Pedro the Ram is in Love

The sloppy plum jam goes in for a re-try.

I knew even as I was posting those pics in the last blog story, of sloppy plum jam and typing. rather apologetically. that it would 'do', that it wouldn't. "Ah well", I said. "It'll get used up". I was just being lazy. A few days later a friend on Twitter's @smallholderIRL account was tut-tutting that it would spoil and I should boil it again, reduce it considerably and get it to set. True of course, so on Sunday morning, back it all went into the pan. I got a good 20% of the water/volume out of it, it went darker in colour and is now potted up properly. You can tilt the jars to 45 degrees and nothing moves.

Chinese pancakes. 

That turned out to be quite a busy 24 hours for me in the kitchen because, Friends of the Blog will remember, Lizzie's Birthday came round and in this house the Birthday Girl (or boy) gets to choose the stay in/go out, the menu and the chef-du-jour. We'll eat in, she decided, you are cooking and the menu is Chinese Crispy Duck and the pancakes, spring onion, cucumber and the rest.

Chinese pancakes.

That was an enjoyable challenge. I had never cooked duck this way before and certainly never made the little, thin pancakes which are not really pancakes at all. Well, not in the sense of pouring batter into a frying pan. They are, though, not available locally. You can get all manner of wraps and tortillas, pitta breads and poppadoms but not these (unless one of my readers knows different) so we were onto the Internet for one of those American accent 'how-to' videos.

Crispy duck should not need carving under that honey-glazed,
crisped skin. It should shred easily with a couple of forks.

They are great fun but a lot of faff and fiddling. You basically make a sticky-ish dough using flour, sugar and boiling water. You knead that gently like bread-dough, rest it and then roll it out like pastry to half a cm thick. You cut that into 3" discs with a biscuit cutter. Every other 'biscuit' is then brushed with sesame oil and they are stacked in pairs like little dough/oil sandwiches. The pairs are then rolled out "paper thin" (says the recipe - I got them pretty thin and about 6 inches diameter but I'm not so sure about the 'paper' aspect). Each thinned pair is then 'fried' with no oil in a hot frying pan, one and quarter minutes each side, so that they blister up like pitta bread.

Liz took this pic of the main event. 

My only way of timing 75 seconds was using the stop watch function on my olde phone and there were 20-odd pairs to fry, so I was there a good 45 minutes slapping them in and flipping them over. When you lift them off heat, you can open them a bit like a pitta bread and peel the two halves away from each other. You end up with a goodly stack of very thin, single-layer pancakes to either use straight away, or fridge over night or freeze for later.

Choc fudge brownie from local artisan baker, O'Hehir's of Sligo

The rest of the meal went very well too and was much appreciated by the 'audience'. The duck meat was tender enough (as it should be) to tease apart with a fork under that honey-glazed, crisped skin. I had shredded spring onions, cucumber and salad-peppers and Liz had already made, a few days ago, that lovely plum sauce. We had bought a special bottle of white wine. I did a starter of simply-cooked jumbo prawns with wedges of lemon and lime. 'Pud' was a choc fudge brownie from nearby artisan baker, O'Hehir's of Sligo. We'll call it a success. I was delighted to battle through the mountain of washing up and clearing away and to hand the space back to the Chief-Chef.

Where Lily goes (left) you will always find Pedro.

Meanwhile, new ram-lamb 'Pedro' is showing every sign of growing up and finding out what he is here for. We noticed him on Friday almost inseparable from our old ewe, Lily. He was close by her, sniffing her with his top lip extended (the way sheep do when the sniffing is 'amorous'), rubbing his nose and shoulders along her flanks and around her rump. All the other girls were abandoned as his focus increased so she was almost certainly coming on heat.

Then last thing at night, as I took the dogs for their last "comfort stop" patrol of the grounds, I am 99% sure I saw him mount her three times. It was dark and all I was looking at on the front lawn were silhouettes. I couldn't even swear it was Pedro and Lily I was seeing and the 'mount' was just a barely visible rising of the head and shoulders of one silhouette over the back of another but the next day Pedro had lost interest again. We are hopeful that he 'tupped' her and she is now pregnant and therefore back off heat. That would mean a possibility of lambs from Lily on 25th January, 5 months away. Watch this space.

