Sometimes the mind boggles!
This week: Sometimes the mind boggles!;

This week for a variety of reasons, my missive is going to be more like a monologue than a Blog.
We have had a damp, humid, rainy, mild week. Not everything every day, but multiples of two or three at a time.
However the good news is that the days are really lengthening and it is definitely getting warmer.
Tonight is the first night since November that I have not needed to light the wood stove for central heating.
The weather means that I have done absolutely nothing outside. If the weather has not been inclement, then everything on the ground has been soaking wet and too sticky to do any work.
A lot of my week has been spent on the computer. There is the spreadsheet for my weather station, which produces the nice charts I occasionally post here.
I usually just input five figures for each day of the the year and the programme does all the calculations. However at the start of each year, I have to update all the formulae so that they add the data, in this case for 2025.
I have automated the updating processas much as I can, but there are still some manual changes to be made. When it is rainy outside, it is a good time to do it.
There is also my work on various aspects of police history. This week I have finished a couple of articles which will be published later in the year.
I’m also running really late today.
I was out this morning at the shops. Then I called at my local builders merchant, Volat, to get timber I need for a project for next week.
It was after 12 noon when I arrived back home. The timber needed to be put into store, so it doesn’t get wet and everything takes time.

Then there were a couple of other jobs to do, before making Yorkshire Puddings, stuffed with cream cheese, hren and chives from the garden and smoked salmon.
Two dozen disappeared on Saturday afternoon at a party I was at with friends and neighbours! So they were obviously not that bad…
So I have started the blog much later than usual, but I know there are people who like it as their “Breakfast read”. Please forgive the brevity, but here we are.
Sometimes the mind boggles!
There are occasions when I see something here on the island, which both makes me sad and angry at the same time.
Coming back from Stari Grad this afternoon in my car, I was using one of the smaller, but still busy roads which runs from Vrbanj to Stari Grad.
As I came round a corner, I was surprised to see a red SUV with three Shetland Ponies running behind it. I immediately pulled over because one of the ponies was over the centre white line.
As the vehicle got close, I could see the ponies ears were back, the eyes very wide and their nostrils were flared. All signs that they were afraid or startled.
Then I realised that the red SUV was actually towing them. The ponies had halters on, one was alongside the vehicle with the halter rope tied through the open rear passenger window. The other two were tied to the back of the SUV.
They were trotting rather than cantering, but it was a fast trot.
I was so surprised that I didn’t have time to get my camera out to take a photograph or even get the number of the SUV. Then they were past me.
Something you see here regularly, is hunters exercising their hunting dogs by having the dogs run behind the vehicles the hunter is driving. Usually the dogs are running free, really running to catch the vehicle.
But seeing small ponies being towed really is a new low. There are laws against animal cruelty, but they are not enforced and the police are disinterested.
Animal protection really is not on the authorities’ radar. Animal husbandry is lacking and the locals that do this see absolutely nothing wrong.
Talking to the lady who runs the animal rescue and donkey sanctuary in Dol, she thinks the owner was probably moving them from one orchard to another. Ponies are used a “mowing machines”!
I only have limited knowledge of horses, but I know enough to recognise that when horses eyes are wide open showing mostly white and their nostrils are flared, it is a sign of fear and panic.
Sadly, in some ways, this is a most uncivilised society! NCG