Earning one's Keep

Apart from the pigs, who have filled our chest freezer with their wonderful fat covered meat, there are just three animals on the field that have actually earned their keep over the past few years.
They are the guinea fowl.
Hughie, little Ivy and Alf watch the field every night. 
They are constantly on sentry duty and miss nothing when it comes to spotting a potential threat, and once seen, they will scream their warning calls "out and loud"  until that particular danger has well and truly passed.
This morning I was trying to enjoy my lie in. Now when I say "lie in" what I actually mean is that blissful and snatched 40 winks I endeavour to take between Chris getting up ( 5.45am) and my actual "getting up" time of 7.00 am...anyway as I was tucked away under the duvet enjoying a particularly smutty dream featuring Russell Crowe , the guineas started their warning calls..
At full tilt, the chatter has all of the intensity of a military machine gun, and the very extreme nature of it immediately informed me that a very real threat was afoot. So, with a sigh, I dragged myself out of bed and poked my sleepy head out of the window.
A scruffy fox was tip toeing  over the field. with his nose down. He was circling the goose house carefully and from the cottage  I could just make out a low warning hiss from the geese who were  watching the scene carefully from their coop window.
Not having a gun to hand I had to resort to a fairly effective and well tried call of "BUGGER OFF!"
and by the time I had hurried down to the field, the guineas were all smug and silent on their perch in the Churchyard and the fox had long gone.

Ivy, Hughie and Alf  trying to keep warm last Winter

Lady Gaga Edge of Glory

Now I had no idea that Mz Gaga sang this little ditty. However, I was aware of the song itself, but thought quite wrongly that because of it's "pop siliness" it was a Eurovision Song Contest entry.
Anyhow I am leaving this toe tapping little piece on Going Gently as a direct result of posting a belated birthday card to old friend Jimmy late last night!.
After all of the animals had been locked up, I collected the dogs and we took ourselves off into the village to the post box on London Road..
Instead of walking back on the main road, I took the more circular route back past the old farmhouse of Bryn Teg and through the small housing estate of Maes Offa which borders the most easterly part of the village.
As we past one house, I heard this song blasting out from the living room windows and I was just about to initiate my po-faced, lip pursing "oh how common" middle aged judgements when the living room's occupants came into view.
Dancing to the music was a fairly hefty young woman in her twenties who was  accompanied by two excitable and bouncing children. The three of them performed their own heavily choreographed routine amid squeals of laughter and to me, the whole scene,  was suddenly as sweet and as amusing as the one I had witnessed on the field earlier that day, when George went egg stealing with Albert in tow.
I was brought up by a mum and dad who didn't really have fun with their children This was, I guess, a product of being slightly repressed and depressed "older parents" in 1970 suburbia.... but just...... for a moment when I watched this young mother thunder around her living room in her dressing gown and slippers, followed closely by two hip swinging  excitable children, I mused just how sad that they didn't!

Reality is an Egg Stealing Scottish Terrier

It was George and Albert's ever cheerful demeanour that has energised me this morning, as it was their unwavering ability to be sweet natured despite any brickbats the weather can throw at us, that has lifted my mood from a rain soaked apathy to a wry smiling positivity.
For the sixth week in a row, the week has started out wet, cold and miserable. "Bosoms" is now dreadfully overgrown with weeks and filled with puddles and  even the most robust of the field animals are looking somewhat shopworn and bedraggled. The weather has a strange ability to zap the strength and knock the teeth out of positive resolve and good energy.
Yet animals like Albert and George seem to maintain their jaunty good wills whatever the season
It is just not in their nature to be anything else but cheerful
This morning was a case in point.
As I was rebuilding part of the compost pile which had collapsed under the weight of heavy over night rain showers ( a bloody smelly and disgusting job) I watched as George carefully ambled towards the duck house.
He was doing so, with that slightly forced way people walk when they want to appear casual and invisible , so I knew immediately that he was up to something.
Very slowly George  approached the duck house. He stopped to sniff here and stopped to pee , there, but it was clear to me that his major objective was the indian runner duck eggs that had been laid that morning in the corner of the coop furthest from the lane.
George knows, that he  always been told him that he has to keep away from sitting eggs, but greed had over taken  from obedience and he was desperate for an early breakfast.
I stopped and watched him as he ambled up to the house door then pretended to be busy when he snatched a quick look over to me, to see if I had noticed him.
Slowly ( and I am sure he was actually holding his breath at this point!) he pushed past the assertive hens that were sat in the doorway, sheltering from the rain, then seconds later reappeared with a large blue egg in his mouth.
You could almost see him smiling gently to himself at the very thought of eating it, and he craftily turned his head away to the left, so that if  I had indeed spared him a glance, I wouldn't have noticed the egg perched firming between his teeth
Now, knowing that he risked a real bollocking if caught with the egg in his gob, he then bolted for a patch of long grass behind which he could eat his prize in peace and was immediately joined there by Albert who had also noted his extracurricular activities with some interest.
Cat and Dog shared their eggy spoils amid some loud yet good natured banter and I had to smile that when both finally emerged from the grass, they were licking their lips and banging heads playfully together like little schoolboys in the playground


