February 28th, 2022

I had returned to Filleigh late Sunday, and it was still windy. We have had a week of storms, Dudley last week, Eunice on Friday and now Franklin. When I woke on Monday, I could see a missing ridge tile on the stable block and a hole where some tiles are missing, perhaps 4 or 5 tiles missing from the visible side. A few of the pots are turned on their side and they can stay like that, it’s too dangerous to step outside.

By Tuesday afternoon it was now safe enough to venture out and survey the damage. Miraculously nothing appears to have been dislodged on the main house but the back of the stable block has been hit, perhaps 20 or 30 slates missing, I’ve no idea where they all are. I’ve given Keith our builder a call, we normally use Jamie for roofing, that is all he does, but I’m guessing he will be inundated. One plant in the stable yard that was still in its pot was on its side, and the pot was missing, I eventually found it. 

Thankfully the greenhouse is intact, it was its first real test, but we must get the roof window locks installed, ready to go if a storm arrives when the temperatures are a bit warmer and the roof windows open, in storms we need to keep the wind out. The two large log piles from the Copper Beech we had felled last year were still mainly intact, the trampoline cover used on the largest and most exposed pile was a bit ripped and peeled backwards but still held on by our bindings. I’ve managed to pull it back and replace the stones and wood that were supposed to hold it in place. Good news, the logs look to be drying nicely.

On Wednesday I made a trip down to our valley along the new hedge. All the spiral tree guards were in place but there are about 30 hedge saplings which will need to be straightened at the weekend, knocked over to varying degrees by the wind. Several of the saplings are now showing some degree of growth. Our valley is all intact, protected from the remainder of Spa Wood which has taken a hammering. In just the small piece I can see there looks to be at least four trees down, some of them quite large. None of the tops of the fallen trees are interfering with the stream, they are close and any thought of being able to walk down the far side will now be a bit of an obstacle course. A holly tree and its next-door saplings which were inches from our boundary have fallen away from our stream. The beautiful vista we have had for a few weeks has now been replaced with the distant destruction.

The path of wind through Spa Wood must have continued down the direction of Long Walk. The roof of the Dutch Barn has been ripped off, and a large Oak tree has been snapped 20 feet up with the top half hanging at 60 degrees into the adjacent field, but still intact. I’ll investigate Long Walk at the weekend, I hope none of the grand old beech trees have suffered, but I suspect a few of them will have lost a branch.

Bridge with Alan was a tad disappointing on both Monday and Tuesday. I’ve got to do a bit of studying, there are small margins and instead of 55% you’ll be 45%. I made a stupid mistake, having worked out how to make an extra trick with cross-ruffing high for two rounds with AK of trumps I failed to trump second time around and then promptly lost two tricks for a bottom on that hand instead of a probable top. Then, on Tuesday night from coming top halfway through I lost my Internet connection, not once but twice, and we ended up having to play quickly to catch-up, very disruptive, and to be honest not enjoyable, I am sure for either of us. I won’t play next week, there is the 3-day North Devon Bridge Congress, and I expect there will be a few extra Covid cases next week.

On Wednesday I made it again into the living room, lighting the fire early and then after my hour of documenting for the podcast, or was it perhaps two hours, I managed to get half an hour in on the piano. I’m beginning to think more of the pieces that I might play for my non-Maximo podcast which I am now calling “The Diary of a Digital Nobody”. This is a take on the George and Weedon Grossmith book called “The Diary of a Nobody” published in book form in 1892, although it first appeared in Punch a few years before this. 

All through this week I have been endeavouring to catch-up with the weekly journal and by the end of the week I just managed this. All 8 weeks have been written and I have timed the narration for each week, although I now realise that there are some paragraphs that appear in more than one week. I will need to review again and cut out any repeating pieces, perhaps I will think of other things that have happened that I have not mentioned.

