Oh yes and before the rant I just want to wish my Mistress a very happy birthday. I\u2019m not allowed to say how many it is, but she didn\u2019t say I couldn\u2019t say there\u2019s another big one in two years\u2019 time! She\u2019s celebrating by having the new freezer delivered and the front porch fixed. She knows how to live.<\/p>\n
In some ways \u2018living\u2019 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\u2019t have to and he\u2019s doing it as a favour so we can\u2019t 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\u2019s still a public footpath which crosses a couple of miles of farmland. It\u2019s bad enough when it gets ploughed although to be fair the field that\u2019s been recently done has had a tractor go over the path to compact that section. It\u2019s the sweetcorn we\u2019re fed up with. Now that it\u2019s grown you cannot walk along the path without being accosted at every step by dense vegetation. It\u2019s not a new path, the farmer can\u2019t 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\u2019t wide enough when the crops have grown. We\u2019re just hoping it won\u2019t be too long until it\u2019s harvested as at the moment going for a walk is like going for an expedition through the dense vegetation of the Amazon. You don\u2019t just come home feeling as though you\u2019ve been for a walk, you come back feeling like a pioneer!<\/p>\n
Alfie\u2019s Diary \u2013 the Book is available at Amazon UK –https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/dp\/B00583ZGSA<\/a><\/p>\n You can find short stories to read at www.alfiedog.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"