This simple little everyday event has been enough to lift my attention away from dystopian thoughts, bad news days and the bleak depressing weather of our  typically sad summer days and the thought crossed my mind .
If I could bottle the enjoyment of watching this little drama...I would be a  very rich man

A Belly Full of duck egg!

When I'm 64

It's not a mop cap..it's a kat kidston shower cap!

The family came around last night for a belated celebration for my sister's birthday. You couldn't really tell that now she is in her mid sixties, she has far too much chutzpah for that and could never, ever be mistaken for one of those grey hairs, who watches Countdown with her slippers on, her pen and pencil at the ready.
Ann is our family's matriarch. She possesses an iron fist in a velvet glove kind of personality that would have "won the war" if indeed, she was living in 1945. and she is the constant backbone for a family which is now happily heading towards it's fourth generation

Happy Birthday Chuck
and we did enjoy your rendition of this little "ditty" last night!


"When I get Older, losing my hair,
many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a valentine,
birthday greetings,
bottle of wine?
If I'd been out til'' quarter to three,
would you lock the door.
Will you still need me
will you still feed me,
when I'm 64!"


xx

Snail Wars

There is a war going on.
The wettest June on record
(and nearly a month's worth of rain falling in just one day yesterday) coupled with the presence of stone walled garden has meant that those dirty little bastard garden snails have seen their populations treble and quadruple in this season of gloomy weather and damp evenings!
Chomping away on the few blooms that have survived the deluge, these greedy little buggers have been laying the cottage under siege and every night you can see them leaving their grotty slime trails over the windows in their effort to break in in order to devour us all in our sleep.
Last night, I lost it with them.
My patience was running a little thin anyway, what with the fact that I had been soaked at least 8 times during a day that had seen a river of run off flowing down the lane , but when I caught a "herd" of the little sods stuffing their fat faces on my young laburnum tree , I threw caution to the wind and collected armfuls of them from the wet bark which I then started to hurl across the lane against the stones of the church wall with some gusto.
After a minute or so, I got rather good at grabbing a snail then lobbing it against the wall without actually looking at what I was doing, and within minutes scores of the little "bodies" were flying through the air with gay abandon to land bruised, battered and broken in the lane


Apologies to the lady driving the blue fiat panda
The small dints in your paintwork, I am sure will come out quite easily

Telephone Etiquette

Our Phone: which actually  still works!

Hearing the phone ring at "odd" hours is always potentially fraught with anxiety and stress.
To me, a "chit-chat" phone call only happens between the perimeters of say 9.00am to 9.30pm....outside  those times phone calls are usually a sign that something is amiss.
This morning the phone rang three times  well before 8am.
To put it delicately, I was busy "in the loo!" so had to be content with checking the answer phone to find out just why someone would be ringing me at such an antisocial time.
Luckily there was no real "disaster" to deal with, just a somewhat garbled phone message from an elderly villager who needed a hand to sort out a computer problem, but the phone call got me to thinking about acceptable and unacceptable telephone etiquette in this, our age where everyone and his mother owns a mobile phone.
I have received my fair share of "out of hours" phone calls which heralded the death of a loved one and there is nothing quite as blood chilling as that "ringggggg- ringgggg....ringggggg-ringggggg" that jars you out of a peaceful sleep and makes you gallop downstairs with a heavy heart and a lump in your throat.


