Open allotment day, pig and gosling news

Some of the friends and helpers at my First Allotment open 2008

Open Allotment day
At the Trelawnyd Church Glebe at
Bwythyn-y-Llan, Cwm Road
1pm onwards on August 1st
Admission £1.50

(proceeds to Trelawnyd Church funds)
(tea and homemade cake included)
Vegetable produce
hens,turkeys,ducks,
Stalls, allotment tours

The above is the rough template for my poster for this year's open allotment day. We have held an open day for the past two years and each time it has been well supported by villagers and friends and family alike. The money raised goes to the Church, but more importantly the whole day fosters good relationships and it, I am reliably informed, an old fashioned and enjoyable afternoon out.

This year I am already conscripting family and friends as volunteers for the day. Chris and my sister will be manning the most popular cake and tea stall (admission gets each person a cuppa and a home made cake). My aunt Judy and her sister Bridget have been "bullied" into helping them whilst my elder sister ( and hopefully my sister in law and Brother) will be manning the gate and produce stall.

Friend Geoff hopefully will be all practical and helping me set up the tents, tables chairs and bunting and already I have had kind offers of cake and scone making from some of the ladies of the village.This week I will ask for a few more cake making volunteers and already neighbours Arfon and Della have kindly potted up plants to be sold on the produce stall. People are very kind

When I called down to my aunt's to ask her to help she had some good news for me. Recently she had visited her sister Bridget who lives near Peterbrough and Bridget took her for a day out at Hammerton Animal park , where they visited my old pigs Gladys and Nora! I was made up to hear that the two girls are doing very well indeed....it's a very small world sometimes isnt it?

I am feeling rather spaced today...no sleep after night shift....off now for another cup of coffee, and another surreptitious peek into the incubator. The goslings are starting their pipping, and a few days early the eggs are starting to crack!

Jet lag and thin sausages

Chris tried not to succumb to jet lag but gave up the ghost yesterday evening and has slept heavily throughout the night. I gave him a lie in, walked the dogs then made him breakfast in bed.
When he has travelled, Chris has a tendency to obsess slightly about food he has enjoyed in the country has just left. Apparently he loved breakfast sausages, eggs and fried potatoes in Canada ( Canadian readers please let me know if this is a "national" dish)..so left instructions for us to recreate this feast today.
I could be arsed sorting out potatoes, and Chris was too tired to worry about it, he shovelled down his breakfast and with a happy George curled up next to him has returned to a jet lagged sleep.
It's nice to be back to normal

Yesterday I constructed two magpie-proof chick enclosures. Kate Winslett and Chick Constance is installed in one and Lilly and her three chicks now have the other (above). I always marvel at the robust nature of these little scraps of fluff . I always think that they look like dandelion seed balls balanced on the top of a couple of pipe cleaners and their ability to leap on top of their mothers never fails to impress me.

The goose eggs are due for hatching in 3 or 4 days time, and the shed is all ready for them if I am lucky enough to have some goslings. I have no experience of hatching out geese but I suspect that they will be as tough as ducklings are when very young. Only baby turkeys are delicate and often sickly after hatching.

I am working nights tonight,so both of us will be mooching around doing nothing special- it sounds like a normal Sunday to me.

DSTV Fireman - funny commercial

thanks to Gill for this one.......

