Corin clearly felt that...

the bridge required additional support.
James adopted a supervisory role.

After tea, I said "Let's go for a walk".
What a cracking idea that was!
80 minutes later, we returned home.

I wanted to go and take some photos of the local "Walled Garden" - it is in need of lots of TLC and investment to restore it to it's glory. It is a wonderful place, but neglected, overgrown and sadly, it is going to take a while to get the funds together to get it sorted.

Someone we are acquainted with is working her socks off, fundraising, looking for external funding sources and revenue streams, so that it can be restored. She is half way there...

We managed to worry some local chavs - one of whom was brave enough to come over and ask us what we were doing, whilst Corin was trying to figure out if he could climb the outside of the bridge over this underpass. We ignored the chav-boy largely. He seemed a little intrigued, and perturbed, that we were taking photos "Are you taking photos of the bad things?" he asked. I resisted the urge to say "why, do you want your picture taking?" Terrible. He is someone's child and actually, he wasn't so bad!


Walking home, we rescued a shopping trolley. James was then driven home in the shopping trolley, all the while asking "Can we keep it?" I pointed out that most children ask questions like this when they find a straggly kitten, puppy or hedgehog, but not shopping trolleys!

We also encountered a whole area of our estate where the trees were covered in silk. Apparently this has happened elsewhere in the country and is a result of an infestation of the "Ermine moth caterpillar". Strangely enough, my brother mentioned this a couple of weeks ago - I thought he was taking the mickey.

A sample of images to illustrate our findings can be found here The silky trees are very intriguing.

With that, I am off for vino and a bath. It has been a long day and tomorrow will likely bring a certain amount of angst and gnashing of teeth!