“When I was a child and when we shopped we got everything in paper bags; tea, sugar, biscuits, sweets, everything was weighted and measured.”

The climate is changing; the yardstick for me every year is how soon will we see the daffodils budding. For a number of years now, I am alerted to how early spring is coming by the early appearance of Daffodils. It amazes me every year that the daffodils are budding earlier and earlier; in twenty five years I have noticed the budding period has gone from February/March, back to unbelievably, this year, it was November. These daffodils grow in a cold windswept graveyard, Our own garden daffodils do not bud quite as early; the altitude here is higher, so I get great pleasure in seeing these early buds and look forward to brighter days ahead.

These past years have proved to me that the seasons are changing; when it is Winter, its not as cold as it used to be; one expects to wear heavy clothing around Christmas time but there have been some years that the sun was shining and a warm cardigan would have sufficed outdoors. This past year, we had only two mornings in what is considered a bad or dangerous frost on the roads; the last bad or heavy snow was in 2009-2010.

Flowering shrubs have budded very early only to be affected by frost. They recovered of course, but the new phenomena are some shrubs budding twice!

Our Winters have become more Autumnal; Our Springs have become more Winterish and our Summers are starting late as Springs. Our Summers are short and extending into Autumn.

Since I was a child, and teenager, the traffic on the roads then cannot be compared; the main road would have some traffic with plenty of lulls; if a car or tractor passed me on the byroad, I would be looking after it, it was so rare. Now, if I park on the main street in our village, I have to wait my chance to open the car door, its like taking a chance to quickly get in or out of the car, so I've decided to drive into a car park or drive around the turn onto the byroad, it's safer.

On water and flooding; I think there is a lot more rain now and storms. A big reason why we have flooding is, there is a lot of land reclamation where water is redirected and the old wells are closed up. Building is allowed on old water plains or runoffs, it must be remembered that water will always find its own level. Over-fertilization of the land and the run-off into our waterways is extremely damaging.