The Struggling Writer in his Garret

Welcome aboard, Dan

We accommodate all flavours of holiday maker here. Our current visitor is (Mr) Dan of  'Dan and Dan' fame, frequent visitors and Friends of the Blog, married last year on that cruise ship off Italy. 'Mrs Dan' is famously the more enthusiastic about our livestock and was here with her Mum (Cousin Cathy), if you recall, a few weeks back, narrowly missing our ewe 'Rosie' having her twins and failing to see any ducklings hatch.

The best kind of 'struggling writer' came
bearing gifts. Thanks Dan!

This Spring, the couple had decided to visit separately because Mrs Dan wanted to treat her Mum to a birthday break, while Dan's visit needed to give him a week of total peace and quiet in which to write up a thesis as part of his final marks on his University "Masters" degree.

The writer in his garret. Also known as our
spare bedroom.

The 'Uni' in this case is London School of Economics, the Masters is in Business Management and the Thesis is in "Supply Chain Resilience" That subject is one close to our hearts as it was my bread and butter for most of my working life but is also currently quite topical and timely following well publicised failures in Danish shipping giant Maersk and in my own company, DHL's abortive attempt to take over chicken distribution for KFC. The former was as a result of a massive cyber 'hack'. The latter was just a dog's breakfast comedy of errors.

Emerging now and again for food.

So, Dan is here for a short week, closeted in the spare room where we have borrowed him a desk and given him a chair and even 2 turkey feathers for quills. He works away in 4 hour+ bursts emerging only occasionally for tea and stopping (otherwise) for just his meals and to sleep. He has 6000 words of brilliance to create by Tuesday and has already done a lot of taped interviewing with people in the business, which he is able to upload to a voice-recognition website which transcribes the audio and gives it back to you as text. Sometimes the text is even quite accurate but he still has to spend hours proof reading it to make sure his thesis makes sense. At other times he has to go on conference calls for his 'proper job'; this course is only really an allowed study-sabbatical. He also works well into the evening after supper, so we leave him alone for three hours or so when we nip off to the latest play rehearsal. He is getting on OK and is still on schedule to complete by Tuesday.

A tangle of lambs round his legs as Dan tries
to line up the bottle on the correct lamb's mouth.

He allowed himself one little 10 minute distraction when he decided to tease Mrs Dan by being caught on camera, bottle feeding the little ewe-lamb which she was so fed up to have missed being born. We were a bit concerned that this could be the end of a short but happy marriage but Dan happily pinged them across to Mrs Dan on 'messenger' and within seconds (he said) drew out the expected jokey/angry phone call.

The brilliant play-set created by the guys at the CE scheme.

Other than that, life has been all about The Play which is now getting scarily close. Dress Rehearsal is only 2 days away on Monday evening, and the performances are on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. By now, of course, they have the set built on the stage and everyone is mightily impressed and delighted with it. It features a 'Rayburn' style range made from the real, metal front and top but built to a wooden carcass as well as an old dresser for the 'good china' which had to be given 2 new doors made to look in keeping. Elizabeth stepped from 'Producer' to 'props' dept for an afternoon to knock out some matching curtains and cushion covers out of an old duvet cover, on the sewing machine.

The Players rehearsing a scene from "Anyone Can Rob a Bank"

The Lisacul Players are now in parachutists "ground-rush" mode, cramming in rehearsals every evening and even a couple to fine tune one of the acts on Sunday afternoon. No spoilers on this blog, of course, suffice to say it is all frantic hard work as the deadline looms, but "The Show will go on" and I'm predicting it will be a superb, funny success which will delight the audience and leave the team all exhausted but elated. Watch this space for progress reports.

Liz jointing up a turkey.

(Typing is interrupted at this point by the Guinea Fowl kicking off their alarm, and me letting the dogs loose just as the Heavens opened and a huge hail storm comes down. The dogs may or may not have found a scent-trail but they give up half way across the 5-acre field and race back to get under cover from the hail. Their route home crosses that of dozens of hens and roosters fleeing for cover too and I even saw the whole flock of ewes and lambs racing for the shelter. If Brer Fox was indeed on site and snatched a bird, then I suppose we should leave him welcome to that one.)

Clearing out the 'office' under the stairs.

...Which rather distracted me from my train of thought. What else is new? With the loss of my trusty old PC, the house lost the need for my own 'garret' - the little cubby hole under the stairs which had become an office and glory-hole. The Interior Design Department feel there are far better (and more attractive) uses for this space including, possibly, a comfy chair for herself, so the area is being dismantled for all my bodged shelving and the accumulated junk found better homes (or consigned to the wheelie bins in the best tradition of de-cluttering).

