Oh yes and before the rant I just want to wish my Mistress a very happy birthday. I’m not allowed to say how many it is, but she didn’t say I couldn’t say there’s another big one in two years’ time! She’s celebrating by having the new freezer delivered and the front porch fixed. She knows how to live.
In some ways ‘living’ is what leads to the rant. The maintenance of public rights of way is just not good enough. We have one lovely farmer who has left a walk round his land for our village even though he doesn’t have to and he’s doing it as a favour so we can’t possibly have a complaint against him. The problem is the main path from here to the village of Helperby. It is the old route that would have been used years ago and it’s still a public footpath which crosses a couple of miles of farmland. It’s bad enough when it gets ploughed although to be fair the field that’s been recently done has had a tractor go over the path to compact that section. It’s the sweetcorn we’re fed up with. Now that it’s grown you cannot walk along the path without being accosted at every step by dense vegetation. It’s not a new path, the farmer can’t be surprised that people walk that way. The path must have been there when he bought the land. The problem is that the gap that has been left between the rows of planting just isn’t wide enough when the crops have grown. We’re just hoping it won’t be too long until it’s harvested as at the moment going for a walk is like going for an expedition through the dense vegetation of the Amazon. You don’t just come home feeling as though you’ve been for a walk, you come back feeling like a pioneer!
Alfie’s Diary – the Book is available at Amazon UK –https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00583ZGSA
You can find short stories to read at www.alfiedog.com