Zip

Angie feeling worse. Not good news and she has an important meeting at work tomorrow. Possibly also part of the cause. It's almost certainly psychological/stress causing the physical pain, tightening the back muscles and putting strain on the discs. Meditation and a bit of deep breathing followed by a long mmmmmmmmhhhhhhhhhhhh exhalation would probably be best but not her strength - she is an action type: "Who rests, rusts" could be her motto.

Set off for the morning walk, parking opposite Mr&MrsB's house. As I got out, MrB shot out from the garden and beckoned me to follow him. On the terrace he seemed to be cooking a pot of Gluehwein but much too early in the morning even for him. No, he was dipping tree cones in to liquid beeswax, dusting them with sawdust  and laying them out to dry. Looked very Christmassy but 1st week of Advent is still a while away despite the temperature feeling like it.

Then he explained he had read in a magazine how to make your own firelighters and naturally as a bee-keeper he has ample supplies of wax, as a forestry owner, firewood maker and as a hunter, who spends hours in the forest, he has easy and free access to all the ingredients. He had no idea if it would work but gave me one of each sort to try out - pine, spruce and fir. If I remember rightly pine is the best as it has the most resin content.

As we also have loads of beeswax, sadly as my bee activity was zero this year and I have loads of half built combs to melt down, and we have loads of cones in the garden or if necessary in the adjacent forest as well as always having sawdust (rather than large wood shavings), I really could try this myself. So to see if it was worthwhile, lit the fire this afternoon with one of MrB's creations and it really did work.

Perhaps there is a market for this. Move over Zip. Strange but the brand Zip is one of those that seems to have been around my entire life even though I grew up in the tropics where firelighters weren't exactly on every supermarket shelf. When I was sent to school in the UK aged eight and joined the cubs and scouts, I am sure we would have been executed if we had tried to light a camp fire with a Zip block. I guess I probably first came in to contact with them in the 1970's when we moved to the UK and had a wood fire. Nevertheless, the awful kerosene smell will remain one of things I will never forget.

So thank you MrB for the tip and the sample. Beeswax scent from now on in our sitting room.

Miserable, mainly dry cold day again not fit for anything but the essentials. Young couple from the village came by this afternoon asking if we had any chance of keeping her horse with us. Would actually be quite an attractive idea as they are both very nice people , Stefan has actually been on Blip some time ago, as passenger on an oldtimer tractor overseeing his younger brother harvesting potatoes for the village "Potato Club".

However we have removed our spare boxes and fear that our Sultan could become quite aggressive or rather possessive of his Rosie  against a new gelding. He had tolerated our old Asyr because he had been there first but when Asyr aged 31 was very weak this summer, Sultan finally caused his end, biting him through the main neck vein. Not something we want to risk.