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Truncated Spring, The Mitcheldean Garden 2026 |
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This is the 2026 index of the pages describing our very dull life in the UK since arriving in 2011. Having negotiated the maze of regulations designed to frustrate those wanting to bring a non-EU (non UK now) spouse into the UK, Yuehong has been the proud owner of a UK passport since late 2014 which means we can have a near perfect balance of the best 7-8 months of the year in the UK and the best 4-5 months of the year in Penang. Well that was both theory and practice until the Chinese gifted the Big C but that's all history now ("Till the next time" did I hear you say?). We have just bought a car in Penang, while in the UK public transport and weekend car hires having just sufficed for 7 years, we put our own 4 wheels on the driveway in 2018 which allows us more flexibility to explore our surrounding countryside and better enjoy our visits to steam fairs, For all sorts of reasons, I don't think we shall ever match 2022's set of visits, certainly our hopes for an improvement on 2023 in 2024 were thwarted by continuing economic shockwaves. Our shrinking pile of money goes less and less far each year and 2025 saw further retrenchment. Click here for the main 'Life in the UK' index page. For most people in the UK the prospect of taking on a property built up 33 steps on a 30 degree slope would be a nightmare. For us, it's proved both a challenge and a delight. This is our seventeenth summer (2026) and it will again be completely different from those that went before. I would like to think that the garden achieved a degree of maturity in 2017, acknowledged by our being invited to be part of the Open Gardens weekend in June, an event which shows no signs of being repeated (don't ask me why...). 2018 saw me celebrating a big birthday and while 2019 saw the addition of the wall, my own physical efforts were all about 'maintenance' which I think we have now organised as being appropriate to our mature ages. I guess in 2020 we were happy to be alive and solving all sorts of new 'supply' problems which mercifully were not repeated in 2021 and then in 2022 we could go as we pleased only prices were all 10% higher and have since risen even more. The current Labour government, like its predecessors, is in thrall to the 'money men and women' and has completely lost 'the common touch'. Our inept Prime Minister has yet to learn that being nice to bullies doesn't work, the country, like my geriatric body is simply falling apart. 2026 is a special year for me, my late lovely mother would have celebrated her 100th birthday in mid-April. She passed her love of gardening to me and I am sure she would approve of what we have achieved in our very special garden here. There certainly isn't anything quite like it in this village and from what I have seen, it's truly 'one of a kind'.
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