Watercolour study of oak leaves. I'm typing this while waiting for a builder arrive.  An ominous horizontal damp patch has appeared along our dining room wall.  Judging from the ridges in the plaster beneath the new-ish wallpaper, this has been a recurring problem for some time. So next-door's builder came in to offer his opinion, and he pointed out that the damp course along that section of the house is too low to the path so it can't do it's job.  One option would be to jack-hammer out a trench "soak away" beside the wall and hope the old damp course would then work ok.  He recommended that it would be easier to simply install a new damp course.  The spoiled plaster needs to be replaced, which means the radiator has to come off first.  Also, an original Victorian downspout has rusted through quite badly and needs replacing with a new plastic one.  It's a pity to lose the historical one but carbuncles of rust are bubbling through the paint along its

Wild Swans in Birkenhead Park Birkenhead Park is currently home to two adult swans and their seven cygnets.  They're a delight to watch as they sail majestically through reflections cast on the water by autumnal trees and shrubbery.  The colours of the foliage are striking, and the ground is already thick with a crisp carpet of fallen leaves.  Everywhere you look, grey squirrels are munching acorns, fattening up for the coming winter. Our dogs found a frog in our garden last night, the first amphibian we've seen in our new-to-us garden.  The one thing I miss about our old house is my frog pond.  I've been eyeing a corner of the lawn, with a view to creating a new one here.  It's a project which will have to go on the To Do list. Meanwhile, I continue to work away at my second NVQ Level 3.  I have two modules, totalling 6 credits, left of the mandatory modules, and then I move on to the optional ones.  There is a huge amount of writing involved - enough for a nov

"All that we profess to do is but this, - to find out the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventatives to the effort of time.  This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood.  In our order we hold most noble -, first, that knowledge which elevates the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body.  But the mere art (extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret which I will only hint to thee at present, by which heat or calorific, as ye call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle of life, can be made its perpectual renovator...." Zanoni, book IV, chapter II, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first published in 1842. Oroboros keyring - Spooky Cute Designs The idea of being able to achieve an immortal life is probably as old as human life itself.  Folklore and mythology ab