I have had to remove several layers as it is very warm indeed here and very damp. Perhaps this will make the mushrooms appear. I haven’t found a single one in the fields this year and normally we get loads plus some massive horse mushrooms as well. Tom and Matt have been very successful in their foraging expeditions on Hampstead Heath and found all sorts of edible varieties and they are still alive, that’s a bonus.
We have to pack up today for the awful marathon of the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace. Four days stood up on a stand waiting for the cheerful moment when you take some money. It tends to come in waves. Nothing at all in the first hour or two as the coaches disgorge thousands of ladies at the other end of the show and it takes them quite a while to get to us. Then it is mayhem and as the stand is quite small we are falling over each other trying to reach the credit card machine and the calculator as my adding up in those circumstances goes all to pot. Normally we are opposite the sewing machine man so we find ourselves fixated on the extraordinary embroidery designs that these machines do on their own. They just stick a card in and away it goes.
My chickens have been moved to a new even more palatial enclosure so that they are not cluttering up the barn. The only alternative for Chas was extermination and I can’t have that. We have caught all of them except two which escaped from our clutches last night. Chas’s sister Ros was with us but she refused to pick up a chicken – wimp – they are quite sweet really and lovely and warm.