I have had to make numerous of these kind of phone calls in my time. Mostly at work to be sure, but to be honest I have had to make quite a few that have been much more personal, and none of them have ever been easy calls to make.
Nurses never have any training in this sort of thing...you just pick it up as you go along. But there are several rules with this sort of thing that haves to be adhered to.
The first is that by hook and by crook, you should avoid making the phone call in the first place. Relatives and next of kin should be aware, if at all possible that their loved one is deteriorating and that they should come to the hospital immediately. In many of these kind of cases the patient often dies before the relatives arrive, but at least the nurse can break the bad news face to face, where physical as well as psychological support can be given personally and hopefully with some sensitivity.
If you have to break bad news over the phone, the rule is that it has to be done carefully, briefly and most importantly CLEARLY, as relatives will only hear a couple of words that you actually say to them.
All they will hear is "Hospital.....I am very sorry..... and "has died" very little else will register, especially in the lonely darkness of 2am in the morning.
Perhaps my work experience has coloured just how I feel about "inappropriately timed" phone calls. 
So, if it is not an emergency please do not call me "out of hours"
... it's not rocket science!

Up in the night with a sexy nurse

I feel hungover this morning

Not that any alcohol was drunk last night....it wasn't

It is just the fact that I was woken up at 1.30am, again at 2.30am and didn't fall asleep until well after 4am

I feel jetlagged  and somewhat jaded.

and the reason for this, I hear you ask?

yes, it was my one and only black indian runner duck

Over the past month or so, several of the runners have gone missing on an evening. All have eventually returned after dark, only to be found quacking in hysterical circles outside their locked duckhouse in the wee small hours.

I suspect that the young and inexperienced females may have been sitting on eggs, only to be driven off them when the dark frightened them home.

The same thing, I suspected, happened to the black runner last night. as at dusk Halleh, the lone drake could be seen  standing nervously at the far border of the field looking out at the fields beyond as if he was searching for her.

But as the heavens opened and hens all trouped back to their damp hen houses, the black runner sadly never appeared.

I went out with a torch at 11pm, and again at 12 midnight, and still the duck failed to turn up, so I went to bed with the bedroom window open, just so I could listen out for any homecoming quacking in the middle of the night.

At 1.30 I was woken up and I was sure I heard the duck ( now I think I may have been dreaming)

so out I went in the torrential rain to search for her, but there was nothing to be heard or seen

I was up again soon after, and then was wide awake listening to the rain thundering on the cottage roof until 2.30 when I finally made a cup of tea and sat down to watch the French film "À Bout Portant"

Gilles Lellouche..... unlike most nurses I have ever met!

I would recommend A Bout Portant ( English title Point Blank) to anyone who is wide awake in the middle of a miserable night for it is a silly but entertaining thriller about a Parisian nurse Giles Lellouche ( who, by the way, has a pair of brooding Gallic eyes to die for) and his drastic attempts to save his wife from a gang of criminal kidnappers.

The film has lot's of  exhilarating chases, gunfights, and silly plot twists and turns to enjoy  and it's all a bit daft, but like I said, when you are up worrying about a lost duck during a storm, the film proved to be an ideal panacea to all the ills in the world.

Hey Ho

I had THE phone call the other day.

A tearful, slightly upset plea from a concerned bulldog owner

Could I rehome another lovable middle aged bulldog bitch who possessed her own set of problems that needed ironing out by someone with patience, some time and and a love of the breed.

I discussed it with Chris and have thought about it for an age, and today I rang the breeder back with my answer.

My answer was a reluctant  "no."

This evening I found myself telling fellow chicken keeper, Margaret the news as she walked her terriers past the field and she nodded in that understanding way only a dog owner could do

"I am glad you've said no", she said after a pause "Your heart is far too bruised"

and do you know what?....... she's right.