The debonair Basil Marigold's

Easy to say, but I am fairly sure that my daughter was only born, at best, 2 years ago. I can clearly remember driving her out of the local hospital in the back of the new car we'd bought just before because we knew we'd need more space. It had only been 7 months or so since I'd learnt to drive. Everything felt new at that point, but no more than driving her home that day. Like I said this was, at most 2 years ago. However, it seems that she somehow celebrated her 11th Birthday a few days ago. How this happened I have no idea! Definitely 2 years. I am convinced of it. Who's wrong? How has eleven years passed so fast? I have found children do have some way of accelerating time. She has grown up so much; She's almost as tall as her mother! Amazing really. How you can be given a baby by a nurse and then told it's time to head home and away you go! They don't give you any advice, or in fact, any formalised instruction manual. Nothing. And we haven't

Ever since we have entered this period of extended lockdown the ability to exercise has also been somewhat reduced too. We now have a daily allowance to provide exercise (Though of course that in the strictest sense is also open for debate, as is the entire government advice). We have therefore kept ourselves to a once a day approach. We are also fortunate in where we live as although we are in a fairly urbanised environment beyond this area there is quite a large expanse of reasonably well connected walks to be had. You can, for instance walk a few minutes from our house and wander into countryside. Of course, if you lived here maybe 60 or 70 years ago you'd not see this as what was there before was coal mines in full production. What we are now walking in is a healed landscape. The scars of this industry such as pit tips and railway lines have removed, ripped up, etc. Nature has reclaimed so many areas of Ashfield. We are able to take advantage of this on our daily exercise. It