No lorries. Glacial progress. All hallows eve lockdown horror. 31st October 2020

Having had all summer to prepare for a second wave, bumbling Boris, his bunch of hapless buffoons and a bunch of over paid, under worked managers of hospital trusts have squandered this time. Coupled with the members of Sage and the Whitty/Valance double act, who value quantity of life over quality of life, 99.5% of the population and the economy have to suffer for the incompetence of the above. Well, at least I get more time to paint.

Tipper and grab loader lorries were conspicuous by their absence during my 25 minute Wednesday morning stomp. Therefore there appeared to be the usual glacial progress I warned would happen weeks ago. Further, will this stupid four week lockdown lead to zero work being done on Manor Farm? Is restoration work permitted? After all, the plant operators are almost completely self isolating. Only time will tell.

I can only assume that the pump is either off, broken down or has run out of diesel. Although I didn't wander over to it on Saturday (it was working on Wednesday), the high water levels and return of Finch pond suggests it was not chugging away.

Inert have been working around my mighty mound; there was a digger and driver there on Wednesday. However, it is rather difficult to figure what they are actually doing, apart from scraping the top off a small section of the south vehicle track.

Some further hills have appeared around my mighty mound. Not sure why. They appear more rubble filled that some of the spoil. This is actually great track building material, and gives firm ground on any infill. I look for this stuff when wandering around any infill as I know I wont sink up to my knees in the mud.

Despite the deluges we've been having, the ground has remained remarkably firm. Even when I wander almost to the edges of infill around the lake water. Normally, freshly bulldozed spoil is remarkably soft.

I noticed the bulldozer working on the eastern parts of the land mass, scraping and pushing spoil into Cormorant lake (south). This became more evident on my Saturday stomp, as there were tracks all over the place, most headed to the shore edges of Cormorant lake (south). I'm not sure where the spoil for infill is coming from, due to the lack of lorries on Wednesday. On the other hand, I might have hit a quiet spell between deliveries.

We'll see if anything happens this coming week. I might elect to take my exercise by walking around the south footpath on Thursday.