Going Gently

Notes On A Tuesday Evening

It's a warm and still evening..... The ideal panacea to a very long study day in a claustrophobic office

I have just put the chattering ducks to bed in their duck house on the periphery of the Ukrainian village and have sat down in front of the geese who know they are next on my list.
They eye me patiently, and will turn for home as soon as I tell them to go.

Like all animals, they are creatures of habit and routine.

The field is full of feathers. The ducks and geese are all moulting and the place looks rather untidy. Tomorrow I will rake everything up into neat little piles..........
It's too nice to do it right now.
Nervously the ewes edge forward in order to steal the chicken feed from the red feeder and Bingley makes way for them, flashing his big turkey tail noisily as he does so.
Turkeys don't frighten sheep, even though everything else seems to do so.
As the sun sinks slowly , the hens in lazy groups of twos and threes amble towards the hen houses
and the dogs, I know, will be waiting for their last walk to the day, dropped into lazy clumps on the living room carpet
Albert knows it's " walk time " too, but he is sat conspicuously on the cottage wall, impatient yet bored at the prospect.
Paloma Faith drifts over the field from the badger radio, as the terriers from Tawelfan down the lane bark at some or nothing.and I can see Chris watching from the cottage window.
He is eating muesli out of a large bowl.....the one with multicoloured spots on it.
The muddy coloured hen pulls at my shoelaces as I take a big breath in of green air

I am home.........

Creative Juices

On reflection the words

Sad bastard

And I

Comes to mind

Scarecrow Entry

What have I done so far today?

I have shopped at the supermarket,

Collected bags of corn from the wholesaler,

Fed and watered a score of animals,

Delivered eggs and flower show schedules,

Run around with the Hoover,

Cleaned up William' s wee accident,

Made the bed,
Topped the berlingo up with radiator coolant

Walked the dogs

And made this..

a prototype alternative " scarecrow"

For the Prestatyn Flower Show

Ok it doesn't quite look like a hen

But it will

The postman was quite impressed

But he did give me a the kind of look
Which said
" how old ARE you?"

We've all done it!

Trust me to be working on the hottest and dare I say most humid night of the year.
Even with air con, and probably due to the fact the shift was so busy, by 5 am I felt as though I was smelling like a dirty whore of an unfit mother .
Having no time to shower and not having any change of uniform..I resorted to a tried and trusted fall back.... A quick delve with a packet of borrowed wet wipes and a squirt of some nicked antiperspirant

Big mistake.......
I forgot that I have overly sensitive skin
And from 6 am my now fragrant groins and " nether regions" now feel as if a very large man is sand papering them with gusto

Hey ho....
A lesson learnt eh?

Nice

In today's " need a bit of an edge" media...the word " nice" seems to be a bit of a swear word. On tv nice does not seem to cut it.
And so, I have to congratulate the BBC for staging the formulaic but entertaining Celebrity Masterchef for the majority of the celebs they chose, turned out to be thoroughly decent, and nice individuals.
It made for a very refreshing change.
The finals ( shown last night) had the supermodel and jolly hockey sticks Jodie Kidd, cooking against actress Sophie Thompson and the explorer Charlie Boorman. All were a real delight to watch.
In the end it was the ever whispering , self depreciating and slightly Barmy Sophie who won.......and it couldn't have happened to a nicer woman.
In view of my previous sad post........I needed a nicer story.......

Sophie Thompson.. Above in Masterchef...below in Gosforth Park

MH17

"That there's some corner of a foreign field"

Isn't that What did Rupert Brooke wrote in his most famous poem?

Bloody dreadful

Eye Eye

During my nursing career, I have had to deal with most kinds of wounds of one type or another. I am, however, not a fan of ophthalmic issues.

This stems from two situations .The first was that I had to once deal with a patient with a prosthetic eye, nose and upper lip and I remember very will how I had to squint like Clarence the cross eyed lion every time I had to help clean the cavity beneath the prosthetics.

I think I would have thrown up if I had " looked" that closely

The second " eye" phobia.....is a relic of my cinema loving childhood.

Can everyone remember the scene in The Birds where Jessica Tandy discovers her farmer neighbour with his eyes pecked out?

I scared the shit out of me when I was a pre teen

Mr Hitchcock would have been tickled pink to have traumatised a young a Welsh boy for life!

This afternoon, on one of the hottest days of the year , I have been galloping around the field like a loon in order to catch a wounded hen. She has an incredibly swollen eye, which needed attention and so after a dose of antibiotics, and in full view of some quietly hysterical dogs, I wrapped the hen in a dinosaur dog blanket and bathed her eye with some sterile warm water at the kitchen sink.

I did squint just a little as I dabbed away.