sadness

We didn't go out on our bikes.

The Pirate received a phone call from the neighbour of our last garden customer. We last saw him on Tuesday evening.   There was no answer at the door, and we knew that he had been expecting cousins from Australia to stay.
No answer to the phone- usual as he lets the answerphone do its work.

However the pile of post on the mat was unusual.

His cousin from over the hill called the police and they broke in and called an ambulance.  Probably the Pirate shouting his name had saved him they think, a link to hold him alive after three days on the floor by his bed.

He wasn't a well man,but if you don't feed yourself well,don't have any teeth, drink a little too much, smoke and don't exercise.....you get my drift.

The Pirate is feeling sad,but there is nothing else he could have done.

The village showed itself at its best for a private man who kept himself to himself in the main.
  Neighbours, his cousin, friends,the doctor who lives in the village (and works in the localhospital in A&E admissions...)and the local neighbourhood police all pulling together.   The Pirate went one step further and we cleared his bedding into the wheelie bin...safe for others to decide its fate and not leave it and the smell in the house.

Now his cousin and his landlady have to sort things as he wont be returning.
He had had a massive bleed on his brain...and these things need to be addressed within a couple of hours, not after three days or more....
We'll keep his garden tidy for his landlady until matters are sorted...

It has made us re-think one house we had seen to rent...ideal, but for the fact that it is in fields and forestry plantations, at least three miles off the road up a lane and a further mile from the village on the main road.

What if.....

He was our last remaining customer out of six in the village that we had moved from,about five miles from here.   Fate has given us another message....move on.