In with the New, (Not) Out with the Old

Roscommon has the eye of Storm Eleanor
pass overhead at around 6 pm.

Fox! My one word text brings Liz running to join me in the garden but we can hardly hear each other over the cacophony of Guinea Fowl alarm calls. We've not seen one on the property all year, since the November 2016 attack but now, two days into the New Year we are back in the firing line.

A new gin for Liz to try. Blackwater.

It was fairly calm (though we were expecting the latest named storm, Storm Eleanor by evening) but lashing down with rain. I was just wandering about looking for eggs, and had come round the corner of the barn, headed for the orchard when all hell broke loose 30 yards away at the top of the 'allotment'. Guinea fowl were exploding into vertical flight and shouting blue murder about foxes.

...and a weird new beer for me. Loved the
goat logo. Very quaffable. 

I saw the fella straight away, with a bunch of feathers in his mouth (but no bird). He was a fine big adult looking first a bit put out that he'd near-missed the Guinea but then a bit concerned that I was running towards him, flapping my arms and roaring swear words at him like some lunatic. He took off smartly through the hedge and was gone. That's when I got a chance to text Liz.

The Guineas having a fox-free dust bath in the tunnel.

The Fox-Success Gods were on our side this time. The pouring rain had most of the birds hiding in the sheds anyway and it was an easy job for 2 of us to shepherd the rest home - geese and ducks. The Guineas now settling down and chuntering and scolding loudly (as they do) could not wait to go 'home' either, so by 15:15, still broad daylight, we had everybody locked up for the night, safe in case Brer Fox should try again.

A baffled turkey?

Well. For a given value of 'safe'. Eleanor is now roaring around noisier, if anything, than the 'Orange warning' one, Dylan. I fear, as ever, for the tarpaulin roof of the chicken house. (We have just been out for a check round at half past six and so far all seems OK. It's just very very noisy. We mainly feel helpless and powerless.)

Meanwhile, away from Storm Eleanor and her kind, all is chugging along nicely as we chug gently through New Year and welcome 2018 in. The remaining turkey hen seems somewhat baffled but that might just be us anthropomorphising like we shouldn't. We were amused to ponder whether she is thinking that she has nothing in her folk-memory or hard wired into her DNA to tell her what to do with the 25th, 26th, 27th, the New Year and so on.

Baffled Turkey Hen

She is also a bit lost-looking now the Guinea cock-birds have  dropped her like a hot potato when they received their new 'women'. Up to then the boys viewed it as their duty to shepherd all three turkeys around and mind them. Now she wanders about wondering where her 'brothers' and her 'minders' have gone.

New Year's Eve supper.

New Year's Eve went very well for us, and nice and quiet. We ate the celebratory haggis supper and sipped Scotch Whisky (no 'E' because this was Famous Grouse, a gift from Santa). We watched a nice Irish-flavoured 'rom-com' movie ("PS I Love You", based on the Celia Ahern book) to fill the long evening and then did the 'First Footing' thing. We have both decided to try our hand at 'Dry January' - no booze till the 31st EXCEPT that we are taking the Scottish Amendment which allows for a dram of whisky on Burns Night (25th). We are not alone, by all accounts. Cousin 'Win'  and  her Peter are doing the same and bro' Mark is taking a gin-drinkers version in Swindon. There is a pre-booked gin tasting on 15th Jan which it would (obviously) be churlish to refuse, though he's not too bothered about Burns Night and Haggis. I'll keep you all posted on how we all do.

One off design handbag by Con and Santa

I can now, at last, post pics of this Santa delivery which I have been dying to show you but unable to do so lest I spoil the surprise. Friends of the Blog may recall that my good friend and archery coach, Con, is also a fine leather worker. He is the national go-to expert on Medieval footwear, frequently called upon to create repro shoes for museums and 'interactive' exhibitions (i.e. where the museum visitors get to try on the items) and asked to try to make a shoe using the archaeologists/historians' suggested techniques. "Nope, they WOULDN'T have been able to do it that way!"

Con also makes items for sale through the website - archery gear as well as shoes, 'jewelry', bangles and (ta-daaaa!) one-off design hand bags. With Santa's help we conspired to get Liz involved in the design without being allowed to know what the final result might be. She'd 'chosen' a cocktail glass for her 'logo' and Con was able to sneak off and contrive a cocktail-glass-based design for our bag. Liz is over the moon and the new bag is now the bag of choice, filled with all the usual 'clutter' of notebooks, spare tissues, lotions and potions and 'stuff' that keeps herself on the road.

My old favourite billhook may be 100+ years old.

Finally, that line in my title about "Not out with the old". I have in my 'man-shed' a treasured favourite farm implement, my bill hook, bought over 30 years ago 2nd hand in Surrey. It has a forged blade marked with the forger's stamp. "I.H.   J Harrison   Warranted" I was chatting away about favourite tools on the Internet and got talking to a lad who is a bit of an expert on old English toolery.