The late Cathy Chapman, featured in the
previous post (plus dog, Kes)

I suspect that is enough for now.

4 Years Ago, Today

Albert still has his Sainsbury Dartford
Depot security badge

June 30th is one of our significant land mark dates. It was 4 years ago today that I ran out of usefulness to DHL contract distribution and the Sainsbury's Dartford Depot, allegedly, at least on my then terms and conditions. To be fair to them, they were very good to me, their 'then' longest serving employee with just under 29 years continuous service. Sadly, they don't make jobs like that any more! The settlement was very generous and I was treated really well but it was still a bitter-sweet day. My 'peers' did a special version of the morning meeting to acknowledge my efforts and I was allowed to spend a good part of the day wandering about the 500,000 sq feet depot bidding farewell to those among the 400+ employees I knew.

Our 'Hen with One Chick' now well
feathered up and starting to wander. 

Then at half past three (briefly interupted by a fire drill during which I was not allowed to leave the site) we did the proper farewell and I was presented with all the signed cards and some gifts. One of these, from those who knew that I 'hated' garden gnomes and was off to "spend more time in the garden" was, inevitably a gnome which they had even put through security check-in, so he had his own access badge with his photo and his name, Albert Green. I still have him gracing a cairn of boulders in the front garden. If any of my old 'DHL lot' read this, thanks again and I will never forget you guys. This was 2011 and is no doubt covered in this blog if you want to go look.

The 'new' Fiat Panda

From today it will also be the day we bought our first Irish car, a replacement for the belovéd red Fiat Panda, Tim, which we decided was getting a bit too close to sell by date to be relied on to do that many more years' service. The 'new' car is also  Fiat Panda 1100cc but brings us up to date by 6 years. It is basically the same as the previous one but has a different 'dash' and (Yay!) the old tape deck is replaced by a CD player. Now we can throw away the old speaking-book stories we'd been hanging onto since they were a thing, we no longer have anything to play them on. They were a couple of Shakespeare plays and some Terry Pratchett books and they have rattled around in the door pockets of the 04 reg car since we moved here.

The Captain checks out the new vehicle.

Whoever buys the old car will get quite a nice vehicle and now with shiny new front brake discs and shoes, the tow hitch carefully removed (the old wiring reinstated obviously) and well valeted throughout. We hope that they never find out that the head gasket has possibly leaked (we don't know for sure even now) and been sealed up with the Blue Devil gloop. May they drive for many more miles in the bliss of ignorance till the old lad dies of some unrelated aged ailment.

Barbara takes a look inside. 

We are very pleased with the 'new' one which seems as bright and willing as Tim did 6 years ago. We have not been any great distances yet - we brought the car home from near Ballyhaunis via a fuel top-up in Balla-D, then Liz nipped down to the PO to buy water when our water mains died (again), and now she is back in Balla-D for knitting. On that small sample, the car seems fine and we have great hopes that it will be as good as the previous Panda. When we transfered the insurance across we found that we are due a rebate because these newer cars are cheaper to insure. It is also cheaper to tax, being a modern, low emmissions engine. As far as I know it does not yet have a name, but that is Liz's department. The 'Tim' came from our UK reg letters which spelt a very abridged 'Timbuktu', but this is originally a Dublin reg car, so the only letter is the 'D' for Dublin.

One of the least focused pics I have ever taken (well, it is
very crisp on the wire!) but you can see one of the two chicks
hatched by the Elderberry Buff-Orp. 

Finally, our Elderberry Buff DID manage to hatch that egg and, in fact, a 2nd. One is the orange of a Buff Orp. the other paler, so it may be from a white Hubbard or a Sussex Ponte hen. Less than 24 hours old, these babies were already being shown how to peck at food and scratch, when I slid a shallow bowl of appropriate grub in under the wire - I think Mum was fairly hungry too, so was immediately clucking and fussing at the food so that she had an excuse to get a crop full while teaching the chicks. Well done Elderberry Buff. The clutch we gave her were a rescue of half a dozen from a hedgerow stash (it was all we had). 2 of these got broken along the way (one with a half-grown embryo inside). She's hatched 2 survivors, a third unbroken one proved to be sterile and a fourth is a Guinea fowl egg. That will also be sterile, obviously as we have no cock bird.

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.