St Helen's Woods

A couple more pictures from our walks down Dad's Memory Lane, this time in Saint Helen's Woods. Within easy walking distance of Pud Lady's and also very adjacent to Dad's senior school, these woods were frequent haunts and used for rough-treating ordinary street push-bikes (this before the days of mountain bikes), climbing trees, damming streams, playing dens and games of "Commandos" etc. You can imagine a gang of then about ten similar age 'Herberts' let loose to get covered in mud, tree stains, leaves, twigs and other bits of forest and make sure you're back for about 5 - Tom! You're the oldest, don't lose any of them!

This is now a nature reserve and is squirrel heaven so I run and run and run, pretty much picking up one squirrel as the previous one escapes me up a tree,so I am in continuous hot pursuit, while the H toddles along behind Dad for the hour. That's enough exercise for him. He needs a lie-down after that. The other favourite dog walk down here is the Firehills, which I have already mentioned; the rabbit-grazed sandy cliffs and gorse thickets down by the coast at Fairlight, just east of Hastings.

Other than that we are just jogging along, killing time as we get through October (and in Mum's case, also November). Everything we can do about speeding the house onward is done, we just have to patiently wait while the legal cogs slowly turn. Mind you, yesterday a month's rain seems to have fallen on Ireland in 24 hours causing plenty of flooding, certainly in areas like Dublin, so Dad has sent a mild email to our estate agent asking him to check "we've" not been washed away. We also await the money transfer for the conveyancing fee which we've ordered. We need to post that off to the Irish solicitors.

Hum drum hum drum

Hope you Silverwoods didn't get flooded out!

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Old Roar Gill

Memory Lane today for Dad takes the form of Local Nature Reserve "Old Roar Gill" at the top end of Alexandra Park in Hastings. The 'gill' bit is a sandstone gorge with, at times, impressive noisy (roaring?) waterfalls and a foaming white stream. It may be 'gill' (as per the nature reserve signs) or it may be "Ghyll" as in local roads Ghyllside Avenue etc, nobody seems to have decided. Perhaps it is one of these place names that pre-dates the populace being able to spell and/or being bothered about how you spelled it. Anyway, it's a lovely leafy walk down in the bottom of the gorge even though today there was precious little water, several completely dry waterfalls and no roar.

We precede this mission with our now regular stroll to Ochiltree Road and the archery fields (where we notice they have a team of young offenders doing community work clearing scrub - we approve!) and a small diversion to go see Watermen's Close. This barge-related location turns out to be a set of almshouses established by the Company of Watermen and Lightermen of the City of London, a quiet little retirement community set up in 1973 in the St Helen's Woods.

The Scrabble-athon between Dad and Pud Lady continues and honours are still even. We hear from Mrs Silverwood that she is keen for Dad (and therefore we dogs also) to head for Ireland as she is loaded down with assorted Silverwood childrens school runs and taxis to after school activities. Dad is asking her to be patient just a few more days while we get the main car serviced and the Irish part of Project Erroll up and running. We have put a surveyor / engineer in to the 'probable' house today to assess whether the septic tank is legally positioned relative to the property boundaries (Don't ask - it's an Irish thing) and to have a quick scout round for any other issues he can see. If that all comes back positive, Mum and Dad can sign something called a "Contract of Sale" (light blue touch-paper) and then pretty much sit back (and in this case decamp to Silverwood's and be Uncle again) and wait for it all to chug through. Days, Mrs S, rather than weeks. Hang in there.

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