Sign of the times

22nd October 2025

It was my father’s birthday a couple of days ago he would have been 87. I have been thinking of him a lot. He had a saying “what price can you put on peace of mind?” Over the years this became a bit of a family catch phrase for all manner of occasions but his original reference was regarding insurance. Whilst he too thought insurance companies were all a bunch of charlatans, he said paying the premiums give you peace of mind, to some extent. I say some extent because at crunch time they often find some loop hole or wriggle room to get out of paying. Anyway I digress.

The wedding is looming and whilst we have public liability insurance and have paid the premium, we still have not got the cover note and the brokers say this can take a couple of years to materialise….ho hum …. Not much peace in my mind. Bearing in mind we have 100 people arriving at 4 pm on Saturday all in high spirits and with a fair amount of strong spirits due to be imbibed, the Bebbs have undertaken a risk assessment of sorts. Those of you who have been here and those who follow the blog know it’s an old property and it has not been maintained. Despite our best efforts over the last year it’s now an even older property, only slightly better maintained.🤣

There are: a shocking amount of loose electrical wires; deep falling-into wells; poking-out eyes spikes deeply and irremovably (is that even a word?… I like it) imbedded; a drowning swimming pool; tripping-up tree roots; falling-over loose concrete slabs and poisoning tank water to contend with. All manner of guests’ injuries and deaths have been imagined at 3am. We also don’t want all and sundry having a drunken funny 10 minutes and needing a lie down in our bed or on our sofa. We have to tread a fine line between roping off everything (and with that appearing officious and unwelcoming) and careful, tasteful signage and warnings.

So after a couple of hours designing and with a long inventory we go back to our sign man, then to our favourite hardware shop (36000 loyalty points and growing… kerching) and arrive home with a box full of signs, hoops, hooks, rope and some degree of peace of mind

So yesterday afternoon dodging showers we set to, hanging, cutting, sticking, drilling, screwing, capping off and knotting.

Pool noodles… who knew they had another use. We thought …“Private no access” sounded better than “Private go away”

Job done. “What price can you put on peace of mind?” Thanks Dad and happy birthday.