Having lost these pages in a sort of temporary sinkage, the sort that happens when your toddler chucks your mobile phone in the bath, we seem to be up and running again.

The move is being managed by a chap from the new internet host who seems to be having more problems than the Head of Public Relations for the Iranian Government. It is not going well. I am not sure if this entry will reach you at all.

It might improve. We will wait and see.

In the meantime life has been trudging along, immeasurably improved by the earliest hints that spring might be surreptitiously sliding through the doorway now that we have all given up hope of expecting it. We have had some sunshine, the daffodils are beaming in the garden, and it is the time of year when all the little mummy frogs and daddy frogs love one another very much.

The tarn was positively teeming with them yesterday, all loving one another very much. Oliver had come on the walk with me, and we watched with a sort of fascinated revulsion as male after male leaped on underwater lady frogs, knowing perfectly well that if too many of them loved her for too long then she would just drown, nature is not very kindly to creatures that can’t afford legal fees.

The benevolent turn in the weather has meant that Mark has been able to get along with the camper van, and he has been over at the shed for the last few days. I have not been able to join him because of being otherwise engaged. Yesterday I had to stay in to wait for a parcel of treasures ordered to enable me to start upholstering a bed head to go in the van, one day when we finally get that far, and today I had a meeting with the council.

The meeting was just to rubber stamp the new taxi policy really, but I have always got plenty to say on these matters and I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to say any of it, so I signed myself up as a speaker and went to join in.

I had been handily forearmed by my belligerent friends in the London Cab Drivers’ Association, and so was full of relevant Acts to be quoted, which qualified me as one of the dullest speakers of the afternoon. I asked for investment in taxi ranks and a fare increase, all of which the council agreed to in principle, although we all knew that it would take them months and months to get round to it, but I went away feeling that perhaps we might be rich and peaceful one day, even if it is probably not in my lifetime.

I do wish the ranks of taxi drivers here would produce somebody else with a good grasp of local government and an argumentative attitude. I am becoming weary of council meetings. I told the lady at Reform that I would be prepared to stand for election as a local councillor, but in retrospect I think that might have been a fib. I have every admiration for our councillors, who managed to sit and look interested without ever yawning once. I did not yawn, and I actually was interested, but I would be very surprised if I looked like it, which is an important skill for a politician.

Really I would rather be thinking about upholstery, which is becoming something of an Asperger’s sort of obsession at the moment. I have ordered some fabric, and a press for covering buttons, and I am very much looking forward to making a start.

I have just taken a brief pause there, you never even saw me leave, and ordered some pinking shears on Amazon. I am afraid that I will have to explain to Mark because it will show on his telephone that I have done it, but they are very handy for cutting things. I recall this from sewing lessons at school, run by a pleasantly inoffensive lady to whom we cruelly referred as Biddy Whetman, and sang her name to the Bat Man theme of the time.

I do wish I had listened to her more carefully now.

I am glad she never listened to us.