We are enjoying the colours on some of this year's crop of hens.

If Pedro is, indeed, doing the business and things go as they did for Sue's ram 'Rambo' in 2015. Each ewe will come on heat in succession (in their own good time, of course) stimulated by the scent of a ram among them. He will fall madly in love with each in turn (nothing if not fickle!) and we might get lambs out of all four including first time Mum, last year's baby bred here, 'Rosie'. If Pedro can do all that without turning aggressive to me (or any other humans) he's a 'keeper'. Patience is the thing.

Finally, we are quite enjoying the colours of some of this year's batch of young hens. We think they may be the variety 'Marans' (as were Bubble and Squawk of yore) as the rooster, Gandalf, and our one layer-of-dark-brown-eggs, Miss Black, are. They are greys and silvers and are either 'barred' (dark bands running round the body across many feathers) or 'laced' (a dark margin on each individual feather). They are a delight to watch and to see scratching about or perching up on fences and gates. As long as they stay female and don't go off down the big-tail, tall neck, big 'cape' cock-a-doodle-doo, rooster route, they too are keepers.

Donaldina of the Trump-esque wig. 

One has caught our attention by growing the most ridiculous looking top-knot, which would make her at least part the Araucana breed. Reminiscent of the Leader of the Free World, she has been named "Donaldina".

Start harvesting spuds and clearing away the foliage here and
you are likely to find the odd stash of secretly laid eggs.

And that about wraps it up for this one. Good Luck now.

A 4-Way Birthday and some New Babies

Early Purple Orchid at Kiltybranks

Friends of the blog may recall that Jun 3rd is Birthday for 3 of our main animals (was 4) who are all 5 years old. The pups, Towser and Poppea were getting born on that night down in Mrs Silverwood's house in County Laois while we were also waiting for news of a birth of kittens at Mrs S's friend's house just around the corner. The two joyful news, triumphant phone calls met in the middle at breakfast.

'Twayblade' (orchid) at Kiltybranks

Lily had whelped 7 (I think) pups and the cat had kitted 3 little balls of fluff. Since then we have lost one of the kittens (Rolo) to an RTA but we have gained a rescue cat (Soldier) of whom we do not know a birth date. We have therefore given Soldier the 3rd of June too, so HAPPY  5th BIRTHDAY the 4 of you, Soldier plus Blue, Towser and Poppea.

Getting the painting gear out. 

My main news events since the last post, though concern not these animals, but a coat of paint (or two) on the kitchen and the arrival of yet more livestock. The new kitchen got its paint on Saturday and we decided to carry the colour on throughout the old which has been up to now Brilliant White.

Liz had fallen in love with the colour of the dry, bare plaster (a very pale grey) and could not think of a better colour to sit alongside the new floor tiles, the bare, raked-out-and-repointed stone wall or, in fact, the existing splash-back on the sink in the old kitchen. As anyone who has decorated their house will know, you can now pretty much get paint in any colour you like. The shop stocks white base paint and has a high tech, computerised colour dosing machine that mixes the tin to the shade you have chosen from the swatch cards.

The new paint looks well against the stone
wall. Ignore the dodgy plastic wall socket.
That is only there temporarily. 

We had tried the older method of buying small 'match-pots' and painting little test patches but could not get a pale enough grey - the kitchen risked looking like a WW2 battleship! Wouldn't you know it, the ideal colour was from the (Dulux?) "Colour Trends" range, the most expensive paint in the shop. This was going to be €36 for the 2.5 litres we doubted would go the whole room even once.

Watercress in a bog ditch. I had thought that stiff needed a clear
flowing, pure chalky stream.

