Just before 5am
Chris is flying up to Glasgow this morning and got picked up by his taxi from a snow strewn main road hours before dawn.
The dogs remained firmly asleep. The three terriers all hiding under the bed eiderdown and Constance in her crate bed in the kitchen but I couldn't get back to sleep, so am presently drinking coffee in the living room whilst watching the snow fall in worrying amounts on the lane
I don't want to be be snowed in today! I am almost out of poultry feed and desperately need to go to the feed shop....and although the snow is only 3-4 inches deep so far , the steepness of the lane just before it joins the main road, means that cars will remain effectively stranded until the lane is cleared!
Anyhow the only good point of dragging myself out of bed at 4.45 is that I saved a young cockerel from freezing to death. As I tried to take Constance out for a pee (she was having none of it) I heard a cockerel call from the field, the call was louder than the usual more muffled ( inside) calls, so I went to investigate and found the youngest of the cockerels ( the one that escaped the cull of last month) crouched forlornly in the snow next to his closed coop. The poor bastard had obviously been late to roost and had been locked out all night.
I picked him up and tucked him head first under my armpit inside my coat to perk him up a little before sliding him into the middle of the ghost hens.....fat hens give off more heat!He should be ok!.............that bloody cockerel is living on borrowed time
I hate bloody snow
ps
Just have to give a big up to Terry, our neighbour and fellow Flower Show committee member, who went out of his way this morning to take me up to the feed shop to stock up on corn and pellets.
A former police driving instructor, he was the ideal person to navigate the minor roads here, which can be treacherous!
A few eggs seemed a small price to pay, for the peace of mind knowing that the animals are now all well fed and insulated against the cold
The dogs remained firmly asleep. The three terriers all hiding under the bed eiderdown and Constance in her crate bed in the kitchen but I couldn't get back to sleep, so am presently drinking coffee in the living room whilst watching the snow fall in worrying amounts on the lane
Anyhow the only good point of dragging myself out of bed at 4.45 is that I saved a young cockerel from freezing to death. As I tried to take Constance out for a pee (she was having none of it) I heard a cockerel call from the field, the call was louder than the usual more muffled ( inside) calls, so I went to investigate and found the youngest of the cockerels ( the one that escaped the cull of last month) crouched forlornly in the snow next to his closed coop. The poor bastard had obviously been late to roost and had been locked out all night.
I picked him up and tucked him head first under my armpit inside my coat to perk him up a little before sliding him into the middle of the ghost hens.....fat hens give off more heat!He should be ok!.............that bloody cockerel is living on borrowed time
I hate bloody snow
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| Terry at the flower show |
Just have to give a big up to Terry, our neighbour and fellow Flower Show committee member, who went out of his way this morning to take me up to the feed shop to stock up on corn and pellets.
A former police driving instructor, he was the ideal person to navigate the minor roads here, which can be treacherous!
A few eggs seemed a small price to pay, for the peace of mind knowing that the animals are now all well fed and insulated against the cold
Bulldog snogs
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| William (sans eyes) Constance and I, getting warm after being out in the garden |
She only seems to come alive when she thinks you are about to treat her with some nice titbit, or ( and more importantly) you are about to cuddle her or kiss her huge foolish fat face!
Constance loves to kiss you back.
It isn't one of those wet sloppy kisses, hounds have a tendency to give humans, no Constance will heave her massive face within a millimetre of your own then slowly and deliberately squash her face against yours as she wheezes like an asthmatic without ventolin.
She seems to take great delight in this oddest of practices
I have mentioned before that her advances feel a little like getting sexually molested by a furry Buster Keaton....but what I didn't say, is that these "kisses" are rather fun and completely pleasurable!
Having her literally "in your face" does have the feeling of being totally enveloped...and is reminiscent of the feeling you used to get when you are cuddled by a parent when you were a child....
Still of the Night
Coincidence is a funny old thing
Last night , when I was locking up the birds I found myself humming a tune that I just knew was from an old Meryl Streep movie from way back in the 1980s. I just couldn't for the life of me remember the movie title, but I kind of recalled the film was a Hickcockian piece about psychiatrists and their patients...
Blow me, when I was having a quick flit into TCM this afternoon...there the movie was the all but forgotten movie Still of the Night!!!
I couldn't find the title theme on its own, but here is the first few minutes of the movie.... enjoy the first minute and a half , the music by John kander, is rather sweet
British Bulldog
So far over 4000 quid has been raised!
see Janet's blog
Mitten demonstration
It was so cold this morning that the dawn air actually hurt the lungs slightly when I took a big breath in.....as I said in the video......thank goodness for my new mittens!
Matt Cardle
He's back on track tonight......Chris caught me smiling at the television................how sad is that?
A horror movie remembered
Well I think I will keep my (MY) Matt Cardle video until later. ( He was very sweet singing Nights in White Satin!Tonight, whilst reading waspish Tom's highly entertaining blog ( http://tomstephenson.blogspot.com/) I was reminded of my fairly brief sojourn into psychiatric nursing way back in the last years of asylum care.
The long dark corridors of a building that dated to 1829 lent themselves more to Hitchcock's Rebecca rather than a "modern" day health care system and the imagination of an inexperienced nurse could literally run riot when on night shift.
One particular shift I remember to this day, I was the only student nurse working nights on a ward called Dunham, which was a 20 bedded ward for, what was termed then, as the Elderly Mentally Infirm. I worked alongside an elderly senior enrolled nurse or greenies as they were affectionately called ( because of their green uniforms), and the night flew by in a flurry of toileting, bed changes and over tired attempts at reality orientation.
I must take a moment to describe the ward.Twenty foot ceilings and two inch thick doors that were locked at night with cathedral sized keys. Pealing blue paint, ancient wood block flooring and wrought iron radiators there were permanently set on "hot"At night the ward looked more creepy than the motel in Psycho!
This one night, at around 1am, the trained nurse and I was sat in the ward office which over looked the sleeping patients. Unexpectedly the phone rang and it was the hospital chief nurse who said in a clipped and somewhat breathless order " Go around your ward and ensure all of the doors are locked do it RIGHT now" before hanging up
We were terrified! As a fairly fit 22 year old male I got the job of racing around the Gothic darkness double checking that we were secure and safe...and boy was my hands shaking when I got to the final connecting door to the main asylum corridor, for in the distance I could hear shouting, shrieking and the sound of breaking glass!!
The enrolled nurse and I then stood in the darkened office listening to more shouts, bangs , crashes and screaming.....and I practically wet myself when the sound of running feet could be heard thundering up and down the central corridor only feet from where we stood.
My imagination ran riot , and if I could have resigned my nursing career there and then I honestly would have done, but like the true Brits that we were.....we sat there in silence, praying for the end to be merciful quick!
The noises finally diminished somewhat and feeling brave I walked to the office window and opened the huge out-of-date floral curtains in a flourish so I could look out on the main hospital building.
There standing not two feet from the window, and barely illuminated by the office lamp was a pale starring face of a man.
I remember everything stopped for a moment.
I said something rather manly like "eeekk!"
and the enrolled nurse bellowed "Jesus Christ Almighty" before the man turned slowly away into the dark.
I have NEVER been so frightened in my life and I can honestly say that I all but wet myself there and then on the ancient parquet floor...
As it turned out, the man was high on a cocktail of drugs and alcohol and had been flinging milk bottles at staff from the rooftops . (Like you do) after being refused night sedation from the neighbouring A & E department.
...and to this day, I still cannot cope with a sudden face at a window...or saying that.....I hate horror films to boot
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