Greetings from Shropshire!

That wasn’t the plan for this week, but then nothing at the moment was in the plan that I vaguely had at the end of Summer.

More of that shortly.

But today.

Today, I was supposed to be in Spain recovering from an epic drinking session after watching bands in a rock bar all weekend.

I’d booked a suite in a golf club, lounge time at Birmingham airport and was looking forward to a weekend away and that feeling of the unknown.

Nope.

I’ve managed to create my own time pressure by agreeing to go back to work for a year to help a friend out.

I start on the 8th of December and in the normal course of events, four days away wasn’t an issue.

But my aunt in the care home has had a series of falls, so I swapped my flights for a long drive and my suite in a golf club for a room in Old Tebay in a lovely little inn.

And I took my girlie with me.

She’s a wonderful travel companion and she’s one of the things that my aunt really looks forward to when I visit.

So that’s what we did.

A seven hour drive in fucking awful weather, because duty and love can be bound inextricably.

And duty can’t just be turned off.

When I wrote this…

In the end

I genuinely hoped that I’d heard the last of the small ‘e’ evil that is Susan Auckland.

But it’s not to be.

She’s so fucking horrible that wherever she goes, she scares and worries people, they google her and end up with me.

And so it is.

She owns a flat in a small town in Scotland, free and clear.

She also owes a lot of money.

It’s her pattern.

In a twist this time, she’s ALSO a resident in a social housing block that’s owned and run by Hanover Scotland.

Why would that be?

Why would you live among vulnerable people when you have your own property?

Quite the conundrum.

Anyway.

Three separate people have been in touch, so I turned off the instinct to ignore it.

And I wrote to their chief executive.

This is the last paragraph.

So, once again, apologies for the direct approach but I feel it incumbent on me to warn you that you have a predator in your midst and that it may be prudent to check with the other residents to ensure that they have control of their credit and debit cards. 

I haven’t heard back and I don’t care if I do.

If you ignore these things, you’re effectively complicit and it’s another drop of corrosion that eats into your soul and mine really doesn’t need any more darkness to be let in.

So…

Instead of being here… (photo kindly sent to me so that I could see what I was missing)

I’m sat here with Cairo asleep beside me, while I listen to music and drink beer.

It could be an awful lot worse.

At least I don’t have to fly back tomorrow on a fucking Ryanair flight.

Man Plans.

‘Der Mensch Tracht, un Gott Lacht’

And God laughs

Fuck me.

What a week it’s been.

Not for me in particular, but an awful murder of a good man happened earlier in the week and then a mass-stabbing event last night on a train.

No dead so far, I hope that my suspicions about the playbook for these things are wrong and that there won’t be a trickle of reported deaths over the next 24 hours.

It’s not terrorism apparently.

We’ll see.

It’s certainly going to scare a huge number of people – again.

All while our government blatantly lies to us about almost everything.

So fuck that.

I can’t dwell on it.

Let’s talk about just one day.

Halloween.

All Hallows Eve.

Samhain.

The night that the bridge between worlds grows stronger – that the veil grows thinner.

A time for honouring the dead and paying homage to the spirits.

Fuck that too.

I went to my normal farm shop and picked up a load of top quality beef, some of which was destined for a pie.

And prepared the house for a dark guest and her earthly guardians.

Dottie.

The dog of my new friends, who’d stopped over overnight on their way home.

We ate well, we drank good wines and we talked of enough things to fill five blog posts.

The doglets took to her very quickly, she’s Milo’s size and she’s a sweet and loving little dog.

If a bit rapacious- I had to put Milo and Cairo’s food out of her reach – much to her disappointment.

It all went incredibly well and we walked all three dogs before they journeyed home.

The husband is incredibly well connected and knows a lot of what’s behind the curtain right now and I’m still taking some of it in.

Along with his offer to give me a proper briefing that may help me.

With my new (one year) job.

Because I had an interview that day too.

It sounds like a proper challenge, one I thought that I wouldn’t see again given that I stopped working in April.

This is for another friend though, the money will be welcome but uninteresting – it’s the challenge that’s fun.

So.

Once again, I’m not going to write about horror.

There’s still too many good things.

Go and find some if you can.