Stocking up

I travelled on a fair bit today, stopping at Rugeley to stock up with food. The dog had started eyeing me up - always a reminder to buy him some food quickly. I'd run out of bread a couple of days ago so I made some and it was sooo heavy! I made a nettle and goosegrass and lentil soup (all comes under the generic term 'hippy-slop') which was ok and put some sprouting potatoes out of their misery, but it really was time to rejoin society and splurge on fresh-ish veg and Frys chocolate creams and bourbon biscuits and a couple of bottles of Weston's cider , for a few days at least.

At Kings Bromley marina, that massive house on the waterfront is still empty. There's room for 3 families in there. That and another estimated 700,000 empty houses in the UK, not to mention unused factory buildings and offices. It's madness to talk about building 3 million new homes and pretend they can all be carbon-neutral. The government clearly doesn't have a clue what carbon-neutral actually means. Talking of houses..
I took a photo of a brand new housing estate full of diddy doll's houses made to look like olde worlde cottages, with plastic window frames and 2/3 cars to every house, all framed within the giant backdrop of Rugeley power station. The horror, the horror. I'd better not put up the picture as it's too depressing and is bound to be someone's dream-home. Shit, I'd rather live in a tent.

I'm in a beautiful wooded place now, which calms me immediately. I spent half an hour watching a little mouse grooming and skittering about on a tree stump on the opposite side of the canal. Then watched tree-creepers flitting spirally up the trunks of alders for insects, dropping back to the bottom and starting up again. I have a pair of binoculars but only one eye of them works so I have to squint at things. After half an hour, you come away with blurred vision and a squint - most attractive.

Later, I checked out lots of trees and came across a duck nesting right inside the bole of another tree stump. I distracted my dog so he couldn't disturb her. There was a felled beech and I counted the rings - it was 150 years old. Some parts have been roughly carved to make a couple of lovely unpretentious seats, which made me very happy. Someone altruistic out there. There was a bank full of tiny holes that I saw were home to a sort of bee but my insect book offers me too many looky-likies for a positive ID.
Tomorrow I must go down the weed hatch. I picked up something dodgy today and kind-of ignored it as I was able to keep going and steer ok, and because it's a nightmare getting to the hatch with no head room to lever the plate off. But tomorrow will do.