Footwear test flight

I was test flying my new walking shoes yesterday, just a couple of hours around the vicinity, ending up at the library and the JA "Green Shoppu" where we bought some negi onions. I carried them back down the hill in my rucksack. The long green leaves stuck up over my head so that from the front I looked a bit like an eco-friendly Navajo 'brave'.

Nice. I'll have to get some new socks to make best use of them but you could walk for ever in these shoes, as far as your feet are concerned anyway. And while I'm about it I'll buy some waterproof trousers from Cainz so that even if it is raining I can walk cheerfully during the winter with my 'Regatta Brand' yachting anorak hood up and not get wet. I have a minor fantasy about having a kind of transparent plastic 'bubble' to inhabit and move around in that you could spend time outdoors in during all weathers, a kind of a 'cross' between a space suit and an inflatable tent. Somewhere that you could spend time sitting in on windy ridges on rainy days enjoying a flask of coffee and reading a book. But for now some red waterproof pants will do.

With all our new 'Everest' gear on we must have made a brave sight walking up through the danchi. E was determined to take in some new houses we had heard about during the week that were 'built to last two hundred years'. There are five show homes on this plot a couple of miles from here but yesterday they looked rather sad and deserted in the cold Sunday afternoon drizzle. There was nobody around so I can't give you the sales blurb I'm afraid.

Compared with the usual cheap and cheerful plastic covered plywood boxes further down the road that pass for houses here they did look more substantial, due mainly to the use of cedar external beams. But the composition tiles and pressed steel window panes and smoked glass panes told a different story to me. And who is going to need an integral car port two centuries from now? Get your story straight! A stable if you are lucky! So my money is on the bulldozers being back down this lane to clear it all away for another dream if not in my life time then certainly not long afterwrds.