It's official I am boring myself!

I am so annoyed I could spit. It is snowing heavily again this morning and I resent not only the weather but also how it is taking over my blog subjects......!(my blogs are never that interesting but recently they seem to be taking a rather monotonous -snow tone!)
Apparently roads are already being closed (Dyserth hill and Gwaenysgor Hill- the only roads down to the coast) and the main route out of North Wales ( the A55) is at a standstill.
Geoff, with his 4x4, came to the rescue this morning and dropped some extra corn for me which was incredibly kind of him,and Ralph the gentleman farmer brought me a bale of straw for the pigs,another lifesaver! However itt still took me over an hour and a half to feed and water every animal!
The cold has taken its toll, old Susan died in the night (right) as did Whoopie Goldberg (another of my eldest hybrids), which was very sad. The elderly "retired" hens, are all hybrids and subsequently tend to be smaller and skinnier specimens compared to the more robust pure breeds, and just have not got the reserves to keep on going despite extra feed and lots of TLC

On a brighter note, I have provisionally booked the Hall in February for my second "Chicken course for beginners". I have 6 students this time (left my first course students from the Autumn!!) and they all seem to be keen as mustard and a pretty nice bunch of despots.

Facebook Pete

Now I have a facebook "account" but seldom venture on the website as I find it overly complicated and difficult to navigate. This evening my nephew pete sent me a message and I absolutely loved his accompanying photo (above)

He is the most sociable, constantly in motion, big hearted and friendly individual I have ever met

and his photo sums that up perfectly!

Miep Gies

I read with interest that Miep Gies died today aged 100. She was the last surviving Dutchwoman that helped protect the family of Anne Frank when they were in hiding in their tiny apartment bolthole during the war, and was responsible for the safe keeping of Anne's famous diary.
Fourteen years ago, I remember going to the Anne Frank Museum. At the time I was on holiday with a previous partner, which was a bit of a disaster,( I won't go into details), suffice to say this one day I was left to my own devices to do what I wanted.

The museum is tiny and has a tendency of being quite overcrowded with visitors, but I was lucky as I went in the early morning and during a snow storm, so the place was virtually deserted.I clambered up the steep wooden staircases and up into those bleak little back rooms almost alone, and for the briefest of moments,I could feel a huge sense of sadness at what had transpired within the Frank and Van Daan families. It was a sobering and unforgettable experience.
A year or so later I visited the concentration camp Theresienstadt in the Czech Republic and on a quiet sunny afternoon, I remember experiencing a similar feeling of awe and overwhelming sadness. I was following a Jewish family around the "show village" that made up the original camp, when quite suddenly the oldest member of the family, a small elderly man, burst into loud sobbing and wailing. He was slapping the door of a shop and shouting something in Yiddish, and the more distressed he became the more helpless and upset his family looked. It was an awful private moment to have witnessed, and one that brought out the reality of the holocaust to me, much more than any exhibition could ever have done.
I remember catching the eye of what I presumed to be this man's daughter and tried to flash her one of those sympathetic half smiles that is supposed to convey support and sympathy, she returned a thin lipped smile and nod and I hurried on eager to leave them in privacy
Reading about Miep Gies today, brought these memories flooding back

Feed The Birds - don't I just!

With the cold weather continuing I seem to be going through bags of corn like there is no tomorrow, and this morning I realised that I seem to supporting the large population of wild birds as well as all of my charges.
Long lines of blackbirds, a jay, thrush,a couple of phesants and a huge gaggle of field sparrows are all surviving the winter as a direct result of the poultry feed.
What can you do?
I am working this evening and Chris is still away in London,so I want to get the jobs completed early. Poor Susan, remains gravely ill in the shed. She is now off her feet, so I have made her a comfortable nest out of straw, so that she can die in peace iand in warmth

Fags

Chris has gone to London for a couple of days, which may not be a bad thing as he is finding it incredibly difficult to cope with every day home "irritations" when withdrawing from the dreaded nicotine drug!
His battle with cigarettes is an ongoing one and is one that is complicated by intermittent fags (to my American reader Fag in the UK is a cigarette!!!) and intermittent nicotine patches!Subsequently he has rushes of cravings and surges of temper, which doesn't make for harmonious living for him AND for me.
I wish I could help him give up the dreaded weed for good, but I can't, suffice to say, I think I had better keep schtum........and perhaps agree to him buying a pipe!

Faye Dunaway RIP

I woke up this morning, not to the promised "thaw" that we were all wishing for,, but to a new moderate fall of snow. The view from the cottage (above) remains white, icy and quite beautiful, but I am afraid the beauty of the snow has long since left me, literally quite cold .
I am tired of posting about the weather, but what can I do when it dominates the lives of out little band of characters at home?
Faye Dunaway died today.....Not the Faye Dunaway of course (though to be fair the real actress does resemble a corpse in most of her more recent films) I am referring to one of my old hybrids, a skinny old amber rock that I found quite flat and frozen in her hen house this morning. Halleh the sex starved duck may well have been responsible for her death (the flat nature of the corpse my indicate that he had given her a good seeing to) but I am hoping (and I really believe) that the cold, coupled with the fact she was well past her prime, was the real cause of death.

Old Stanley watching me clean out his coop this morning with my oldest hen, Beatrice

Nora keeping the cold at bay with some bananas donated from Joanne, one of my egg customers

Lizzy,Jane and Kitty

The four turkey poults seem to be doing ok in the adverse weather, and all six turkeys have survived their brush with the dreaded "Blackhead" which is something of a miracle. Boris is accepting all of the youngsters including the one slate poult stag who remains rather shy, and I am hoping that the three brown females will provide him with a good natured breeding group.
The girls are robust, friendly and well used to being handled, and with the deep dark eyes so typical of the adult, they are, to me,quite beautiful. I have named them Lizzy,Jane and Kitty.
The young male will be "swapped" for a garden shed, by a guy from the village who has a lone female!
The sky is pale and almost translucent today, and already this afternoon it has started to snow, albeit very gently. We are all getting sick of the snow here, one neighbour, Ann, fell in the lane the day before yesterday and badly broke her arm. I took some eggs up to her yesterday...thought It was more useful than a get well card!
Off now to feed the pigs and to put the turkeys in, I have left Chris sitting on the couch wearing his scarf watching Went the Day Well? (1942)

Isn't everyone just a little bizarre?

I have a theory that when were are alone, all of us can be, well, just a little odd!
Now I am not speaking "serial killer" here, I am actually referring to those private little moments of "madness" we all indulge in from time to time.
Today was a case in point.
I took all four dogs out for their walk this morning and for a change I walked them down the snow filled bridlepath called Gypsy lane. The sides of the path are screened by trees and hedges and I had walked well over a mile before I had to stop in order for George to get his head out of a large rabbit hole.
As I stood waiting I looked into the hedge and there balanced neatly in the Ivy on a tree was a glowing ten pence piece!..
Weird? well yes it was, because in actual fact I was me that placed the coin in the tree way back in 2006.
Gawd knows just why I had done it. I remember finding a coin in my pocket, and I remember thinking It would be a grand Idea to secrete it on a tree but on reflection I cannot, for the life of me, remember my actual motivation for doing so!
I mean, why on earth,does a middle aged man, go out of his way to jam a ten pence piece in a tree?
Does anyone else do similar bizarre things?
answers on a postcard....