The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1904 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

Christmas was receding fast as we progressed beyond Boxing Day to the Thursday. I got my Guardian and discovered that the percentage of people okay with gay marriage was increasing, even 52% of Tories were in favour. So how come the Archbigot of Westminster, ranted and raved about it? I have no problem with him practising his religion, but I do with it becoming political, and let’s face it his church spent most of the first millennium AD by persecuting anyone who thought differently. Goodness knows what he’d do to me if he had his way, and the faggots he’d have in mind would probably be of wood, as would the stake.

I passed the newspaper over to Tom, thinking if I had any brain cells still functioning later on I might have a go at the cryptic crossword. I had a quick flit round the internet and discovered that a young woman had been murdered in Carmarthen in West Wales and a young man had been charged. She had three children so he’s spoilt five lives if he did it.

They say that the number of arguments in families is greater during the season of goodwill than any other. It could well be. People get together who might not have seen each other for months or even years and they drink and squabble. Some even get to fighting or killing each other.

Crazy isn’t it? Sometimes I reckon the only reason we’re not extinct because of our ability to breed, because there can't be many more warlike species than us unless you consider various groups of insects like the Hymenoptera or the bees, wasps and ants. They all have wasp waists like they’re wearing corsets and some of them parasitise on other species, or attack other colonies to steal their young or their food or both. Or like the army ants of the tropics, kill anything which isn’t quick enough to get out of their way, including some slower vertebrates.

Most bee stings are modified ovipositors–they evolved to lay eggs but the eggs weren’t developed as a queen so they became the defenders of the hive or nest. They were intended to be used for fighting off other species of bee or wasps who threaten the nest or hive and not really for thick skinned bipeds who should know better. Obviously we’re not the only predators of bees. Bears and apes, badgers and birds go after the honey or the grubs, but most bee stings are ineffectual against thick skin or hair, such as bears or badgers. In Africa there is even a mammal called a honey badger. I haven’t had one recorded for the survey here yet, but...

So given all the negatives of Christmas and there are plenty, it’s nice to think of all the positives as well. Charities like Shelter and St Martin’s in the Fields–the field is Trafalgar Square–run annual events for the homeless. Food banks have distributed loads of spare food to needy people, and local charities have also done loads. However, one particular story on the BBC website caught my eye and gave me a warm feeling. A nine year old girl helped her mother open their cafe on Christmas Day to feed the homeless people in Dewsbury, in Yorkshire. She did it because she knew her dad had wanted to do it, but he'd died from a fall in August. They gave meals to thirty six homeless people. What a wonderful way to share your success with the community?

What did I do by comparison? I tried to give a Christmas to an abused woman and her daughter. Relatively, it probably cost as much as thirty six meals, with a computer and various other bits thrown in, but to see their faces on Christmas when I handed it to them was just wonderful.

Since then, Sammi had set it up on our broadband connection with some safeguards like a block on child porn or any hardcore stuff, like the phones had a block on premium rate numbers because they can get ridiculously expensive.

Oh yeah, the morning had started early with a mother and father of a thunderstorm banging over head and the lightning flashing. It set off Simon’s car alarm but he let it peep until the rain eased off. It gave new meaning to torrential, the wet stuff came down like a curtain splashing up from the drive and within a couple of minutes the drive disappeared under a couple of inches of water.

Okay, it’s not like the storms they have in the States and have had this holiday time, but several feet of snow in New York State isn’t going to flood my kitchen or wine cellar, but a cloudburst in Hampshire is.

We have a step up to both main doors and the various sets of patio doors around the building, but it isn’t very high, and it came very close to rising over it. Tom and Simon of understanding my worries pulled on waterproofs and carried over some sandbags from the ‘old barn’ where Danny had been flying his helicopter the day before. It took probably twenty minutes to protect the main doors. The drive slopes down towards the road, so we only needed to divert the water flowing past the front door, down the middle of the drive, so we built a sort of weir with sandbags to shift it away from the house. It meant the road would have extra water a little more quickly than usual but that was too bad. Our priority was to protect the house.

After the pair had been soaked in their work, Si suggested that they get a drain built into the middle of the drive. Tom disagreed, saying that it wouldn’t cope with the flow of water, it just came so fast. I agreed with him. Perhaps a channel cut down the centre of the drive and covered with metal grids would work, but it would be another job to keep free of leaves and other debris.

I know there are other ways of protecting doors with barriers that fit runners and so forth, but hopefully we’ll have to estimate risk before spending loads of money. The house is a listed building being part Georgian, if not earlier, so we’d be limited as to what we could do, but I suspect some sort of barrier would be allowed to stop flooding and thus damage to this lovely old place.

Fortunately, the cottages are on the higher side of the site and were pretty well out of the danger area, but at least we didn’t have any power cuts this time, so the freezer and the computers, not to mention the television and the heating clocks didn’t need resetting, because that usually happens and then like altering the clock for summer or Greenwich time, you always forget one and something unhelpful happens.

Oh Si managed to switch off his car alarm to the relief of all at the farmhouse. The only casualty–one of Mima’s wellingtons, which had been left outside the back door and had been washed away. Despite a good search we never did find it and so I’ll have to get her some more–at least the shops are open if I can get past the bargain hunters of the sale crowds.

I also dealt with a dip or pickpocket, but I’ll tell you about that another time.