I know someone who has left hospital about 10 days after he had a major operation – losing quite a lot of his internal ‘stuff.’

He is going home to a small house with his wife and four kids – two of them under two.

He should be in a convalescent home, looked after by nuns and nurses who feed him chicken broth and get him to sit outside in the sunshine.

But they don’t exist any longer – maybe they do for those who have Swiss accounts with HSBC but not for the likes of us.

Surely the re-introduction of convalescent homes would ease the bed-blocking crises, the failure of getting the right social care support.

Surely, a convalescent home would be a cheaper option for the state than a high-cost hospital bed. Maybe we could even be asked, heresy of heresy for someone of my political views, to pay a bit towards it.

I thought I’d better check whether I was right and there were no convalescent homes around – and indeed I was wrong.

There is one on the Sussex coast and very nice it looks too but it costs a minimum of £650 a week.

In Belgium it is part of the deal when you have a big operation and I know they have a different system but it surely (yes I know I have said ‘surely’ quite a lot) would be something the Government should consider.

So, if any parliamentary candidate makes it to this small out of the way corner, I shall raise the issue as they say.

Unlikely though.

We don’t even get Jehovah’s Witnesses here. Actually, our window cleaner turns out be a JW but he has never done more than discuss the recipe for the large piece of banana cake he had.

I have a small amount of work to do. At least I have some irons in the fire. Or at the very least, I have a paper clip and a couple of twigs to rub together.

It has so far necessitated getting up, dressing up a bit, looking professional and going to a meeting – and that hasn’t happened in a while I can tell you.

It has also required some very rusty mental cogs to work again and as things stand, it has been gratifying to realise that they can get into action, albeit a bit slowly and after some significant displacement activity.

Yes, yes I did need to go for a very long walk and make a chicken pie, but eventually I got down to it.

And indeed it felt good.

All I need now is the go ahead to do the full piece of work, some promise of money and someone to do it with me.

It is not that I cannot write an interactive case study for 100 PhDs, I have done it before, many times and with some success I can modestly assert.

But I am someone who works and thinks and gets energised into action so much better in a group of people than one my own.

This of course, has a direct bearing on the fact that I have not generated much at all in the way of work – I need some workmates and that isn’t what happens when you are self-employed, on your own, in Deepest Sussex.

This week in Oxfam has been rather a bumper one.

I think I may mentioned the very nice woman who donated some art books – well they boosted our sales nicely – and that is not a phrase which is usually on the lips in January.

Then there was the complete set of the Sopranos – all 28 DVDs in a box set. But we couldn’t sell them in the shop because they were not properly certificated for sale in the UK. No PG or whatever.

But it happened that Rosemary who ‘does’ the DVDs was in at the same time as me and asked if I wanted them.

(I like the Sopranos but stuck with French telly – hopeless – we rather got into box sets and had done the whole series more than once and back here of course there are the delights of Antiques Roadshow and Broadchurch.)

Anyway, I thought maybe I could sell them on ebay under my name and put the proceeds through the shop. So I brought them home, stuck them on for thirty quid and sold them within half an hour. Not bad.

All good things come in threes, as another volunteer told me, and she was right.

I had put to one side a children’s book which had been one of the few things rescued from a less than enticing donation and on Thursday I got round to rootling it out from under a pile to have a look online.

Now, what you may not know, is that books with nice illustrations are often valuable and this one had a series of rather lovely simple paintings of animals. (It is called The Square Book of Animals, which pretty much sums it up.)

But we have strict rules in the shop about childrens’ books being of very good quality in terms of their condition so a book like this – aged and a bit battered – could easily have got thrown away.

I was expecting say £20 and would have been happy with £10. So imagine my surprise when the cheapest one on the net was £800.

I rang our Old Book Expert and he duly came post haste and confirmed what I had found. (Most of the time, I get very excited about something and he has to dampen my enthusiasm and tell me it is worth £4.99.)

It turns out William Nicholson went on to be a significant artist and this was an early work and there are not many around.

So, here we are with a treasure and as I suspect there are not many people in Petersfield with the inclination to pay £700 for a book, it will go online.

And now I have to fess up to something.

Oxfam have decided to up our online sales targets by 10% in the next financial year. This is a lot when you are dependent on what people give you, and that is never certain.

Our financial year ends of March 31st. £700 is the most expensive book we have ever found. And do you know what, I simply won’t find the time to put it on the internet until Wednesday April 1^st.

Observant readers will have noticed that this is only the second of the three good things but I must break off to feed the dog and man so the next installment will follow.

Last week was freezing and the birds were lined up pleadingly. I suspect they got together and asked the robin to sing its heart out on top of the arch over the gate to get us to break out with another round of fat balls.

Today, there is just a touch of spring in the air – not to be relied on of course – but it does remind you that it won’t be long before they are dashing about with estate agent prospectuses in their beaks looking for a nice place to build starter homes.

The Virginia creeper was a fave with the blackbirds and one year we woke up to find that the bit near our bedroom window had collapsed, exposing a nest of startled blackbird fledglings. Nick propped it back up, and all was well.

The following year though, we had building work done and they had to make do with the climbing Hydrangea – but everyone has to downsize now and then.

We put one of those nest boxes with a camera in it (a nice Christmas present from the son) in just the place they used.

Not a dicky bird as they say.

Nests built above and below it, but an assiduous avoidance of being watched.

The back hedge though is the garden’s housing estate with numerous sparrows and tits in residence.

They make a great racket so I presume there are neighbour boundary disputes and the avian equivalent of kids of bikes and BBQs in the back garden.

The only time it is ever quiet is when the Sparrow Hawk comes over. It is an impressive sight to see every little sparrow face clamp its beak shut and dive for cover.

