Thursday 9 August 2012

Slow

We'd not seen any  of these lovely creatures for a while. Who know's why they're called slow, because they can be anything but!

Can you tell what it is?
Maybe a close up will help....



Not a snake, but a slow worm. A lovely healthy adult. 


We're lucky to have a healthy population living in the garden. The damp cool weather has meant we've not seen them much, but as it's warmed up over the last few days they've been basking in the sun.


Monday 6 August 2012

Support

I just tweeted about posting parcels. It's Monday morning, which means it's parcel day. I only post on 2 mornings per week. Partly because it's more efficient, and partly because I'm limited by the opening hours of our post office.
It's been a busy weekend in the shop which is lovely, and I'm also posting the Handblended Club this morning. That means there are 4 large Ikea bags all full of parcels. In response to my tweet a friend said  you can just print the postage online and then drop them off. This is an option, but it's not currently what I chose to do.

Our post office is in the garage a mile from our house. It's run by Dilys, who is the wife of our neighbouring farmer. Dai and Dilys are the "go-to" people in our community, if you have a problem or question they will either help, or know someone who can. When our water was blocked (we're not on mains water) last year, Dai and his son were the ones who un-blocked it.

Our community is small, our village isn't much more than a hamlet, and it's 20 minutes drive to the nearest small town. A resource like our own post office is something to be treasured, and used. If I print my parcels online and drop them off at the post office, it means that the postage isn't going through the records of my small post office. Dilys is also very nice, and lets me drop off the parcels and come back to pay later, it's not even that I have to wait around for them. It also means she can fit in other customers around my parcels.
Should Post Office closures in my area be looked at, it would be disastrous if we lost this resource, instead of a 3 mile round trip, I'd have to do a 30 mile round trip to post my parcels. It's in my own interest to get Dilys to post my parcels rather than use the online postage.