Expensively Shoed

These shoes which look quite ordinary in a buttoned up sort of way have actually cost me a week’s salary in old money. Do I grudge the expense? You bet I do, but I reckon that if I can walk pain free and without the use of blister plasters, then they might be worth it. I’m sure it would have been more elegant to have gone for teeteringly high heels to add a few inches to my height, but I have never managed to walk the Sturgeon walk, in fact walk at all in any kind of elegant way in high heels.

I was held captive in the Dower House this morning waiting for the lovely boiler man to come and service my boiler. It was fortunate that a friend came and kept me company as we whiled away the hours. Every day I bless that boiler for consistently working which is such an asset after the original malfunctioning Ferroli one.
The minute cabin fever set in after lunch , I strode forth into the teeth of a gale for a circuit of the marches. The gusts were sufficient at time to bowl me along at a cracking pace in one direction and have me bent double in the other.

After two window experts looked at the windows in the west wing to give me an estimate for draught exclusion, it appears that the culprits are not the windows themselves but the orifice in the wall holding the pulley system for the ropes operating the sashes. How one deals with the howling draughts through these spaces, I know not. There are no curtains int the Dower House to shield me from them, only a hot water bottle and Wildwood’s lovely knitted blanket.