Update

Sylvia and Irene....I have them eating from my hand

In response to Beatrice F, who wanted an update on the Ukrainian Village population, I snapped a few photos for her this cold and muggy morning. The village population has now plateaued at a healthy 73 souls. The refugee hens that arrived on mass from Llanasa in the autumn have now been transformed from slightly sad and untidy birds into sleek free range ladies. You can tell that they are doing fine as the winter egg production remains fairly high.

The four geese are healthy and the ducks ( including the last three hysterical runners) have bonded into a robust little flock of eight birds....I will need to separate two drakes in the spring. when sex rears it's ugly head, but for now things are calm and peaceful.

Cogburn, the blind cockerel has shed his feathers and has suddenly gone all red and gold. He looks fantastic now and has recovered from a cowardly attack by the field cockerels who sneaked into his run when I was cleaning it out. The other waifs and strays ( the two ancient hens I took in last month and Mary the disabled rabbit) are all doing well in their own little runs and houses. There are now 17 little green " buildings" in "Anatevka"

Bingley, the turkey, is now the real patriarch of the field and in the spring will be joined by a couple of females ( a promise from a friend). His slightly aggressive behaviour towards the geese has now settled down.

It was too cold for the dogs this morning,

I found them all hidden away like this after their early morning wee walk

I am waiting for something to go wrong....everyone seems far too healthy and happy

Hey ho

A Box Of Happy Days

A box of Christmas pasts

Chris is working away so tonight I will busy myself with the yearly tradition of untangling the Christmas decorations from out of their box . I really think, that out of everything that we collect....the flotsam and jetsam of the material " necessitates " that accumulate when you share your life with another person , that Christmas decorations can be the most poignant .
Like photographs , these little collections of plastic and glass chronicle a lifetime. They remind you of happy days, of people lost, of friends loved and of nostalgias shared.
The fact that you get to " enjoy" them in only a few weeks of the year, makes them, just that little
more special I think.....
I grew up in a household that wasn't a very happy one. However at Christmas things could be very different as my mother loved everything about the season and so worked very hard indeed to make everything special and childlike.
The tradition of "sorting out the decs" remind me of those happier days
I suspect, I am not alone in this.

Too Far Gone (Beware Spoilers)

Too far gone ( the mid season finale I watched on YouTube today)

Old Hershel Green

Well, it had to happen. The Walking Dead has finally  killed off one of its most beloved characters . From the slightly pious and irritating religious farmer we met two dozen episodes back actor Scott Wilson has transformed Hershel Green from a stock supporting character in series 2 into a moving beacon of humanity and warmth amid a savage and sad new world in series 4.
For a programme with a fan base in its teens and twenties, it's refreshing to see that a man in his seventies has become a bit of a super hero
Fans of The Walking Dead have delighted in Scott's quiet authority in his role.....and it is a valuable lesson to learn that amid all of the CGI and gore......it is the performances and characterisations that are really  central.to the drama..
Hershel will be missed

Customer relations

The day after a night shift is when my temper often bubbles just underneath the surface

I wish I could be a better person when I am knackered.

But I can't .

Today a woman stopped to buy eggs

She wanted duck eggs there and then

So I had to schlep across the field to check the duck house to retrieve them

I only had five and so I only charged her  £1

But she wasn't happy

Now, ducks are not the cleanest of birds 

So I rinsed the eggs in the water butt before I handed them over..but even so

the woman sort of turned her nose up when I boxed them in front her of her

she pointed a perfectly manicured red finger nail at one of the hastily  collected and rather grubby eggs and asked rather haughtily

" is that mud?" 

I just couldn't be arsed with her

" No it's SHIT !" I said shortly

Whiskey & Ashes

My sister in law Jayne ( centre) amid family and friends

It's exactly two years today since my brother died. The time ( as  it always does when you reach your fifties) seems to have flown and this anniversary has felt like the right time for my sister in law to finally let go of his ashes.
This morning a motley collection of my brother's family and friends met up on the hillside overlooking the small seaside town of Prestatyn. There was no fuss. There was no ceremony of sorts.
There was just a quiet and good natured appreciation of a view that my brother grew up with as a boy and a slightly surreal realization of why we're had all gathered there.
We raised schooners of whiskey in a toast (It was Andrew's favorite tipple ) then each one of us scattered small scoops of his ashes  into the gentle breeze from the sea.

The view over the coastal plain

Chris with his schooner 

Eli's Story

My great niece , a teenager, wrote this essay recently

I think it deserved its own blog entry

Enjoy

Chasing the Dragon

A shadow descends the desolate alleyway simultaneous with her ambled movements. Looming over, it threatens to engulf her into its murky abyss. It’s both unnerving and formidable – Not her. She’s hunched forward, eyes raised ahead, amply expanded yet sustaining a stoic guise of detachment and serenity. She is numb in the utmost physical and mental way. The only thing giving her away is the rugged pace of her breathing. She trudges forwards into the ominous unknown. The shattered glass of beer bottles forms a transient mosaic at her bare feet. She smiles and paints it in alluring shades of crimson as she walks. A gurgled laugh escapes her throat accompanied by a trickle of blood. It’s laced with cynicism and before she’s aware of what’s happening she’s laughing hysterically and her façade has crumpled like the decayed bricks she leans against for support. She slides down the wall and crumples to the ground. She is still laughing as she stares into her blooded reflection in the window ahead.

