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Haven’t blogged for a while. Spent a month in the UK, I have kids, spending most of the time out in the sun. Nuff said.

So back in from where I left off I suppose (Hi Corinna and Helmut - Mein luftkissenfahrzeug ist voller aale) we have a snake in the courtyard. It’s taken up residence in the wall underneath the steps leading to the balcony. It’s quite a rare snake, an aesculapian snake, you know, the ones curled round the staff to symbolise medicine. It’s been there for over a week now. It’s a constrictor and doesn’t like noise apparently. Pity then that it’s taken up refuge 6 feet from the cement mixer in which I’ve been mixing up concrete for the last few days, so particularly noisy, plus I’m walking two feet away from it back and forth all day grunting noisily and repeatedly as I carry 30 kg  worth of concrete down to the woodshed in banging buckets (re-doing the floor). Perhaps it’s deef. It occasionally puts its head our to see what is going on, only to retract it again when it has. It doesn’t see impressed. Sometimes it turns around but other than that it’s just there, watching me. I know I’m anthropomorphising but it’s looks to be a serene, friendly snake. I’m going to have to find a name for it if it stays much longer.  Being diurnal and crepuscular maybe as it’s there all day every day, it goes off for a bite to eat as the sun goes down. I tried filming it today but no luck. Tomorrow maybe I’ll try filming in the evening.

 The chestnut tree next to the house got zapped by lightning the other night.  I thought the mad mullahs of popular myth were invading. It blew the bark off the tree in a split  which runs from crown to root. The bits of bark and branch was blown more than 20 metres so quite some explosion. The bang it made was unbelievable. Then yesterday, as I was looking at it I noticed the top of the tree was still smoking. In fact there’s a heady whiff of charring chestnut below the tree. It rained this morning so hopefully its now out but this evening there’s a terrific wind so maybe it’ll spark off again, in which case I suppose the forest fire service will have to be contacted.

For anybody who has been here and knows the state of the tarmac on the road up to the house, they’ve resurfaced it at last. I take total credit for intercession on this as needing a less bone breaking alternative to mountainboarding to fill in the gaps between falls I’ve just ordered myself a longboard which of course requires a decent road to ride on. The gods, belss’em, have arranged things in my favour as per usual so now I have a nice smooth run down to the village on our spankng new road. At the moment too it’s covered in that nice slippy fine gravel so powersliding should be fun.

On the barefoot front it’s now been almost three weeks without shoes except for some of the building work and to conform with the public ideas of acceptable so that the kids don’t get the piss taken out of them at school. I’ve done a couple of long walks all barefoot and after a tense winter I can feel all my body realigning itself. Lovely. With the temperatures up in the 30s too it’s just so nice not to have to bother putting shoes and sox on.

Even Balders has gone lightweight after his clomping great boots gave up the ghost. Who knows sooner or later maybe he’ll be dancing up mountains in his bare feet.

Not done any wild camps of late due to kids, work and afternoon heat storms but hopefully soon. I’d love to combine wildcamping with barefoot  and mountainboarding.  So not really done much in the way of videos either. I did find a fantastic spot for wild camping though, perfectly flat, perfect views, perfect solitude and no bloody lights, even the possibility of a glimpse of a wolf if the stories are true. I can’t see myself getting up much before July/August though when the kids go to the seaside. Such is life. After sitting out this evening with a G&T toasting my tootsies on baking hot flags eating excellent chocolate cake from yesterday’s party and watching the squirrels scuttling about with the backdrop of the usual evening lightning display I’m quite content to just do nothing for a bit.