Gladys

To answer Steven...Auntie Glad is not a blood relative, but she is somewhat of a local celebrity in the village. A diminutive powerhouse of energy she is the widow of "Bob the railway" who lives in the old private school house in Trelawnyd. She caters for the entire Male voice choir (scones, tea in mugs for the men), helps run our Flower show ( selling thousands of raffle tickets by marching around every village in the district, knocking on doors!) and supports every single social/community event without hesitation.
When I opened up the allotment last year, and despite the torrential rain, she marshalled the old ladies of the village and made her way down to the field to support the event....

The old ones ARE the best

Isn't youtube entertaining?

The Badger pit and Auntie Glad meets her namesake

Sometimes you come across the dark side of human nature in the most unexpected of places. This afternoon I took the dogs up the Gop and around one of their favourite sniffing points (a huge badger set on the north side of the burial mound) George pointed out a large deep hole alongside the entrances. The hole was square around four feet deep and four feet wide. At the bottom was an opened up badger run and it was obvious that badger baiters had been at work.
The run had been opened up by spades, a badger had been pulled out, probably by a dog and the pit had been used as a fighting pen. It was a sorry pathetic sight. A body of a badger was lying nearby mangled and ripped, God only knows what agonies the poor thing had been subjected to. A fellow dog walker saw me walking down from the scene and he told me that the police had been informed of the situation. I just hope they can catch these bastards that think this type of this is fun and acceptable!

On a brighter note, Auntie Glad called down to the cottage this afternoon to drop off some scones. I took her into the field to meet her namesake and she was tickled pink at the sight of the fat, black sow!! Both pigs have been spoilt this afternoon (above is a photo of Nora sucking up Chris' homemade Stilton and broccoli soup!)

Pig update

The pigs have settled in nicely. Throughout the day I have tried them with various bits and pieces from the kitchen! They love apples and went slightly hysterical over an over ripe banana! but didn't like slices white bread (preferring it in bits! rather than in a full slice)
I doubt they have seen a chicken before either! as when Mildred Pierce made the sin of walking across their enclosure both galloped over to give her a slightly frightened once over sniff!
I photographed the snow drops in the Churchyard before getting a picture of some baby rabbits onto of the Church wall (look closely at the pic)...... at least some rabbits survived the myxomatosis outbreak

Frost/Nixon

I have always enjoyed the films of Ron Howard. His direction is usually assured,pacy and intelligent (for mainstream cinema that is) and the likes of The Missing and Apollo 13 rate highly in my top 100 films.
Hazel had a bad day at work today, so perhaps Frost/Nixon was not the most uplifting of movies to go to, but as Chris was doing his ballroom dance practice with Janet and Hazel's daughters were off to their father's it seemed a good idea for us to support the scala cinema again!
Frost/Nixon is an interesting film. It does not paint a picture of the former disgraced President and the chat show host as real three dimensional characters but concentrates more on the battle of wills and ego present in their fateful tv interview of 1977.
Michael Sheen wisely portrays Frost as a slightly shallow, slightly fey character with a skill for gaining channel ratings and doesn't shy at making the presenter ever -so- slightly unlikable, it is a brave performance which is overshadowed by a masterclass of scene stealing by the wonderful Frank Langella as the old dog Nixon.
I don't know very much about Watergate, indeed I know very little of early 1970 American history (except for a genius level knowledge about The Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno from 1972 and 1974),but I did find the whole film fascinating!!!
8/10

A Steep, steep learning curve

Well finally Gladys and Nora made their somewhat tentative appearance this morning. Sat quietly in Helen's landrover (Helen is the owner of the animal feed shop in Lloc), both of them eyed me and the field with a stubborn anxiety when we opened the van door!
Helen,her husband and I (non of us with any experience of pigs) eyed the pigs......the pigs stood their ground and eyed us, and and the stalemate seemed to last an age. We tried shaking a bucket of pig nuts, we tried pushing and pulling and we tried waving a tempting carrot in their general direction.....we even tried pleading....but in the end it took an empty bucket over the head and two pairs of strong arms to get both ladies into their new pen.
Nora (left in above pic) Is the bigger and baldest pig, Gladys has the a more squashed facial look but both are quite charming in a food orientated piggy type of way.

The girls settled down almost immediately. Grunting happily to themselves they scoured every inch of their new home, eating everything they could find. Occasionally they would raise their heads to gaze with tiny eyes at the rest of the allotment , then satisfied with the view, off they would amble, noses pressed closely to the floor.

By four pm, they had totally exhausted themselves and both flopped into the duck house to sleep ( you could hear the farting from halfway up the field!) I got on with clearing the veg plots and let the Scotties out for a sniff around.

The dogs immediately knew that there was something interesting in the old duck house and they galloped for the pig pen barking loudly. Both pigs shot out, tails high up in the air and ran to meet the dogs. Maddie held her ground while George bolted for the safety of the hen house, but there was no further confrontation after their brief nose to snout sniff off. Maddie obviously worked out that the pigs were far too big to confront and the pigs obviously worked out that Maddie was inedible!
Our family now consists of:-

4 dogs,1 cat,2 pigs,2 turkeys,11 ducks,41 hens,6 bantams,4 buff chicks and 2 middle aged poofs

Three cocks in one day and a blue hen

I have a friend who is an academic and who over works terribly! Subsequently he suffers bouts of mental exhaustion which are hugely debilitating. I am lucky, today I am totally bushed, but it is a satisfying type of tiredness that comes from being physically active!

Early this morning I took Albert and William to the vets. Albert was having his post femur fracture check up, and I wanted William to be reviewed as he is showing hypersensitivity on his skin (a sure sign of some infection lurking) Albert got the A O K and William got another course of antibiotics and steroids! Both animals were beautifully behaved in the waiting room, which allowed me to have a chat with a bloke from the wild animal rescue centre at Greenfield who was in the queue with of all things a tawny owl with a broken wing. He has an empty hen house and has agreed to take a couple of the male buffs! which was a great result.

After the vets I took all the dogs to the beach for a run then put them in the pig enclosure while I dug over the last of the vegetable patches. William knackered himself out so much (nervous exhaustion at being so close to the hens) he actually fell asleep sat up when we got back to the cottage (below pic)

I called into Rhyl to organise a replacement birth certificate (I need one for some criminal checks for the hospice bank) then picked up a load of pig food for the girls tomorrow! On the way home I called into see Eirlys (my friend who has a big poultry farm on the other side of the village)....I took with me one of the buff cockerels and she couldn't resist him.....three down just one to go!

This afternoon, I cleaned out the turkey and duck houses,walked the dogs again, then cleaned out the fire and prepared Chris' tea before the dusk chores of locking every animal up safely. Several neighbours have been calling in throughout the day (ostensibly to buy eggs but I know they all are eager to see the pigs!) All will be back tomorrow! It's amazing how many people love pigs!

My final job of the day was to "repaint" Mildred Pierce's wings. I have a unseen feather pecker bully amongst the hens and several of the "victims" have unsightly and painful looking bald patches on each wing. I have sprayed Mildred (who has been pecked the most) with antibacterial spray which she was most indignant at. I fed her with some saved worms from my digging in way of an apology.

Violin concerto

I have recently heard this violin concerto no 2 by Composer Philip Glass....and I think it is hauntingly simple and just a little chilling......