Easter week-end will take us seven weeks into our move to Bath. We've settled well at Larkhall. Enough energy from D to wizz through a transformation of our home. We have one room left to 'do'. The cats have settled well and are already enjoying frequent trips to our local vets with tooth extractions and gashes. It is an interesting and very mixed community. A bit of a Totnes feel to the main street with its local theatre, established butchers, green grocers and three-shop fronted ironmongers! That has to be the biggest l have ever seen! You can walk into town on the London Road and l have mastered the 6 in and 7 out bus service. Changing numbers ensures the most direct route home. I have joined the YMCA gym. Funny how l was a Red Triangle player all those years ago at Weston-super-Mare. Feel l have come full-circle! Am meeting up with old friends from HTV and developing frustration over media work. Maybe exploiting a cyber future could be an answer. We will see.

I am angry! Forget the News Corps story and foam flam-flingers, l am angry about the culling of sixty thousand badgers here in the South West because of the spread of TB in dairy herds. Does it kill the cows or just infect the milk? Why, when they can rush through vaccines for human use when new strains of flu arrive on the scene, cannot they find a vaccine for cows, or even badgers, to stop the spread of TB? I suppose now they cannot legally kill foxes - charging around like idiots in their little red coats and surrounded by their snappy dogs - they go out instead and have a go at 'brock.' What gives us the right to exact such judgement on Nature. Wait until Nature kicks back - as undoubtedly She will.

When will Cameron fall on his sword. How can this podgy-little man stay as Prime Minister when he has such bad judgement and taste in people to surround himself with. I think it's time to send for William Hague. The only real statesman the Tory Party has produced in years.

Friday July 8th, 2011. Totnes. 20C humidity 54 %

It's refuse collection day. The wagons are meant to be out and about early as it's also Market Day in the Civic Square and our traffic congestion reaches choking levels on a Friday. Our small band of seagull supporters continues to take an interest in the one remaining fledgling still hanging on to its young life. There were two hatched on the roof of Alexandra Terrace. The nursery was crammed in between the chimney pots on top of Jon and Lou's home. They normally are there to keep an eye on things but this year are having an extended holiday in Mexico. This gull hopefully grows into a world where he will find little sympathy for his efforts to share the town of Totnes with its human occupants. This morning, coming back from town, l saw an all too familiar sight. A black bag shredded and its contents scattered. Fists will again shake at the gulls. Damn you for the mess, your poo all over our cars and house windows and your raucous utterings! More headlines for the Totnes Times. Put them on the list of 'unwanteds' - along with the grizzly cider-heads sleeping rough, domestic cats and anyone who won't get out of the way of the four by four push-chairs sweeping all before them on our pavements.

Hang on a minute. Gulls have been an 'issue' for half a century as far as my reporting career is concerned. As we fish out the seas, our landfill sites are getting more and more attractive. I was reporting on the gull problem in Bristol and Bath at least forty years ago. Back to the refuse collectors. I have something called a 'seagull proof' bag - issued by South Hams District Council. I do not use it. My rubbish goes in the wheelie-bin. The owner of the contents of the black bag - now scattered over the street - may not have one. Why not?? Where is her wheelie bin??? Don't blame the gulls. It's like inviting guests to a feast and then complaining if they are messy eaters. It is us humans who are the problem. Stop and think about how you are disposing of your rubbish! The gulls are more clever than we are. They know where to find a free meal.

Catching Up

The eve of the royal wedding. Totnes bedecked with two Union flags and some bunting in a couple of charity shops. Be interesting to see if English Heritage flag over the Castle gets swopped for the old 'red,white and blue' when tomorrow comes. Enticements coming from local election candidates getting very amusing. Including one which will see Vire Island renamed Fire Island! Yes - he wants permanent barbecues installed so families can gather to create a summer-time town smog to rival anything being cremated on the banks of the River Ganges. Don't expect my vote. And l don't want more of the castle slopes dug up for bloody allotments when so many people have huge gardens at home. Dig up your own rose beds and leave one of the town's star tourist attractions alone. Please scientists hurry up and design a simple way of harnessing the sun's energy before the whole town suffocates under plastic photo cells. They are hideous and add to the clutter of dormer windows, Sky dishes and old aerials. Look also to the hills as you cross the park towards the leisure centre. Polythene is creeping over Devon's green fields. Do we really new strawberries two weeks earlier than normal. To every thing there is a season.

The storm has passed. We spent yesterday in long periods of silence interspersed with our thoughts on selling up and what a mistake we had made coming here to Devon. I had created the spark that lit the fire. A dead and lonely Friday which l threw in his face when he came in late that evening after driving home from teaching in Bath. It is me who must change. l hold the key to my own self-created prison. Today he struggles with a cold. We will not move. We must start saving for our crumbling chimney stack. The thaw is sending small pieces of frost split brickwork tumbling down the roof. Plus there is the matter of a water leak under the utility room floor. We are too scared to lift the linoleum.

On another matter - how can young, taunting, camp Master Gilmore - pictured swinging from a Union flag attached to the Cenotaph - claim not to know what it represents? I am told that our major wars are part of the school curriculum. Gilmore's father sent him to public school. I am saddened and ashamed and frightened for the future of humankind.

Hiding upstairs in the attic while my partner deals with another massage client in his treatment room below. Try to be quiet. They are paying for peace and relaxation!Rang South Hams District Council yesterday to ask if a traffic warden could come and check out the road above us. Its a single yellow line situation continua;lly abused by a neighbour who often parks one - if not two - cars - there all day. It makes getting our car out very awkward. It also blocks the emergency services. South Hams woman obviously had me down as a "snitch" and failed to do anything. Both cars are there again today and no sign of anyone with a notebook and parking ticket. On a positive note - l have started chanting again. SGI-UK if you must know. Out of the blue the Men's Leader from Plymouth made contact. Guy from Liverpool whose family comes from China. I think we both got something out of our meeting. Two strangers sharing ideas and interests.

Heard that Designer Graham Ferris from HTV West has died. Hot on the heels of my mother's examination yesterday, l feel l see 'death' in my wing mirror! My mother told me on the telephone this morning how positive she felt. She is an inspiration to me. I took my tea out into the garden and sat at the table with both cats in front of me and felt the sun on my face and watched the swifts giving me a free aerial ballet overhead and felt humbled. l am now in the attic and about to chant. Lawrence the cat has just moaned in his sleep and stretched. How cathartic this is. It does not matter that no one but me will be reading these jottings.