To our rescue, the shop guy who is probably well used to penny pinching customers (his shop is in Roscommon!) who said that he quite often makes up the colour in the "standard" Dulux version of the base-paint and it always works. That was now €19 for the tin which was especially nice when it became obvious that we'd run out of paint and need a 5 litre tin to finish the first, and complete the 2nd coat. 5 litres was €29 which was not so bad. I didn't ask what a 5 litre tin of the real 'Colour Trends' version would have been.

The 10 week turkey poults arrive

Today, then, saw delivered both our turkey poults and our day old Hubbard meat-bird chickens. The turkeys come from Sue and Rob who are currently breeding them by the dozen, hoping to sell birds for people to 'grow' for the Christmas market. It is nice to know that her parent birds are, in some cases, raised from the eggs laid by our own (late) Tom and Barbara pair, so the DNA has been working away over there and is now coming 'home' in a sense.

Sue and Rob hatch these either in an incubator or sneaked under any broody hen who has space under her skirts. One such "clocker" (broody hen) got a mention in my recent sheep-shearing post when we discovered a hatched turkey during a pause from the wool clipping. Once hatched they are kept under good heat; an 'electric hen' AND and Infra Red bulb till they are about 9 weeks old. They then get a week off heat before they go to their new homes, acclimatized.

We have 'landed' ours into one of our well used redundant rabbit runs, which have a cosy, draught-free, bedroom at one end. They spend a week or two in there getting used to the sights, sounds and smells of our yard and all the other birds (and cats and us), before we start letting them out free range and try to persuade them to move home to the proper chicken/goose coops. This year we will be more careful around the start of cold weather and the increased braveness of foxes. Last year we lost all three in November and had beef for Christmas dinner. It was lovely but we still hated that fox for stealing our turkey(s)!

Hubbard chick at day 1

Friends of the blog will also know that we have done several batches of the Hubbard chickens as meat over the years, lately one from May-June to August and a 2nd Aug to Oct/Nov. We join in with Anne and Simon who have access to a big commercial hatchery (long term friends of the Manager) and when they drive all the way up there to get their birds, they always ask us would we like some too. Thank you very much, Anne and Simon.

The Hubbard is a popular variety in Ireland among the commercial boys who are supplying supermarkets with Free Range and/or Organic birds. They make a nicely keeled oven-ready carcass and have a phenomenal growth rate, achieving 2-4 kg (oven ready) in 80-120 days. We kill ours at about 100 days on our 'genuine free range' system and it has always been the tastiest, most succulent chicken meat you ever tasted.

Long may it continue. We also enjoy having Anne and Simon in for a chat, a cup of tea and either dillisk, or chilli-cheese-and-bacon biscuits (or both) which Liz rustles up within minutes of us all sitting down at the table.  We got 13 chicks this year (a miscount at the source!) instead of the straight dozen and we have been amazed by the speed with which they have learned to peck up their own food. In previous years I have spent some time pecking at the food with the point of a chopstick to 'show' them what to do and, even, picking up bits of food and carrying it to their little, hopeful, upward pointing beaks. This lot were straight in. Good luck to them.

Nearly 60, You Know!

Liz is currently enjoying knitting with some pure wool. 

Regular readers will remember fondly with us, the late Diane Walsh (formerly Riches), a very good friend from our Faversham days. Diane used to regularly amuse us with stories of her friends and relatives from 'up North' - Stockton on Tees - from where she hailed. One of these was an elderly friend of her Mother. This lady, 'Ellie' was forever proudly telling all and sundry how old she was and how she managed with it.

2 Brown (Irish) Hares check us out from a safe distance after
we'd met them in a narrow lane. 

Her regular was "I'm nearly 84, you know!" which lasted from just after her 83rd Birthday and as quick as you like became "I'm nearly 85, you know!" within days of her year clicking over to the next year. Then she'd assure you that she "doesn't get out any more..... oh, except for Bingo...oh and when (Diane's Mum) takes her shopping.... and the Post Office to collect her pension... oh and the occasional car outing... etc etc" Bless her. She is still with us as far as we know, and must be way over 90 by now (Nearly 91, you know?).

All the logs in the front garden split and the machine lowered
into travelling position. I towed it round to the yard with the car.

