of days. Speedy stuff the way that it can be dormant for months and then spring up in what seems like hours when the conditions are finally right.