The Ghost Sheep

My efforts to tame the sheep are going a little slow.

Sylvia, like her namesake, is somewhat of a robust, character who leads the shy Irene a sort of merry dance all over the field. Sheep trails have already been formed clearly in the grass and are providing a highway for the hens and ducks too and from the coops and the pond.

I need better weather really, and aim to sit with a book when the rain finally clears away, so that the ever curious ewes can have an opportunity to give me the once over.

Physically smaller than your average "Wallace and Grommit" sheep, the Soay breed are shy and silent characters. They slip from one favourite part of the field to another like grey ghosts and will suddenly apprear out of nowhere when they went to see just why I have my head in a coop or a bucket in my hand.

With their wide panda eyes and their gentle ways, they are characters that are certainly growing on me

Who Taught Me to be Inclusive

when I was around seven we living in a cul-de-sac in Prestatyn

I have only one memory of living in the bungalow on the right hand side of that street and that was a Sunday based "show" performed by the kids for their parents in the street

I remember very little except the dance performance by one of the girls on the close and that was a downs syndrome girl in her teens who danced and ran about in a circle

She skipped her way through some sort of 70s song and did so with such good humour I remember the entire close giving her a standing ovation....

It taught me a lot about fair play,

and it taught me to celebrate a lumpy fat girl with learning difficulties who had more chutspah than the average rabbi

funny what you remember eh?

Home To Roost

The mellow nostalgic melancholy of yesterday is still lurking there.

The weather has a lot to do with it,

It remains wet and dull and grey this morning.

I thought that this photo would lighten the gloom

I have just remembered that Albert was up on the kitchen table earlier, licking the butter off the butter knife when I was leaving the house at dawn to take Chris down for the train.

I have just used the knife without thinking to butter my bagel.

It'll do my immunity some good.

Last week a chap from across the valley dropped off five point of lay warrens for me.

Earlier in the year we fell into a  conversation about my runners, and as a favour I gave him a load of duck eggs over a month or so period. He offered to pay for them but I refused saying

"You do me a favour sometime"

A week or so ago I saw his wife at the feed shop. We chatted about this and that and I mentioned to her that my egg production was dire.

A few days later he dropped off five new laying warrens for me

"Just returning the favour" he said kindly.

 

Earlier in the week another chance meeting allowed someone I know having a good moan to me about their lot . It was something and nothing really, a case of the right person at the right time.

But the following day a couple of jars of jam was left on the doorstep.

"a small thank you for listening"

Unnecessary but rather sweet....

and yet again the RFWF has just dropped off another huge bag of wood shavings at the field gate. The hens will sleep snugly tonight.......

When the weather is dire, muddy dog paw prints have covered the only clean bit of floor in the kitchen yet again and the cat has been licking your butter knife with a gob covered with mouse body parts...its nice to think that some good deeds come home to roost

Have a nice Weekend

Golden Girls 1992

Ok I know.....THREE posts in one day!!!!!!!!!!!...........but I couldn't quite resist posting this.....

a week or so ago I wrote a post about The Golden Girls

and I had almost  forgotton just how funny they were......

(Incidently I try to base my humour on Dorothy's)
ENJOY!

Andy Williams - Moon River

His version was even better than Audrey's original one

Incidently it is mine and Chris' "song"
Enjoy

Beach Meetings

All of us have people that we know (and have known for many many years) who inhabit the very periphery of our lives.

More often than not, we know very little about them. We may share a nod and a cheerful "good morning" with them. We may know a little about their family, or their job or their history, but in very broad strokes they remain very much part of the scenery of our lives.

Recently I have been thinking about a lady I shall call Gwen.

Gwen was in my year in secondary school, in fact, if I think on, I now realise that she was in my primary school as well. She was, as I remember, an awkward girl who always seemed to be alone in school. Big busted, old fashionably dressed and frequently bullied, Gwen always looked an unhappy girl, but apart from knowing each other's name , our paths never really crossed in or outside school as we were growing up.

School, for me was a fairly unhappy place.

When I returned to Wales in 2005, I started to occasionally bump into Gwen . Invariably it would be at the beach where I would be walking on the promenade with the dogs and she would be sitting in a car reading a newspaper. Occasionally she would be joined by an elderly lady, who by the look of her had advanced dementia, but at other times she would be alone, save for a scruffy Scottish terrier who would be let out of the car on a long lead. I used to go to the each at different times every day, so guessed that Gwen spent long, long periods reading in her car

At these times we would always swap "hello" and would chat briefly , and even though a lifetime had passed since we were both in school, I still saw the lone, sad girl that I "knew" some 40 years before.

