A Rotten Return

It's never nice coming back from a break is it? Especially when you've had as good a time as we had over the past two and a half weeks in St Andrews. But being retired, we are not returning to work and we have a great lifestyle at home so coming back to Southport should be nothing to moan about. And it wasn't. Until I opened the door that is. "Smells a bit musty" I remarked as we entered the hall. "Probably just the lack of air and the weather" was Marion's response. Sadly, as we reached the kitchen, the smell became overpowering and we realised that there had been a power failure and the freezer had defrosted. An hour later and maybe a hundred quids' worth of stuff in the bin and we were back to normal. Certainly not the best welcome home. The circuit breaker had tripped. No idea why. It has done it once before a few years ago but it hasn't tripped out frequently enough for us to discover the cause. Next time we're away we'll empty the freezer as a precaution. We were looking forward to catching up on the programmes we missed on the Sky Plus. We'll probably be able to work out the day the power went off from what we've got recorded.

This morning (and every other day at the caravan) we had only rabbits to keep us company. There are scores of them there and, although they scatter if we get very close, they aren't very scared of the caravaners. I said I wouldn't mention the weather again but should just note that our local weather station in Leuchars recorded three times the annual average rainfall for the whole month of August in just ten days and in some places the rain was the heaviest it has been in August since records began. We're going back again in just over two weeks so maybe we'll be a bit luckier next time.

The weather stopped me getting out with my detector in Scotland. Not only was it too wet to detect but it delayed the harvest although on Friday I finally found a stubble field to try. The stubble was very long and I had to walk crab like between the rows so it was very difficult. The field was on a steep hill and I headed for the top which was on a busy crossroads on the edge of a very old village. I guessed that this would be the area that had seen most use and it proved the case as I got signal after signal to prove that activity.

Unfortunately it was that peculiar British activity of hurling rubbish out of car windows at junctions and anywhere within chucking distance of the road was full of empty drink cans. After digging about half a dozen up I moved further away and found these few bits and pieces.

There's nothing very interesting there - few scraps of lead, two Victorian coins and a buckle a couple of buttons and an old key but at least I got out and about. I was made very welcome by all the farmers I visited and when I go back I've got hundreds of acres to try. In fact I've so many fields it will be difficult to know which to choose. Let's hope it's the one full of gold next time and not the one full of beer cans.