Musical Coops

I woke up this morning dreaming that a tidal wave had enveloped the field! I guess that I heard the torrential rain bashing against the window, and so I was in two minds about staying in bed. But alas, pigs still need feeding and ducklings still need watering, so soaked I got, sludging around to and from the cottage and field.
Just two hours later, the sunshine burst through and I have been amazed that I have worked outside all day weeding the beds (above my cabbage and potato bed) and rearranging the field population!
First job was to set the five ducklings up in their own run. I nicked Bunny's ark, cleaned it out and put it into Rogo and the dog attack survivors' enclosure. Rogo's flock out of all of my hens seem to cope with newcomers best and do so with a degree of friendly alacrity.

Albert as usual spent the morning catching mice and stalking the ducks, who oblige him with a screaming hysterical girly "chase me, chase me" type reaction (below)

Susan (below centre) is almost back to her Normal self . I still feed her extra pasta and bread, and she has quickly learnt to take these build up morsels direct from my hand.

I cleaned out the small broody box and set Bunny (above), Mary and Roger up in it. I suspect it will be a bit of a jam between them all but I have now run out of hen houses. My friend Geoff has plenty of spare wood and has kindly offered to fashion up a bog standard box for me. It will be my 11th hen house!

I moved the two buff cockerels Poppy and Clover back into the buff hen run (a bit too early as the girls are still looking a bit bald on their backs after too much sexual activity!), but I needed to get their old hen house ready for two casualties of hen bullying!

One of the Andrews sisters and Mildred Pierce (above) have had their feathers pecked out by an unseen bully (probably done at night when the hens are roosting) and both are looking rather shop worn and untidy.

I thought it prudent to separate the two girls from their flock and I have set them up in their own run. Blanche will be joining them if she too loses any more feathers, and the rest away from the others, with high protein food and calmness will give the girls a chance to recover their condition
In between dog walking and egg delivery, I have also covered the bird damaged young cabbages and califlower seedlings with netting and chicken wire...it has been a productive day

The Best Of British

You couldn't help getting slightly emotional listening to a triumphant Joanna Lumley thank her supporters hours after the Government made a U turn of their outrageous refusal to let all long serving Gurkha veterans settle in the Uk.
I think that Gurkha Justice Campaign lawyer David Enright played a blinder when he let the sixty-two year old celebrity take centre stage on this long standing and very public fight with the Government. The much loved actress very publicly humiliated the immigration minister Phil Woolas on the 7th of May, when she eloquently and passionately fought the decision to limit Gurkha admissions to the Uk Since then, and with huge national support Miss Lumley has been seen to embody all of the best traits of being essentially "British".
Quietly assertive and never aggressive, Lumley, in her perfectly modulated "posh but not too posh" accent showed a dignified frustration towards a "naughty and disappointing" Government.
She galvanised the press with a spirit that could have won the war, mobilised the country's dissatisfaction with the MPs expenses to her advantage and has become the much needed figure of "trust and integrity" within this recent climate of sleaze.
Put quite simply, the British public love her.

Peas

It has been a day for weeding, which is a thankless but necessary job at the best of times. Dodging the heavy showers I almost finished three of the five allotment beds, then cleared the weeds from the pea canes (above) before planting further pea and beans in successive sowings. Chris took the car today, so I was effectively trapped at home, but I didn't worry about it too much, mind you I did have to change the radio stations on my potable radio from the constant LBC discussion on the MP expenses fiasco to a more soothing classic FM.

The only person I spoke to today was neighbour Pippa, who came down to tell me that she had seen the female pheasant with five tiny chicks in her garden. I am so pleased as I caught sight of the bird family a few days ago by the church a few days ago and wondered if they had survived the afternoon car jam by parents waiting for their children to leave the village school.
Albert has gone into overdrive today and has brought home 5 mice. Every corpse he has proudly dropped at either mine or the one of the dogs' feet...and rather nauseatingly, Maddie has chomped three of them like someone eating a snickers bar, her eyes closed in pure and happy pleasure
Tonight I am off to Theatre Clwyd with Hazel to see the French film The class. I haven't seen her in ages

The Class

Entre les murs (English title The Class) is a slow burn of a movie that cleverly chronicles a year in the classroom life of a class of tough multi ethnic school children and their French teacher within an inner city Parisian secondary school.Real life teacher and writer François Bégaudeau has been given his naturalistic reins in this documentary style drama and shines as the flawed but genuinely talented teacher François Marin, but it is the improvised looking (but apparently closely scripted) performances from the class of sparky,unruly and totally hypnotic 15 year olds that totally captivates the audience. The result on screen, is a sparkling, clever work whose ensemble cast impresses, surprises, wrong foots and disappoints you in exactly the same fashion a class might its teacher.

