It’s starting to feel like spring, some days around here it only rains for an hour or so and the temperature makes double digits.

Sometimes.

On other days, the permacloud is unbroken, the winds howl and the rain is horizontal.

But this is why we have boots and rainproof clothes, to get outside for a couple of hours every day, whether working or ‘only’ doing things at home at the weekend.

The walk is the thing that defines the day, the fresh air or the smell of silage across the fields, birdsong or the raucous noise of a couple of hundred crows that live above some lucky people a mile down the lane.

The gentle susurration of the trees in the breeze or the howling gale that makes you effectively deaf and means that you have to keep looking behind you for the very occasional vehicle.

Such is life in The Shire.

The doglets aren’t too keen on the rain really, but on days like today, Milo is more than happy to strut along, tail high and gently swinging back and forth for a six mile walk, while Cairo POUNCES like some sort of big cat in her regular attempts to kill something small and squeaky.

And me?

I let the worries and issues of the real world, or the wider world if you will; trickle through my subconscious, sometimes arriving at an answer to a problem or sometimes just filing stuff away in the corners of my brain.

Retirement seems like a summer dream right now, I’m knee deep in issues from all sides and have more than a casual interest in the issues in the gulf right now.

In three weeks or so, I have to break out the black tie and go to a conference being hosted by the American military.

It’s not what I was expecting at this time last year, that’s for sure.

But this weekend, I hung pictures that an amazing artist painted on commission and fitted two safes so that casual burglars can’t just steal things.

And earlier in the week, I met a friend in Bath and we discussed the huge issues along with the small, politics and trivia, we accurately predicted a by election result and agreed that we didn’t really care.

The goal is to stay as content as you can, change what you’re able and let the other stuff wash over you.

Take the tiniest of wins and let them fuel you.

Yesterday, I found a lost dog, then I reunited her with owner.

A few weeks ago, I stopped my local parish from raising the precept, arguing successfully that:

We have a surplus

That putting it up was just kicking people even more when they’re down.

It’s not much, but.

If even once a week, we do something that helps others more, maybe we’ll at least hold the tide, even if we can’t turn it.