I am cruising in towards my 59th Birthday in a few days and wondering if the day afterwards, I might get away with an "I'm nearly 60, you know....and I don't get out any more". I suspect that those who know me will tell me that this is because I love this place so much you have to pry me free with a crow-bar and, anyway, neither of us feel at all like we are either "nearly 60" or much much younger (depends on which of us you are talking about, he said carefully). Liz can't quite believe she is married to a bloke who is nearly 60, and I certainly don't feel that old, or see someone that old in the mirror. I find I have no reference point. I don't know anyone who was particularly 60 while I was watching.

Squawk, our 9-10 year old Cuckoo Marans, still laying those
dark brown spotted eggs.

Ah well. These things happen anyway and need celebrating, so as I write this I am a bit stuffed up with food and rather awash with the good Guinness. Not to a dangerous degree, I hasten to add. It was also very recently K-Dub's Birthday, so we adjourned to his local pub close to the Sligo house for a few (Liz drove us there and collected us later, nipping off to spend an evening knitting at Carolyn and putting the world to rights in the meantime). Then today a nice family tradition - the Birthday boy/girl gets to choose the menu and/or the restaurant and here I am happy to be a "cheap date".

Gorgeous George, the Gander

I do not need fancy restaurants or expensively 'foodie' fare - my idea of Heaven just now is the "bacon and cabbage" option at The Golden Eagle (Hester's) in Castlerea and 2 pints of Guinness. We had a nice salad starter and Liz had a pot of tea afterwards, but that was it. Nothing finer. I am stuffed with the food and a tiny bit squiffy from the beer. I will need no proper supper, but there is a lovely rhubarb cake sitting on the sideboard there and I have ice cream in the freezer. There is also some good cheese knocking about somewhere, so while Liz is off at knitting club I will not be starving.

The dog micro-chip certs are quite posh, serious affairs
on heavy paper. Impressed.

What else is a-foot? Our dog micro-chip certs came back from the database people at Fido.IE (Yes, I know!) and were impressive heavy-weight paper. I was expecting some aul' print out slip torn off at the perforations. I am not sure why you'd need such a posh certificate - I can't imagine anyone framing it for the office wall, for example. Impressive, none the less.

Baba and Marta (Myfanwy's lambs) enjoy the climbing pile

I have finally ploughed my way through the stack of tree slices  using the borrowed log splitter. I rescued a few rounds and built a mini pyramid in the East Field for the lambs and kid to play on, having seen how much they enjoy the grassy knoll further down the field. The youngsters have quickly adopted this and we can see them enjoying leaping on and off, playing 'King of the Castle' from the Kitchen window. I have seen mum-goat Nanny Óg up on it too with her baby. The baby goat tends to sprong up there on all four feet, boinging about like Tigger.

Guinea cock 'Apollo'. What a handsome fella!

The weather has taken a turn for the worse, reverting to freezing rain and bitter raw winds just when we were getting used to March's (false) spring. This has stalled the bumble bee surveying for the moment, killed all thoughts of opening our honey-bee hive to check for brood and stopped all outdoor gardening. Everything around field entrances is, once more, a soggy mess into which I am firing quantities of the shredded wood to try to mop up the sloppy wet. Back indoors, then, to light a fire and think about writing this blog. Have to look after myself and keep myself warm and dry. I'm nearly 59 you know!

O Sole Mio?

Yes; I've been making my own entertainment this week, with Lizzie off down in Silverwood-land "minding" Daddy (Mr SL) while Steak Lady steals some time in the sun in Malta off with her gang of former Bridge Club chums from Portmarnock. Not that Mr SL needs much minding, you understand; he's all well again from his Hospital scares so this is not Intensive Care we are talking about. Liz tells me that he instructs her not to get up and start "fussing" before 9 a.m. because he likes to wake up and potter about gently and if she'd be good enough to leave him alone till then he'll bring her a cup of tea.

Some first-year shoots from those English's Nursery crowns
only in the ground a week or so!

