Morning Update for Beatrice Fickle

Ok Mid Western Beatrice Fickle has been emailing again, I have been remiss and have not given her an update on the field population..so while I wait for the dog groomer to turn up here is a quick snapshot of this mornings going on......
I am being a giddy kipper later....I am off to the cinema for a matinee performance of the indi movie  Submarine

No 21 being a bit challenging this morning

No 12, who is now a weighty weaner!

The bantam cockerel Eric facing off old Stanley as peanut looks on

Albert stalking the quail

CJ and Badger now an inseparable couple

Winnie Jo and Russel, who is resting a swollen knee, which is probably an arthritic problem..he is being treated with cod liver oil soaked bread



For the Weaver of Grass

The View of my field from the Graveyard wall
One villager said that the collection of hen coops looked like a small Ukrainian hamlet

Weaver of Grass left a somewhat horrified message on this morning's post about the proximity of a graveyard so close to the field and seemed terrified at the prospect of me sitting out at night so close to a load of graves!
I have never felt worried about St Michael's Graveyard, it has never frightened me , even in the pitch black when the footsteps of a rabbit can be amplified by the imagination to sound like the thump thump of some unseen monster!
I find the whole place peaceful and rather welcoming ( ok now I am sounding just a little weird) so if you ever passing Weaver, come a sit with me for a while, I'll make you a coffee and you can watch the chickens go to bed in the shadow of a cemetery

Badger Watch

I am buggered!!!
I stayed up last night to see if I could catch a glimpse of the badgers that have been threatening the hens over the past few weeks, and seeing that they don't usually appear until the witching hour I kept myself busy with the blog and an old Humphrey Bogart Movie on TCM until 1am and then sneaked out into the moonlight to see what was going on.
I took Constance with me as she has the muscle and we sat quietly together in the shadow of the Church wall waiting to see if the badgers would appear.
After an age and from the bottom of the field near to the pig pen they arrived and for wild animals I thought they were extraordinary loud and heavy footed.
Not two or three animals lumbered out of the gloom, but four; and grumbling like old men on the way back from the pub, they bickered and snorted their way up the field, rooting through the grass and sniffing at the coops as they did so.
Badgers are indeed impressive animals to watch in the wild and it didn't take me long to realise just how powerful they are as not seventy feet from where we sat, I watched one aggressively butt his companion with his head with a loud "twack"
Leading the troupe was a huge badger  and I was convinced it was the one that I had kicked the other night when Jesus had copped it and it was him ( or her) that checked the remaining coops with several loud sniffs as the group made their way through the field.
Despite the trouble I have experienced with them, I could not help to admire the sheer beauty of these strange piggy animals very much in a similar way than I did with the pair of foxes that visited the field last year.
The badger group walked up to the broody box and would come no further. I think they sensed that Constance and I was there  but could not quite work out just where we where.( Constance hardly battered an eyelid at ttheir activity by the way!)
Two of them had a good sniff at the box which now housed the bantams but then ambled away after deciding that attacking it was a fruitless endeavour ( the box is now housed inside an impregnable dog crate!)

A photo of a badger taken at my friend Geoff's house in the village way back in 2008

We watched them bumbling around until well after 2.30am and by that time they had left the field and were galloping around our neighbours' garden before trotting off into the sheep fields.
I am paying for lack of sleep now.... I need to bright eyed this morning as I am "interviewing" local powerhouse Audrey Jones ( who at 85 is still a formidable farmer's wife) for the sister blog....and I need to be on my toes
so I think I will try and have 40 winks......fat chance!

Dogs and Cars

Earlier I took Chris up to the A55 ( the main duel carriageway out of North Wales) so that he could be picked up by a minibus filled to bursting with a load of PhDs. They are all off to a five star hotel in Belfast for a week's conference and looked like for want of a better word, a knackered looking hen group out on  a mucky weekend.
I waved them off, loaded the car up with dogs and went off to do jobs.

William and Constance
aka Richard Madley and Judy Finnigan

It is a funny phenomenon, but I have always been entertained by the fact that all dogs generally LOVE car journeys.
I am strict with our four, and wont have any silly bouncing around the back of the car on any journey, so -from when they were puppies, they were always taken out daily, to get them used to the expected etiquette of "sit and be quiet" .

