Monday

Good afternoon peeps,

Well what a time. Snow and things.

Yesterday, as you know, I woke at 3am and eventually had to get up. But you didn't know I built a snowman and played in the snow between 5am and 6am and as it got light.
I did. I got very cold and my hips really didn't like building snowmen, I have been struggling to walk since then. The hips have the disorder.

Anyway. Yesterday remained cold and snowy, I didn't try to go to church, even though other people were driving the main road by then.

I watched films and cleaned the house and got on with writing. I completed an article for a specialist firm.
No-one from the farm had mentioned anything about when I could stay until or go, so I was cleaning and packing to go in the evening when the farm lady came round.

She said that as I was due to look after the farm from Wednesday to Monday, I could stay if I wanted, either from yesterday or from Wednesday.
I had already made the beds and cleaned the place, and I only had a weekend bag and my work stuff with me, so I said I would return home and sort myself out and bring what I needed on Wednesday.

What happened next, although it was going to happen, caught me by surprise.

I have lived in the apartment on the Great Ship Bay for a few months now but it has been rocky, and me and my friends nearly arranged alternative lodgings for me a few weeks after I moved there.

I got home to find a drunk and aggressive landlady in my room.
It appears that she split with her partner who she lived with most of the time, and at the same time her daughter lost whatever place she took after splitting with her partner a few weeks after I moved in. The flat was in chaos, and I politely told the landlady that I was concerned to find her in my room and rooting in my things, she started out on a very clear lie about the television aerial and then started attacking me, and then simply went into the lounge in silence. There was beer bottles, stuff everywhere, it was crazy.

I picked up my things that she had been doing goodness knows what with, packed everything into the car, and made the dangerous drive that I described in the last post. And came back to the cottage. I am on farm duties and the farm know the situation and have known of the problems at the apartment since the beginning, so I can stay here until they have guests at Easter, and we are following up offers of rooms for me.

What happened yesterday isn't confirmation of the church's opinion of me, it is confirmation that living in the underworld and a fugitive and unable to earn a good living means I end up vulnerable in unstable accommodations, as a lot of vulnerable and poor people do. It's not ideal, this way of life, but who has an ideal life?

Anyway, I don't have to defend the reality of life as it is since the church destroyed me or I left the street, I have done my best to build my life, and still am doing, despite the church press, police and other attacks that have cost me work and my degree and a lot more. I just have to keep going.

It was late when I got here, and after a chat with the farm people, I went to sleep fully clothed and wrapped up in cottage duvets, as I couldn't get my bedding out of the stuff in the car and I couldn't find my pyjamas.
I woke this morning at 7.30, deciding to have a Birthday today. I do that approximately once a year.
Ha, the snow remained so thick that I couldn't do the care home or walk the dog as I had hoped.

I had a shower and went in town to put an advert in the paper and get some groceries and toiletries, the roads were alright.

When I checked the animals, there was a male wild duck keeping the ducks company, he did look funny among them, but I wondered if his mate was sitting on eggs in this weather. I got a barrow of logs for the cottage, and the geese honked lazily at me from where they lay in the snow, they are mucky geese, they show up as dirty white against the snow. They love the mud in the paddock, I don't.

I went to scatter a bale of straw in the hen barn, and found a bewildered female duck among the hens.
I couldn't help thinking...The male duck is having a stag do with the other ducks, and the female duck is having a hen do...with the hens.

Anyway, the hens were shut in the barn, so I fed and watered them, and fed the quail, and the duck.  But I decided I had to open the door so the duck could get out, which meant that the hens, bewildered, stumbled out the door and started mooching around. I think they were only in because of the snow, and it was beginning to melt, there is certainly no problem with them being out for a few hours before roosting, especially as the snow was melting.

I headed off to view the new garden, as it hadn't been cancelled. The garden was under snow, but we were able to discuss it and make arrangements.
The lady amused me, she was quirky and swore like a trooper, reminded me of me a bit, not that I swear like a trooper. Her husband had been caught out by his car breaking, and couldn't get home in time.  Anyway, I have booked them in, but tomorrow's garden cancelled due to snow.

The snow is melting a bit, but we have ice now, and snow blowing off the hills, a lot of it.

I was just going to go and put the animals to bed when there was a knock on the door, the farm lady was home and she was going to do the animals, and she brought me a present and card, how kind.

I have a nice log fire going and 'Titanic' on Netflix, and I am just writing and not doing much. Tomorrow I may get a dog walk and the care home done, due to my main garden work being cancelled. This evening a beautiful sunset lit the snow-blanketed field, how wonderful to be able to see such a thing.

I am now on farm duties, we have new hens in a separate enclosure, so I have to remember to include them in my duties, and the newer ducks are such a pain, I hope they behave. I wonder when we get new piggies, I like the pigs, although they can be a handful. They trash the troughs and throw them in the mud.

My friends are so keen on the book manuscript that they have got me enthusiastic about editing and publishing it.