Jackie Hartley’s BLOG

With all the recent changes affecting careers work (relegation of careers work to conference fixtures in the Economic Well Being Non-League championships) and the dessimation of the Connexions rebels by the Dark Lords of the Empire I have been harbouring delusions about dropping out. Well, not so much dropping out as doing a bit of Tom and Barbara in the garden. So, a couple of weeks ago we spent a long weekend erecting a large fruit cage to keep the pesky birds off our raspberries, strawberries, loganberries and gooseberries. We are now researching polytunnels and hope to have one sorted in the very near future to make our vegetable garden a more year round affair and we have planted 2 apple and 1 plum tree. We are booked onto a chicken handling course in a couple of weeks time to see if we feel confident enough to branch out into livestock, though talk of ‘crusty vents’ at a recent dinner party for highly amused friends has left me feeling a little less sure about poultry as a part of this dream. Clearly the hen thing is more to do with romance than practicality. I suspect it will be much cheaper to buy organic, free range, ‘I was laid in a hedgerow by a free roaming and joyously happy hen’ eggs than to produce our own but hey, the grandchildren will love it. So, where will it all end? Who knows but in the meantime we are enjoying ourselves playing at the good life whilst working in the real world is proving so taxing on the spirit.