Constance being three and a half when she arrived had no such training, and it was a particular joy watching her first reaction to the simple experience of sitting in the back seat of a citroen berlingo.
Constance was neither frightened or excited at first. She was a little non plussed at being lifted up into the car ( at 25 kilos its not an easy job) but after she watched the relaxed reaction of the other dogs, she soon settled down, that was until we actually drove off....

Even today, every time we leave the drive, her little piggy eyes open just that little wider than normal with silent excitement and in her chosen position between the driver and passenger seat, she will watch the world with the look of a slightly shopworn Robert Mitchum. but a Mitchum with a bit of a fire in her eyes.
Every pedestrian will be scrutinised carefully every shop will be noted, and she, like William ,absolutely adores a supermarket car park as if they were visiting a place of 1000 pleasures!  They are places where literally hundreds of people can be watched with the precision and diligence of a FBI surveillance team on duty and all from the comfort of a comfortable back seat!.

Dogs are  so easily pleased.........that is the joy of them as pets 

and I never fail to smile when all four  line up patiently, noses against the car doors, waiting to go out on a five minute journey that you and I would think nothing about at all

we could learn a great deal about being happy with our lot from dogs

Company (CJ and Badger)

Loneliness is the most dreadful of diseases
Occasionally you will meet someone who just likes to talk and talk and talk...it's as though they have saved up all of their weekly unused conversations and let them pour out of themselves like water out of a garden hose.
You want to get away, there is always 101 things to do....but for someone like me, who has never really felt the pain of loneliness, it's prudent to stop and think a little more before you make your excuses and hurry on to something easier or more necessary.

I see lonely people at work.Those that are isolated by grief, finance,depression,apathy and fate.....and to bloody well  cap it all they are ill too....being ill AND lonely.....thats a bum steer if ever I saw one.

Yesterday I watched one of my co workers. I don't know her that well, we say hello in a kind of businesslike way and I make her laugh on occasion but that's as far as our relationship goes...she gets on with work and I guess so do I.... anyway as I was writing my notes... I watched her interaction with an elderly lady who was obviously very frightened with her condition. The patient was also alone in the world, having no documented next of kin or even a "person to be contacted in an emergency"., and  during visiting, when all the other patients had their relatives around them, I noticed that the nurse almost instinctively became more attentive and physical with her patient, cupping her face with her hand after she arranged her CVP lines and holding her hand as she administered her antibiotics.
Before I finished my shift I told the nurse that I liked the way she interacted with her patient and she summed things up nicely by saying with a bit of a sad smile "It's crap being by yourself..especially  in this fucking place!"

I have always been lucky when It comes to loneliness....I have never suffered it's destructive, gnawing pain. Some of that , I think comes from being a twin.....as a child there is always some other person there for you..........the rest I think comes from the fact I have always been lucky enough to be able to cultivate friends as well as being able to enjoy my own company....and this in turn has got me to thinking about how animals, so often, need that special contact of another warm body to keep them company.

Yesterday I put two orphans together. CJ the gosling and the chick that survived the badger attack (who I have now nicknamed Badger) now share the back garden shed.
After a bit of an initial squabbling match, both birds have settled down and for once in their short lives now have a constant companion in each other. CJ being larger and more confident has a tendency to bully the hen chick just a little but Badger seems oblivious to the odd prod now that a real, warm and animated friend has appeared on the scene. Last night at dusk I checked on the two of them. Badger had started to roost on top of a wicker basket in the corner of the shed, and right up with him was CJ.

Like that old lady on ITU yesterday, these little scraps of life, just needed a warm body to touch base with...............

Sometimes you just need to be inspired

I can't be arsed telling you the story about last night's badger attack ( 2 badgers versus 1 cockerel)
lets have a bit of cinematic chest beating instead!

CJ arrives

CJ looking at his new shed mate with a tiny bit of trepidation

Now before Tom threatens me with strangulation with my own poultry wire...this bird orientated blog entry is purely designed to resassure the surrogate father of a four week old gosling that his "baby" has arrived safely in his new Welsh home.

I have placed him in the shed under a heat lamp and for company have let Blanche's surviving chick loose with him, which panicked him somewhat as he has only had a pensioner for company since he was found alone in Guildford back garden four weeks ago.

He/she is a real sweetie!

And seeing that it is his 90th birthday , I will leave you with one of Prince Philip's funniest quotes

When asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union, he snapped

“ I would not.!!!.....The bastards murdered half my family”

God Love You Phil



Be ready to ohhhhh and arrrhhhhhh

Couldn't resist