Comment: The calm after the storm... and why renting isn’t all bad

For anyone who’s been living in a hole for the past week, I can confirm it’s been a bit windy out.

Storm Ciara hit Herts hard over the weekend, with epic gales causing havoc across the county.

Many homes were left without power, while fallen trees blocked roads and damaged cars.

I don't know about you, but I wasted a good hour of potential sleep on Saturday night wondering if I should get up and load some heavy stuff on the trampoline or stick the bins in the shed. I decided not to bother.

Luckily the trampoline remained in situ and the bins, though a bit scattered, weren't upended.

A couple of fence panels had blown down in our garden, however, while a third is definitely on its last legs.

When this has happened before, some serious Googling always ensued as we tried to establish which boundary was our responsibility.

This generally led us to our property deeds, followed by some awkward convos with the neighbours.

And herein lies the one good thing about renting: it's (sort of) not our problem. We won't be fretting over who needs to cough up for new panels, or finding someone to fit them or fix the current ones as - hurrah - that's our landlord's job.

Of course, the down side of this is that our landlord is unlikely to feel massively motivated to get to the bottom of this particular issue when they probably have their own fallen fences to worry about.

In the meantime, we're having to keep a close eye on the dog to make sure he doesn't become overly familiar with the couple of new gardens that have just opened up to him. He likes to leave his mark, and that's not something any of our neighbours would wish to be on the receiving end of.

Swings and roundabouts. And hopefully some nice new fence panels.