In fear of Children

I have been informed that I am pretty good when dealing with children. I cannot quite see this myself as it seems my contact with kids of any age is extremely limited, but I will concede that when I do talk with a child I do so without patronising or condescension.
It is clear to me, that in this modern age, there is a generalised and insidious fear of children. Now of course what I actually mean is that there is a unspoken fear of other peoples' children in today's world of stranger danger and risk assessments.The new unwritten law is that Children, especially ones that you do not know have to be ignored in fear that anyone would think that ulterior motives are afoot!
It is a sad state of affairs.
I was only thinking about this a day or so ago. I was walking the dogs in the village as the school children were leaving the village school. One little boy of around 8 was walking back home alone ( gawd how many times does this happen any more?) Now I know him to say hello to as he and his parents have visited the allotment for eggs and I always have found him a bright little boy with an eager and enquiring mind. He called out a polite hello then asked where Maddie was. I stopped to tell him our sad news, but all the time I was chatting I felt uncomfortable that how this perfectly normal conversation may be viewed by say other parents or passing drivers. Would they see my behaviour as "inappropriate" especially as I was not a family friend or indeed a relative?.
This overwhelming "worry" of being seen in the wrong light does a disservice to children. It isolates them from normal interaction with adults and creates an imbalance as those adults that they don't know, literally do fear them.
In today's world Children are only brought up by parents. In my day adults generally were trusted to do the right thing by children. You had non biological aunts and uncles that you minded and trusted and the treat of stranger danger, although present, was never overwhelming and restrictive.
My elder sister was on holiday once, I think it was in Portugal, and she and numerous other people on the beach noticed a woman who was a little "lax" at caring for her small toddler. At times this child seemed cold and distressed, and despite the general consensus that this was not acceptable, the population of the beach seemed to be paralysed into any action. Again this unwritten rule that children must not be approached, frightened people into indecision.
In the end, my sister, who is a forceful character scooped the child up,warmed and consoled her and gave the mother a bit of a "talking to", but this directness and community action is sadly lacking in all areas of our lives.

Perhaps the pendulum will swing back to a more relaxed age. But I cannot see that happening.
I would like to think that the generic "we" will mean a more community "we" rather than this modern day nuclear family "we" that pervades everything nowadays

Smile

The images on the internet never fail to amuse me ( I found these in a two minute troll!......however the above family photo does worry me just a little...but hey ho

I am tired of bad news, dead animals and predators........ and am in need of a good belly laugh.

Not quite the desired humour level here...I need a good belly laugh me thinks

Pet hates

Well it starts today.
Media hype; an excuse to drink to excess in cheap Wetherspoon pubs, the usual disappointment when England gets kicked out of the quarter finals and white van men from all over the country indulging in some pointless male bonding.......
Yeap the bloody world cup kicks off yet again.
Already those naff plastic Flags of St George can be heard rattling noisily on top of a huge selection of tatty vans and cars and although here in Wales, I think the numbers are thankfully lower than they would be in say Sheffield. my opinion of them and the competition itself remains pretty low.
The blue collar culture of football fanaticism is something that has always baffled me. I cannot think of anything worse than being trapped in a testosterone filled pub or front room with a hoard of loud drunks and a plasma screen tv.
I just don't do tribal
I cannot see the appeal.
My best friend Mike is a big footie fan, and the environment I have just described, he adores with a passion. I did go to a football match with him once over at Leppings Lane in Hillsborough, and found the die hard fans and crowds just a little intimidating....Having said this we did used to go the Ice hockey and basket ball matches in the early late 1990s and I yelled my support with the best of them.
What is it about football that turns me into Margot Ledbetter I wonder?
Who knows?....it is a question that I dont fancy thinking about at 7.15 am after an early morning dog walk.......in a couple of weeks time the whole World cup will be over ( probably earlier for the English team if past exploits have any indication) and those bloody awful cheapo flags will be consigned to land fill

The morning news is that Kitty one of the American turkeys has met her end hidden away in a far flung nest within the hawthorn bushes.
Last night she went missing, and I suspected that she had taken herself off to a new nest in the hedgerows. Despite a long search there was no sign of her, so I was not surprised when Albert pointed out a large pile of brown feathers at the bottom of the field

we followed the feathers out through the badger run (the badgers have a clearly defined trail leading through the hedge and across the lane into the fields beyond) and what ever had taken Kitty had carried the heavy bird up and out of my field and away. Whether it was a fox or a badger who knows, but it is unfortunate that the stupid bird hid herself away.

She was not the only victim in the night. Something has dug out the baby rabbits from their shallow burrow from beneath the parsnips......

