It's far too early really but since I have been observing nature very carefully as I take my exercise perambulation around the garden every morning, it's hard not to notice that winter is already in retreat. There are definite buds showing on the field maple hedging I inserted around the edge of the little wood and the snowdrops are in full flower - outliers appearing in all sorts of odd places. I have to be very careful of where I walk since the daffodils are now appearing around the edge of the grass in front of the house. Clumps of them demonstrate their physical power as several of them have pushed up large chunks of earth as they break into the open air. I was impressed. Bluebells are also appearing. I have marked out a exercise path for me to use so that I don't step on them either. That sort of thing keeps me busy out - and I suppose it's moderately constructive.

                Lots of rain still. The ground is now so saturated that it cannot take any more water, so rain just runs straight off. The drainage system is still doing its job, disgorging the surplus indirectly into the road drain and sparing the annexe from further flooding. And then came that really cold snap which seems to have killed all my overwintering Broad Bean plants. They'd survived the snow but not the cold. As ever with gardening two steps forwards, one step back - sometimes more. 

                It's pretty much like that with the pandemic too - a continuing mixture of the hopeful and the frankly terrible. I heard of the death of a long-term close University friend in Salisbury a couple of weeks ago. Really unexpected as he was fit and careful.  Just another awful statistic nationally but devastating for his family and friends of many decades like me. That really brought things home.

                But there's some good news as well. I've had my first jab - it was over so quickly and so efficiently I wasn't even sure I had had it. A very, very slight soreness in the arm for an hour or two suggested I had. But it doesn't really make planning any easier. I am beginning to twitch about the state of affairs over in Newport, where a block of remote teaching is looming on the horizon. What sparked it off was being told that the big house and the grounds will be put on the market in April. My lease only ends in June but it's far from clear whether, or when, I will be  able to get over there to sort things out. I have a new car in the garage loaded up with my all stuff but various colleagues have volunteered to look after it if I need them to. I gather the estate is going for $8.6 million. I thought it would help to solve the problem if I made them an offer, but decided against it as it would have used up too much of my spare cash.

                So from the future academic point of view I'm in state of limbo at the moment and far from sure what I should do, or even can do for much of this year . There is no talk yet of the College opening up properly any time soon so I am not actually missing anything, apart from a bit of Newport experience as the town isn't as fully locked down as we are.  There's a lot of mumbling over there amongst my colleagues as Rhode Island is the worst performing US state in getting the jabs out amongst the ancient ones. The Navy is slowly coming to the rescue for members of staff but not for their families as yet I gather.

                As for me more immediate academic commitments are still appearing and I am still doing a fair bit of zooming around. Plus, of course this interminable book (positively my last) is chugging along. Every day I set my self a little target list of things to be done ( a habit acquired from Cherry - 'I've got a little list') and every day I don't quite make it. So I haven't found  the time yet to be idle though I am still looking.

                Another thing that is keeping me off the streets at the moment is using up the remnants of some 16th woodwork I bought from a friend sixteen years ago. His mother had recently died and when going through her effects he re-discovered it all in the loft of her little house in Chesterfield. She had been the housekeeper at Earlsheaton Hall near Dewsbury in Yorkshire. Typical of that barbaric  time the house, which was in poor condition, was demolished in the 1960s to make way for a garage. Even then, this caused outrage and the local history group, having failed to avert the demolition, did a survey of the house. This revealed that the core of the house was 16th Century, grand enough to have a coat of arms above the fireplace. My friend's mother was upset and saved what she could (some of it apparently from skips) and somehow getting it into her loft. The local museum  thought it was interesting but wouldn't take it off his hands.

                Shortly afterwards he came to stay with us to visit my college at Shrivenham. Driving in to work with him one morning,  I happened to say I was looking for some old panelling - and he said that, coincidentally, he had some, plus some banisters. Needless to say by the end of the day I had bought it all off him, sight unseen. Shortly afterwards I hired a van and we drove up to Chesterfield to collect it all. There was tons of it. Getting it out of the loft was a struggle. Cutting a long story short, a local craftsman/antique restorer of enormous ability  turned as much of it as was sensibly usable into the linen-fold panelling in the dining room and hall, and replaced our ghastly stair rail with a set of oak banisters and rail adding new bits where necessary.

                Obviously there were lots of little bits left over which I left in various dusty corners of the garage until I worked out what I could do with it all. Burning it, as suggested by my more philistine colleagues wasn't an option. Some years later I used most of the massive oak planking for a long temporary book case in the computer room. Now confined to barracks, I have at last started making use of some of the rather challenging remnants still left over. I enjoy fiddling around with old wood but I am no carpenter unfortunately. I console myself with the reflection that if I don't use it, it will only get thrown away one day so I hope to give at least some of it a chance of longer survival. So I am having fun sticking bits together, or trying to, staining bits with tea as the experts do. At least it gives me something new to think about ! Which in these straitened times is no bad thing.