When she dives in and tries to start clearing the meal table and do washing up he good naturedly shuts her in the sun-room with a glass of wine and insists that HE will do it because he "knows where everything goes" when it comes out of the dish-washer. Yes, it's a tough old job this "minding" but Liz will survive. She is also getting plenty of opportunities to go visit the Silverwoods and be visited by them.

Let loose in the kitchen, I am trying my hand at a few scones.

And I do NOT want you to get the impression that I am feeling sorry for myself here. I am quite self sufficient, me, so though I miss the wifely presence (it would be impolite not to!), I can chug along happily here on the 'farm'. There is always plenty to do and the dogs, cats and livestock are all good company (if a bit thin on simulating conversation). I do a little bit of this and a little bit of that - gardening, the bees, shopping, photography, blogging, facebook, cooking stuff for myself, entertaining the occasional guest, housework and even some baking. The latter always feels a bit "bold", like interfering where you are not normally allowed to go. Although I can cook perfectly well, we have slotted into a rhythm here where it is Liz who rules in the kitchen and does all the fancy cookery while I am mainly outdoor jobs. So if I stray into the kitchen I always get the impression I am being 'watched', the same way I am sure Liz feels if she were to wander out into my veg plot and start weeding.

Possibly not the brightest place to sit, Blue.

Just for a bit of fun, I also had another go at taking some video footage and uploading it to the internet, one short chunk of the new twin lambs, and one of the new piggies. These are the links if you are that way inclined. Unfortunately, they are facebook based links (I failed to grab the Youtube addresses which appear briefly when they were first put up there and I have no idea how to find these out again)

This is the pig one https://www.facebook.com/matt.care.54/videos/vb.100002645805158/769903719774481/?type=2

and this the lambs one

https://www.facebook.com/matt.care.54/videos/vb.100002645805158/769526129812240/?type=2&theater

Apologies if you can't get at them. Equally, if anyone knows how to find them on Youtube, then please do let on. Perhaps the solution is to upload them again and take notes?

Lots of activity fom the new bees. 

We have also had our very pleasing result (so far anyway) in the bee keeping department. When I last posted I had just done my moonlight flit over to Killashee in County Longford to collect my new colony from the wonderful BO'D and carefully set it up next to the old hive. Any worries I might have had of bees suffering in the car journey were quickly dispelled when the new workers were out and buzzing first thing the next day, even though it was a bit chilly. There were bees pinging everywhere, certainly more than my 'old' hive has done this year. A good few were doing the face-the-hive, fly-backwards and spiral outwards flights which we know are 're-orientation' flights, the bees emerging from the hive to discover an unfamiliar landscape and having to learn the new map.

The twin lambs now thriving again at almost 3 weeks. 

I have set the hives next to each other so that in a few days we can slot all the frames from inside BO'D's boxes, into the old white boxes, which will have been cleaned and sterilized just in case, and then spirit the old brown boxes away. The bees will then (so goes the theory) cope with the fact that their home has suddenly 'turned white' because they will come back and mill about for a while, confused by the visual change, but then smell the familiar smells of home coming from the entrance slot of this funny white box. It is almost beekeeping mantra that you can move a hive less than 3 feet or more than 3 miles, but never anything in between.

Cheeky happy pigs, scarfing more fruit.

Bees find their way about by a remembered map. They will find the hive again if it has only gone 3 feet, but if it has gone further away they will mill about at the old location, lost, till they run out of fuel and then simply die on the ground. If you move the hive less than 3 miles, which is the bees natural forage range, they may accidentally come across an old remembered route to the old location and follow that back to the former home (where they will, again, die of lack of fuel). If you want to move your hive ten feet, then you have to move it 3 miles to an out-station (a friend's ground for example), wait 3 weeks while they re-orientate to that and forget the old map, then move them back to the old apiary but new position. Strange but true.

George the Gander. You lookin' at me?

