Rumbling Closer

Despite me voicing my protests in the most strident, loud manner to the builders, they insist on rumbling ever closer. Just beyond our beech hedge a big tracked hydraulic digger is scooping off the top 2 feet of the old hard-standing carpark into big 8-wheeler lorries, and another is laying a new foot of finer stuff, which is being smoothed by a road roller.

I have already mentioned that an enourmous estate behind our house is currently being developed to include 390 dwellings and a Home for the Bewildered. the Home is right at our backs, and as the houses gradually encroach on us the space is being cleared for the car parking for the Home.

Dad is impressed tonight on the dog walk when a small shaggy terrier is let out of the front of his house on our busy road by a bloke in a white van, and trots 50 yards down the pavement to the van looking up adoringly at the bloke, before leaping in as soon as the guy opens the door, and sits on the passenger seat looking out of the windscreen, waiting quietly while the guy belts in and fires up.

Dad comments to the bloke that he wishes he could trust us to do that (theory is we'd take off after a cat or stroll about aimlessly across the lanes), and says that H for one, has never voluntarily got into a vehicle in all his (almost) 11 years.

Ah so.