Doris Raises The Roof

"Entry Wound"? Only 3 panels ripped off the front of this
out building. 

From an unpromising start, the latest 'named' storm, Doris, blew up to become our scariest and most damaging yet. She felled a tree, ripped a huge hole in the main hen-house, flung two jackdaw pots into our East Field and damaged the poly tunnel. But let me start the story a bit more gently than that while she was still only 'looming' and we were going to bed. We'd seen the weather warnings but by bed time we still only had light winds. I even left a window a-jar to let the cats in and out.

"Exit Wound"? Half the roof is missing this side!

Around midnight I'd been woken a couple of times by the rising wind noise but, you know, cosy warm under the duvet, safe in the nice strong house.... At around 3 a.m. the bedroom door slammed shut - not a normal occurrence. I was immediately awake and quickly aware that there was quite some storm blowing. The a-jar window had been blown fully open and I sprinted round battening down the hatches - pulling all the windows properly closed and closing vents.

We're not leaving the site till this tree is out of the way.
In the right side of the pic between the green and the grey
tree-trunks you can see the root-plate of the down one.

I couldn't stop the noise though and lay there wide awake listening to every blast and buffet, every flex and reaction of the house, every external noise and howl of the wind in the wires and chimneys. I was scared stiff imagining all manner of destruction and wrecking going on out in the dark, unable to do a single thing about it, offering up fervent prayers that surely it would soon be over and the gaps between gusts were surely getting longer.

More firewood. I cut a gap in the tree so that we could come
and go up the driveway.

We woke up at first light - around 7 a.m. to Poppea barking madly - we still do not know what she was hearing; there was plenty of choice once we started looking out and exploring. One of the medium sized trees in our 'woods' had fallen across the drive and was lying half way across the lawn and part buried in the fence. We could see 3 panels had been ripped off the chicken house on the yard side (front). Half the roof was missing from the back, with 8 foot long corrugated sheets and pieces of roof timber strewn across the East Field. One corner of the poly tunnel had been 'walked' sideways so that the door no longer fitted and had been twisted off the bottom hinge. 2 of the jackdaw pots had been flung down from the chimneys; one was half way across the field.

Chicken shed with temporary tarpaulin covers.

But that was it and the rest of the 'damage' was just superficial stuff - pots and an rabbit hutch over-turned. The fence. The garden strewn with blown bits of twig and tree. They were all manageable problems and some even had up-sides. We were just going to have a couple of busy days sorting stuff out. No humans or livestock had been killed or hurt in the storm. The only immediate cost was that I had no tarpaulin big enough to cover that hole at 6m by 6m - I managed to find a 6 x 8 one at €130 on the Internet. The supplier could get it to me by "tomorrow" on the excellent couriers that ply our roads.

Once I had sliced out my chunk of tree
the stump gently rocked itself back upright

3 good friends (Sue and Rob plus 'new' friend Jim B) heard of our plight and volunteered smaller, temporary tarpaulins and the man hours of help needed to rig them. They would also return today when I had my new, big, tarpaulin. Angels. I love that about small-holders. Helping each other in times of difficulty goes with the spirit of the thing.

The trunk appears to hover 3 feet above
the ground. 

Our tree proved to be a black spruce aged 53 years. It had been 22m (72 feet) tall and was 1.42m (4.6') circumference at chest height. It was easy enough to cut out the drive-way gap and the trunk is, amusingly, now suspended at about 3' from the ground sitting on its side-branches as if it was on the perfect saw-horse. The bottom ten feet or so of trunk gently rocked back upright pushed by the springiness of the huge roots and pulled by the weight of the root plate. When you are a rookie chain-saw man you learn that trees can do this violently and with a real whip-action as soon as you cut the heavy top-parts free of the base and if you are wise, you position yourself and saw accordingly.

Life under canvas for the chickens and ducks. 

So with the drive clear, my crew turned up and Sue and Rob had brought spare old tyres (for weighing down the tarps) and a big reel of fencing cable to use as "guy-ropes". That was Thursday and Doris had not quite finished with us. It was still quite squally with some hail-storms so battling the tarps over the roof was quite challenging. It was a cold, wet gang who retreated indoors to welcome tea and buns laid on by the Lady of the House. The chooks were not too keen to re-enter their building - as well as having scared them half to death last night by falling apart while they slept, it was now semi-transparent and had a flappy roof.

