As I lay in bed listening to the Radio 4 Christmas Appeal for the work that St Martin's -in-the-Fields (a grand church in Trafalgar Square), does with homeless people I gave thanks that we have a home of our own. I may grumble about not being able to keep it warm enough but how does that compare to those people who sleep in shop doorways or
grimy alleys? St Martin's provides emergency beds as well as daytime
activities designed to help these people emerge from the depths to which they have sunk. They manage to get 80% of the people who come to them, into the next stage of housing. When we lived in London we would go out with our church to provide food and other basics to these homeless people who were often very troubled. Some critics say that charities who do 'food runs' are encouraging people to sleep on the streets, that is a harsh view and the people are there and hungry. How could we turn our backs on them? Peter also worked full-time for a charity that helped homeless people to get into accommodation. Thinking back to how the homeless would sleep on layers of cardboard and today hearing descriptions of how cold and dangerous it is I also give thanks for our lovely warm bed and for last year's work which enabled me to save up and change our perfectly good standard sized double bed for a super-king and also to buy a full memory foam mattress to ease our creaking joints.
Today has been very cold, frequent wintry showers with the odd bright spell.
During one dry spell I went up and repaired the little soil dam that diverts the water from the road into the field and away from our drive. I have just about finished clearing
Romas' room. There are several boxes of stuff that he needs to sort through when he comes home this holiday and then it will all be done. I had been wondering why the room smelt a little stale and on investigation I found that the down pipe that takes the water from the sink in there and another bedroom, was full of stagnant water. I tried
unsuccessfully to clear it from the top. When I dug down it looks as if the drain has been put in as a soak-away. Not that daft as it only runs from 2 sinks until you take in consideration that the soil is solid clay. I dug out some rather stagnant clay and the water started to ooze out. Heavy rain stopped me from carrying on digging so I poured some drain cleaner into the top of the drain pipe. I will have to dig a bigger hole to clear the water out. We are having some major drain work done next year so we will either link that drain into the main system or take the water to where it can soak away.
I have finally decided that Smudge our grey cat is almost totally deaf. For some time I have been trying to decide if he was deaf or just going senile. Today he was yelling at me (with his very loud yell) when I was looking out of
Romas' window because he wanted to come in. I went to the front door but he did not respond to my shouts until I went round to where he could see me. Indoors I tried clicking my fingers behind his head to no response, the other cats mainly responded but then got fed up with me. Then I took a tin out of the cupboard and clicked my fingers on it. That produced a 90% response from the other cats but almost nothing from Smudge so I think it may well be his hearing. He is about 11 years old so is getting on a bit but I will not be taking him to the vet for a hearing test!
As I lay in bed listening to the Radio 4 Christmas Appeal for the work that St Martin's -in-the-Fields (a grand church in Trafalgar Square), does with homeless people I gave thanks that we have a home of our own. I may grumble about not being able to keep it warm enough but how does that compare to those people who sleep in shop doorways or grimy alleys? St Martin's provides emergency beds as well as daytime activities designed to help these people emerge from the depths to which they have sunk. They manage to get 80% of the people who come to them, into the next stage of housing. When we lived in London we would go out with our church to provide food and other basics to these homeless people who were often very troubled. Some critics say that charities who do 'food runs' are encouraging people to sleep on the streets, that is a harsh view and the people are there and hungry. How could we turn our backs on them? Peter also worked full-time for a charity that helped homeless people to get into accommodation. Thinking back to how the homeless would sleep on layers of cardboard and today hearing descriptions of how cold and dangerous it is I also give thanks for our lovely warm bed and for last year's work which enabled me to save up and change our perfectly good standard sized double bed for a super-king and also to buy a full memory foam mattress to ease our creaking joints.
Today has been very cold, frequent wintry showers with the odd bright spell.
During one dry spell I went up and repaired the little soil dam that diverts the water from the road into the field and away from our drive. I have just about finished clearing Romas' room. There are several boxes of stuff that he needs to sort through when he comes home this holiday and then it will all be done. I had been wondering why the room smelt a little stale and on investigation I found that the down pipe that takes the water from the sink in there and another bedroom, was full of stagnant water. I tried unsuccessfully to clear it from the top. When I dug down it looks as if the drain has been put in as a soak-away. Not that daft as it only runs from 2 sinks until you take in consideration that the soil is solid clay. I dug out some rather stagnant clay and the water started to ooze out. Heavy rain stopped me from carrying on digging so I poured some drain cleaner into the top of the drain pipe. I will have to dig a bigger hole to clear the water out. We are having some major drain work done next year so we will either link that drain into the main system or take the water to where it can soak away.
I have finally decided that Smudge our grey cat is almost totally deaf. For some time I have been trying to decide if he was deaf or just going senile. Today he was yelling at me (with his very loud yell) when I was looking out of Romas' window because he wanted to come in. I went to the front door but he did not respond to my shouts until I went round to where he could see me. Indoors I tried clicking my fingers behind his head to no response, the other cats mainly responded but then got fed up with me. Then I took a tin out of the cupboard and clicked my fingers on it. That produced a 90% response from the other cats but almost nothing from Smudge so I think it may well be his hearing. He is about 11 years old so is getting on a bit but I will not be taking him to the vet for a hearing test!
2 comments:
Ruta, thank you for your wonderful stories and musings. Your Sunday story about the homeless really touched me. Over the past year I have been checking in to read your stories regularly and have thoroughly enjoyed it. It is funny though how I came across your blog: see my name too is Ruta (I am a Latvian extraction living in the US, Portland, Oregon). A year ago I created my own blog and one day I was testing my link by searching my name in Google, and your blog popped up. The funniest thing is that my blog is called "Rutas domas" meaning "Ruta's thoughts" and the image on top of my blog is of the Oregon coastline with cliffs, so similar in style to your image.
There are some other similarities, which made me interested in reading - my husband and I too are avid gardeners and Portland climate seems to be very similar to Devon, the seasons are similar, same plants. We too hike a lot and take a ton of pictures. And I too am a teacher, currently working in adult education. I thought all of it was quite amusing :-)
Thanks again for writing,
Best, Ruta
Hi Ruta,
Thanks for dropping by. It is always interesting to see who my readers are. I started writing as a way of keeping in touch with my sons as they went to uni and also with my relatives who live abroad but now I also value the blog world friendships that I have made.
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