So far we have harvested oilseed rape and wheat. We got about 75 tonnes of OSR at 1.25 tonnes per acre and 298 tonnes of wheat at 3.75 tonnes per acre. In the farm office we are pretty happy with that and we just have field beans to go.
The wind has been very high for a few days and it has taken the leafs off the bean plants. The pods are still there and we are hoping the weather will settle down and in about ten days we can get the last crop, the beans, harvested.
May the seventh will long be remembered for a rather unusual funeral at the village church in Wimplebridge. If there were any tongues that weren’t wagging before-hand they certainly were for a few days after.Scandal seldom visits our quiet village. Brexit and football, a royal wedding and celebrity divorce, they all pass us by with hardly a nod of recognition. Our villagers are more likely to be outraged the Bridge Inn selling out of date crisps than a politician taking photos up a woman’s skirt.
So you can imagine how we were all shocked when one of the oldest and most respectable families in the vicinity, not named for legal reasons, was torn asunder by a young strumpet.
That’s right dear reader, I’m sorry to report how this viper positioned herself in the bosom of an otherwise happy home. She took advantage of a dear old man, a man who was vulnerable and easily distracted, one who’d normally not give her a second glance. But as skilful as any James Bond agent, she slipped beneath his radar and settled under his duvet.
Away from home and without his wife for guidance, his defences were down. He was on a two night business and golfing trip when she made her move, she allowed him to buy her drinks in the bar and willingly agreed when he suggested a nightcap in his room. Our female protagonist was young and fit, the older gentleman less so. But not wanting to disappoint his guest, our septuagenarian managed a good performance twice before sleep overcame them and once in the shower the following morning.
Three children waited at home for our gallant philanderer. Their shinny faces scrubbed and desperate to see their papa. Aged forty eight, forty five and forty two they were mortified when he came home and told their mother, a lady he’d been married to for half a century that it was all over. They returned to their own homes, the elder two explaining it to their wives and the colleagues in their city offices where they worked.
Mother was horrified. She moved out immediately, not able to spend another day with the bruit. Divorce, unheard of in Wimplebridge, followed and she took him for half of everything he had, or half of everything she could find.
There was still quite a lot left. The business, the house in Spain, the yacht and the shares. Not to mention the offshore bank accounts and the pensions.
Now the old guard was out of the way and our gallant hero is all loved up with his ne young bride. There is but one fly in the ointment, the brothers and the wife, two years younger than his youngest son, hate each other. There seems to be nothing he can do to bring them together until he devises a plan that will make them work as a team. Just for a day, a few hours really, he knew how they’d willingly put aside their squabbling and co-operate.
Want to know more?
Then read the short story The long game on kindle.
I’m so angry I could spit, No, change that, I’m so angry I could rip the head off a Range Rover driver and boil it for soup. Not very ladylike I know. But one such bottom feeding scum bag really got to me this morning.
I was outside the cottage scraping frost off the windscreen of my car, it’s an elderly Volvo with no heated glass. The entire heating system is buggered actually. Between October and May there is no heat at all and sometimes it has ice on the inside of the windows. There’s a leak somewhere and when it rains hard in the winter there’s a frozen pond in the passenger footwell. Fast forward to the hottest days of July and August and the system pumps out wind not unlike the boiling breath of hell. It comes from under the dashboard, it pumps through all the vents and gushes straight upwards onto the windscreen. There’s nothing I can do to stop it and I’m told it part of an old Volvo’s character.
Anyway, back to this morning. I was scraping the ice off the car when a Range Rover driver pulled up just in front of me. “You couldn’t get a fire engine though that gap” he called. Well it was a good thing he wasn’t driving one, I replied.
He went on to say there wasn’t room for him to get past even though there was about two feet of clearance either side of his Chelsey tractor.
I don’t know why they have to drive those things when they live in a town, this Goliath looked like it had never been on anything as unpaved as a grass verge, let alone done any serious off road driving.
Anyway, we had a full and frank exchange of view, (that’s another way of saying a shouting match) in the middle of the road. He said I was blocking the way, I told him to turn around and go out the other end of the road. It was only about fifty yards, after all. He told me “there was no need to be a << insert very rude word here >> about it. I said I’d been parking in this space for twenty five years and he was the first person to say anything about it.
Then I simply ignored him and carried on scraping my car. Eventually he got board of just shouting rude words at me and he drove off, past my car without any problem on my side or on the other.
I really don’t understand why he had to be such an arse, it’s a horrible way to start the day and it had me quite wound up for the next couple of hours. As it was, Hubert caught the worst of it when I got to the office. I can swear like a navvy, when I’m wound up and this morning I almost bust my spring
Claudilia Belcher.
Earlier in the month we enlisted the younger Angus Macintosh to help us choose and cut a tree for the house. It looked just perfect in the woods and once we got it was into a pot and dressed with tinsel and balls it looked even better.
Although we are all having the day off there are still a few jobs to do around the farm. The sheep had been given an extra feeding this morning so we don’t have to go out again tonight and the cowes have been bedded down in record time.
Everyone came to the farmhouse for lunch, even my sister Claudilia, who gave her present to Pumpkin the horse on her way over to us.
They are not riding today because there is a meeting of the hunt tomorrow and she will give Pumpkin a good run out with them. The local hunt never catches anything, even when they were allowed to chase a fox they never caught it but they do look wonderful all dressed up and the dogs love to race across the fields behind a very fit young man with a scented drag.
This year Karen H and her husband joined us for lunch, she seemed to have a lovely timebut we lost her at about three when everyone else was watching the queen’s speech. It’s all right though. She turned up in the lounge with her dog, snowy, having a little nap.
What’s going on with this weather, It’s the middle of November and I saw a butterfly today. 
You might not be able to see it clearly but this Painted lady (I think) was busy around the ivy which is in bloom right now. Surly it should be too cold for butterflies this late in the year.
I guess it’s getting warmer later and later, there must be a term for when there is this sort of change in the climate, I wonder what it is?
Clement and I went for a walk over Monk Hill this morning. It was windy on the top but the sunshine made it nice. We saw this mushroom but I can’t give it a name.
Mushrooms, of course, are normally found in dark moist places and it’s well known that they thrive on a diet of manure. This one seems to have made a break for freedom and is doing very well, bathed in sunlight in the middle of a grass field.
I’ve given in to popular demand and written a book about the comings and goings of Wimplebridge Village. It’s a murder fuelled romp through an English country village and bound to be a best selling classic.
If you fill in these two fields I’ll let you know when I’m ready to publish. I guess it will be early in the new year but don’t worry, you’ll be one of the first to know.