It's been a week
since we met up;;;I have missed him
Bless ...hated this song........
but I am still obsessed!!!!!.....
cute cute cute
Dog love in
 |
| The Burtons on the way to the beach |
I am cooking Leo a Halloween dinner tonight, he has his outfit all sorted out!
Operation Dog Snot Removal
Too much to do...... too little time.......
I am just about to wipe a thoughtful skid mark from the kitchen floor and a disemboweled field mouse needs shifting from it's last resting place from the kitchen top.
True to form it's raining........
more muddy footprints all over the house before our visitors arrive
Big Breaths John....Big Breaths
I am just about to wipe a thoughtful skid mark from the kitchen floor and a disemboweled field mouse needs shifting from it's last resting place from the kitchen top.
True to form it's raining........
more muddy footprints all over the house before our visitors arrive
Big Breaths John....Big Breaths
Visitors and culling
Tomorrow Chris' Brother Jonathan, wife Charlotte and nephew Leo arrive. in Trelawnyd
They live way down in Broadstairs in Kent and in the ten years ( to the day!) that me and Chris have been together, this is their first visit to our home all together ( remember Leo visited earlier in the year!) As you can imagine it is an important visit for us.
Yesterday I have shampooed the dog smell out of the carpets,wiped the dog snot from the windows and bought fresh flowers and a Halloween pumpkin for the house.
Today I will give the cottage a general scrub, and will try and tidy up the garden in preparation and early this morning I have put together a hamper for Jon and Charlotte to take home with them.
In the hamper I have put my own fresh produce (leeks, artichoke hearts,pumpkin,onions shallots and sprouts) I then added my own jars of picked onions and pickled spicy beetroot and topped it all off with six newly laid eggs, some donated green chutney from old Mrs Jones and some bought honey from Eirlys' farm.
Visitors need to be fed well!
Yesterday, the sick ghost hen fell over when out for a drink and was unable to get up again. Luckily I found her quickly and knew there was nothing more I could do , so in the field and with a heavy heart I sat and stroked her for a short while before putting her out of her misery. She was the only the second hen I have culled myself since Bob the retired poultry keeper showed me how to dispatch my young cockerels last year, and no matter how necessary the job, I really do hate doing it.
Three juvenile cockerels need culling next week and I think I will ask Bob to come and help me again with the job.......As I sat on the grass in the field with a dead fat hen on my lap I realised that I will never make a proper farmer!
I am just too soft
They live way down in Broadstairs in Kent and in the ten years ( to the day!) that me and Chris have been together, this is their first visit to our home all together ( remember Leo visited earlier in the year!) As you can imagine it is an important visit for us.
Yesterday I have shampooed the dog smell out of the carpets,wiped the dog snot from the windows and bought fresh flowers and a Halloween pumpkin for the house.
Today I will give the cottage a general scrub, and will try and tidy up the garden in preparation and early this morning I have put together a hamper for Jon and Charlotte to take home with them.
Visitors need to be fed well!
Yesterday, the sick ghost hen fell over when out for a drink and was unable to get up again. Luckily I found her quickly and knew there was nothing more I could do , so in the field and with a heavy heart I sat and stroked her for a short while before putting her out of her misery. She was the only the second hen I have culled myself since Bob the retired poultry keeper showed me how to dispatch my young cockerels last year, and no matter how necessary the job, I really do hate doing it.
Three juvenile cockerels need culling next week and I think I will ask Bob to come and help me again with the job.......As I sat on the grass in the field with a dead fat hen on my lap I realised that I will never make a proper farmer!
I am just too soft
Friends
I was moaning just a little that my two local friends are "off the radar" so to speak after reading my blog
I received a very funny email from my friend Nige ( who lives 50 miles or so away)
This is part of it
Very Funny
I received a very funny email from my friend Nige ( who lives 50 miles or so away)
This is part of it
Very Funny
But you know, of course, that you always have someone to call/e-maillol
if you need a chat/rant.
Here's my assessment of your options:
Nuala = stress-free long-distance telephonic love-in
Mike = vicariously heterosexual discourse
Bel = creative firestorm with a touch of gender outrage!
Me = post-apocalyptic glitter, with a fricassee of narcissism
Hey, I think you've got a nice mix there!
Family
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| From left to right My Brother Andrew, twin sister on My mother's knee, unknown old lady, Granny Gray, Auntie Judy wit Stuart, Auntie Margaret with Ian, Uncle Bert, My Grandfather ( I don't remember him), my handsome father and a rather fat ME I "found" this on facebook tonight |
My New Best Friend and Winter's bone
People that know me, will know that the latest gadgets leave me somewhat cold...I have my laptop and my battered solar powered radio and thats about it.............even our tv is a supermarket buy with a 12" screen!, so I was quite intrigued when Chris presented me with his old ipod yesterday!
He has a new , all singing, all dancing, even-makes-the-tea, ipad thingummy, of which he is extremely proud,so I have taken another step towards the 21st Century and have bought my first itune download......ok it doesn't take much guessing which single I bought? yep Mr Cardle.......but I put the whole experience down to experience!
My new ipod will be a constant new friend me thinks.....especially as my two main friends in North Wales have disappeared somewhat off the radar for very different reasons!
Anyhow, today, my first lesson ( after switching the bloody thing on) was to learn how to download! ( or is it upload?) anyway....after organising Mr. Cardle I ventured into the free podcast service from the BBC! FANTASTIC! ...so on a rather wet and uninteresting walk I listened to the sweet tones of Kirsty Young interviewing Jonney Vagas in Desert Island Discs followed by a compilation of Woman's Hour and The Archers......
It was lovely.......
and Nige, don't worry I will make an effort and keep the little scrap of miracles clean and dry!!!
