The Random Thread

[TheOstrich]

When we used to live in Walmley (a district of Sutton Coldfield) our estate backed on to the Newhall Valley Country Park, a green oasis with a stream down the middle and a restored working grain mill with a water mill at one end and Sutton Coldfield football club at t'other (so I used to use it a fair bit!)

The ground in the middle is marshy so when they were building a network of grass tracks and paved cycleways through it, that section was bridged by a raised wooden walkway. In 2012, vandals set fire to it and it burnt down. So the community rallied around and funded the rebuild. For a sponsorship donation of (IIRC) £30, you could have your name etched on one of the replacement planks. That we duly did - "Ossie, Mrs O and Master O". (Well, not exactly that, but you can see where I'm coming from ).

Last week, vandals burnt it down again. Our plank will have gone up in smoke.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/m ... r-17467898

Glad we moved out of Birmingham, TBH ....

[JanB]

I often wonder what "pleasure" these idiots get from doing things like that Ossie.

[Kaz]

Oh Ossie, what a shame!

[JanB]

How lovely

We went down the bar earlier and came back to a lovely Christmas bag full of goodies.

A rather good bottle of wine, ditto olive oil, a bag of dried figs and ajar of figs in oil.

A thank you from Jose Felipe and Ana Cristina

This year, we'd given them a washing machine that we know he can sort out, a load of wood, much too big for our closed fires and some fencing.

And, of course, they use our land for their sheep. So a win win thing

[Kaz]

[JoM]

Ossie, what a rotten thing to happen

[JanB]

Maria, mother of Jose Felipe, has just arrived. She's picking up all the acorns off our oak trees, to give to her animals. Gave her a beer and she's happy

[JoM]

There surely can’t be any more fireworks left?
Last night they were going off perhaps every 10 minutes from 6pm until they became constant at Midnight, then we were still hearing them at 1.30am.

They’ve just started again. Just as we’re about to walk Bill

[Kaz]

Blooming things! We dosed Peps and Fraggle up on Rescue Remedy and they slept through the noise this time xx

[JanB]

Love this time of year It's still light, the sun is just going behind the trees, but we've lit the fire to be toasty