What an absolutely lovely day we had today doing a garden of this client who is a diving instructor at one of the North Sea oil platforms.  He was away and will return 28th September. The garden is in Peasedown, down a side Lane which no one ever thinks to go down but it is a link to a most extraordinary group of houses which comprise a real community where everybody knows everybody else.

We were resting from our work and made contact with a lady who was next door across the street and engaged her in conversation which went on a good 20 minutes. She has lived in that street for the last 45 years, knows everybody. It used to be a farm in the old days.

She offered me a cup of tea which I gladly accepted and went round to have a chat about the chickens running around in a field noticing that some of them have been pecked so much that they have no feathers on their back. This was evidently due to the actions of cockerels.
Meanwhile, my wife had engaged or become engaged with someone just passing who commented on the historical nature of the area and how a company had bought up and adjacent hillside to build 35 properties.  It was however far too steep  so hundreds of tons of earth would have to be moved and to cap it all, planning permission had been given but with the stipulation that only one access point would be granted. Looking at the Narrow Lane which would have to serve as the ingress and egress for everything I don’t think there’s any doubt that this proposal would be a dead duck.

It was lovely to see the number of ripe blackberries in the hedgerows  and my partner Françoise  lost no opportunity in picking them for what will I’m sure turn out to be a lovely blackberry pie.
It really made my day; everyone we came into contact with was really interested in us as people, and of course we were interested in them as well and this reminds me of what society should be and how the amount of mental disease would diminish if everyone felt valued as a person.

After working for 4 hours we were both strangely refreshed at the end of this time. Francois wanted to stop but I would have preferred to continue such is the enlivening energy  of working in the right conditions.