Nature is very cruel

A wasp got into my pants today through a rip in the crotch
I was stung on the inner thing and right buttock
Nature can be deadly.....
.....and painful

Being a bitch

I can be such a bitch!
William and I sat at the vets (yes again~!) for nearly an hour today. One vet didn't turn in for work and with the new appointment system in full flow, the clients just kept a coming!
Now every time I go to the vets surgery, I always seem to get lumbered with a fellow customer with, shall we say, questionable social skills and today was no exception. A man with an inner city accent, too much bling and an overactive collie held court in the waiting room, and as we were all waiting for our appointments we got lumbered with him for the duration.
His dog was beside itself and was constantly on the go, he, shouted a great deal, huffed and puffed about the wait and shouted at his dog some more and had that annoying habit of talking loudly at the animal asking it "why are you acting like this?- you are doing my head in!...will youuuuuusittttttstillllll?", and after 45 minutes I literally could have ripped his face off, but as politeness would dictate, I studiously ignored all of his comments and read the notice board time and time again!.
While all this was going on William sat beautifully on my knee, watching the proceedings quietly and with interest, and just before we were called in the see the vet, the loud man bellowed over "How do you get him to be so well behaved?"
I could resist it, and as I smiled sweetly I said
"I always think that a dog will reflect it's owners calm quiet behaviour, don't you?"
...result.............

A Sick Chris,Belle goes Broody, too many buns, a welcome change of plans , the Chicken course grows and a cracking blog read

Chris thinks he has swine flu....his symptoms suggest a heavy cold, but his temperature IS up, so he has gone to bed early with Miss Marple and some Night Nurse tablets that I have just brought for him.
Another day has brought forth another broody hen. This time Belle has caught the mommy bug and has found the most exposed nest in which to raise her brood! This morning, quite by accident I caught sight of her sat sternly on top of the lane wall, inches from passersby and farm traffic! and she had been there all night! Bless her! I moved her into a spare rabbit hutch complete with a new set of eggs to sit on, and she has taken to broodiness with some gusto! More mouths to feed! (sigh)

As I was moving Belle into her new safer home, one of the girls that regularly visit the pigs (as a diversion after the sad death of her mother) called around with 7 huge boxes of bread buns and cheese, which were leftovers from a village wedding! It was 8am and raining, and I was very touched by her kindness and effort! The pigs, even after the 100th bread bun thought they were in heaven!
This afternoon I made the decision not to go to Sheffield at the weekend, of course it wold be lovely to catch up with Nu , Kathryn, and Mike and Bev but all too late I realised that it clashed with my Brother''s summer party! I won't go into details why, but I think that just now, family has to come first and we are all looking forward in sharing a minibus and going up to his party en masse! Can't wait.,...Jayne (sister-in-law does LOVELY FOOD!)

Tonight was the second of my four Poultry course sessions, and I was pleased that all the "students" turned up for a second lesson. In actual fact I now have 9 participants, and all of them seem to enjoy the teaching.

I have forgotten just how enjoyable it is, having a group that really wants to learn something and as usual I also learnt just as much as I taught as a lot of the time we discussed their experiences rather than just mine. They are a nice bunch of despots!
Anyhow I will close today's blog with a nod to another highly entertaining blogweb site called PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVENOTES.COM (http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/)

This witty blog basically Chronicles the pithy, often "last chance" work based notes posted by stressed work colleagues and family in reply to minor slights and tribulations....it makes hilarious reading!

we have all been there!

Eba would be proud

Now to make sense of this blog, you have to read the previous one.
Fired up with memories of Eba "dirtyboys", I turfed Chris out of bed, and grasping my resolve (and holding my breath), I crawled under the bed with a dustpan and brush!
The bedroom was filthy...it truly was and in seconds I was covered head to foot in a thick, smelly film of dust and fluff. God knows when I last cleaned it, but with a bit of hard work, a touch of nausea and a ton of hot soapy water, the ancient floorboards (which came from the original cottage in the 1700s) gleamed as if new and the windows sparkled without their usual coating of dog saliva.

"Dirty Boys!"

We will never have a pristine house, it will never happen.
This little nugget of realisation came to me this morning when I was sat on the loo reading HOME & ANTIQUES. In this glossy, page after page of beautifully arranged Georgian and Victorian “items”, all polished and dusted within an inch of their lives, stand side by side with vases of newly cut roses from the “mature” garden, whilst the pearl draped owner sits comfortably on the plump settee drinking a cup of filter coffee.By her feet, a small border terrier is asleep. He is clean and well groomed (in an untidy designer way) and there isn’t a dog hair or scratch mark to be seen!
I am writing this during our all too brief Sunday lie in. The animals have been fed and watered and the dogs walked. Chris has had breakfast in bed, and all the dogs (with the smiley Albert in tow ) are asleep on the duvet.
I look around the bedroom.
The window seat, is all pulled and marked where Meg bites at it when she sees a passing dog in the lane. The windows have the very attractive smeared and now dried spit marks from doggy faces and the skirting board below is covered in stray dog hairs and dust. By the door, in the hall there is a strange mark in the carpet from where George threw up a stolen meal of cat food and hen eggs, and the window ledge in the bathroom beyond, has a precise set of pawprints all over them after Albert stood in the coal scuttle and then escaped back into the garden.
When I fried Chris’ potato cakes this morning, the cat had a crafty sniff, lick and tap at them when my back was turned, and I am sick and tired of hand washing our “tasteful” scatter cushions, when they smell of overheated Welsh terrier.
Our immune systems must be as robust as a charging rhino!