That's more like it. Big new tough tarp well lashed down. 

By today my shiny new bigger tarpaulin had been delivered, so all my crew had told me to call them back for Round 2. By today the wind was mercifully almost gone and it had stopped raining and hailing. We made fairly short work of the big new tarp and the house looks like it could cope with a bit of weather again. The birds were much keener to go in on this 2nd day, even though it is now dark inside.

Rosy has been at the mineral lick again.
Note the brown nose and lips!

We are all praying that the next storm (Ewan) does not come along any time soon and that we will fairly soon be able to do a proper repair, replacing all this canvas with new corrugated. Friends of the Blog though, may find all this very reminiscent of the winter snug-down of the Cambria Sailing Barge - tarpaulins laced down with ropes, rubber tyres hung 'over the side' to protect you from damage to the paintwork against stone piers and wharves while you rode up and down on the tide at the moorings. We are very happy with this 'bodge' and reasonably confident of its ability to take some weather. The birds are snug inside. We will cope.

Still in the pet-carrier.

Finally a couple of pics of the new poults, our "Suzy's Six" mentioned in the last post but without a picture. Also a HUGE Thank You to my riggers who generously supplied tarps, tyres, 'string' and manhours, Sue and Rob plus Jim B, and to Liz of course for throwing ropes over the roof in between cooking up marvellous scones, dillisk biscuits, cake and tea. What a team.

Released into the covered rabbit run.

Never Volunteer

Keep your head down and never volunteer for anything..... seems like good advice. So when the Irish poultry discussion website (Fowl.ie) of which I'm a member was struggling under a barrage of fake new member names generated by a robot spam programme and the poor guy trying to manage it was working 70 hour weeks, why did I hear myself volunteering to help? At the time the guy (who owns and manages the site) thanked me but didn't take me up on the offer. Yesterday, though, he decided he could use me after all and here I am, "Global Moderator" for Fowl.ie to go with my responsibilities as 'web-meister' for the Thames Sailing Barge Cambria website (http://www.cambriabargecharter.co.uk/ ).

The fowl.ie site is (obviously) mainly peopled by poultry keepers, breeders etc plenty of whom have interests outside of pure poultry; they are farmers, small holders, pest control people, writers and publishers, all sorts. They cross the whole rich brew of human life, all ages, 'classes', standards of education and strengths of opinion. They seem to go almost 24/7; certainly they can be up gassing way into the night way after I've gone to bed. It can sometimes get a bit heated but is generally harmless, just like a gang of friends bantering in the pub. There are a few muppets we need to keep our eye on but 99% of them are sensible. If anyone stepped over the lines in the past the Moderator had the option to "kill" discussion threads, warn offenders and ban them, sometimes for a fixed 'cooling off period', rarely permanently. A good few of them have given me their best wishes, some with a wry "Good Luck - you'll need it!" It should be fun, and, I hope, will not use up too much time. Feel free to look in on the website(s) if you'd like to know more.

Our drought is finally over. Overnight light rain on Tuesday 5th laid the dust and left us with a smeary, moist soil surface but no puddles. We have had drizzle on and off since then and enough quick heavier showers to fill up the car-port water-butt. The spring like weather, however, has set all the plants into motion and momentum for spring is building. We have now had a first daffodil open - this one courtesy of Steak Lady and her big net of bulbs given to us last Autumn. This whole net was planted in a curved 'drift' and promises to look superb.

Pond digging continues a-pace and yesterday I finally finished the first 'spit' (spade depth) all across the area so, for a laugh, I dug a small pit at one end down into the clay. I am hoping that the Roscommon clay will be sufficiently goo-ey that I can 'puddle' it into a waterproof layer so that we do not need to spend €860 on a butyl rubber liner. I was curious to see whether the geese might help me in the puddling process. I filled it from the water butt, scattered grain around the rim and whistled up the geese.

