(Probably Not) Art

Chutney, Chili-jam and paté awaiting storing away

I have been messing about lately with two new 'art' forms; movies and the well known genre of "Dustbin Lid Enamels". What do you mean you'd not heard of that one? Read on. We have inherited from Diamond, a tiny but very sophisticated camera, a Sony Cybershot 8.1. Although this beast could (almost) fit inside a standard cigarette box I am constantly amazed by the sophistication of these tiny cameras, as compared to the hulking 'standard' sized SLR that I normally carry about, a Canon EOS. As well as a respectable flash, the Sony has all the time delay, zoom and other toys plus, I was amazed to find, a 'movie mode'. Our 'proper' movie camera is currently parked with a flat battery and we cannot find the charger, so I decided to test out the Sony and then to explore uploading my 'films' to the movie sharing website 'youtube' just to see could I successfully link back to this blog, to Facebook, Twitter and so on. So, for the first time ever, I give you links to videos of geese and of our dozen young Buff Orpintons. Don't get too excited. They are 30 seconds long each, or there abouts and of seriously bad quality, but they are a start.

Geese in the morning http://youtu.be/iU_mXzEZNtM Gorgeous George leads the ladies noisily out to the orchard.

Geese in the evening  http://youtu.be/LLJzxj2vyOY The gang race home to their supper.

Buff Orpingtons emerge from the 'bedroom' http://youtu.be/7tUCC-wU7Pw Lots of bleary eyed gazing about and fluffing up of feathers.

The 'artist' concentrating.

For all the camera is an impressive technological achievement, I must say that from a photographer's point of view, the 'movie' function is disappointingly basic and has no adjustments (no zoom, mainly) - you either have movie or no movie. Youtube has a function at upload which allegedly spots that you are shaky of hands and 'fixes' this but I could not see any difference. Our main problem here is that the horribly slow broadband locally means that even these 30 second bits take 5 minutes to upload each so, enjoy these short clips (and comment if you like) but I can't see myself doing many more of them.

The 'Dustbin' thing was just a silly idea I had to use up a bit of long, dark evening and to pretty up my chicken house feed store. I had 6 dustbins of various feed, identified only by felt pen writing as "Layers' Pellets" , "Sheep Crunch" and so on. I decided to paint an appropriate logo-style design onto each. Anne and Simon, who know about paint, suggested that enamels would be the thing for a galvanised bin lid, and I went on line and bought up 7 colours of the tiny tins of modelling paint; a real buzz of nostalgia from the days when we three brothers were crazy into Airfix kits and had dozens of colours between us. In those days it was mainly military and camo colours but I was sure either Humbrol or Revell would do me a usable red, green, ginger (for the pig), gold (for the wheat), and a flesh-pink for the egg shells.

Revell in fact do a whole range of the tiny 14 ml tins called "Email Colour" at less than €2 per colour (about £1.50). I found some silly designs for pig and dog from the internet. The dog looks a bit like a Westie and the pig is perky enough for anyone. Hours of harmless fun. We are not sure if we'd call them 'art' but they made the pair of us smile and they do whenever I go into the feed store.

I have a date now for the sheep, the 13th of Dec (or any time after that, says Mayo-Liz). This gives our 2 adult ewes enough time to 'dry off' (finish their lactations)  having been separated gently from this year's lambs, to come back onto heat and to be served by the tup (a fine Hampshire Down purebred chap). Then, also, to wait the 17 days in which they might come back on heat if the tup did not do his job properly the first time round. He would spot this, being a very concerned and loving kind of bloke, and give it another go. If they do not 'return to service' then they are almost certainly pregnant. Fingers crossed.

Thawed haggis, neeps and tatties 'ready meal' served on this
occasion with steamed black (Tuscan) kale. Times is hard.

Today saw us on a Christmas shopping trip to Galway, our nearest city, an hour and a half away by car. I'd never been into the city, though I'd been round it and past it on trips to Kinvarra or Connemara but I'm not a great lover of cities and the teeming shopping throngs, so I'd not missed it. Today though we needed to visit Marks and Sparks and TK Maxx plus to browse around various other shops to find suitable presents for folk. Galway, you will not be surprised to know, is like any other city in terms of traffic jams, rammed multi-storey car-parks, ring roads with multiple roundabouts, shopping malls and business parks, just in an area smaller than most cities. In our case, today, we also had a teachers' strike, so there were a million young teenagers strolling about and 'hanging' by the milk-shake outlets, the mobile phone shops and sub-culture magazine/video shops. We survived, though, getting in and parked eventually, then making forays from car-park to shops, returning to offload goodies into the car in between forays. We made sure to be all done by 3 pm so that we could race home (ha! In that traffic?) to rescue the geese in daylight before Brer Fox might come a-calling. Not a bad day and plenty of list items ticked off, but painful enough on the traffic, parking and crowds, that we'll not be rushing back any time soon. Certainly not to use Marks and Sparks's generous €9 food-hall voucher which can only be spent between the 19th and the 23rd of Dec. That truly would be one of the 7 circles of Hell.