June - the good, the bad and the ugly

The sun has been good to us this June and we have enjoyed every minute. Kitty caught her first tadpole at Mama and Grandad's house.

She also learnt the fine art of escape via the dog-flap.

The garden came into bloom and the tomatos are coming on well too.

Vegetables are growing, but it's tough as the snails are big and there are 1000's of them. Kitty and me try to do an early morning raid on them as often as possible. This is an average catch so you see the problem! I don't use any other method of pest control at the moment, though someone did recommend slug-off recently, as it doesn't kill slugs and snails they just don't like it but I have yet to find any for sale.

Kitty playing in our Visitor Centre recently.

Tory cuts to public services have hit us hard already. We are looking for 40% cuts across the board, with non-statutory stuff going anywhere it can. Several community centres, leisure centres and libraries are already on the hit list and our little Visitor Centre has been one of the first to get the bullet. All that work. We close the doors on 18th July. Just a months notice to get out. Luckily we have justified that the service should be kept, but only really as we have managed to find a temporary building with no rent - for now. As for my job, well I'd say it's looking like 80-85% possibility of redundancy at the moment. All we can do is wait and see how things go. Probably time for a change anyway, but I doubt there will be anything else for me around here so we may have to move from our lovely little house on the hill. I just hope all those people that were fooled into voting Conservative, now realise what they have done and that Tories do not and never will have the interests of the lower classes in mind. Unfortunately, it's a hard lesson to learn and much of the work that has been done to improved the lives, prospects, health and wellbeing of poorer people in this country will be lost. The North will be devastated after just a few years of this.

We spent fathers day at Grandma's house as it was also her birthday.

Bert got a bad hair-cut.

Kitty is moving into 'big-girl class' next week and will be joining Friday ballet class. We went to East Lancs School of Dance on Saturday to buy her outfit. She looks like a proper little ballerina now and is very excited about the up coming lessons. Note the cute little stool Grandad Simpson turned for us.