They were straight in, curious as anything, first dibbling their beaks into the water and then head-bathing. The sides of this mini-pit are rather steep so the geese were a bit alarmed when they sometimes slithered in down the bank. They made some amusing efforts to reverse out, but quickly learned that they could turn round and simply hop out. As well as the puddling thing, I want to know whether they will mess around too much and the water will never settle, especially as the pond gets bigger but that'll be for later. For now this pit does not seem like draining away, i.e. it seems pretty waterproof, so I will have to dig the rest around this pit leaving a dam to separate the filled bit from the digging. Slopping around in sticky Roscommon clay while trying to dig and push wheel barrows about is not fun.

There is little progress on the poly-tunnel front. The tunnel 'kit' was allegedly going to arrive either last weekend or 'middle of this week'. We have started to clear the site and the picture shows the two main horizontal wooden beams (5 by 2's) which will take the tension on the polythene sheet which we have bought so far. These are 20 feet long and , here, roughly 14 feet apart, which is the size of the tunnel ordered. The old hay barn floor is a mess of old peat turf, rotted straw bales and the old topsoil or underlying clay plus, inevitably, our local head-shaped, head sized boulders. The kit did not arrive and a chase phone-call today had the firm adjusting their ETA to 'Definitely this weekend, possibly Sunday morning'. This unlikely prediction is only credible because we know the main delivery guy has an Auntie in Loughglynn, our nearby village!

More successful is news of the return of my belovéd rotovator which you may recall died last summer (after I foolishly left it out in the rain without its cover) and then spent 8 months not being fixed by the tool hire firm Domac. I rescued it from Domac recently and entrusted it to the tender loving care of Felix-the-Fix (Chainsaw Genius) who has now fixed and serviced it. He tells me that Domac had tried to bodge on some lawnmower parts which were totally inadequate for the 3HP Briggs and Stratton motor. ("I love this engine!" says Felix).

Well, now I have it back and have seen it chug-chugging away in the sweet, relaxed, leisurely way it has. Diamond heard the noise while on her visit here last summer and, still in a half drowse in her bed, thought it was one of the small fishing boats putting out from Poros Island. Lovely. Felix being the kind of careful engineer he is, of course has also given it a huge clean up and oil and service, cleaning out air filters, fuel lines and the carburettor. He is also very careful to explain to me how the fuel tap and choke should be used. His charges were, as always, very reasonable and, as part of the deal, I'd agreed to give him the old dead Lidl chainsaw to strip for parts. In the event I was scrabbling in my pocket for the last Euro and he flapped his hands, grinned and said "Ahh... Don't worry... call it a trade in on the saw!" So, readers, the chainsaw was not a complete write off. I got €1 for it!

Home for the Bewildered

The Home for the Bewildered out the back, finally finished, is now accepting "customers". A bevvy of carers and nurses has arrived, and the first residents are in. We watch developments with interest. The Management are saying that locals can get a guided tour of the building. The Angel B says she is going to get her dirtiest clompy boots on and tread some mud into their new furnishings, see how they like it! Go Angel!

Diamond is home. We met John this afternoon walking home to his own house, from having just delivered Di into the tender care of fiersome Stockton-on-Tees friend of the fambly, Joan (quake, tremble). House has to be kept really really really clean because Di's immune system is still under par, so there must be absolute minimum risk of infection. One gets the impression Joan is the one to do it! No Ragworth allowed yet, so he's still at his "hotel" and no little white furry dogs yet either. Good to have you home though Diamond!

As promised, some recent Cambria pics. First a view you'd never see unless you owned one probably and had it up in dry dock to scrape barnacles off the bottom. This is taken with a wide angle under the port bow. You can just see the aft end of one of the new inner planks. the pale grey paint is the only "original" wood preserved in the restoration - the very bottom boards, pickled in salty mud since at least 1970 and almost certainly well before. At some stage in the barge's 103 years the underside may have been "doubled" (covered with a new layer of planking over (outside) the old) but we have no way of knowing, and these boards may actually be truly original 1903 wood.

