Running the gauntlet...

Or, how not to get wiped out when cutting the beech hedge by drivers who seem to think that 30mph is a suggestion, rather than a mandatory maximum!

Yesterday, Kevin and I decided that we needed to give the beech hedge its annual haircut. This hedge forms our boundary with the village road; there is a pavement, but it is very narrow and is even narrower when the beech has had a full summer's growth, not to mention the invasive ash seedlings that pop up here and there, or the brambles that stick out to attack the unwary.

So, armed with the electric hedge trimmer, long handled pruners, a rake, yard broom and snow shovel (the latter makes a great 'dustpan'), we pushed the green wheelie bin out so that it was just over the curb and began the assault.

Almost immediately, three cars came past, going up through the village on our side of the road, and they were definitely not doing 30. Nooo - I reckon that they were doing at least 40mph and the drivers seemed surprised that there were actually people on the pavement. The bend before the cottage makes it difficult to see whether there are people or parked cars but still people gun past us. 
The village road is narrow, and there is a point just before our cottage where two vehicles can only just get past each other - the clash of wing mirrors is one of the sounds that we didn't really expect to hear in a quiet Devon hamlet, but it happens a lot. It has happened to us, when despite pulling the Landrover over so that the passenger side was almost in the hedge, an SUV clipped and broke our driver's side mirror (electric, colour-coded and expensive to replace - thanks so much, that driver!).

Anyway, we became adept at hopping back into the beech hedge at the sound of any approaching vehicle but the point is that we shouldn't HAVE to do this. We were on the pavement, not in the road and yet we still felt incredibly vulnerable.

At the beginning of September, we had a water meter fitted; for two days, there was a Transit van outside the cottage, with plastic barriers to protect the workers. The difference in the speed of passing traffic was incredible - most went past really slowly, others at a modest 25-30mph. A couple had to noisily apply their brakes (N.B. not all would-be racers are kids, I've spotted middle-aged drivers charging past us).

There have been talks at the Parish Council meetings for months about a Community Speedcheck being set up - I'll be the first to volunteer! If the speeders are locals, they should know better - they know that livestock/tractors/cyclists are likely to be around any bend in the road. On a stretch that is de-restricted, just outside the village, Kevin was toddling along at 30mph past my friend Helen's cottage; he was going slowly in case she was trying to get her car in or out. Instead of Helen, he had a doe leap across the road in front of him. If he'd been going any faster, he said, there would have been venison all over his bonnet.

Why the need to rush through our pretty little village so quickly? Surely a brief spell of 30mph isn't going to make THAT much difference to your journey!

The Beginning of the End...

 Wow - that's possibly a bit too dramatic! The website for my final Open University module has opened and all of my books have arrived...it is starting to look terrifyingly real now.

This is the module that will determine my degree classification - hence the nervous smile!
I'll be studying some wonderful texts:

Three Shakespeare plays: As You Like It, Hamlet and Julius Caesar
Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy
Edmund Spencer's The Faerie Queene
William Wycherley's The Country Wife
Molière's Tartuffe
Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments
Rousseau's Confessions
Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion

and along with these individual works, there are sections on poetry by John Donne and his contemporaries and, later in the module, an exploration of the Romantic and Nationalist movements in poetry.

I adore Shakespeare and Jane Austen, but have already found a great appreciation for the amazing Lady Mary - what a woman! If you get the chance, I urge you to read her Letters - she was possessed of a wicked turn of phrase and was obviously highly intelligent and independent!

I am also required to undertake a fair amount of independent study - not that daunting, considering that when I studied the Children's Literature module, I did look at other novels that were contemporary with Alcott's Little Women, just to see how different her work was from that of her peers, and used the information in my assignments as well as in my final, externally marked work. I am also able to spend time doing this - there are some advantages in being unemployed, I suppose - I'm not sure how much independent study the OU expects from students who, for the most part, are also working full time.

My study corner is prepared. I am working on all the projects around the house and garden that need to be done before the module officially begins in October. Hopefully, I'll be using this blog as a bit of light relief from university  - after all, all work and no play, and so on...