9/10

Different Worlds

This evening I listened to Chris giving a run though of his presentation on "evidence based practice" he is due to make tomorrow! The whole thing was polished and suitably professional and I should think that all the bigwigs from the health services from the whole of North Wales will find the whole thing informative and useful.
I found myself giggling after his run through. It was not anything he had said that started me off, I was actually laughing at myself. (a thing I do often)
Today I chased up the 7 people who had showed an interest in my hen keeping course. I aim to start the whole "programme" on the 27th of July, and spent most of the rainy morning booking the Memorial Hall and doing "hen" preparation for it.
This is where the giggling came in......There's Chris developing strategic health care workshops for the intelligentsia of Wales, and there's me in the same breath teaching a motley group of would be chicken lovers basic poultry care.......tee hee.....life in the fast lane continues eh?

Anyhow the rain has lashed down this morning, so apart from organising my PhD in Hen care. I have chased up my bank applications to the local hospice and hospital bank. Finally both have gone through ok and I am now fit for duty as it were. Once I get sorted with these areas, and get regular shifts I will finally leave ITU for good, which will be a total relief. Now I know that some people will be anxious that I have said too much on my blog about this, but don't worry I have already discussed with my manager that I eventually intended to leave..The morale within the more junior staff is noticeably poor, and like I said it will be a relief to be out of all the petty gripes and micro managing

A sense of belonging & Ducks in the garden

Dogs have the unwavering ability to sense where they belong. When the "pack" is complete, they seem to relax immediately and gel into an unified entity, it is sometimes the oddest thing to witness.
This morning was a case in point; after night shift I spend three quarters of an hour feeding and watering, then I come in for the briefest of rests. More often than not I have a lie down on the couch or bed and today I climbed onto the bed. Immediately the dogs joined me, each one almost pinning me to the duvet in an effort to remain close seconds later Albert dives into the mass of arms and legs.and with the biggest of sighs wraps his front paws around Meg's neck.and falls asleep.
As soon as I rest, so do they, and there we stay calm and still until I get up again to give them their walk.
The quietness of the early morning disappeared rather too quickly for my liking as the hen chicks had to be moved into the shed and the ducklings had to be moved outside so that the disgusting jobs of mucking out to be completed.
The postman found the tiny hysterical ducklings enchanting, unlike William who spent the entire morning giving them the evil eye from the lounge window.
The only other excitement of today was the sudden appearance of 8 blue tit fledglings in the lane. All 8 must have flown the nest all together and in the blustery wind conditions all had crash landed in the road flanked both sides by high stone walls. Four times this afternoon I had to stop the farm traffic to retrieve these tiny tiny birds and deposit them safely in the long grass of the wildflower border of the graveyard............
I think I confused one farmer type I had flagged down by shouting "tits" on the top of my voice! as I pointed to the tarmac........note to self get more sleep before you try and save the world..........

ALEXANDER RYBAK FAIRYTALE

We did not bother watching the Eurovision Song Contest last night, so I caught up with the results on you tube this morning. The whole event has turned into a sort of trailer trash version of the Olympics.....you know how it goes..........New Money.....no taste......cheap looks..........flashy and gaudy.
The Russians must have thrown millions on staging this event, and still it looked as though it had been developed for Saturday night Itv ...............hummmm on reflection perhaps that was a little unfair---mind you the suspended swimming pools with a few wrinkled-to-death artistic "swimmers" flondering around inside them made the whole place look like a wierd strip joint

The block voting by the Eastern Block now has been sorted and a cute chicken from Norway won with a traditional ,sixties style ditty....which made a welcomed change...
Back to work tonight.............

Angels and Demons

I won't wait for tomorrow to do the review for Angels & Demons (2009)....believe me it won't take me too long to complete it.
The sequel (or prequel) to The Da Vinci Code is a sprawling, occasionally exciting, and disappointingly predictable romp through Dan Brown's Vatican mystery.
At times I felt I was watching a cross between Midsommer Murders and Treasure Hunt, and although the whole thing was undeniable glossy, the film lacked a large vital heart.
Bring back Audrey Tautou that's what I say.....
7/10
(Nice to See Prestatyn's scala full to the gunnels for a change)