And I have had that birthday, of course, which was looking to be a non-event, with the celebrations postponed till Liz came home. All my friends and contacts, though, must have had other ideas - I received a veritable blizzard of greetings on Facebook, I got a card and gift from the UK through the post (Thanks Pud Lady and Tom!) and visits from friends who wanted to meet the piggies plus one from Anne and Simon who arrived bearing rhubarb and stayed for a cup of tea, a sit down and a chat. Also some phone calls about the bees and a nice call home. May also have pinged a few texts back and forth to/from the absent Lizzie. It all made for a perfectly good day.

All your Birthdays at Once

Having all your birthdays at once usually means having such a good day that it feels as though all the treats from all your birthdays have arrived together. Here we have a different meaning. It so happens that last year, when we were looking to buy a pup, the pregnant Westie bitch who was going to supply us with him, Mrs Silverwood's "Lily" (by Maxwell), happened to whelp on the night of 2nd June into the morning of 3rd June 2012. Regular readers may recall that in the event we ended up with both the planned boy-pup, Towser on the right here, plus his sister and litter-mate, Poppy (left).

Meanwhile, Liz had been looking to buy 2 kittens and we had found out that there was a friend of Mrs Silverwood's, living just around the corner who had a pregnant cat. The morning of the whelping we found out that this cat had also given birth on the same night to three kittens and that we could therefore have our 2 from that little gang. These turned out to be Rolo (pictured here stalking through the buttercups) and Blue (sleeping in the caravan, below).

So there we had it - 4 animals all with the same birthday. It makes remembering the date(s) easier. Our traditional birthday treat for dogs is raw pork ribs which are gnawed, ground and slurped with relish. The cats will get a treat of fish which they will also love.

So, Happy Birthday Towser, Poppy, Rolo and Blue. We nearly had all this batch of baby rabbits born on 3rd June too, but we are fairly sure these were yesterday or the day before.

I made it to 4

Well! They all said I was too daft, feisty and annoying to make it to my 4th Birthday but here I am, 4 years old today and celebrating the event with the standard our-house dog birthday-cake of raw pork ribs. Yes, they told me if I carried on annoying the humans at this rate I'd die young, buried under the patio, if I kept on feisty-ing at other dogs, I'd get mullered for sure by a Rottweiler, and if I kept brainlessly pursuing prey animals with the 'red mist' before my eyes I'd end up under a car or some such, but I'm still here.

I will survive! As long as I know how to schlurrrrrp raw pork ribs, I know I'll stay alive.

Thank you, brother Archie for the birthday e-mail.

Happy Birthday to Me

Happy Birthday to Me

Happy Birthday to Deefski

Happy Birthday to Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

Sorry I've been a bit quiet of late. So much going on.

The Deefs

More J-M

I promised to give you some more on the J-M visit, having covered Harrods, Hamleys and Buck House. There's plenty to tell. The London stuff was Tuesday. Wednesday saw us on a variety of 2CV adventures; first to the allotments where J-M fancied a go at digging some spuds and picking blackberries, and we ended up by pulling onions, picking beans and beetroot, and even a small amount of chard. We headed off to "the horse place" to buy wild bird food, and dropped in on some more blackberry bushes near the boatyard, to fill our punnet.

We head for the "Goods Shed" farm shop in Canterbury to buy meat, cheeses, more veg, cup cakes and nice bread for Wednesday's supper with Diamond and John. That evening ends up with a bit of a drama when the hot tap pipework springs a leak under the sink, and we end up having to haul out the fridge freezer and washing machine to try to get at it to repair it. Plenty of dog sniffing opportunities in nooks and crannies which never see the light of day.

On Thursday, Mum takes J-M off to Canterbury for shopping for outfits and make-up, Mum trying to steer J-M away from the all-pervading favourite pinks, towards purple and "teal". We also have to drop Mum's car off at the Fiat dealer for service.

Today's been a bit more of a quiet day for J-M but that's partly because the planned outdoor swimming pool trip got vetoed by the chilly wind and rain. Also, it's Mum's birthday (Happy Birthday to Mum!). There's the car to collect, and the plumber to entertain - that's our mate Bob S, who we've known for ages and who bought one of Megan's pups from the first litter, Little Owen.

All good things must end, though, and we are coming to the end of J-M's stay. Mr Silverwood pitches up tomorrow for a day when we're all together, but armed with tickets for the flights home on Sunday.

