School Run

Yesterday I was helping out at the village school bike picnic. Nearest Village School has a grand total of 16 pupils (it’s community council policy to greet all newcomers to the catchment area of breeding age with a welcome pack of Viagra and a packet of condoms with some sneaky holes in them*) and has been enthusiastically participating in the Big Pedal. They decided to celebrate with a ride to the reservoir for the bigger ones, and some bike skills in the playground for pretty much all of them and I volunteered to help the local Sustrans iBike officer out. The day, naturally, dawned wet and promised to stay wet and I thought the weather might put a dampener on the proceedings but these are rural kids who had come prepared with raincoats and it was only really the adults that seemed bothered by a little bit of water coming out of the sky – in fact, the kids on the ride took great delight in riding through every puddle they could find, even the more delicate looking girls.

After the Sustrans officer had fettled the bikes into something resembling working order, or at least got the brakes braking and the handlebars on the right way round, and a bit of cycling round cones in the playground, the nine bigger kids set off in two groups to cycle to the picnic site. I had the slower group, including two girls whose bikes were stuck in top gear, one girl whose bike was stuck in bottom gear, one tiny girl who appeared to be composed of pure energy and got up the hills by sheer force of will alone, and a small boy who stuck at the back well away from the resulting procession of pinkness, plus the playground assistant on a bike shaped object that looked like it weighed half a ton. Three miles – quite rolling miles, with a sharp hill at the end even I don’t like riding up – suddenly seemed quite a long way. The girls – I had forgotten this about little girls – made up a whole series of additional rules about who could do what on the ride (my only instructions were don’t overtake me, go in single file when a car comes, and avoid the puddles, and fat lot of use the last one was) and wasted quite a lot of breath attempting to enforce them. The first real hill had most of them getting off and walking, and there were some dubious looking faces at the thought of carrying on, but they stuck with it and two of them even made it up the hill at the end – which I had renamed heartbreak hill, because if you’re going to be defeated by a hill, it’s better if it has a name. There was then much whooping and squealing as we reached the final flat bit and saw the rest of the school waiting for us. ‘I think this is the proudest of myself I’ve ever been,’ I heard one of the little girls say to herself as we finished.

The ride back was, thankfully, largely downhill and – despite being overtaken by the bigger boys – I think we were all pretty proud of ourselves as we rolled back into the school, myself included, if only because the same number of kids came back as went out. It did open my eyes to the dreadfulness of the average kid’s bike though – it’s not just that the gears and the brakes didn’t work that well, but they were so badly designed, with no mudguards, brakes that small hands couldn’t reach, grip shifts that weren’t aligned with the gears, heavy suspension systems. As a way of putting kids off using bikes they couldn’t really be bettered. And yet, somehow, the kids seemed to have a blast anyway…

Still, I doubt that if the entire school was magically kitted out with beautifully maintained Islabikes that the kids would start cycling in in great numbers. And I’m not going to pretend that one bike picnic and a led ride is going to suddenly transform the Nearest Village school run into something the Dutch might recognise. But if you get a chance to help out at a cycling event for schools like this I urge you to take it anyway – if not for the kids’ sake, then for your own. There’s nothing like seeing the sense of achievement on their faces as they get from somewhere to somewhere else on their own two wheels to gladden even the most jaded cycling campaigner’s heart…

*not really, but the chairman looked thoughtful when I proposed it at the last meeting.

We’re Back

We’re home again, having arrived to find two mild disasters: the Rayburn was spluttering its last, and some toerag has flytipped a bunch of tyres in the river at the ford (just to add insult to injury, they were dumped there the night after the village litter pick). The Rayburn will probably stay off now as it’s not worth getting it serviced given we would have been turning it off at the end of May anyway which means no more warm clothes in the morning, among other things. I keep catching myself leaning against it, hoping for some warmth and comfort. As for the tyres, the council won’t do anything because they’re on private land. Perhaps we should have set up that webcam after all…

But I’m not going to worry about any of those things right now. I promised you holiday snaps, dammit, and holiday snaps you shall have. Whether you want them or not, frankly

In Which I Solve the Problems of the Rural Economy

At the village Senior Citizens’ lunch* today we were discussing holiday destinations and the rival charms and delights of Flamingoland (no, me neither) and Diggerland. It reminded me that on my way back from my epic cycle ride on Thursday, I passed a young lad of about 11 tooling around a field on a small tractor with an expression of complete and utter contentment on his face – happier even than a dog on the back of a quad bike, which is really very happy indeed. Farming these days seems to be nothing but toil and sorrow, whether you’re digging your sheep out of ten foot snowdrifts or watching your wheat crop rot in the fields. Yet, for a small outlay in machinery and diesel, a field or two, and presumably several squillion pounds in liability insurance, ‘Tractorland’ would take in money hand over fist, from small boys and, indeed (I speak from direct experience), much larger boys too. It’s an idea whose time has surely come.