I heard through the Internet grapevine that the movie Winter's Bone was well worth the price of a pint of lager...so tonight I braved the elements and popped down to the Scala to join eight other hardy souls in watching this slice of "Ozark dirt poor realism".
It's an depressing tale....but is an interesting one. Poverty stricken Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence ) is just seventeen but single handedly is looking after her two younger siblings and her mentally ill mother. Her father has disappeared before a court appearance and has put the family shack up as a bail bond, so in order to save the family home, Ree has to face the local criminal underclass in an effort to find out what has actually happened.
Yes it sounds all very Deliverance doesn't it?,the sense of dread, oppression and uneasy menace does in fact remind me of the 1972 Boorman film, and Winter's Bone on occasion crawls towards every stereotype we know about Hillbillies in the cinema........the rubbish strewn farms, the happy slappy menfolk and the women showing that Silence of the Lambs " shortness of bone".......but thankfully director Debra Granik focuses the films gaze upon the teenage Ree, and her hard-as-nails, unwavering sense of what is right for her family. Ree, unlike the drug riddled and oppressed mountain men she faces, is a mother tiger, frightened but fiercely passionate about saving her kin. With the reluctant help of her violent and frightening uncle "Teardrop" ( the chilling John Hawkes ) she eventually finds out the truth about her father in an awfully tense and almost unwatchable climax and it is Lawrence's amazing performance that is key to Winter's Bone's success. Without her, the film could have teetered down the uncomfortable road of a hic thriller , but with her powerfully centred Ree, we see a character that is both strong and moral, warm and intelligent. She is a mother personified and is never anything less than real. Lawrence never softens her characterization too much, she keeps the audience directly behind her at all times and I suspect she will be nominated for an Oscar ( still hot on the heels of the cracking performance of Melissa Leo in the similar Frozen River
8/10
I would be fascinated to hear what my American Bloggers think about this movie
It's an depressing tale....but is an interesting one. Poverty stricken Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence ) is just seventeen but single handedly is looking after her two younger siblings and her mentally ill mother. Her father has disappeared before a court appearance and has put the family shack up as a bail bond, so in order to save the family home, Ree has to face the local criminal underclass in an effort to find out what has actually happened.
Yes it sounds all very Deliverance doesn't it?,the sense of dread, oppression and uneasy menace does in fact remind me of the 1972 Boorman film, and Winter's Bone on occasion crawls towards every stereotype we know about Hillbillies in the cinema........the rubbish strewn farms, the happy slappy menfolk and the women showing that Silence of the Lambs " shortness of bone".......but thankfully director Debra Granik focuses the films gaze upon the teenage Ree, and her hard-as-nails, unwavering sense of what is right for her family. Ree, unlike the drug riddled and oppressed mountain men she faces, is a mother tiger, frightened but fiercely passionate about saving her kin. With the reluctant help of her violent and frightening uncle "Teardrop" ( the chilling John Hawkes ) she eventually finds out the truth about her father in an awfully tense and almost unwatchable climax and it is Lawrence's amazing performance that is key to Winter's Bone's success. Without her, the film could have teetered down the uncomfortable road of a hic thriller , but with her powerfully centred Ree, we see a character that is both strong and moral, warm and intelligent. She is a mother personified and is never anything less than real. Lawrence never softens her characterization too much, she keeps the audience directly behind her at all times and I suspect she will be nominated for an Oscar ( still hot on the heels of the cracking performance of Melissa Leo in the similar Frozen River
8/10
I would be fascinated to hear what my American Bloggers think about this movie
Update Monday
It is a case of the calm before the storm. Today looks as though it is going to be a beautiful day. The weather is set to change tomorrow for the entire week (surprise fu*cking surprise!), so I have had to get cracking with essential dry day jobs. Between 8am and 2pm I have cleaned out the majority of the hen houses, the shed, the quail cage and the outside store room. The dogs have had a four mile walk (they didn't have a proper walk yesterday due to all the Sainsbury's shenanigans) and I have just sat down with my first (yes first!) coffee of the day
I remember I promised to give you all an update on the characters of the field (charity work, weather moaning and lyrical blogging about Matt "be still my beating heart" Cardle seem to have taken centre stage somewhat, so with coffee up in hand here is a brief run down of the news.
Red (bottom left) and his five quail hatchlings have now all feathered up nicely in the shed., a few more weeks before they are set up in their own miniature enclosure on the field, the youngsters are growing beautifully and strangely for tiny birds are the most chilled out and calm animals I have ever looked after ( with the exception of Boris)
The runner ducklings (below) are quite another story..it took me an absolute age to creep up on the seven nutcases when they were sunbathing this afternoon....and still the photograph is not too clear. Although I can hear quacking, I still cannot ascertain exactly where the noise is coming from amid the chaos, so sexing the little buggers is difficult .....I need to get going on this as Dan in Huddersfield is ready for his babies to be set up in his garden........"patience grasshopper....patience"
I photographed Gloria when she was half asleep in the sun this morning. For most of the year she has been moulting, and has resembled a somewhat shopworn old tart, but now just before winter, she has feathered up and looks quite beautiful in her virginal white.
One girl is already showing the signs of cardiac failure ( breathless with an exercise tolerance of say ten steps!) but they have survived longer that I have expected given their genetic make up, and that fact gives me so much pleasure, I couldn't tell you. Hopefully they will make it through their first winter.
And finally Boris!..... after his sexual over exertion and collapse of the summer, he has bounced back slowly after more TLC than I care to admit . I have made sure that he has corn every night when he is put to bed and the extra rations have allowed the old boy to pile on the weight he lost so quickly when he was ill.
This morning he sat with me for a few minutes when I tried to photograph him and Gloria, and snorted loudly in my ear like a randy horse.....he's a real sweetie!
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