Ah well.
Deefs

Happy Birthday, Haggis (13)

How's this for a Barge-Dog? For all of the time the SB Cambria has been being rebuilt, one of the guys has had a dog with him while he works, and Dad's fellow volunteers have seen various dog evidence come and go. At one stage there was even what looked like a whelping box with cuddly toys, so whether the "dog" has actually been a pup at some stages, or perhaps a pregnant bitch, we do not know. Various cuddly toys have also come and gone and been ripped to bits, so they also see headless corpses or body-less heads lying in the sawdust. This little chap is fairly intact, all be it covered in wood chip and sawdust, but at least he'll know it's not just sawdust, it's Cambria's Somerset Oak and Iroqo wood!

Meanwhile, Happy Birthday Haggis, who is 13 today. Hard to believe he's been going on that long, Bless Him. I suspect Mum may be buying the usual pork ribs for a celebration, and as soon as Dad gets off the work conference call, we are off out for a walk, down to the Creek, currently depleted of all the usual barges, because it's the Swale Barge and Smack Race today - they are all out "playing"!

Happy Birthday, H-Man

Deefski

Barely a ripple

Dad sneaks a birthday through with barely a ripple - a couple of cards and a text from Neice Madeleine, plus (of course) some prezzies from Mum. He had left a few unsubtle hints on the "Birthday Present Ideas" board just in case she was feeling uninspired; these were mainly barge-book flavoured; he needn't have worried.

Mum is constantly appalled by the big gaps in Dad's "education" born out of growing up in a house which didn't have a TV (it still hasn't), he has whole chunks of "culture" missing. The original old St Trinians films, for example. Dad was watching the new one, bought recently by Mum (Russell Brand, Rupert Everett etc) and professing ignorance of any previous incarnations. This ends up as a rich vein of Birthday Present ideas for Mum to mine, as you can imagine!

The evening is also a dead loss as Dad has to be at a Hort Soc speaker's night (subject greenhouses - think the earlier scenes in "Calendar Girls" where they are yawning to talks on broccoli) to take money off all the little old ladies who are going on a coach outing. So there's no chance of a special meal, and that gets postponed to Friday Night when there is a chance of the obligatory Calvados.

And today he's busy, too, bound for the Hilton Hotel (no less) in Bristol, for a meeting. He reports enjoying the sight of buzzards and red kites soaring above the M4 in the clear sunny blue skies, while the volcanic ash from Iceland sneaks in at even higher level and closes down all the airspace. The kites and buzzards are not listening. On one Radio 4 programme the presenter is taken out into the back garden of a lady who lives under Heathrow's flight path to record and transmit the silence (!). M4 and M25 Matrix boards all proclaim Heathrow Closed, or Gatwick Closed.

Deefski

Happy Birthday to Me!

Happy Birthday, too, of course, to brother Archie (thanks for the card, Arch') and Sister Ellie. Nice picture of a dog - looks a bit like the "H". First-Dad tried to get me to write "Archie Parchy Poo-Pah, Dinky dog, Baby-Boy darlin' " on Archie's card because that's apparently what First-Mum calls him, but I wouldn't be that cruel to someone on their Birthday!

These here are, roughly in order, me licking my chops after the raw-pork-rib-fest that accompanies Birthdays round here. Next up, with a rib in bed, where I always sneak off with them to, to eat them in private (and there's my card). Then one of me unable to beleive that the tray is empty, and finally trying a "Monarch of the Glen" pose on top of the compost heap. Yes, standing in a pile of the dead flowers left from Mum's Birthday bouquets. Her cards have also been swept from the mantle by the Angel Betty. Move over Mum - my turn now! This is all about ME (and Arch and Ellie of course, but mainly ME)


Happy Birthday to Meeeee

Happy Birthday to Meeeee

Happy Birthday to Deefer

Happy Birthday to Meeeeee

Now... where's dessert? Just fancy some jelly and ice cream.

Look after yourselves

Deefski (3 Today)