So many days in one blog you ask, well that’s because I have been away in wood where there was no wi-fi. Yes there are such places, a word to the wise, such places also seem to rely on composting toilets! This epic started on Friday as I and my partner rise and start to get ready to drive to rooks wood in Bromyard, Herefordshire. By lunchtime we have packed the car, had lunch and prepared to travel. I have of course left enough food for the hedgehog and filled the squirrel feeders. So we both head off feeling absolutely crap as we are both feeling decidedly under the weather.

Its a two hour drive and all goes well, an easy run. We call ahead to tell the host that we will soon be arriving and as if by magic he is there to greet us. Our Rook Tower is up a wood chip path so I am pleased that our host has a motorised garden truckette.

We settle in, unpack the food and then sit on the veranda to look around. As the evening arrives we retreat inside and cook our evening meal. Its beginning to get chilly so we light the log burner not really convinced that it will warm the whole tower through, but we were very wrong.

We go to bed ridiculously early as we both feel crap. It was going to be a long and interrupted night.

Saturday we get up, wrap up and have breakfast on the veranda. This sounds lovely and it was even more interesting when the “ladies” popped in to join us.

They look charming and they are. Their little feet clickity click on the decking as they run after the crumbs we throw for them. Of course being really stupid semi townies we do not realise just how much we are conditioning them. Before we know it w are bonded. Fromm now on we only have to appear on the veranda, or even open the door and the “Ladies” would clickity to us immediately, even from a hundred metres away. However we soon discovered that the “Ladies” crap profusely! This was to become an issue as we found ourselves tip toeing through the piles.

The whole of Saturday is a snotty battle ground, we are both ill and neither of us want to roam away from the tower. We drift from hot drink to hot drink and dozed intermittently. Once again in the evening we lit the log burner and let it warm us through. The difficulty was that we both kept feeling alternately cold and then fevered. We eat a huge meal of fresh filled pasta to fuel ourselves. We play Scrabble but its all too much and we go to bed ridiculously early again.

Sunday, its Mothers Day and I get up to make hot morning drinks and take them to bed where I pass on my daughters present to my partner. We are still felling crap but we are determined to get out today. So after breakfast we get ready to go to Bromyard. Clutching a leaflet in hand we drive to Bromyard. It was closed. Truly, utterly closed in a very British Cristian everything closes on a Sunday way. When we got to the church (historic of course) we found it locked and full of internal scaffolding, it was having the decency to fly a Ukrainian flag at least.

We discover a sheep called Ann Campbell and a building that Charles the first slept in. We also found a rather unusual clinic that appears to have the most unfortunate name.

There is not a lot to do in a rural Herefordshire village on a Sunday that is closed so we go back to the Rooks Tower. More food hot drinks and scrabble. To my surprise I actually pull a seven letter word.

We eat and watch half a rugby match on my phone. and then we go to bed to try and sleep. We are both exhausted. We go to bed adn have a poor night as we both suffer from our colds. Of course we wonder is this COVID.

Monday. We get up eat toast and pack. By 10 o’clock we are back on the road and home by 12 o’clock. There is a spurt of energy, unpack, washing in, cleaning being done, pots watered, hedgehog fed and garden paths swept. I do a LTF, no COVID. My partner is the same, so we just have shit colds. I manage to get to 4:20pm when I set off to the GP surgery to get my monthly injection. I get there and into the nurses clinical room very quickly. I am jabbed and walk home. I drift into the evening, Peaky Blinders, Killing Eve and extraordinary portraits. I’m trying to draft the blog but break off to do tomorrows Tesco order. Back to the blog. I’m beginning to feel my regular junkie like response to the jab. I’m exhausted and I have a morning of a work drop in session. I go to bed, wrecked.