*I imagine that there are villages where this would be an event where the senior citizens are given lunch by their well-meaning juniors in order to get them out of the house, but you have to remember that this is a parish where the oldest inhabitant (a sprightly 93) regularly sweeps the board at the annual village show. So the lunch is cooked and served by the senior citizens to all comers for charity, and very good it is too.

Cat on a Hot Tin Rayburn

Happiness is…

… your own stool by the Rayburn

In the interests of strict accuracy, that is supposed to be MY stool by the Rayburn but we’re cat sitting again and the cat and I have been conducting an undeclared turf war over this prime bit of kitchen territory. I think the cat’s won though, as MY stool has had to be moved from a position where I could sit with my back against the Rayburn because the cat had a tendency to fall asleep on it and then stretch luxuriously on waking, pressing her paws against the hot metal. It turns out it takes a little bit of time for the message that your paws are burning to get through to a cat brain (although when it does, boy the cat can move). We wouldn’t want her damaging herself under our care, so we have moved the stool to a safe stretching distance and if that inconveniences anyone else in the house well, she’s a cat, and she doesn’t give a stuff, frankly.

Someone remind me what cats are for again?

Neither Snow nor Rain nor Heat nor Gloom of Night…

Having spent most of yesterday delivering the community newsletter, I now have a renewed respect for our postie, and not just because of the whole snow/rain/heat(admittedly unlikely)/gloom of night thing – he does, after all, have a nice wee van to deal with that part. I’d set off in reasonable spirits on the Brompton thinking its front basket would be handy for quick deliveries, but I soon realised that getting the leaflet out quickly was the least of my problems. Setting aside the keen north-easterly wind and the fact that the Brompton, God bless its little compact fold, does not really stay upright in anything but a light breeze when it’s parked, not to mention the sudden flurries of snow and hail, plus the fact that all of those dogs who’ve spent the last four years barking furiously at me from behind closed gates finally got to meet their public enemy number one face to face,* and the fact that it turns out 90% of people in the area live up awesomely potholed tracks of extravagant length, the main difficulty is the fact that clearly, rural people consider letter boxes to be some sort of townie new-fangled nonsense not to be contemplated here in the countryside. Some of them put metal boxes up on their gates, which was handy, but a good half of the houses had no visible way at all to deliver anything other than ringing the doorbell and handing it to them in person.

As it happened, most people were out and the rest didn’t know me well enough to do much but say thanks and go back to whatever they were doing before their dogs disturbed them with the news that there were murderers and rapists and foreigners and A BICYCLE invading the precincts, but someone as well-known locally as the postman will have to at a minimum exchange pleasantries with everyone (or in my case, repeat the same pleasantry three times until I understand it) if not actually come in for a cup of tea and a blether. The man must have the bladder of a camel.

*and I can confirm that among the ‘everythings’ that the everything-bar-the-apocalypse-proof jacket is proof against can now be included ‘not very determined dog bites’

Consultation Exercise

Or, why I love the community council…

“So, item three on the agenda is the draft new policing plan for Scotland, which arrived a couple of days ago and we’re supposed to respond with any comments by the end of the week [waves large densely printed document]. Seeing as they’re planning to go ahead with it anyway from the beginning of April I don’t expect they’re sitting in Edinburgh waiting with bated breath to see whether Nearest Village community council approves or not, but if anyone’s interested and wants to have a look … no? OK well I’ll just respond and say that we’ve received it then. Next item..”

Of course it helps if you hold your meetings in a draughty village hall where the one electric fire barely takes the edge off the chill and nobody removes their fleece or even their hat until we’re well into Matters Arising, if not actually Any Other Business. Presumably come April we’ll be more in the mood for more prolonged discussion but if you’ve got anything controversial you’d like to sneak through your local democratic institutions, I recommend you time it for the period between November and March…

Muddy Hell…

We had another ‘snow event’ yesterday – there was snow on the ground when we woke up and it then proceeded to snow all day until about mid afternoon when it switched seamlessly into rain. This seems to be the pattern for this winter – we’ve never seen so much snow, but it’s mostly been pretty fleeting. I didn’t get the chance to get out in it yesterday because I was insanely busy but today things eased off a bit and when the sun came out I couldn’t resist the temptation to sneak out for a walk in a rapidly thawing world…

The road outside our house is now basically a stream bed.

