Thanks Gareth (I think)

friend Gareth pointed out the similarity...funny........................

Old Laptop to the rescue

In Sheffield after a night shift, I could (and often did) stay in bed until lunchtime. Today I grabbed the quickest of 30 minutes nod off on the couch before the daily walk in the dirty brown/green countryside.
Up in the Gop woods I have noticed small reflective disc "eyes" set up on various spruce trees. Perhaps one of my blog readers could let me know the possible reason for this slightly bizarre occurrence......I have absolutely no idea why they are there.

The baby buffs are now out in their own run within the adult buff enclosure. Elizabeth and Shelley have now been accepted by the dominant cockerel Clover and his second in command the diffident Poppy. The other hens Sorrel,Lily and Violet have practically ignored the new adults but seem fascinated with the chicks. As I was lying in the grass taking the below photo, the three hens climbed slowly onto my bum and back to get a glimpse of what I was looking at.

They all sat like this for ages, if the weather was a little better I would have fallen asleep in the grass with the girls plonked contentedly with me

Disaster

I am writing this brief blog at work. I have no computer at home after Albert pulled my laptop onto the floor
How did we cope before computers?
disaster..................

This made my day

I have just got home after a long long shift and realised that I have missed Strictly two weeks in a row now.
The scene where the elderly John Sergeant dragged the slutty Kristina Rihanoff across the dancefloor reminded me of how I move 25 kilo bags of poultry corn.....
It totally made my day
I dare you to watch it without laughing

"I 'm in the mood for dancing"-not!!!!!!!

The old Nolan hen died today- which was a little sad-. Just to answer a question I was asked yesterday, she wasn't "Broody Nolan" (above) who hatched the chicks so successfully in the summer, but was one of her sisters. Chris gave her a decent send off in a black bin bag!
I have been working today and will be working all day tomorrow, so have just caught up quickly with jobs and dog walking before we talk Richard out for an Italian meal tonight

Just had time to drop a few eggs off to Arfon at Pen-y-cefn-isa, who kindly sorted out the debris from the hedge cutter without being asked......

A fine romance and Halloween

I am designing my own Christmas cards (as usual) and had the idea that a photo of a "happy" turkey may be funnier than the usual tinsel and Scottie terrier motif I usually choose..The above picture is one of the "short listed " Christmas photos. I think we do look as though we are in love.

I do not subscribe to the Americanization of our winter "holidays", and find all this trick and treating by scruffy kids wearing ripped bin bags and a cheapo "scream mask" all a bit trashy, but I do admit, I enjoy the tradition of making a Halloween pumpkin head, Tonight I lit my artistic effort up with a score of tea lights and set it up in the cottage garden.

We have only had two very very small trick and treaters turn up so far. Both dressed as diminutive Jedi knights !( with an embarrassed looking mum donned in an all-in-one pajama suit) They didn't stay long, Maddie was baying for blood when they knocked.

Chris is looking after Richard tomorrow and on Sunday, as I am working most of the weekend. As I write this my father-in-law is covered with dogs. Albert has yet to show his face, having an exhausting day bonding with the house canines. Funny he seems much closer to the dogs already rather than me or Chris

Mixed bag- Hedge cutting, a poorly Nolan,a work plan and Maddie's object of obsession

A local farmer turned up this afternoon and very kindly cut the field border hedge. For just a tenner he has done a cracking job, and now the neighbours will be pleased at the knife edge finish of hawthorn and bramble.

The poorly Nolan is on her last legs. Yesterday Eirlys gave me some intra muscular antibiotics from her extensive poultry medical chest, but like me, she feels that the old hen may beyond help.. The Nolans were some of my very first hens (Robina the pure breed being my first), so I want to try everything before giving up on the old girl. Today I have syringed the sweet juice from a tin of sweetcorn into her mouth, every couple of hours, and she has taken the liquid quite easily. At least, I feel that I have made her more comfortable.

The above picture is of an exhausted Maddie. I took the dogs to Janet's to meet up with the hyperactive Jess. Whist William,Meg,Jess and George spent 3/4 of an hour roughhousing in the garden, Maddie found a new toy-in the shape of a cheap plastic football.

Of all the dogs Maddie is the least playful character. She is standoff-ish with other dogs,and seems to cultivate the persona of a rather crabby elderly spinster. Today however, we witnessed another side to her.Hysterically she has chased,head butted,kicked and unsuccessfully bitten the discarded football with a excitement bordering upon obsession. On numerous occasions she managed to corner the ball in a flower bed or path corner, and when it didn't roll away to her satisfaction, her frustrated growling would raise to fever pitch levels and she would kick at it frantically, until one of us would pick it up and throw it back into the garden for her to chase once more.

When I finally got her home, she has slept for 5 hours without moving. It is the most energy I have ever seen her exert.

It was snowing all night, but most of it had disappeared by dawn when the runners went slip sliding on the icy ground.. A woman from Trelogan called today to arrange to buy a trio of the runner ducks. She remained rather vague about arranging a day to collect them, so I won't hold my breath. The 60 quid would come in very handy at the moment.

I think I will develop a bigger breeding colony of the expensive buffs, and will reduce my bog standard hybrid flock.I have the five young buffs as well as the buxom Shelley and Elizabeth, but will need a lot more breeding hens to give me a potentially larger profit margin.when I sell each bird for 25£ to 30 £. Clover and the smaller cockerel Poppy are just starting to crow (albeit rather pathetically) so it is not surprising they haven't even started to mate with the other girls. Non of the females have even started to lay eggs yet, which I find surprising.

Today I have bought some fertilized eggs off ebay in a hope to increase the flock.

The weather remains cold and miserable, so I have done a "swap" of some duck eggs for two dvd's we can watch later: Gone Baby Gone (2007) and Femmes de l'ombre, Les (2008) Thanks to C.F. for that.

A Huge pile of Sh*te

I have watched some tosh on Sky over the past few years but the Halloween "Special" from Most Haunted, truly takes the biscuit. Last night I watched a gaggle of failed tv presenters, fake mediums, false cameramen and a rather fat unattractive make up girl stalk a whole plethora of supposed ghosts and spirits that inhabit a disused psychiatric hospital in Denbigh, which is only a few miles away from us here.

The whole programme is flim flam. The fake medium warns the "ghostbusters" that a violent patient' spectre is smashing the hospital windows as a bellowing front-of-house presenter (the odious self publicist Yvette Fielding) screams then goads the "spirits" into other forms of unseen and unheard actions. Fielding's husband (the show's producer Karl Beattie pic) is perhaps the programme's most slimy and irritating character. It is obvious to anyone with a brain that he is constantly making up his own supernatural experiences and does so with such a lack of conviction,that I am surprised that the paying audience (all sat in the psychiatric hospital's wrecked dining hall) does not lynch him from the nearest camera light. I could have shoved his hand held infrahead camera somewhere that the sun doesn't shine

I am surprised that this sort of cheap showmanship is alive and well, but I guess that it mirrors today's populist newspapers , in sensationalism and in it's ability to blatantly lie...................shades of Oda Mae Brown me thinks......................see...http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=33922