Sex and Violence

Gawd, I have had enough of sex and violence, and it's only 8.30 am on a Monday Morning.!

I was feeding the pigs first thing and noticed that Margie (aka no 21) was acting just a little weird.

While no 12 sat patiently waiting for his breakfast, she ran around their enclosure shaking a grotty bundle in her mouth like a cat with a mouse.

On closer inspection , the "bundle" was the masticated remains of a Plymouth Rock which went missing yesterday morning.Another victim of the steely eyed sow who has a taste for chicken flesh me thinks

I couldn't worry too much about the chicken killer, in some ways the death of the Plymouth was just an example of Darwinian theory as she had been unwell for a while....and therefore unable to escape sharp little piggy teeth..... no I had bigger issues to sort out this morning

The new alpha male  gander remains a bit of a handful. Desperate to protect his little flock, and obviously upset at being "dumped"  in new surroundings , he continues to challenge everything and anything on the field.

I have dealt with aggressive male animals before, and it is important to be dominant with them without being violent in any way.

Aggressive cockerels can be pickled up and tucked under an arm, until they go submissive and limp, so I tried this tact yesterday with the gander.

Grabbing him firmly around the scruff of the neck I lifted him up and tucked his body under my arm.

He hissed at me aggressively for a while, then went quiet when I trundled around the field looking a little like Rod Hull with his Emu!

I did this for ten minutes or so, then I returned him to his pen, immediately offering him a bowl of corn as soon as I placed him onto the ground.

He honked at me with some gusto, but after I shook the bowl did take one mouthful of food from me, albeit reluctantly

This passive/aggressive approach hopefully will reinforce that I am in charge, I am the boss and I can be trusted to fed him and his family but it has to be done every single day, until things calm down....I have to thank Von for the corn idea..here's hoping it will work

The Bells...The Bells!

I fell asleep after night shift at 8.40am.... and was awoken by the Church Bells ringing at 9.45am!

It seems my whole world over the last 14 hours has been alarm dominated.

I still have not gotten used to monitor alarms at work.

The above video is a basic monitoring set up for an intensive care patient, but it gives a little bit of a taster of what life in intensive care can be like..

For those that don't know the alarms on a basic monitor watch over:-

arterial blood pressure, central venous pressure, hearth rate and rhythm, oxygen saturation, carbon dioxide levels, respiratory rate etc etc etc... each "subject" will have it's own alarm, which can be triggered by any one of a hundred reasons.. some big and some insignificant

Add to this "alarm fest" individual alarms for a score of infusion pumps ( some patients can have a dozen or more), ventilator alarms ( which have their own individual "bing bong" quality about them , two phones on the nurses station AND a particularly irritating unit door bell... and you just may understand just why after just one shift, I love to stand in the field listening to a chicken fart in the rain!

My head can be literally "ringing" with the residual noise pollution from work for an hour after leaving......and I am the lucky one.. I only do one shift.......

The Church Bell has finally stopped belting out it's monotone "dong"...and I have now marshalled the dogs in silence and am off out for a gentle and peaceful  walk down gypsy lane

whispering to myself "hey ho" very, very quietly

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!!!