Next, again with the wide angle, is a nice shot of the framing under the port bow. Finally is one of the hold with Dad's colleague Richard wandering about for scale. Running along the top of the shot above the camera and out to the right ( port side, as we're looking aft from starb'd bow) are the 2 new, 90 foot long "marjin planks", which form the sides of the hold hatches, take the hatch coamings, and support the long-ways, short "carling" beams.

All good stuff. Meggie, meanwhile, has spent a day at the vets having her feet poked and prodded. Turned out she had no grass-dart (which had been a possibility) and a small pink growth on her pad (which has been there ages and is just part of being an old girl) which might have been causing pain was cut away and cauterised, and sent away for biopsy. So she's on anti-biotics and mild pain killers, and has to wear a lamp shade for a few days. Wonder what is the price of NOT taking her pic for my blog....... mmmm... perhaps I prefer to live long and be poor.

Deefer

Clicking

Thought you might like to see how the boys are getting on with the Cambria restoration. This shot is taken from the port bow looking astern, so you can see that "we" are now into the curving frames that start to form the bow, but also you can see the shaped frames which start to bring the stern shape in towards the transom.

Those rear-most frames are almost "S" shaped where they join either side to the stern "deadwood" (bottom central timber running "north-south", painted red here, top centre of pic). and then curve out to give the width. This is the barge almost a year into the 3-year build project. It started, really in November 2007.

Meanwhile, you know how sometimes you just "click" with someone. Well tonight that happened to me and a 19 month old white Jack-Russell bitch called Tammy. Dad, Meg and Haggis were forgotten as we two dived into vigorous play together, running, running, running, wrestling and tumbling. Sometimes the H would join in to try to trip me up, but I was really just focussed on Tammy.

Later, when sis Ellie came up across the Rec, we said a quick "Hello", but then I carried on playing with Tammy, and Haggis chased Ellie around. Often we were right under the humans' feet (isn't that always the way?), but then sometimes we'd carve off in great circles, off round the rugby posts, or trees, or the park benches. So it went on for about 30 minutes, chacing and racing till we all had to have a lie down and collapsed, panting on the damp grass. Fantastic!

Tammy and her Mum are from Graveney, a nearby village (although originally, the Mum is a Northerner, from Bradford). We hope we see them again. It is great to find someone to play with as an equal, not someone who's either going to kill me, or wimp out!

Exhausted

Deefer

Wagtails on the starboard bow

Thought you might like these 2 recent pics of the Sailing Barge Cambria, currently under restoration. The barge hull is now well under way, with all the frames in making up the parallel rectangular part of the hold in place, and the boys starting now to form the more intricate curved sections at stern (you can see in the distance) and in the bow (under the camera man).

The baby wagtails are cunningly concealed near the starboard bow, down a cavity between the inner and outer skins of the starboard topsides, between 2 of the rotten frames. The shipwrights are aware of their presence and are studiously avoiding them, but think there might also be wrens nesting somewhere on the barge, as they keep seeing wrens nipping about with full beaks. There are so many likely holes in what is a seriously rotten, deteriorating old wooden structure, I'd not be surprised.

Deefski

When, Oh When....?

When, oh when will "they" ever fix the 2CVGB website, http://www.2cvgb.org.uk/

It's where Dad writes (or used to write) his blog aboutt the Mademoiselle, Project 2CV restoration, but it's been down for ages - about 2 months now. Click on it by all means - be my guest - but you'll just get the default page which sings a sad song about "hackers". Just as well Mum and Dad have been tied up with all this judging of Village of the Year and "Wild about Gardens 2008", so they've not had much chance to work on Mademoiselle, and not had much to write about.

Dad's gone back to school, taking in a web design evening classes (ho yus - knows more about embedded html code and web crawler algorythms than it is probably healthy to know). When we know it's "out there" we'll let you know the (fairly beginner-ish) website address. Dad has designed it and registered the domain, and has since tried to get it publicised by Nominet and hosted, but so far, there's no sign of it.