I’ve decided to create a new web site with the title rather than reusing the site I started last year, Paperback Secrets, which does not seem appropriate considering I have not mustered more than 150 pages this year and we are now 2 months in. I will start by publishing the written text for both “The Diary of a Digital Nobody” and “My Podcast Journey”, and follow-up with the podcast once I have improved how to deliver the narration. In the read-through for the timings, it still sounded flat, and it would be obvious it was being read.

Saturday morning was a lovely day, and I went out in the garden and picked up seven barrows of twigs which had been shed from the two remaining beech trees in the back garden. Thinking about it, it was probably a good job we had the other copper beech cut down last year, because it was found to be on its last legs, and might have succumbed during a week of storms, especially as many others that I would have guessed looked much healthier have been uprooted or been broken in two.

During the week I had a closer look at some pieces of slate I had found, some on the driveway, and they were soft. My worry was that in trying to repair the holes in the stable block, the hole might just become bigger, so I called Steve our carpenter and asked for the phone number of the person who had installed his slate roof in Chittlehamholt. Gary came to inspect on Saturday, and he said what I thought he would say, and what others have warned in the past, the slates are past their best and the whole of the north side, 15 metres will need to be replaced. The lead-time is about 2 months, getting hold of scaffolding is at least 6 weeks. So, I hope it doesn’t rain too much in March and April. 

I went around the garden taking a few photos, the crocus are looking near their best and some are fully open in the sunshine, the snowdrops are now beginning to fade, and I suspect will be mostly gone by the time Victoria comes back on Thursday. The Camellia which pushed out a first flower three weeks ago, only for it to be ripped off in the winds, has now decided that it is worth risking a second, but it is buried deep among the green leaves and well protected. The daffodils are now in show in multiple places around the garden with plenty more still to come, the first primroses are showing in sheltered spots, and a few of Victoria’s 40 odd pots are starting to open their flowers, mainly iris reticulata.

On my way round to Long Walk I found the entrance padlocked, the notice indicates several fallen trees and ones that had been uprooted but not quite fallen. I’m guessing this walk will be out of action for a few months. I looked in on the entrance down to Gordon’s house, from the green, at the top of our stream, and the level of destruction was not as bad as I had imagined it would be. There are a couple of trees which look as if another storm would bring them down and a second big tree at the top creating a tangled mess with the tree that brought down our telephone line a week before the first lockdown in 2020. It had seemed from our house that the cars were more visible as they went around the bend towards Swimbridge, now I know why.

With Long Walk closed I decided to walk down our valley and spent a very pleasant 45 minutes checking out the territory, stopping to take photos, upstream, downstream, and keeping an eye open both what was on the ground as well as what was in the trees above. There will be quite a lot of wild garlic at the top of the wood where it is now open, and some other bulbs in the middle area where it is closest to the stream, but I’ll need to wait for it to flower before being able to identify it. There is plenty of Scarlet Elfcup around, with bigger red cups than I’d seen last time. At the bottom I walked around the edge of our boundary trying to find odd bits of barbed wire so that I would be more certain where our boundary line is. One fallen tree has taken a piece of barbed wire with it, and so the boundary must be where the root is and not where the barbed wire has ended up. I think it would be better to add some stakes around the edge to make the boundary clearer.

On Sunday morning the tops of my thighs were like concrete from all the bending over I did in the garden the previous day. Peter and I played golf on Sunday on the West course, a rarity because we prefer the East. I hadn’t played for 2 weeks since my 83, then it had been breezy, today was windy with a nip in the air but there was sunshine. I started well with 2 pars and reached the green on the par 5 with my third shot into the wind, only to 3-putt. A driver on the par 3 saw me a little past the pin but on some bare ground and my chips let me down, but I did scramble a 5. The outward 9 ended with a 47, but I probably lost 4 or 5 strokes with duffed pitch shots. The second half was much better, no improvement on shots of less than 75 yards but I did manage to find 6 pars and a 40. Peter and I tied with 8 pars each although I think I might have nudged it on strokes. In the wind I was very pleased with my 87 especially without dropping a shot in the last four.

The legs had been fine all the way round, but getting out of the car at home, stiffness had come back with a vengeance and I’m expecting another night disrupted by cramp.