It's done! Our tax return is filed and the payments required look right, so that is over for us for another year. I still have to sit in on two more tax returns with people who want their "hands held" as they work through the electronic forms, but mine is done! Yay!
I chose a wet day to do battle with bureaucracy, so there were no challenges to my time and attention. There have been storms and we have had rain this last week - the first for a good month and boy did the ground need it! There have also been dramatic clouds.
That particular cloud was all drama and no action, which is fine by me.
In terms of animals, there have been a few noteworthy things during the week. I bought a nice big pot for our seed-grown yew tree, that will be topiary art in due course. Naturally it came without holes, so for the moment, it is sitting gathering water, waiting to be drilled. There is a large spider who has taken up residence in there, and is doing a fine piece of work demonstrating surface tension on water. As I've seen it up the sides of the pot, I think it has chosen to be there.
One of the outdoor cats kindly brought me most of a lizard during the week, but it was a feisty one! She wanted to bring it right over to me, but it latched on to the floor mop and would not let go for anything, demonstrating that lizards and crocodiles are related! Poirot had one attach itself to her face in a similar manner - no one was impressed by that.
On the cuteness stakes, this little fellow is probably the winner. I knew there was a vixen in the area that was seriously with cub, as I had seen her on footage from one of the trail cameras. I think she had at least two cubs, as I have seen two playing around the badgers' set. One has now set up camp in the Garden bit at The Shack. Yesterday I was sitting listening to birds and cuddling cats on a seat under the birch tree, when I noticed a fox cub coming out of the hedge area, then sitting by the polytunnel frame to scratch, yawn, lick bits of itself and generally enjoy the sun. The cats were not phased by it. It wasn't phased by me taking out my phone and taking a few pictures, but then something changed and it ran away.
Naturally we will not feed or encourage it - nature must take its course - but there is something very cute about baby animals, and provided Reynard doesn't do anything silly or destructive, he is welcome to live in the hedge and keep the mice and rats under control.
The art side of the week is that there is a new exhibition opened on Wednesday at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne - Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism - Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism — Towner Eastbourne for the official details. My dad is one of the featured artists. There was a pretty useless review in The Times during the week, vapid in the extreme, listing a few artists that they had heard of, and complaining there was too much to see. Those I know who were at the opening say it is marvellous and very interesting and well laid out - I need to go and see for myself next month. I took over a few bits for the show in March, including a painting that had been knocking around the place for years and had got very grubby. The wonderful conservators had cleaned it up for the show - just a foretaste of what is there!
I am ashamed to think how grubby it was when I handed it over!!
Next weekend is the village trout fishing festival, where I will be required to help staff a bar for much of Sunday. It is therefore possible that the blog will be a day late, depending on the state of my feet and patience after selling beer, soft drinks and wine for 6 hours.
Have a good week!
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