It drains into the field opposite which is currently home to some rather depressed looking cattle. I don’t think they’ve had dry feet since they’ve been turned out there – and some of the calves probably don’t know what ‘dry’ means, poor things.

The sheep, meanwhile, were sticking to the higher ground

As were the hens (and one duck. Go figure)

I stopped to take the traditional but now pointless record of the ford. Presumably if I had the photoshop skills and could be bothered, I could photoshop back in the depth gauge, but I can’t. The other half did spot the torn off depth gauge lurking in the undergrowth on the other side of the river so I might have to go on a rescue mission and ‘photoshop’ it back in real life.

And then, because it was Valentine’s day and I hadn’t remembered to buy a card, I made my beloved some coconut macaroons instead.

They did get semi-dipped in chocolate but didn’t survive long enough to be photographed…

Ain’t Nobody Here but us Chickens

Nearest Village’s generally deserted streets have been enlivened in recent weeks by three nice friendly brown hens, who wander around it freely, sometimes on the verge, sometimes in the road – folk do like their chickens *very* free range round here. A local building project, plus some forestry means there’s a fair few lorries coming through the village at the moment on their way to and from the Big A Road, so you’d expect they’d not be long for this world – but we already know that trucks brake for poultry, so maybe their owners are onto something. As a traffic calming device, a couple of hens are a lot cheaper than speedbumps, and more replaceable than children, with the added advantage over either of laying eggs.

In fact, now I come to think of it, the question is not ‘why are there hens roaming the streets of Nearest Village?’ but ‘why doesn’t every village have them?’

Embarrassing Moments in Rural Life

… such as when you realise that the perfectly nice chap (and his perfectly nice wife) that you’re sitting opposite at the village Burns Night supper is not only one of the people whom you have been randomly bombarding with emails in an attempt to get some sort of answer to the question of whether Bigtown’s cycle paths are ever going to be gritted in your lifetime – but also the tarmac fairy’s boss. It was in retrospect fortunate for both of us that I had uploaded my entire collection of badly mended pothole photos off my camera only that day and so couldn’t spend the entire evening going through them with him in detail (I gather from some of the pleasantries he was fending off from passing locals that he gets plenty of full and frank feedback on the subject as it is). I suppose it says something about the area that the road on which the pothole mending high heidyin lives is as badly mended as any other. We wouldn’t want to play favourites, now would we?

In other news, the latest excitement is that Zumba classes are starting up in the village hall. ‘It burns 800 calories an hour,’ someone mentioned excitedly. Which, given that any and all village activities are punctuated by a compulsory tea break complete with home baking, means it probably works out as calorie neutral in the end.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just need to go and work out how many miles of cycling (or Zumba classes) I need to do to work off the huge mounds of haggis, neeps and tatties we were served last night…

Cluck Off and Die

The walled garden where the veg patch lives is rather quiet these days – and not just because the mice have eaten themselves into a stupor. No, it’s because the landlord has, with commendable ruthlessness, sent the hens off to the big stock pot in the sky. They had not really been earning their keep as the two surviving white ones never really got into their stride – and the two remaining brown ones were getting rather long in the tooth, or beak, or whatever it is with hens. Once they started to moult and stopped what little laying they were still doing, they were for the chop as they’d then spend the rest of the winter eating without producing anything other than manure, of which, frankly, we’ve got enough.

I can’t say I’ll miss the white ones as they never really showed much spirit but the brown ones (Black Rocks, if anyone’s interested) were a feisty bunch, with distinct personalities of their own. They’d always come racing over to investigate what delicious treat I was bringing to the fence (drunken slugs? Chickweed? Baby rabbit?) and they were nice and chatty too when they were happy (obviously their conversation didn’t actually make any sense, they’re hens, but the point of most conversation is to make a companionable sort of noise and that’s what they did). They also laid wonderful eggs, of course, which made our occasional stints of chicken sitting something to look forward to. So I’m hoping that the spring will bring some replacements…

Meanwhile, in other news, the cat is considering whether to forgive her staff for their three weeks unauthorised absence. So far, the jury is out.