But now it's the weekend. Diamond and Rags are here - we are all chewing on chunks of pigs ear and fighting over the remnants, while the humans move from pink Pinot Grigio, to a rather nice Rioja (without fighting). Tomorrow Dad is manning the S.B.Cambria and her interpretive centre in town as part of the town's "Open House" scheme. Drop in if you're about.

http://www.faversham.org/pages/directory_category.aspx?i_PageID=11878

Deefski

Black and White

New kid on the block we meet out walking this morning, a Scottie named Pip. Lots of people we meet seem to think it would "be great" to own one of each - a Westie and a Scottie, like the little black and white dogs on the whisky logo..

http://www.scotchwhisky.net/blended/black_n_white.htm

In practise we meet very few Scotties, so they must be quite a rare breed around here, although we know of quite a few people who have multiple westies. Anyway, Pip's a good lad and we all have a nice chat with and sniff of each other, as we're mooching about the Rec.

Talking of black and white, and neatly segue-ing across to "pied" (ah - these radio-4 links), Dad is down all day at the Cambria sailing barge project, alternately manning the Visitor centre, and the barge itself. The barge sits in an old Thames "lighter" as a 3-year dry-dock while the restoration takes place.

Members of the public would not be insured to clamber all over the half-built barge, so the project has rigged up a solid viewing platform which is welded to the structure of the lighter, enabling people to get above the bow of the barge and look inside , down the length of her, through to the stern.

As Dad was showing a batch of people up the platform, the slight movement caught his eye - a pied wagtail nipping about down in the barge. It turns out that this bird has nested in between the inner and outer "wale" planking on the starboard bow, quite near to the viewers on the platform (but well away from the current position of the shipwrights, who are shaping the curved bits of serious oak which make up the stern.

Dad mentioned this to one of the guys ( he said they knew, and were avoiding the area, as well as thinking there is a wren nipping about, possibly also nesting on the boat). Hopefully this will not interfere with the proposed "Open-House" sessions coming soon.

It's all go!
Deefer

Pegwell Bay, Kes and Cambria

Yep. It's time for your regular shot of the progress on the restoration of Sailing Barge Cambria. Double click the picture to expand it up to full screen. You can see that all the frames and floor planks are now in, for the box-like mid section of the barge, and that the big long curved "inner wales" have now been put into place, helping to bring out the lovely curved shape of the hull, higher at the prow and stern than she is mid-ships.

These old girls, loaded with 170 tonnes of bulk cargo (wheat, cattle feed, coal, rock, bricks etc) sometimes sailed with only 12 inches of free-board at the mid point - ie any wave more than a foot tall would be lapping over the side planking, so they sailed with the hatches covered over and batten'd down - it was said that as long as you could see the stem, stern and mast, you were OK!

Mum and Dad are now in the thick of judging (assessing) gardens for "Gardening for Wildlife" and of villages for the Calor Village of the Year "Environmental Action" category, so this weekend is a bit of a come and go session. We don't mind. We get a sweetie as they leave and the joy of a welcome re-union on their return. So today they are off to do a garden in town, then back. Then off to do another at the old coastguard cottages in Pegwell Bay.

They come back enthusing about that one - there are not many gardens where you are a-top the cliffs, looking down at a kestrel nest in the cliff, and watching the fulmars patrolling up and down, eye-ing you suspiciously (and ready to spit that foul fishy goo if they think you're too near their cliff edge!).

Finally they're off to look round Charing village for the VoY thing

Only after that do we get our walk. We go down to the creek, and boatyard, and call in on the Cambria Visitor Centre, where-at, one of Dad's mates and his wife are holding the fort. We all troop in to be met by his long haired Jack Russell, 3 year old Kes (named after a character in Startrek, apparently - we'll have to google it, not being Trekkies).

We have a short shout but then we all settle down to schmoozin' up each others' "parents". Mind you we thought it was a bit cheeky when Kes, trying to love up Dad who was leaning back on a wall, jumped from floor to lap and then Dad's shoulders, looking down on him from the back of his neck as if she were on the back of a sofa! A new friend.

Mum and Dad are off to try out a new Italian Restaurant in town "Villa Toscana" - more on this next time.

