A Fictional Wife

Those ducklings are growing up fast. 9 days old here.

Somewhere in her 'legacy', followers of the late, lamented Diane ('Diamond' on this blog) will find a varied collection of sayings and expressions which her friends still use, always with a fondly remembering smile. One of these, 'Finish Holidays' , comes from the Greek island of Poros which Diane visited every year from teenager-hood (when she went with Mum). She loved the place and the people and knew many of them very well; some now café owners she would have bounced on her knee when they were baby sons and daughters of then café owners.

They learn about left-over petits pois

When she went to those cafés in recent years and tried to sit in the normal 'public/customer' seating areas she would be quickly gathered up by the owners in scolding tones and shepherded quickly 'out back' to the family seating areas and quickly plied with Metaxa. Many of them clung proudly (as you'd expect) to their Greekness and only learned the necessary amount of English to do the business of café-ing but also were proud to try out their stilted, awkward phrasings on Diane as Diane gamely delivered her quite reasonable Greek replies. One of these was when they all assembled at the quayside to see her off on the ferry back to the mainland - they would hug her and say, sadly, "Ahhhh Finish Holidays". Finish Holidays has stuck here as a catch phrase whenever holidays or breaks are ending.

Finish Holidays. The borrowed chooks
crated up for the homeward journey. 

Where is all this going? One of the jobs this week was to return our 'borrowed' chickens to their rightful owner at the end of their little Christmas sojourn with us. These half dozen came to us on 4th Dec when the owner was temporarily unable to keep them at home and have been living in one of our big rabbit runs ever since. I dared not put them actually in with our gang as the group contains a fairly feisty rooster and all 5 of our then roosters were trying to have a go at him through the mesh, as he was back.

15 more bales of straw for the neighbour's bullocks.

Well, that problem is now solved and their little holiday was over. We had to crate them up and whizz them home yesterday. The owners are fellow archers of mine and this delivery gave us a chance to sort a funnier, less tricky issue.

The clean air here allows for some lovely flamboyant
growths of moss and lichens seen on over-wintering trees.

There is a running in-joke at archery because so few of us/them ever show up with our spouses, that we are only pretending to be married and that our wife/husband/partner does not actually exist. This leads to a load of silly banter at shoot coffee-breaks when we try to explain where we got the cake or home made biscuits we have 'produced'. Liz was quite enjoying being a "work of fiction" and when I said that she could come too on the 'chicken-run' and meet these couple of friends she almost declined because it would blow the gaff and she'd lose her fictional status. It is now 50/50 whether the friends deny all knowledge at the next meeting (No! Matt didn't bring anyone -he came alone!) or decide to bear witness of Liz's existence.

Polly's fleece. She is a Jacob x Suffolk. 

Meanwhile, life chugs on and I have little to report. I am happy that no news is good news - our poor friends Sue and Rob have too much news and are not having a happy time; they are actually waiting for 'the third thing' to go wrong and professing that disasters always come in threes. First a pregnant Nanny goat went into labour about 3 weeks early and delivered 3 tiny kids, one still born and the other two managing only a couple of shallow gasps each but unable to start breathing. They died in seconds/minutes.

A 'pussy hat' and gloves. You may need to look that one up
in the USA/Trump news. 

The next morning they were still trying to get over that tragedy when the billy goat rocked up pumping blood from a horn-bud. He had ripped one of his big spiral horns clean off and goat horns have a very good blood supply. He was in real danger of bleeding out but they managed to grab him and stem the flow. Off to the vet then and he managed to only be 'woozy through blood loss'. He is quiet and recovering. We are told that he will probably grow back a smaller, soft horn.

'Our' Syrian refugees hit the national news. 

And local town Ballaghaderreen suddenly found itself in the national news when a story broke that a large batch of Syrian refugees was to be accommodated in a 200-bed 'failed/closed' hotel in the town. Initial reports were all a bit alarmist and had some local anti-foreigner types passing out leaflets saying these would be ISIL terrorists in disguise, images of jihadists beheading people etc.

I am glad to say that it has all calmed down a bit now and less alarmist, even welcoming voices have started to be heard. All the journalists have moved on, as they do and TDs are saying how proud they are of the way Balla-D accommodates its diversity. I expect when the (80) children and adults do arrive (in March) it may not even get a mention. The leaflet man is, by all accounts a local 'character' with 'form' in this area.