A surprise trip to the vets and mother love

It's been a funny old day.
I was due to attend a study day at work that covered health and safety issues as well as a resuscitation update, but found out when I arrived at work ( all clean and tidy I have you all know) that half the day had been cancelled.
The dogs had gone to our neighbours for the day, and as I was all smart and human looking, I decided to take a drive and complete all those outstanding jobs that I had let slide.
I went up to the feed wholesalers to buy chick crumbs.The owner, Helen, seemed to be that surprised to see me so smart that she asked me if I was going to church or as she wryly added "court!"
I then delivered some posters advertising the village Flower Show as well as handing out others publicizing the allotment open on August the first and my next proposed "Chicken keeping for beginners course"
After that, I called at the stone masons to have Maddie's gravestone engraved, then on impulse I called into a local vet surgery to see what they had to offer the dogs and Albert.
The surgery I had picked is small and run by only one vet. The practice looked clean and tidy and the practice nurse, who looked remarkably like Nicole Kidman from Dead Calm , was all pert and friendly. Rather proudly, she informed me that she was a trained dog psychologist and we chatted at length about the recent spat between William and George, Of course I felt comfortable registering the dogs and Albert with her.....after all you don't meet a movie star every day.

When I left, I literally bumped into a woman coming through the gate and would you believe it. she was carrying an elderly black Scottie that was the spit of Maddie. The suddenness of the situation took me completely unawares and as I stopped to say "hello" my eyes promptly filled with tears. The woman was very kind, clearly she could see I was upset but kept the conversation light as she described her pet's eyesight problems and personality. Her bitch was called Lassie (of all things) and she was 11 and as I reached out to touch her head, the dog ducked away exactly the same as Maddie would have done. The experience wrenched my guts out
I cried all the way back to the hospital when I left them.
I guess it had to come. Anyhow things are fine now. I completed my resuscitation study day (enrolling the course leader on my chicken course too) then came home to check on Lilly and Kate Winslet's new chicks.
Compared with the hybrid mothers I have had, the two buffs are incredibly more protective over their babies. So much so, that I only just managed to snap a couple of "distant" shots of them all before the growling got all a bit much.

Chris is still in Canada and is due back on Saturday..it's been a long week without him around

After the jobs are done and the animals are settled for the night I aim to sit down and watch the dvd HAPPY ENDINGS.

Lawrence of my labia

Humm where shall I begin?
Ok lets concentrate on the good bits:

1. Liza Minnelli's legs..which are fabulous and can still dance with the best of them (don't dare look at her mummified face though)
2. A funny and oh so non PC clip of a pair of bouncing boobies
3 A 3 minute , pithy and rather amusing interaction about motherhood between Miranda and a rapidly inebriated Charlotte.

...and that....I am afraid is it!

Sex and the City 2 centres it target neuroses away from the single girls' love and career lives and directly directs its designer attention to marriage, motherhood (avec nannies of course) and ageing.....it also unwisely centres most of the action away from New York, takes an ugly side swipe at the traditional Muslim lifestyle and embarrassingly ends up with the girls escaping the clutches of some irate Arabic men by wearing the hijab.

The movie is a bit of a mess .

Now this is a shame, for hidden away amid the dross, the sparkling fairytale that was the tv Sex and The City could just be seen lurking underneath the surface of this movie. SATC2 lacks its old charm! it also lacks Carrie's trademark squealing ( we only hear it once!), the razor sharp breakfast table banter and Miranda's hidden warmth.....and strangely enough it is left to Charlotte (Kristin Davis) to nab the best acting honours, when she has a breakdown when trying to hard to be the ideal Stepford wife.

.....at least all the girls looked their ages.....................SATC3?.......please set it back in New York, give it more pathos and pace,include steve,Magna and a pair of manola Blahniks and perhaps ( and only perhaps) I will give it one last chance
6/10
ps. this blog's title refers to Samantha's "best " line........... sigh