The longest Day

Deefer

Fast Alfie

Still no sign of that snow, so we guess we've missed it as usual. We are all up nice and early to enjoy a good walk in the chilly sunshine. There's a cold wind blowing. Dad takes us down across the allotments and into the Abbey Fields behind tracing the line of the Whitstable railway and then curving Northwards towards the creek.

We meet a young black greyhound called Alfie who wants to play. We are in some close-grazed (rabbits) scrubby grassland. Alfie starts charging in huge figure-of-eight circuits, so I give chase. By cutting the corners hard (my figure of 8's are about 20 feet across, Alfie's are about a quarter of a mile!) I can keep up with him and when he curves in towards me I send him on his way with a couple of excited yaps, and off he goes again racing out on the next loop.

There! You never knew I could run as fast as a greyhound did you!

Dad then left us to Mum's tender mercies and went off to play with his Cambria restoration buddies. Came back smelling of the other Alfie, barge dog from Greta, so I suspect he may have been communing with Steve and the rest from the boatyard.

Chilly tonight - we have a coal fire going
Deefs

Sounds Promising

Well - it was still lashing down with rain at lunchtime, but we were all going stir-crazy in here, so Dad put on some suitable rainproofing and we went out anyway, all down round the boatyard loop to check up on the barge, Cambria

The gale was still a-blowing so the wind was screeching through the rigging of the boats, and slap-slapping the halyards and pulley blocks against the masts with that unique noise that can only be a boatyard full of aluminium masted boats

Down at Cambria it all looked promising - there were sounds of heavy hammering coming from the depths of the lighter, and occasional shouts. The car and trucks we know to be those of the Master Shipwright were parked there, and there were two big braziers, one an oil drum, another a rivetted sheet metal water tank burning vigorously, well stocked with size-able chunks of old boat timbers. We didn't want to disturb them, so we went on our way, happy to know they are cracking on a-pace.

By the time we got back indoors we were like 4 drowned rats, so Dad pulled out a wad of dog-towels and we all got rubbed dry. We love that! We end up battling with the towels that get wrapped all around out faces and bodies, and even racing from room to room and on and off the sofa, festooned with damp towels.

Now we're all tired out, and crashed out various places about the house steaming gently and probably stinking of damp rug. It's a dog thing!

Deefer

2008 !

What will the New Year bring. Other than the predicted mass launchings of fireworks, that is. The whole town seemed to be exploding, and there were some big, heavy (expensive) fireworks amongst it, too. We found a fair number of casings on the morning walk.

The walk is great - everybody seems to be out and about, even though some of the humans look a bit jaded. We met the people up the road with Westie Jock (always immaculate and frequently entered in dog photo competitions) and the Cav "Twiggie". We met another westie we'd not seem before, name of Lewie, about Haggis's size but I guess about 4 years old. We met pointers and alsatians, springers and patterdales... everybody!

We walked past Cambria and wished her New Year, and we walked on past Greta and said Hi and Happy New Year to skipper Steve (but barge-dog Alfie was below decks sleeping off his own walk).

Now we're back home, resting (or in Meggie and Mum's case, watching girlie movie "Polly-Anna" from the sofa) . Dad's reading a book he got for Christmas. All is quiet and warm - very mild, although the forecast is for freezing cold weather and snow.

Happy New Year
Deefer

Poly-Tunnel

Bit of a thaw. After a succession of mornings at minus 5 degrees C, this morning was either warmer, or us getting up at a lazy 9am instead of the workday 04:15 meant that all the white frost had had a chance to melt.

Still steering clear of the Rec, our walk this morning took us down to the creek abnd back through the Iron Wharf and the boatyard. We were able to check on sailing barge "Cambria" now cocooned inside her poly tunnel of white tarpaulins. She also now has her smart new gang-plank and here, in the pic, you can see the railway sleepers the men have laid down to stop the cranes, when they use them, from collapsing the creek bank.

At home today, all is mad preparation for Mum's "posh frocks" do tonight, where Dad will be descended upon by 6 more glamorous ladeeeez in their finest (it's a hard life, Dad, but some-one's got to do it!). We have been despatched to the allotment to harvest leeks, kale and savoy cabbage, we have laid the fire, we have been shopping (nearest Sainsburys surprisingly not too manic!), we have been tidying and readying the house, polishing champagne glasses and getting out the finest china. Coo... aren't we the elegant ones!

