Good Feedback

Good Feedback. Now there's a business-speak expression I have not used a whole lot since finishing at DHL in Dartford in June 2011. We bloggers write these reports and fire them off into cyberspace hoping that maybe someone is reading them and enjoying what we have written. We cling to the 'site-meter' reports telling us how many hits we are getting and listening out for comments each posting. But I have an additional incentive to keep writing and to try to keep this interesting; this has become, for me, my letter home to me dear aul' Mum, the 'Pud Lady' mentioned in some of these reports.

Pud Lady (named for her marvelous steak and kidney puds) is of that generation (she's 86) that never got to grips with computers (except for word-processing), the internet or blogging, Facebook, Twitter and all that jazz. She does love, though, that we have moved to Ireland and started this small-holder life and she is hungry for news and fascinated by all the goings on. When we were living in the caravan and had no access to the printer, my brother Mark offered to print these posts off (in the UK) and to include them in his own letter home which already contained his 'blog posts' and other news. He has kept up the habit even though we are now installed. Thanks Mark - much appreciated.

Pud Lady is therefore now getting all my news, and probably knows more about what we are up to than when we lived in Kent, just 45 miles away from her, I am ashamed to admit I was never that good at writing or phoning. We know Pud Lady is enjoying it because we also now get old-style 'snail mail' letters from her every fortnight included in the UK-addressed forwarded mail posted on by my other brother, Tom. Thank you for these Mum, they too are much appreciated. Today's has them impressed by the height of our daffodils and comparing gardening notes (we are both keen gardeners), describing their snow and Tom's family's children's off-school adventures, and looking forward to the RSPB's "Big Garden Birdwatch" which we used to do every year. See? Good Feedback. Everybody is happy!

Liz has just described today's weather to Diamond as varying between lashing rain in strong wind, and glorious blue sky, sunny warmth. That's no exaggeration. I am trying to build three tough, fox proof rabbit runs and a tough, fox-proof house for the geese. The rain has driven me indoors, so I am trying to work in the Tígín which is a bit tight for space but nobody wants to be using an electric circular saw in the wet! The 2CV trailer has been pressed into service as a mighty sellotape-dispenser style wire mesh machine. The heavy 30m roll of 1" square weldmesh is threaded through with a pitch fork handle and slung across the trailer box so that I can unreel lengths of wire, hooking them over the back of the trailer while I go along laboriously cutting each strand of wire.

The plywood and rough-cut "2-be-1-and-a-half" lengths are in the car port and the tar-felt is already in the Tígín. Sparks has run power and lighting to the Tígín, so it's not a bad shed to work in. I tend to rough out a plan of what frame and sheeting I will need (mainly so I can go buy enough!) and then start with this but then let the part built frames dictate actual sizes and saw cuts as I go along. The width of the mesh (92 cm, 3 feet) dictated the width of the run and I went with half that for the height to minimize waste. 3 metres length we thought would give the rabbits enough space to run about while leaving the thing light enough for us to move it about from grass to grass. You can see from the picture that I have, tonight, completed one run. This one is for (Buck) Rogers, our bought-in male bunny who is now separated from his ladies. I had a bit of blue fence-paint left from an earlier job, so Rogers's house is painted blue to go with his eyes. Ahhhh.

When the paint's dry we'll drag this one outdoors and get some sunny pictures of it (with rabbit!) to give you some idea.