Could You Just?

How many times have I have heard this over the years?
It is a phrase that is usually accompanied by a slightly pained expression
A tilt of the head
A half smile
and occasionally a bit of desperate flirting
"Could you just?"
I always know what's coming next.
.................this morning there was a knock at the door
A woman with that slightly hopeful expression smiled somewhat theatrically at me
" Could you just...........?"

....and in a cardboard box in the back of her car, was sat a lone, elderly chocolate coloured duck.
" has she a name?"' I asked the woman
She blushed slightly
"Her name is Lena Horne"

No more " stormy Weather"

Bemoaning Letterboxes

Hopefully, very soon, all of the Community Council news will be placed on line and available to all. In the interim, we thought it prudent that the council make a bit of a PR effort and so drafted a brief newsletter for Trelawnyd and it's sister village of Gwaenysgor.
I volunteered to deliver the Trelawnyd newsletters.
Yesterday I completed almost three quarters of the task, and I must say, that after two hours of jamming my hands through a couple of hundred letter boxes, I now have a healthy respect for the hidden dangers faced by the average postman.
The nemesis of the modern day postie must be this new fad for PVC doors.
Gone have those swinging metal letter boxes of old. You remember the ones I mean, wide open slots you could slip a large bundle of second post letters through with a satisfying PLOP!
Now we have menacing spring loaded metal gin traps which are guarded by stiff nylon draught excluder bristles. Pushing a flyer through these objects of torture can be more difficult than doing a gynaecological examination on an irritable pig !
By the time I had slogged all the way up High Street, I was feeling somewhat fed up with the whole operation..... Thank goodness the last house on the hill didn't seem to have a finger crunching post box at all.......I had to jam their newsletter through the bloody cat flap.

Opera Shopping

My favourite Supermarket

( I was given a scotch egg from Waitrose by Camilla's former owner's daughter today

9/10). It was lovely.

Anyhow I did enjoy this little Opera interlude too!

Thanks Megan

A Reunion for Camilla (updated)

This afternoon , an elderly chap will be visiting the field. He lives over 200 miles away, but will be stopping by with his daughter in order to have a reunion of sorts.
He will be coming to see Camilla.
Two years ago, he found what he thought to be a grey duckling in his garden.
He placed the duckling in the conservatory, fed it porridge and panicked when it not only survived, but thrived under his care.
Only then did he realise that he had no real idea of how to look after a duckling who was doubling in size every few days ( or so it seemed)
Luckily his daughter reads my blog, and so, after some minor telephone and email negotiations the ducking was transported all the way up to Wales.
Of course the duckling wasn't a duckling at all. She was a buxom and rather adorable Canada goose gosling with big, black sad eyes and feet the size of dinner plates.
I fell in love with her as soon as she arrived
She was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen
I have a thing for goslings
Readers may remember that I teamed her up with an orphaned chick called badger, whose mother had been killed by a marauding boar badger a week or so previously.
The two birds were inseparable until Camilla eventually joined the other field geese when they realised that she was indeed " one of them" and Badger took over as alpha male cockerel in the Ukrainian Village.

Camilla and Badger in their salad days

I will post some photos of the " reunion" a bit later. Funny that two plus years after the event, Camilla's former carer still has that " bond" with the orphan that so luckily found him in his bungalow back garden one spring morning.

Camilla gave her old owner a rather shy but sweet welcome

World War Z

She may look worried...they are headed to Wales

From the get-go WORLD WAR Z  looked promising.
Seconds after we meet Brad Pitt, his surprisingly vapid and rather plain wife and their  two Hollywood kiddies, a galloping zombie hoard overwhelms the city of Boston ( well its stand in of Glasgow) in a tidal wave of the undead reminiscent of  chilling initial chase sequence in 28 Weeks Later.
Unfortunately things go all tits up after this, as this global " Walking Dead"  disaster movie doesn't really get off the ground., despite its 190 million dollar production costs, which is a bleeding shame, as some of the set pieces ( zombies running amok on a passenger plane ) are really quite good.

