Drought!!

It is only the beginning of April, and half of the UK is under hosepipe bans. Standpipes are being cleaned and polished. Here in Bidborough the water pressure is very low at the best of times, as we are on top of a ridge, so we shall have to wait and see. When I started doing planning work as a young solicitor, the planning authority as a matter of course consulted water authorities as well as highways authorities and the other utilities as to whether they had the capacity to sustain the development proposed, but I now learn that the water authorities have been removed from the statutory list of consultees! Something wrong somewhere.

As soon as I got back from Cyprus I underwent a flare-up of the cellulitis, as promised. Once you have it you have it for life. So back on the anti-biotics. Fortunately we knew what it was and caught it in time, but it is clearly going to be a damn nuisance. However, back on track now, and doing all the things that I like doing - except that I still have difficulty in standing for long period of time. So propping up the bar in the local pub is no longer an option, and cocktail parties and the like are difficult. However, there is usually somewhere to prop myself up.

Planning to go to Jersey later this month for an 85th birthday party. The guy is still flying his own plane, too. It's all right for some, but I do admire him. Also planning to go to Scotland in May, and on the Leeds-Liverpool canal in June. That should be enough excitement.

More jokes needed - her is one sent courtesy of a friend in Cayman:

A tourist in Vienna is going through a graveyard and all of a sudden he hears music. No one is around, so he starts searching for the source.

He finally locates the origin and finds it is coming from a grave with a headstone that reads "Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770 -1827". Then he realizes that the music is the Ninth Symphony and it is being played backward!

Puzzled, he leaves the graveyard and persuades a friend to return with him. By the time they arrive back at the grave, the music has changed. This time it is the Seventh Symphony, but like the previous piece, it is being played backward.

Curious, the men agree to consult a music scholar. When they return with the expert, the Fifth Symphony is playing, again backward.

The expert notices that the symphonies are being played in the reverse order in which they were composed, the 9th, then the 7th, then the 5th.

By the next day the word has spread and a crowd has gathered around the grave. They are all listening to the Second Symphony being played backward.

Just then the graveyard's caretaker ambles up to the group.

Someone in the group asks him if he has an explanation for the music.

"I would have thought it was obvious," the caretaker says. "He's decomposing."

That's all folks!