pumpkinstrokemarrow

A few days ago FIL got a bit impatient about the non-appearance of the new winter aconites and bought two small pots in flower to stick in the bed as a consolation prize. Which I did, planting them in a bit of the new bed which had been well turned over by worms or cats and discovering on the way that winter aconites have plenty of root, at least these two pots were well pot bound. I imagine that they had been brought on in some greenhouse in the Netherlands so it remains to be seen whether they survive the rest of our winter. Anyway, down the garden this morning to see how they were doing, which was OK. But found that at least 4 of the original planting are poking up through the grass. So maybe we are going to be OK after all.

Carried on down the garden to see how the new lid free compost heap was getting on. Where I find that there were still signs of rat activity, but much diminished. Last week's kitchen waste had not been dragged underground in the usual way, rather just sitting where I had put it. So this week's dumped on top of that and the remaining portion of lid at the back of the heap removed, a lump of it falling out in the process, so if we ever revert to lidded compost that will be another bit of DIY.

In the meantime I got around to noticing that the newly installed washing line on the rotary drier had indeed stretched a good bit, so got around to pulling it through and doing a more permanent job on the two joins which I had left done up with sisal on the last occasion (see January 19th). Found it much easier to install the bolted washers with a labourer (ie BH) to hold the line while I held the screwdrivers and so forth. With a bit if metal work skill it would have been easy enough to knock up a version of the washers with a couple of prongs to hold the line in place - but in the absence of skill where am I to find such things?

Last item on the morning's agenda was a second coat of Weathershield on the batten holding the plastic guarding the new lock for the garage (see February 10th).

All the while pondering about how tricky it is to be a bank more or less owned by the government. OK, so the bank lost billions and billions of pounds making, or at least buying up, dodgy loans on a large scale and that nice Bank of England has now printed billions and billions of pounds which have gone to repair the bank's balance sheet, rather than to fuel inflation or generate work. After which the government said 'no more casino banking! Stick to proper banking'. But now the government is whining because this same bank does not want to throw a small amount of money down the drain after the large amount of money it lost in the first place by lending it to the sort of small businesses which are very apt to go bust in the present climate.

Which gives rise to a bit of déjà vu. I remember when we first moved to Epsom in the late eighties, around the time when another property bubble burst, lots of small builders were very cheezed off because having been encouraged to borrow to grow for years, their banks were suddenly calling in lots of the resultant loans because of the hole in their balance sheets caused by some massive speculations in South America which had gone pear shaped. I wonder how right the memory is one this one? I think it would take longer to check than it is worth.