Earlier this week I arranged with my sister-in-law to meet for  a chat.

We met at a local market garden cafe during a rain storm and the place was packed with grey hairs having "coffee" and girlfriends "doing lunch". After we had sat down, I spied Gwen sat at a table and we nodded our "hellos". As usual she was alone, and looked it, and as usual ( and I know rather patronisingly) I suddenly felt very sorry for her.

I had the urge to ask Gwen to join us, but, of course I didn't. It would have been an awfully pompous and condescending  thing to do, after all what the hell do I know about someone I have hardly spoken to during a lifetime?, and so when we left, all I did do, was to stop to chat briefly.

I am glad I said hello. And I am glad I didn't ask her to join us, I can cope with the vunerable and the sad when they are animals.... but as for people?

Not a good idea

Despite a 40 year gap, perhaps I just don't want to be reminded of more unhappy times

Where Do We Go Now?

Where Do We Go Now? 

is quite an ambitious film.......... It's a bittersweet  comedy drama about sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians in a rural Lebanese mountain village. It's  star, writer and director,.(the statuesque 

Nadine Labaki- who by the way made the delightful Caramel) tells the story from the point of view of the village women (from both religious factions) who band together with the increasing difficult objective of preventing the village men folk from descending into violence as a result of an increase of sectarian atrocities around the country, and the resulting farce ( which includes an unlikely arrival of six Russian strippers) is suitably amusing and conscience pricking in equal amounts.

There is a a couple of emotionally charged scenes from Labaki ( who plays the village cafe owner) some odd semi musical set pieces ( between her Christian character and a hunky Muslim painter (Julian Farhat) and plenty of not so subtle underlining that it is always the women in the conflicts of this world that have to deal with the fallout reality of violence and hatred

8/10
I have not made the effort to go to the cinema for a while.... it's nice to get back in the swing so to speak

Saint Christopher

The "hen in the airing cupboard" incident went by without so much as the raising of the famous "Roger Moore" eyebrow or the rolling of the infamous Captain Mainwaring eyeballs.

This slightly wrong footed me, as I was prepared to fight the little warren's corner,for she had been as good as gold wrapped up in a dog blanket behind the duvets and pillowcases, but Chris merely nodded his head and sighed with that "as long as I don't have to see anything" kind of way.

All the warren needed was to warm up. She slept and she kept calm in the cosy darkness of the cupboard and after a couple of hours was ready to return to the waterlogged field.

It is still raining this morning by the way.

A few years ago now, I made the mistake of hatching out 16 Indian runner ducklings without a mother and without a shed!

Strangely Calm, my last load of runner ducklings

All 16 were installed in a large dog crate in the kitchen, which was transformed very quickly from a delightful oasis of fluffy ducklings into a quagmire of shit flinging , needy and incredibly noisy and hysterical monsters.

The pitter patter of tap dancing webbed feet nearly drove poor Chris into the psychiatric version of "shady Pines". and nearly every morning he could be heard bellowing "Shut up you dirty little bastards" as they galloped to and fro in the crate following his every movement as he tried to eat his tea and toast.

Since then, I have tried to keep any  animal infiltrations into the cottage to an absolute minimum.Chris can cope with the dogs as long as they are clean and  does have a soft spot for Albert as long as he does not drag in any rodent no matter what size through the catflap, but in general terms anything else with fur or a beak would not be tolerated,

He's right of course.... the cottage is far too small for any miniature intensive care unit set ups.....I just wonder what could happen if one of the ewes has complications during the birth of a lamb....?

I couldn't see Chris boiling the hot water and fetching the towels as Irene lies prostrate on the kitchen table with her hooves up in stirrups....

Bless..... he does put up with a lot.

Anyhow the warren survived to fight another day, ( unlike the Pansy-Potterish Sarah Jane who was unfortunately voted off

The Great British Bake Off last night.) and hopefully the tropical storm which has battered North Wales and Northern England  is now petering itself out to nothing.

(BBC Wales)

Sarah Jane....a podgy star in the making

I am off now to drop some more Harvest Festival food off at the Church now....Trelawnyd collects boxes full from it's small congregation...all of which will be taken to the homeless shelter in Rhyl after the harvest services are all finished. It's another small, unsung positive community gesture which the majority of people in the village are unaware of ....