Foxhole three

After ten days respite, the foxes have returned to the attack, digging tunnels and holes in various places on the southern front.

A different response was called for. The tyre, screen and drain cover were dismantled and the compost heap was spread out, lowering its height significantly, incidentally exposing a fair amount of well rotted material. Maybe even a touch damp.  Tyre, screen and drain cover put back in place over the remodelled heap.

The idea being that the layer of compost is not now thick enough to make tunnelling a very attractive option. With the clay underneath being far too hard to bother with: it would be hard going with a pick axe.

But should the foxes continue, I should be able to punch through to the tunnels from above in short order and hopefully they will tire of this game before I do. They certainly have hitherto - but then they have not mounted such a serious attack before, in the twenty years or so that this compost heap has been there.

After all this, and a stock check under the stairs, I decided that quick visits to Majestic and TB were in order. On the bicycle that is: when it is as hot as it is presently, air cooling works on a bicycle but not when one is on foot. Both establishments all present and correct, with another customer in Majestic but no-one in TB, although there were signs of activity, cranking up for the evening to come. I wondered what was going on. Late Saturday afternoon at TB is often a bit of a lull between the family trade of the afternoon and the other sort of trade of the the evening, but dead? Is the impending cost of living crisis bearing down on discretional boozing?

PS 1: preliminary inspection this (Sunday) morning suggests digging from above, but no tunnelling from the side. Which is easily enough dealt with. So far so good.

PS 2: while the Financial Times reminded us yesterday, in an article which I was prompted to read by Microsoft News, reference 2, that cakeism - so beloved of our fat leader and the truss to follow - is wearing a bit thin. We cannot have both US levels of taxation and European levels of service. Something has to give. Maybe, as Kirkup faintly suggests, it is time to have a go at that huge slab of unearned wealth accumulated by those of my generation, in the form of their houses. Long ago paid for - at the house prices of thirty or forty years ago - prices which now seem ludicrously low, although they did not seem that low at the time.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/08/foxhole-two.html.

Reference 2: Public services will wither unless the UK makes hard tax choices: The Truss camp’s calls to ‘roll back the frontiers of the state’ invite the question: to where? - James Kirkup, Financial Times - 2022.