Is it me?

Now, when I am on two consecutive night shifts, I do not do any cooking, dog walking or housework. I will however sort the animals out on the field and have fed and watered them all this morning and again this afternoon.
So it is up to Chris to cook the main meal, and it is up to Chris to walk the dogs (albeit briefly down the lane).......and what an unholy palaver we all have to go through for the simplest of household chores to be completed.( he forgets that I usually complete 99% of the jobs)
We have the "tut,tut,tutting" syndrome when I use a glass and don't wash it up. We also have the Mrs Mop "take you wellingtons off before you come into the house...I have just cleaned the floor!!!!!" shriek, after I have been on the field!
Then I have to go through the hoops of stating how beautiful the Sunday meal is "I have slaved over a hot stove allllllllllllllllllllllllll afternoon!!" he says wiping a sweaty brow........and that is all before we have the long sighs at the amount of washing up he has to face afterwards.....
Sometimes I feel as though we live in the sixties!!!
bless........

Sometimes.................

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8064867.stm
Sometimes you just want (or need) to be badly behaved......mind you the Chinese guy that got frustrated with the traffic jam caused by a potential suicide jumper perched on a highway bridge took this just a little too far!
He walked up to the distressed man, shook him firmly by the hand and then promptly threw him off! (thankfully the guy landed in an emergency services inflatable !)
Years ago,I remember, a rather prissy patient's relative walked around my ward offering the staff pieces of fruit from a huge ornamental display in rather a patronising way.She had received this showy gift from her local MP and was enjoying the attention it had caused.....most of the staff took a few grapes or a satsuma but not I! It had been a very bad day, and I couldn't be arsed being polite. When she offered me a token I grabbed the huge melon from the centre of the basket and without a thank you walked off with it........

Apologies

apologies for the f word, but I just loved this poster......
sometimes in life we all have this sort of day don't we?

I have in fact has a busy, but enjoyable catch up day today.we got up early, I sorted the animals out and Chris walked the dogs and then we went back to bed for a lie in! which was a unexpected treat. Did the weekly shop, had a cooked breakfast treat in Sainsbury's and caught up with my sisters in Prestatyn. I think we are all going to Osborn House for lunch next Sunday to celebrate Janet's and my Birthday! Hopefully my brother Andrew and Jayne will come too,!
I am working nights tonight and tomorrow.

A night in

As a favour to a colleague I have swapped a few shifts and am now working nights over the weekend. Tonight we are having a quiet night in with Meryl Streep and Mamma Mia!....Frothy and totally relaxing.

It's been a funny old day, someone close to us is experiencing a bit of a health scare and dealing with the unknown is an awful and frightening time to say the least. Nurses are not really used to resorting to platitudes, we are trained to be sensitive and to give dollops of information and anxiety reducing knowledge, but at times when you are supporting a close one who is facing the unknown , sometimes all you do have are platitudes.
Oh and a small pretty sunflower in a pot!

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