She gazed into the face of a dragon. Striking a match to her demise, she watched as an intoxicating trail of poison seeped from his lips. A transcendentsea of ecstasy and tranquillity leaving behind a path of internal destruction. The hypnotic thumping of base from Massive Attack’s “Black Milk” droned in the distance, followed by an unsettling passage of keyboards. His heavy stare bored into hers, taunting and temping, challenging her. She wanted to duel with him,to conquer her untamed desires and the savage beast which lay beneath her hooded gaze. She reminisced of a time free of such yearning and self-scrutiny,before happiness was such an alien concept and her soul was tainted by thethirst that consumed her very being. This only conjured images of their copious battles… his gentle embrace proceeding savage dominion, her frangible resistance proceeding assured submission. She’d always submit. From the moment he found her she was desolate... Whisped away in his smoke. She was no heroine, he was the heroin, and she could not resist.

“Eat me in the space within my heart”.

He released another seductive puff. So alluring, so sensual... She surrendered.Euphoria manifested itself in her lungs and she was elated ten feet in the air.Flying. She wondered if this was what death felt like, if only it felt so good. I am invincible, she told herself. Awash in the exaltation, she was suspended,cradled within a comforting cocoon of fog. Its tail snaked its way around her,kissing her scalp and caressing her skin. She had fallen in love with her capture.And then the smoke morphed into fragmentized glass and she was falling into gravities embrace. Soft acts of endearment were transposed with sharppunctures as tangible grains of reality clawed at her skin, drawing blood. The light refracted from the glass drowned her in an aura of luminescence, as thoughher form had been ignited on fire. She was jolted from descent as she collidedwith a hard surface while a thousand shards of glass showered down around her.There was no trace of smoke in sight.

Abandoned.

Defeated.

Betrayed.

Still. Her crumpled form no longer moves as I cast my gaze down on her from above, watching. Always watching. Scarlet permeates through her glass clad skin, intertwining with shattered fragments of prospect and aspiration in a puddle at her waste. The lone moon drowns her in a cold breadth of florescence,looming over and mocking the spectacle of her pathetic state. Matted eyelashesframe crusted, dead eyes which still fixate impassively on her reflection.Eventually, she succumbs to the shadows.

“God Stares to Marvel, Only Love.”

This is what I do. I anesthetize your dreams… I mutilate ambitions… I lure you in to a delusion of spurious security and devoir every cell of your anatomy before I whisp you to ashes.

I smirk and turn away, leaving to lurk the streets in wait of my next victim. The dragon does not chase you, you chase the dragon…

But who is the one that gets burned?

Word Count: 381

Arse shot

I can thank Chris for this candid shot of my arse sticking out of my pants at tesco's checkout
At least it proves that I have lost a stone and half.......
Off to work today...Chris is in charge

A Placement in A&E

When I was a student nurse, the only placement that I did not enjoy was A&E ( ER)
My father died right at the beginning of my three month span of duty there, so in a show of support by the nursing staff, I was moved from the resus area ( where all city traumas were brought in) to work with the staff that were allocated to the " walking wounded".
It was mildly interesting and less stressful than the cut and thrust of the adrenaline filled trauma room.
Only one experience from a humdrum collection of cut fingers,boils on the bum and dislocated wrists  sticks in my mind to this day, and that was the time I was conscripted by a pretty Scottish sister to help her with a patient.

This sister in question collared me as I tidied up a treatment room with a " could I ask you to help me with something important?" She looked upset, so of course I agreed and she led me to a curtained off cubicle where she told me in hushed tones that an elderly woman had been brought in and had unfortunately died just as she reached hospital. Her husband, who had accompanied his wife's ambulance in a good Samaritan's car , had turned up in the department and had just been informed of his wife's death.
" what do you need me to do?" I asked the sister
" he wants to feel her arms around him a last time" she explained with a gulp,
" and I can't do it by myself".
There was no one else around, so of course I agreed.
And so between us we gently sat the old gal up a little on a hospital trolley and ever so gently helped her husband up onto it where he lay against her with a sob.
The woman was around 80, and had a single roller in her white hair. She wore a white cardigan as I remember.
I held one of the woman's arms around his shoulders and the pretty Scottish sister did the same with the other and there we stood for what seemed like the longest of times.

The old man whispering  and crying to his wife all the time as we, with our eyes brimming with tears, tried to look elsewhere.