Christmas Shopping and Animal Bonds

The only decent shopping centre in the whole of North Wales is Llandudno, which is a thirty odd mile round trip for us. Dwarfed by the Great Orme which looms over the town, Llandudno looked the picture perfect Christmas set, and as I marched around the shops today, I was amused to see the tiny figures of the famous kashmiri goats grazing on the slopes overlooking the bay.
In just three quarters of an hour I purchased all of Chris' pressies, had a coffee and succumbed to some Christmas guilt and bought a "big issue" from a guy in front of the library who had the obligatory dog stuffed inside of a laura Ashley blanket.of all things.
I dropped into work to sort out my secret santa, then sorted the animals out before walking the dogs, injecting Jessop with her final antibiotic injection (she still has not eaten as yet) and dropping into a local art gallery (yes we do have them in Wales!) to buy Chris his final gift.
I have 30 minutes now free before picking Chris up at the station. We then have to face the yearly trial of the Supermarket Christmas trolley dash before we can come home and wrap pressies and make mince pies for tomorrow.

At dusk tonight I spied two small characters huddled together out of the cold behind the duck house and snapped this photo before the light changed completely. These two hens have amused and moved me greatly over the past couple of weeks. Both are very young, and were hatched weeks from each other in the late summer. The black rock is the only hen from a batch of six (the cockerels were taken in by a woman at the animal sanctuary) and the little red was the only hatchling from one of my hybrids. I have named them Ripley and Newt.
Both of these gentle souls have been bullied by the more robust hens, and have lived somewhat lonely lives on the periphery of the field,Over the weeks.It kind of broke my heart to watch them eek out their quiet isolated existence and I decided, then to do something about it.. . A week ago I caught Newt and placed her in Ripley's little hen house for the night. In the morning both hens went their own separate ways, so each night for part of the week after this I repeated the process, until now they are inseparable and a supportive little team.
Perhaps it is the silly and infectious because of Christmas,perhaps I am just a soft old pudding but it was greatly satisfying to see the pair of them tootling around together this afternoon.