Oh Autumn... I'm not a fan

I'm not keen on Autumn. Not when it is wet and let's face it, wet is the new normal for the UK. It's almost as if the nature itself has decided to live up to the stereotypes about the British weather. The year seems to have been one of various records being broken, mainly records that involve large quantities of water and ever bigger measuring devices complete with ever greater superlatives to go with them!

And a wet Autumn is the worst of all I think. The days are getting shorter, the temperature is dropping, the central heating is on and the faults in the central heating that have been there through the preceding six months of so, sniggering unseen in a pipe somewhere, suddenly burst forth (not literally I hope) and say 'tarrah here I am...' and the plumber is summoned from his slumber to come and deal with it!

Doing things in the garden is not exactly pleasant. The cold air, the never ending cascade of leaves as the different variety of trees decide upon the most inconvenient of schedules to follow amongst themselves such that clearing up leaves is not a one off process but something that either lasts for two months, or more, or is just left and builds up an impenetrable mound of rotting leaves across the whole of the garden... and drive and every single gutter as well!

Add to that the various creatures that decide now is the best time to seek some form of shelter inside the house to hibernate or simply cause havoc. I find ladybirds by the thousand in various crevices around windows or even simply in the corners of window frames. Which is fine, except every now and again through the winter, one will wake up and find it's way to the bedroom light and proceed to bounce annoyingly off the ceiling until it gets worn out then disappears from sight. All manners of spider come in, some small, some large enough to scare Australians! Generally they stay hidden, they don't want to spot us any more than we want to spot them, and often the only time I will be aware they are around is when they die from natural causes and do so in plain sight!

On top of that I have even had a toad in the stairwell! After some considerable thought about how exactly a toad managed to get the considerable distance from the front door to the stairwell I have concluded that was not the method of entry!. I realised that due to some poor meshwork on the outdoor drains and their interconnectivity with the main sewage system pipes... this toad can only have come through the pipework and up the toilet. There really is no other way it could have got in and got to where I found it!

Finally, at least I hope finally, there are mice. The mice do a great job of aerating the garden through the year combined with the moles but then in the colder months they are not as keen as the moles to just slum it outside with the inclement weather, instead they seek nice warm shelter indoors and find all manner of ways into the house. Never the ground floor, only ever the upper floors and only ever in the eaves. Again, various searches have been made to find their entry points but considering how small a gap a mouse can actually squeeze through then there are frankly too many to secure. I have evidence that not only can they get through an air brick, into the cavity wall and from there climb up the rough surface of the inner cavity to the openings in the attic area. But they also can climb up the various plants; ivy, vines, other climbers and squeeze though the gaps under the roofing.

I have no desire to hurt any of these creatures but unfortunately they will come to various sticky ends if they show themselves. Hibernating nests of ladybirds will be left alone until Spring when they will be swept outside to find a new home. Spiders will not be hunted but where they run across the room directly in front of me they will be sucked up with a Dyson handheld vacuum and deposited out the window, especially if they are in the bath! And mice, well, sadly they get trapped and are then fed to the buzzards by laying them on a piece of open grass so the buzzards can see them. Or, if the buzzards are not quick enough either the foxes, or possibly owls, will get them at night. All I know is that within 24hrs of laying out their lifeless corpses, they are gone.

Oh well, back to the gym for me I think.