scum

I can understand the easy come/easy go mentality of some spongers in society, but the whole selfish attitude of thieves, benefit fraudsters and con artists literally makes me feel sick.Taking the road of least resistance is I guess a human failing, but when you hurt and damage other peoples' lives, then can the ends justify the means?

To many amoral people it obviously does! a case in point is a phone call I received this morning. Lisa a young mum in her early twenties is single handedly running an organic poultry farm and small holding in Cheshire. I have bought most of my hens from her and was due to go over tomorrow to pick a few new girls for Stanley's new enclosure. She rang me this morning near tears, to tell me not to bother coming tomorrow as all her hens (2,500 quids worth of birds) had been stolen in the night. Lisa and her husband have worked all day every day to build her business to what it is, and it angers me terribly to think that good, honest people like them can be preyed upon by no mark scum.

The whole thing is just very,very sad.

Worked hard in the allotment for most of the day, am just on the way to the beach to walk the dogs with Janet and Jess, then off to Llandudno to meet Chris for supper in Osborns which is a nice treat.

Guilty Pleasures

Now I love disaster films.........the bigger the better is my motto; so those old fashioned pot boilers of the 1970's are my yardstick for a successful romp. Towering Inferno & Poseidon Adventure, you remember them, frilly tuxedos, every man in a bow tie and every woman in a tissue paper evening gown or hot pants, battling physical special effects, fire and water and explosions by the bucketful. They were the kings to those second generation disaster flicks of recent times such as The Day After Tomorrow and Cloverfield so it seemed inevitable that the Brits would get on the American bandwagon and produce their own disaster flick. Flood (2007) is the worst disaster film I have ever seen (well just marginally worse than Airport 75) yet I actually found myself enjoying tiny parts of it, albeit rather guiltily!

Based loosely on The Day After Tomorrow we find a group of English c Lister's battling a London storm surge ( and some terrible special effects)

Skeletal Robert Carlyle is estranged from his professor father Tom Courtenay, both are experts on the Thames barrier and flooding! (like you do) A huge storm hits Britain and the two have to work together ( with Carlyle's ex wife Jessalyn Gilsig another flood expert) to save the millions of Londoners.....As thousands die in the streets, we find Carlyle,Gilsig, 2 heroic underground workers an unnamed woman,and father and daughter trapped at a flooded Charring Cross station( This bit was quite well done), but all tension of their escape from the dark was overshadowed by some awful "Americanization" of the rescue centre, with the Prime minister and his advisers all sat at darkened computer monitors, watching the disaster unfold "on line"......

The film's saving grace was fag hag police commissioner Patricia Nash (played a touch tongue in cheek by Joanne Whalley, power suited, lips quivering..........she kicked some military ass to save Londoners without wavering, even though her daughters were caught up in the flood in the west end!.....If only she existed in real life.........

Even though the whole thing was shit on a stick.....I kind of enjoyed watching it.

"Connie--well actually its Jess",haystacks and a new hen house

Janet called this afternoon when I was clearing the hen runs; a new dog had just been delivered to the pet rescue centre and she wanted me to see it with her. The dog turned out to be a small terrier cross bitch around 10 months old, and I thought she was quite charming. She was friendly with William (who had come along for the ride), fairly placid with the cats in the cattery and walked easily on her lead. I thought she was sweet and I wasn't surprised when Janet drove home with her calmly sat in the back seat.Her kennel name was fudge but I kind of thought she looked like a Connie.............I think the name might actually stick.

I finally got hold of the lady who owns the substantial hen house on the gop and after a bit of negotiation I knocked her down from 50£ to 30£, which I think was a bargain. The coop is worth at least 75£ so I was pretty pleased. When the new hen house/chicken house comes tomorrow I shall have 6 poultry coops up and running. A hen monopoly!

Cleared out the large coop this morning and fully disinfected it against red mite, which is the most disgusting of jobs on earth. I have raked all the dead grass from the enclosure too (the hens remove all the unwanted grass and straw from the pasture) and I couldn't believe how much stuff they can shift

Chris is in Swansea all day today, so won't be back until late, Connie now is called Jess, which sounds just right

Fame

Susan, "our" dog breeder sent this picture of the dogs to "Dog world Newspaper" and they have printed it!

fame at last

http://www.dogworld.co.uk/My-breeds

George walks!

In an effort to balance the blog stories (oh no not another tale of doggy-life) I wanted to put a friend's adorable boy pic on line as it were. Love the t shirt George Bevan

Sicko Moles

First it was red mite,then cabbage whites and last week it was the gale force winds that threatened the allotment. Today we have "attack of the moles". Long mole runs zigzag across the chicken runs and more importantly they infiltrate the vegetable patches, up ending my sown broad beans and shallots.

One of the neighbours is kindly getting me some traps, and after watching the delightful Harry Dodson in the The Wartime Kitchen Garden I think I can actually use them.(mind you the above picture IS kinda cute),on a happier note:
Stanley's hen house is being delivered on Friday, so perhaps I can buy his three or four concubines on Saturday.

Months and months after it was released Theatre Clwyd has finally shown the film Sicko (2007) tonight.and although I find Michael Moore films rather too contrived and ever so flippant, his review of the American health care system is well worth seeing. In an entertaining and sobering 2 hours Moore explores the US's efforts to establish free health and traces it's failure to President Richard Nixon's deceptive support of the then-emerging HMOs pursuing huge profits and subsequent pressures for Congress to sacrifice sound health care in favor of corporate profit.
The film ends with three emergency service hero's of the 9/11 attacks who cannot afford the health care costs in the United States, being ferried over to Cuba to receive first class health care they only dreamed about getting at home. Their reactions to the kindness and free-at-the-point -of -delivery care ,I found , incredibly moving.

Moore's side-swipe at Hilary Clinton's u turn at her initial health care reforms during her husband's presidency must be incredibly painful given her efforts to enter the White house at this time, and as a Brit with little knowledge of American dirty politics I found the whole thing extremely interesting! However it was an articulate and erudite Tony Benn, who stole the show, with a moving speech on the virtues of the National Health Service.I could listen to him talk all night long.

A good 9/10

Enjoy Rugby in the capital of love

very very funny!
typically French

Village Gossip and more allotment news

With the garden flowers in vases on the kitchen windowsill the cottage feels more spring-like than winter-ish. The helleborus- Christmas roses, miniature narcissi and flowers from the bergenia are all slightly early this year which is a welcome change from the dull greens and browns of February.

I got a spurt on this morning and planted the rest of my shallots, 3 rows of onion sets, 3 rows of parsnips and radish. My broad beans are already in, and second planting shall be done next week as will be the first of my potatoes. My rhubarb crowns (right) have shot up in a week , so I am now feeling that things are moving along nicely.

Talk in the post office this morning has been centred around the arrival of the air ambulance on Gop hill Sunday morning. Apparently a man had been caught ill whilst walking his dogs and sadly did not survive a suspected heart attack. I was shocked to hear that this poor man was an old acquaintance of mine from the CB days of the 1980's.I had no idea that he lived in the same village. Made me feel rather old..........