Not being thankful

I'm pleased with myself. I've put all my OS Maps in numerical order and the right way up. I have very many more maps ,I love them . When Kirsty asks me what book Im taking on my Desert Island I am going to ask for the complete set of OS Landranger Maps.  I wouldn't mind a set of the Old 1 Inch to 1 Mile  as they take up less room . The OS have just released a digital map of Mars. I want it but don't need it. I am trying very hard not to buy books and maps . Google Earth is great , online text is sort of great , but one cannot replace the feel of paper , or parchment in the case of the Laws of the land, and hand crafted Title Deeds . 

I've enjoyed sorting my maps. Its a perfect wet weather occupation when spouse is watching Come Dine With Me or Rising Damp . I am near enough to hear that he's watching a re run of a re run of a re run, but far enough  away to be still a companion . So  S A D have I been, even with Brazil Nuts, that I have actually resorted to tidying and filing . Thankfully when it stops raining I  take my compost Bin Veg and fruit peelings  to the Allotment and sojourn there awhile in the Greenhouse looking at my rows of Leeks and Shallots and Garlic, and wishing that the Saffron Crocuses would look a bit more like the £12  I stupidly paid for them in my insomniacal spree on Amazon . Yesterday I took Cleo the borrrowed Westie up on the Country Park for the afternoon in the sunshine and sodden grass and deep mud. I looked over the bay , and saw such a change in Carr Naze as the winter erosion has deepened all the Run -off -gulleys in the Boulder Clay .

It wont be long now , well 3 months only , before I start my 2016 Plant Surveys again for NPMS. By then my allotment will be working hard to supply our vegetables , fruit , flowers and sanity. I will have got past this Doldrums period, where all the books I've read have been boring *.

For the last 8 months the furtherest I have been is Sutton in Holderness just 38 miles away . I have never been so near home for so long. Its all part of being a dutiful wife to a dear man .He cannot go anywhere much at present until the NHS either treat him or say NO to treatment . We can then get on with our exciting Life Together.   Small jaunts to exhibitions in London are perfectly manageable but trips abroad no longer are , and wild countryside and windswept Scottish Islands are a memory on Picasa.

So I've been and bought a map of Herefordshire. I've never been .  I've convinced spouse that the Mappa Mundi will be interesting and we can take some bus trips on our Passes along the Wye and Lugg valleys. Well be fine in the  Premier Inn, and I can get us there easily  with 2 changes on the train. My first Deputy Head at Belleville Junior Girls School , the redoubtable Miss Midwinter, came from Hereford and as this young teacher was jetting off to Norway and Austria she told me how lovely it was in her home county  , and I have remembered.

1972 revision

1989 revision

And here a puzzle for you if you too are BORED with Feb .Two Landranger maps of same area, my old one from 1970s and new one from 1990s.
What has happened to the SEWAGE WORKS THAT I KNOW WERE NEVER THERE ? Clue  GOLF BALLS 

*I've read 4 of the British Library Crime Classics so lauded in the press. They were OP because they were awful  , why did no one tell them , a case of the Emperors New Clothes of fiction .