Deefer

Oh Ellie!

The grapevine has it that my Sis, Ellie is in "twouble" again. Her Mum has grassed her up to Uncle Jim, found guilty of chewing up her glasses. Ellie's Mum says she has 2 pairs - her "spare" pair and her "best" pair. We'll leave you all to guess which pair Ellie has written off......

Dad has a Team Lunch today and skanks off work a bit early, so is home to walk us round the boat yards loop in daylight. We pass the project Sailing Barge "Cambria" in her dry-dock "lighter" and see the guys just finishing off assembling her "polytunnel" of bright white lorry tarpaulins. Dad hails one of the shipwright guys. "She'll start to dry out now", he says, "So we can start doing some proper work on her.

We also pass the barge Greta, as sailed on by Mum and Dad (twice now) under her own transparent plastic polytunnel. We say Hello to skipper Steve and barge-dog Alfie

Meanwhile at home, all is oprepping up for Christmas. Ever more cards are amassing on mantle shelf and window sills, and present wrapping has commenced. There is some stuff being kept out of sight of dogs, which is promising.

Deefs

Cambria

A couple more pics of that Sailing Barge, cambria, now residing a few yards from one of our favourite walks, on the Creekside, at Standard Quay. Nipping onto the website, we found she was built by the Everard yard in Greenhithe in 1906, and was the last remaining sailing barge to be in trade, still under only sail (all the rest had had at least auxillary engines fitted) until 1970. She's 91.1 feet long and was registered as 79 tons.

Meanwhile, back at the Rec, we meet 2 nice new dogs tonight - 4 month old golden lab "Paddy" who is not yet trusted off the lead. We wanted to play but the lady was also bringing home from school a (someone else's) child who was not used to dogs, and wailed in terror every time our romping moved in his direction. This got too much for the lady in the end and she apologetically dragged Paddy away. Only when I was 20 yards off and back wrecking a plastic bottle (Coca Cola Zero) did the little mite quieten down.

Also, lovely tri-colour Jack Russell "Mac". He was new to his owner and she was wary of letting him off but at least she had him on a 20 foot lead, so he could run in huge, fast circles, trying to scythe humans and Megan and Haggis off at the knees at every rotation. Won't be long before he's off the lead, I think. He'll be as much fun to play with as Nelson the other day.

And, of course, it's hallowe'en, so an evening of doggie restlessness is forecast, what with Trick or Treat kids (we don't usually get many - we're always (I'm told) left with shed loads of sweeties), and some fireworks

Happy Hallowe'en

Deefer

Even older than Megan

I have no idea what order these 4 pics will come out on the blog - have to "publish" and then go back in and edit if I've said anything that doesn't fit with the pics!

Anyway, dad has day off work today so, other that when he is, yet again, trying to capture a good deer photo in Challock Forest, we have his undivided attention. We get a lovely walk round the fields and the boatyard. Housed there now is the old Sailing barge "Cambria" - poor old girl is in rather grim condition. More on her soon, but suffice to say now she was the last barge still in trade round these parts, eventually being pensionned off in the 60's, and is now in dry-dock at our boatyard pending (we hope) restoration. She's even older than Megan!

Out on that walk, I managed to find some ripe fox poo to roll in. The pic with my head in the shade shows well the amount I managed to get on my rump and right shoulder. Megan was looking on with murder in her heart, remebering, as she did, the mention of shampoo and "minging" at the weekend, and thinking we'd got away with it.

Well, my attempt to improve the doggie fragrance put the tin hat on that, and Dad wrangled us all through the shower, one after the other. Hence my pic of me looking all white and fluffy, completely devoid of fox poo (and street-cred!). The final pic, of all three of us, is just the three of us basking in the warm october sunshine at the back door, all damp from the shower. Megan is at front (out on the step), I'm centre and Haggis is at the back.

Deefer - West Highland WHITE terrier!! :-))

For more info in Cambria, try http://www.thamesbarge.org.uk/barges/charter/cambriadetails.html#done