One swallow does not a summer make.

Aristotle  (384 BC - 322 BC)

But it does kick off the Tractor Tuesday year with a special whiff of country air. The annual winter ban on slurry ended on Monday. Nogbad would probably have preferred it to happen 24 hours earlier - he has for many years  led the the Valintinexit campaign - his motto "24/7/365 love and rock n' roll"

I was still on our property when this "Bliportunity" appeared and it was the only tractor I saw all day, everyone else seemingly waiting for the forecasted cold and snow for the next couple of days to go.

Dog walk was to a spot where lots of fox holes & badger lairs. Apparently they in fact usually share their homes but I suspect with separate dining and sleeping quarters. They should sleep well tonight on full stomachs - 16kg of prime, 100% organic, vegetarian goose. I actually drove with the car right up to the spot as I wasn't going to cart the corpses a kilometre or two. Trust the responsible hunter for that patch doesn't DNA my tyre treads as the paths are closed to normal traffic. Luckily I just happened to know he was many kilometres away.

Last few weeks have been a bit up & down - here goes another excuse for not commenting as much as I should. Internal time clock all messed up and spewing out so many kidney stones that I have been approached by an oil company wanting to do some test drilling prior to signing a fracking deal. No pain at all but my internals seem to react very badly to the stones. It won't be long before I get out my John Deere and can enjoy a daily shake. Angie suggested months ago I should get one of those workout mini trampolines - saw a "health" programme on TV this evening praising them but saying a good one cost 150-200 Euros.

Other Bavarian news - cause of train crash now 99.9% known. Tragic simple mistake with no evil background. Get the feeling that everyone terribly torn between the horrendous results of the mistake and a sort of sympathy for the dispatcher and that in this day and age, technology didn't prevent it. The relatively simple technology has been available for years - one such system was tested on exactly the stretch involved five years ago but not bought as it wasn't and still isn't a legal requirement.

Ended the day with the latest UK Papers review on Sky News. EU debate silliness continues, on both sides, unabated. Even if Aristotle was a student of Plato and his Platonism, he realised Empiricism and a few real facts was a better way forward. Boring maybe but a better basis for making important decisions than using slurry tactics.