Well, here’s a momentous day, I have been back to my house where I had left my cat and brought him back with me. I had up until today been leaving a timed feeding machine and  going back on a regular basis to feed him.

The day started as normal with me taking Diana to the station and coming back to light the fire; here my ruddy faced countryman image is taking a bit of a knock just recently.

We have just gone over to a new wood man, who for the first delivery brought us the most fantastic dry wood that sparked up at the drop of a hat, however this recent lot has been very slow to start to burn.

Once going it’s fine, so we’re in a quandary as to whether it’s slightly damp or hard wood or a combination of the two.

This leads me on to my next topic, building a wood store, a project fairly high on my list of priorities, behind getting the garage sorted, putting the cars in the garage, moving the fridge, moving the washing machine, dumping the rubbish, let alone all the things that we have already achieved, the list goes on. I will let you know how it goes when I get around to it.

Whist I was at home I filled the Maverick with things I had stored in my friend’s garage with a view to getting my classic 1939 Rover 12 happily ensconced in the garage here.

The Maverick has been invaluable yet again proving my point that it was far too useful to leave rotting and that every ruddy faced countryman needs a 4×4 and judging by the traffic this morning everyone does indeed have one.

By late afternoon we were back with Oliver who had during the journey made such loud meeows you would have thought he was being murdered. We put him in the back lounge, or should that be sitting room, well anyway the first thing he did was to run and hide behind one of the sofas.

Eventually having left him alone to acclimatise I went back in later and he came out and had a walk round and is now fairly confident in his new environment.

We have installed child gates on all the doors to separate Angella’s three fairly large poodles from my fairly small cat, but so far I’m fairly confident we will find a working relationship between all of them.

I’m hoping I don’t have to eat my words there, when one of the poodles eats the cat, as we have been together for about eleven years and I do love him dearly.

So yet another stage in my transition from mambie pambie townie to ruddy faced countryman is complete, I’m feeling strangely relaxed here in the country with my 4×4 and my cat and dogs at my feet.

I’m considering taking up drinking brown beer and smoking a pipe and I noticed on the way back from the station that the farm down the road is for rent, I was wondering if you can breed wildebeest.

Still, one step at a time.