I found 35 fox turds in our front garden. It’s like a public toilet for foxes. “This way, guys, it’s wonderful here”. The smell! so I’ve got some fox repellent called Scoot. It’s powder you mix with water and use a watering can to sprinkle. It doesn’t hurt plants or animals (or humans) and it makes a smell that only foxes can notice, and that smell tells them it’s somebody else’s lair, so keep away. It does work, but has to be replaced regularly. That’s ok though.

Then there’s the heating system which is still to wonk.

The wi-fi range is a problem in our house. It’s been working fine for years, until lockdown, and Skype and Zoom became regular things. I’ve been under the delusion that these powerline/homeplug/whatever-they-are-called things work through the whole house, but apparently, to my horror, they only work on the same electrical circuit. So I’ve ordered a wi-fi range extender with all sorts of bells and whistles, and am hoping that will help. We do have an old router I made into a wi-fi booster, but even that’s not helping with the Skype and Zoom problem. Last Saturday hubby and I sat in the study, using his tablet, next to the router, so that we could join in.

The network fell apart last night. The music player in the lounge (hubby streams music) was not visible on the network. (everything else was!) I had moved the router  (which is in the study) nearer the door (we’re on cable, so it can’t be moved out of the study) in an effort to improve the wi-fi range, though I hadn’t unplugged any of the ethernet wires. After a fraught and sweaty half hour, with lots of switching things off and back on again, eventually, the music player re-appeared on the network. I am sure the problem is that the only reason it’s visible at all is because of a huge long ethernet cable from the router to the music player, which looks a bit fragile where it’s attached to the plug. So I’ve ordered two more huge long (30m) flat ethernet cables, one to go from the switch box in the study to the switch box in the lounge, and a spare. (Resilience, I think the techies call it). The idea is that the switch boxes in the separate rooms will then talk to each other via the ethernet cables, as they clearly don’t talk to each other via the powerline / homeplug / blah blah blah. We shall see. Flipping technology.

And hubby hurt his back turning the compost. It’s a regular problem. So we’ve ordered a tumbler compost bin, which should help.

Lots of money going out. Lots of deliveries arriving, but somewhat sporadically. It’s all fine. It’s all FINE.