hunter gathering

I fancy myself as a hunter gatherer after today. Not that I hunted anything apart from slugs, but I did gather and just being a gatherer sounds much too girly.

Despite the late hour, the dark and the rain, I took my favourite handyman outside to view my forest felling last night. He made appropriate noises and Fionn tried to swing on the jutting remains of the trees in the dark. I made tutting fussing mummy noises.

But amongst the appropriate noises was a comment on wood cutting easily while wet and becoming progressively harder to cut as it dries. So today I decided to ready ourselves for next winter by cutting wood to dry over summer. Usually how I do this is I ring one of the local wood merchants and arrange for them to deliver wood on a truck, pay them handsomely and then rather late in the piece I inform Mr Handyman. He needs to know because he is the chief wood stacker. But now I am looking at our section with entirely new eyes and I can see half of next year's firewood awaiting the chop on areas I had already earmarked for destruction. Don't worry carbon people, I'm keeping one tree, and have planted others.

I cut 18 pieces of wood into appropriate sizes for burning today. You may scoff but I bet I cut more than you. Eighteen looks a much more dignified reflection of my achievements than 18, but the anal English grammatist in me can't do it unless it is at the beginning of a sentence.

Do you think that is all I have done today? You people who were probably in your proper clothes before breakfast? Well actually I also weeded, replanted, killed slugs and got the ingredients out of the cupboard for my student nanny to make chocolate cake AND bread with my son. I did make one or two other gestures towards parenting, like feeding the baby.

The other thing I did, in my dressing gown, was to take lots of photos. Just for Sharon and Rachael. And I can't even find a USB connector to try and do the damn photo to computer thing. So we will all have to wait, even me.