The cottage, at times is a midden

I do miss those Sheffield days when for a short time we had a cleaner! She was a powerhouse Filipino woman called Eba, who hardly spoke English, was, we suspected a mail order bride and worked like a thing demented. She was a godsend! By the time she had knocked on the door and you had answered it, she had already brushed the yard and cleaned under the plant pots! I loved her!

The only thing that did worry me slightly about Eba was the fact that she pathologically hated dirt ! (She made Joan Crawford look like a pussycat) when she found a particularly nasty stain or mark ( I remember her special reaction to the mess she once found under the microwave!!)- she would mutter loudly under her breath

"dirty boys!!! dirty, dirty boys!!!"

I used to get so embarrassed I used to hide in the attic when when was in full flow!!

Eba where are you when we need you.!!

I am working tonight, and need to write some more handouts for the chicken course for tomorrow , but I think I will give the bedroom a good seeing to!......in the spirit of Eba!

As good as it gets

I have worked today at the hospice, which was fine! I won't wax lyrical about pallative care, as I would like to briefly blog about one of my favourite films. AS GOOD AS IT GETS..which for all it's bad language is essentially an old fashioned wise cracking romantic comedy. I watched it avidly on tv last night!
Some people think that the film is just a showcase for Nicholson's talents... but for me, it is Helen Hunt's sassy Brooklyn waitress, that really melts your heart!!!
In this sequence she hardly says a word......and she steals the scene

Scarlet

I had just come downstairs after a bath, when I saw Rogo streaking across the field with a couple of buffs in tow. A second later a thin Labrador cross bounced into view, and I couldn't quite believe another bloody dog had found its way into the enclosures.
I had already put all of the ducks and turkeys into their houses, so only the hens were at risk, so with a heavy heart, I galloped outside with a snatched up broom only to find the dog clambering up the broken church wall into the Graveyard. The hens were milling around fraught and loud. but I could only see one body lying in the grass outside the enclosures
The victim wasn't one of the slow buffs or indeed Rogo or Stanley, who had run forward to face the intruder, it was the nervous pure breed excelsior Leghorn Scarlet that had been caught and bitten through the neck and back.
Touch wood, I have never had a fox attack as yet, but this is the third dog attack I have experienced in two years! so I was pissed off, big style....I checked around the field and checked on the other hens and pigs, all seemed ok, and I was pleased to find the new young hens crouched together in the long grass with Stanley clucking over them, all of them untouched but very frightened!
I then turned my attention to the dog, but somehow it had got out of the Churchyard,which was strange as the church gates were shut, I debated driving around the village to see if it was around but couldn't be bothered.
It is not the animal I am angry at, but the bloody owners who let the bloody thing run free

Wasps and cruelty

A day without rain!!!...well until 4.40 pm that it!

I cannot quite believe I had around 8 hours dry working time, so I have dismantled all of the coops, disinfected them all (the dreaded red mite it back),emptied the pig latrine then scrubbed the pig hut out and refilled it with wood chippings! By mid afternoon I looked (and smelled) dreadful, but at least all the crappy jobs have been finished,which is good as tomorrow I am doing my first hospice shift and Sunday I am working on ITU

The rain started just as I finished slopping out, so I joined Gladys and Nora and sat in their hut drinking a welcomed diet coke with George also for company.

The better weather has brought some of the villagers out, so I have been stopped by a steady stream of egg customers and pig feeders .

One of my visitors asked if I would take some hens off him as he was too busy to look after them properly, after some questioning I found out that they were older hens that were no longer laying, so where not any good to me, but after I said that I couldn't take them, this bloke stated he would take them into the woods and let them fend for themselves.

I almost lost my temper with his insensitivity, and suggested that the animal rescue centre may take them, but he didn't seem interested,so curtly I told him to drop them off with me rather than abandon them to the elements.

People can be so cruel, when their hens become unproductive!...perhaps I may be able to find them a new home!

I have also been watching the to-ing and fro-ing of wasps in their nest located in the bank next door to Bunny's enclosure, for a few days now. They have taken over a rodent hole and their constant activity has meant that I have had to forgo any activity in that part of the field.

I have found their presence strangely interesting.- if you look closely at the photo , you can just see one of the colony leaving the nest, it looks like a tiny spaceship leaving a mother ship!