Pitt plays a UN trouble shooter who is given the remit to find a cure for the pandemic. He is smuggled into various " hotspots" around the world ( From New York, the Mid Atlantic, then Jerusalem via South Korea) in search for clues that may stop the infection and ends up bizarrely surviving a plane crash with a one armed female Israeli soldier in the middle of the Welsh Countryside!
( Chris was laughing hysterically at this point)

I was hoping that World War Z was going to be a big screen Walking Dead.
It isn't.
It is in fact a bloated, drama-less, and rather uninteresting CGI laden mess.
5/10
I had to eat a Marks & Spencer Scotch egg to cheer myself up.

Guilty Pleasure

It's a late pointless sort of entry today.
By the time I got home after work, locked the animals up safely for the night , walked the dogs, washed the dishes and collected a fish and chip supper ( I know I know!)I KNOW....!
It was ( and IS) a quarter to ten.

Time for some cultured relaxation with Jane Austin and Classic FM?
Nawwww....
I have settled down to watch a crappy tv documentary entitled Finding Bigfoot
Well my usual pleasure that is CHOPPER COPPERS isnt on tonight

What's your guilty pleasure?

" Back Away From The Scotch Egg..You Fat Bastard"

I stopped in at Sainsbury's last week and surprisingly got heckled by the church organist as I walked across the car park

" going in for a scotch egg?" She cackled loudly 

She is the third person to question my supermarket visits recently

She reads the blog!

Yesterday I counted 14 scotch egg wrappers hidden away around the Berlingo....this morning I took my old weightwatchers point counter to Marks & Spencer to check the calorific total of their luxury Lincolnshire Range . ( which is pure heaven  ambrosia in breadcrumbs I must say)

12 points! 12 friggin points! 

That's nearly half a day's points in two eggs!

It's no wonder I am starting to waddle again

Seeing my shock a middle aged bored shelf stacker came over and asked if I needed any help

" I need to put the scotch eggs down....and I need to walk away from the scotch eggs that's what I bloody well need to do" I told her

She laughed and tapped her arse with her hand

" don't we all love" .

So I rang the " Scotch egg abuse help line " and now have formulated a controlled scotch egg eating plan in conjunction  with weightwatchers, (an organisation I shall be rejoining  next week)

From today I will  allow myself just two ( non luxury) scotch eggs a week.

No more.

And I was proud of myself when I walked out of the supermarket this morning without picking up a packet!

Mind you I did linger just a tad too long next to a rather attractive display of Melton Mowbray miniature pork pies..............

To add insult to injury..this coupon arrived is morning in the post......why God? Why?

Titty

Titty and me ( two tits together)

It never fails to surprise me when an animal exhibits an abnormal behaviour, out of the blue so to speak. Most actions that may seem bizarre ( Bingley's obsession with my crocs for instance) can usually be explained away as an exaggeration of the norm( in his case an over abundance of hormones) but sometimes a behaviour just cannot be explained away as natural.
One of the hens that arrived after a fox attack in Prestatyn a month or so ago has developed an overwhelming need to be cuddled. Every time I kneel down to feed the chicks or collect the eggs, over she will come and without pause, hesitation or fanfare she will climb up onto my lap to be stroked.
She is not after any  food. She is not hiding from bullies . It is plain and simple that she wants and actively seeks out a physical contact that is pleasurable to her.
Not a normal behaviour for a constantly foraging animal at all.
And of course I am flattered by her attentions
Every morning I will break the routine of feeding and watering and will now sit on the grass and call her . Eagerly she will bound over and scramble up into my lap with her eyes half closed in silly poultry type rapture, and we will sit together for a few minutes, like a pair of right old sad bastards.
Her neediness is all rather touching.
I have named her, Titty
Bugger alone knows just why.

( note my new "scotch Egg" T shirt in the above photo....it is a slightly belated Birthday gift from J at
http://octoberfarm.blogspot.co.uk/. I am thrilled with it........)