Thank you's

A few thank you's are in order

First I must thank John (murphyfish) and his wife Claire for donating their old chicken coop to the small Ukrainian village that has spring up on my field.

"Poultry Towers" will be a welcome addition , especially given the news that Hazel's old hens are due to be retired here in the next week or so.

It was very kind of John to set up this slightly retro/mock Tudor construction on his day off.....thank you

My second thank you is to the lady from the local store and garage, who called around last night with a huge bin bag of bread for the animals. It was very kind of you to think of their welfare and to obviously go out of your way to drop the food off to me.... thank you

And my final thank you, is to providence for giving me this lousy cold.

I felt so ill last night that I stalked off to bed in the spare room at 9pm, complete with lemsips, cough linctus and a box  of tissues

.......I missed Strictly Come Dancing...How fortunate was that?  Thank you Providence

I don't think that even I could quite have coped with the camp fest that was Russell Grant....
(When I looked at it briefly on i player this morning) I have never seen anything so camp as this since my friend John danced Living la veda Loca  on the dance floor of the Cossack in Sheffield


Still full of cold and working tonight... wish me luck

Christmas Dinner?

I feel vindicated in a sense by the fact that  recent research has proved that Man Flu is a real phenomenon and not a figment of a lily livered male imagination.
With the sun shining (another 27 degrees today!)...I feel rough as the proverbial bear's arse but I have dosed myself up with Beecham's Powders, drank gallons of hot  lemon and have contemplated rubbing my chest with goose grease....so I feel well equipped to face the day.
However not firing on all cylinders has already backfired on me a little this morning as I have been well and truly "goosed" by the new gander, when turning my back on him to let the hens out of their coop.

The new "dumped" geese giving it "large" this morning

He's a big aggressive bugger of a gander, which was probably one of the reasons he and his family have been dumped on me in the first place.....he has a rather nasty bite on him,.... a behaviour that I am not used to dealing with. My geese are such gentle souls.
Christmas dinner, will be goose this year..... me thinks

thanks Hippo!

Three More Beaks To Feed

I went out for a couple of hours this afternoon,
When I returned I parked the car on the field and emptied several sacks of feed into dustbins. When I  turned to drink some coke I noticed the geese walking past.....
one, two, three and four trundled past............then numbers .FIVE, SIX and SEVEN followed!
For those that don't know......I have only four geese!

The three strange geese were all domestic birds, a gander,a goose and what looked like an adolescent bird. They looked healthy enough, a little dirty perhaps, but healthy....and also very hungry.
I looked around. There was no note, no answerphone message, nothing to indicate just why they had been left on the field. The neighbours were not around to witness their arrival, so I came to the conclusion that they were unwanted pets and had been dumped with me!


The first rule of looking after any new animal is to quarantine it from others, so I set them up in Bingley's coop (the turkey) with a run of their own., and by the time I had finished it was practically dark.
I could have done without the hassle today, so fed and watered the geese again and settled them down for the night.
Bingley doubled up with the hens, which upset him somewhat..and. I will figure out a plan of action tomorrow

Passing It On

It's going to be another fine day again today,  I was up extra early and have cleaned out the pig enclosure for an hour and a half before it became too hot. I am full of a cold today, so am not going  to my brother's house. The risk of giving him a virus is just too high.........It feels weird but I feel guilty.....it is as though I am bunking off from work a little by not going spending the day with him.....

Yesterday I set up Chris' new auction buy into one of the sitting room cupboards, and today I moved some of the extra "flotsam" into the other cupboard,some  items that I have not properly looked at for perhaps  a decade.

It's funny, but we all collect a plethora of things over the years.....each item has a memory, a place in our shared past.....each item having no relevance to anyone but us,

Two tiny delicate glasses with finely etched lobsters and fish all round them bought from a Japanese store on 5th Avenue on one of our first holidays to New York;

.....an old wooden box full of photographs;

.....a set of 1930 champagne glasses, a Christmas present from my sister; 

.....three copies of "Virtue's Household Physician";

.....an art deco lady, bought from a Chester art sale

.....a carlton ware lobster bowl full of dried hydrangea flowers from the garden of our last house

.....a soapstone cockerel...a present from Chris' China trip....

I could go on....

When we are dead and gone, these trinkets will be dispersed to the four winds...some will become the new memories of strangers, others will be thrown away, unloved and uncared for....

We never really "own " something do we?

We just care for it for a while................

A Welsh Terrier In a China Shop

Before

We have not bought anything at an antique auction for an absolute age, the last thing purchased was a grandfather clock that used to belong to a close family friend, and buying that was so fraught with excitement that I very nearly wet myself during the bidding!

Today I went to collect a dinner service that Chris had purchased using a commission on line bidding system, The whole lot was 50£..... not bad for a 176 piece "service"  made up of three or four different but very similar Mekin styles...but it has taken an absolute age to sort the bloody thing out from auction house to cottage carpet!

The mixture of styles is of no consequence to us, as a the eclectic collection of plates, tureens and bowls suits us just fine....I will make up one functioning dinner service and ebay the rest......

Now all we have to do is find enough people to have a dinner party with..

hey ho!!!

And after......

A message for Tom

with affection

Joan Cusack at 8.30 is my absolute fav!!!

Rehab Weather

  October is literally minutes away and it's still 70 degrees at 5pm in the afternoon. I have just had a walk around the Graveyard to gauge what kind of trees may need replanting..The Flower Show Committee has offered to replace some of the native saplings that have been lost to some over zealous strimming over the years.All I need to do now, is to locate some healthy specimens and price them up...
It's just another job to do on my growing list 


Mother-in-law , Sorrel has returned to Broadstairs on the 10.04, so the cottage is suddenly quiet and certainly "Downtown Abbey" free
The weather has brought the village to life. and has proved to be an excellent adjunct to the physical rehabilitation of some of the older , frail Trelawnyd folk . I spied Auntie Gladys striding away for the Rhyl bus this morning with her shopping bag perched casually over her arm., she now looks remarkably chipper for a 92 year old who fractured her pelvis only a few months ago and this afternoon, I caught octogenarians   Olwenna Banks- Hughes and Mrs Jones (Pen-y-cefn) laughing away in the street....I watched them for a while as they carefully negotiated Bron Haul with their matching sticks "clacking"musically on the pavement. and wished I had brought out my camera to photograph them....they looked wonderfully valiant .


They breed them tough in Trelawnyd

Jane Eyre

As a kid I remember thinking that Orson Welles' Rochester would never have fallen in love with the insipid, weepy Joan Fontaine in the 1943 version of Jane Eyre.....she was far too bloody wet!

Having said that, I couldn't also quite work out just why Fontaine would have swooned over Welles...
I always thought he looked just a little bug eyed and rather fat.

The latest version of Jane Eyre is a somber affair. It works, primarily because the characterisations of Rochester,Jane and the morally superior St John Rivers are faithful to the novel and the acting by Michael Fassbender,Mia Wasikowska and Jamie Bell is inteligent and carefully judged.

Fassbender is passionate yet not too cruel in his role of the lusty Squire and Wasikowska's plain Jane is just naive enough to be believable yet displays an innate  resilience....a realistic survivor of childhood abuse. she carries the movie effortlessly and is well worth watching..

Not a bag of laughs ( I felt just a little depressed by it all when I walked out of the cinema)..... but it is a worthy film