The Sparrow Hawk uses the back hedge like a tapas bar  – but then its name is rather a give away.

Anyway, all this is leading to the fact that we have to cut a significant section out of that back hedge if we are to build the platform which will be the basis of our George Clark style Amazing Space.

We have a fabulous view from a ladder perched against that hedge but want something a little more stable and able to accommodate more than one person at once.

I have visions of something which will act as a spare bedroom-cum- study-cum- place to sit on a small verandah watching the Downs.

The man himself is starting out with a platform and a couple of deck chairs.

Either way, if we are to build it, the hedge needs to come down and before the residents start re-building their nests.

I hasten to add , there are plenty of other hedges all round the garden but persuading someone to reduce their recreational space so you can squeeze in a three-chick home next twig, may take some negotiating.

January seems to be a good time to clear out all your old books. Some of course come brown and damp direct from a garage to our shop and thence, very quickly, to a re-cycling dump.

Some come carefully packed in boxes and then I feel more sad about putting them into white sacks and sending them off to the dump – but we really cannot sell the AA Road Atlas of Great Britain published in 1972.

Others bring in say 10 boxes and ask for the boxes back so we have to de-box all the books there and then – never much fun and they usually arrive five minutes before closing time.

Some come in black bags and when someone rings to say they have a lot of books and will we take them and then say they are in black bags, your heart sinks just as you say, ‘Brilliant, thank you, how many is a lot?’ And you are told, ‘ About forty or more feet of them.’

Well the bags came in and there were a lot. But, and this dear reader is a very rare occurrence, they were absolutely brilliant.

Art books. Lots of art books. All in pristine condition and all interesting – and all very saleable. And even more delightful, the woman who brought them in – clearing out her parents’ house – said she had been directed by them to only bring them to the Oxfam bookshop in Petersfield and be sure to sign up for Gift Aid (which means we get 25% more on every sale from the Government.)

So, having looked them all up and pricing them, we decided to do a window full of art books and as we were piling them up on the table ready to put in the window, people were buying them left, right and centre.

Usually, January in the bookshop is a quiet month – no one has any money left and books – even second hand ones are not high on the priority list.

This amazing gift to our shop has meant we have had a better January than anyone can remember.

So thank you, whoever you are, for getting the books to us. Thank you to your parents for loving art books, caring for them and making sure they got to us. We are never again going to be as despondent when we get a load of black plastic bags.

The lovely thing about Viennese coffee houses is that they look like they must have done 100 years ago.

There are men of a certain bearing coming in wearing great coats and homburg hats, women in fur coats, couples leaning together and having intense conversations and of course – cake of every kind of confection.

We slipped into one through the lovely arrangement they have of a semi-circular rail holding a curtain so that the cold is kept out when you open the door.

Inside the floor was not really polished, the décor a bit shabby, the waiters in long white aprons, the locals reading the paper and having a ‘melange’ of coffee and hot milk.

We had been sight-seeing and were cold and tired so sitting there in the warmth, watching the locals, was definitely in order.

Coffee houses was where the Viennese have conversations apparently. I am not sure whether they chat about nothing at all at home and keep the real stuff for coffee houses but it looked like that.

And it rubs off.

After a desultory conversation about what to do the next day, we started discussing how the Labour Party should run their election campaign.

‘Ask a nurse’ was the theme.

When bankers say they cannot reduce bonuses, the Labour Party should say they will introduce them to a nurse and then they can try and justify their position to her (or him.)

(And, by the way, can we really believe every banker who got a reduced bonus would up and displace their whole family to Singapore. And even if some of them do, are there no more intelligent people, with or without a physics PhD, who could take over their role?)

Is it fair that private schools get charitable status – I tell you what, ask a teacher in an inner city school.

How fair is the tax system – ask someone on the minimum wage.

Well you get the idea. The sad thing is that I could articulate this plan so much better and so much more convincingly sat in a Viennese coffee house – it must have been the atmosphere.

Perhaps we should send Ed Miliband there, after all it can’t make the current situation any worse.

We have just been to Vienna and a much better trip it was than last time (a really long story which I will add sometime….)

Despite the taxi driver saying we should visit in the Spring when it is lovely, I think Vienna is a wintertime city.

And, do you know what… as we walked back from the restaurant on our first night, it started snowing and by the middle of the night, it was coming down in thick flakes and romantically coating the church opposite.

So, as I set off in the early morning to go to the flea market – of course – I was tramping through the snow past the cathedral and all only my own.

Except for a Petit Walter. A little golf cart time thing with a mini snow plough on the front and a big bag of grit and salt on the back.

He was not alone, there were lots of them whizzing about, doing their business and making Vienna safe for its inhabitants.

Compare and contrast with the sleepy hollow in which we live.

No one would expect Petit Walters (or Small John’s as they might be called) to race around the lanes of the Hartings.

So a few winters ago the Parish Council said they had secured a large pile of grit or salt to be stored nearby and at the first sign of bad weather, piles would be left at strategic points around the lanes and hardy locals could shovel the stuff around.

The weather happened but the grit didn’t.

In a stroppy mood I bearded the Parish Councillor responsible in his lair.

(His lair happens to be the rarely-open carpet shop in the village. Given the butchers, bakers and candlestick makers have long gone – about the same time as the smithy and bank shut up shop – it is strange to find a carpet shop.

We presume, not unreasonably, that it is a front for a Colombian drugs cartel.)

Anyway, back to the main story.

He said that no one had checked whether the grit had been delivered so when they went to look for it, imagine their surprise…..

Our house is a mile or so away from his shop so when he went on to say, ‘ I hear it is bad out your way’, I did feel that he probably spent more time in Columbia than on the icy local lanes.