The stamp on mine told him that it was made by the company 'I Harrison', long since absorbed into Spear and Jackson, and forged by the son of the firm, John Harrison. The chap has all the pattern books from these firms and was able to identify my billhook as being originally from 1916, over a hundred years old! I loved it in an obsessive way before. It was my most precious piece of kit. There will be no stopping me now!

Silvergirl. 

And there you have it. In the time it has taken me to type these last 8 paragraphs the roaring wind of Eleanor has quite died away... unless she is just teasing us as we sit right under that eye. More on all this soon. Happy New Year to all our readers and don't throw away those old tools. They might be historically important!

Possibly taking the love of Prosecco a bit far? Now you can
emerge from the bathroom smelling of it!

Just a couple more pics because I have them.

Final loaf of 2017.

Anyone for Yoga?

Morning sky on the 11th

Readers who know my brothers and I will know that we went through our first 50 or so years without a sporty bit in our DNA. We know nothing of soccer and at school would swerve outdoor team stuff as often as possible when options like cross country running or canoeing were available. We have precious little interest in any other sports (except maybe rallying, off roading or possibly Formula 1). Gyms were BAD places and, as far as I know, none of us did that 'subscription' thing when gyms became fashionable.

Yellow hot poker?

Lately, youngest bro, Mark, has been getting into the weight loss and fitness thing, and his blog posts and Facebook have been well laced with various exercise classes and words like 'biceps curl' and 'abs'. Most recently he has been doing "Total Body Conditioning" and "Balance Classes". I have no idea what these involve so, Mark, you'll have to forgive me if I have an image in my head of you balancing along one of those 3" wide beams like a latter-day Nadia Comaneci.

Blue the cat (top centre) looking a bit beleaguered when his
day time hidey hole is invaded by all the birds taking shelter
from the rain. Blue hates chickens and always gives them a
wide berth.

I am not sure I have been inspired by all this but when Liz organised some Yoga classes at work and included, for the first time, a men's beginners class, I found myself agreeing to support this worthy clause. I was, of course, scared stiff as it would be a first time doing anything formally 'fitness' and I was also worried that I might be the only bloke who turned up. I felt a bit like a school kid being dropped off at school by her Mum as Liz drove me down there and waved me off. Her 'Mixed Ability (Ladies) class had their session after ours. I am also, I think, the only bloke in Roscommon who doesn't own jogging 'pants' so I was attired in a pair of rarely used long pyjama bottoms which were dark-ish and could pass muster in a dim light. (Yoga instructors seem to like dim light and tinkly piano music for atmosphere).

Nice low angle shot of one of the hens with all 5 babies.

Well, it went OK in the end. There were 4 other lads there, mostly as old and creaky as me. I have to admit to spending the first 15 minutes (warming up time?) feeling a bit rebellious, hurting at the unprecedented pain being done to hip joints and convinced that I had done what I agreed to - go along and try it the once - so I could bow out after this session. Yoga? Tried it once but it wasn't for me. But then, as I warmed up, I began to enjoy the stretches, the heat and the pain in under-used muscles and joints. It helped that I didn't feel completely useless as the lads around me were groaning and gasping just as loud as me and the man to my left at one stage grunted a very audible 'Aaahh Jeeeeezus!' which had us falling about laughing.

Hops

30 minutes in I had changed my mind completely and was determined to come back for the remaining (5?) sessions of the course and I have to also admit to a lot of respect and admiration for our teacher, easily the bendiest woman I have ever seen in action (maybe with the exception of Nadia C?). She apparently races around Roscommon doing these classes in all manner of villages and towns, most evenings. She is in huge demand and Liz was (she says) so lucky to get her for Lisacul. Yep, I was actually quite proud of myself that evening and the next day, wearing my whole-body aches and pains with pride. I knew I had had a good work out and hope that those joints and muscles will all be a little better for it, all be it I will never be as flexible as 'Teach'.

Who knew that the membranes inside your 'dippy egg' could
have this honeycomb structure?

If I am getting healthier, though, the Health-bogeyman must have spotted me and decided to whack me on Sunday-Monday with a horrible stomach bug. I 'never' get these (We can remember just one from our marriage which hit me on a Christmas in Hastings) so the pain and seriously 'ill' feelings come as much a shock as debilitating. I got first signs on the Sunday night, spending all that night very uncomfortable and not sleeping very well. I woke up at normal time and forced myself to do livestock rounds (waves of hot-flush and sweaty nausea), and then engaged in a 3 hour drive/hang around getting the right people to the butchers to see the lamb cut up and re-homed. At that point I was packed off to bed by Nurse Lizzie.

The ivy starting to flower. Bee keepers need to be getting their
honey off the hives - ivy nectar sets like rock once the bees
have processed it into honey.

I spent most of that day in the sickbay. Meanwhile, Liz (snr) was due up for a visit, mainly to go blackberrying with us. Not that day though - every time they fired up the car it lashed down with rain! I woke up at lunchtime feeling a little better and tried some flat 7-Up (a family cure for dodgy tummies) and some sieved (bitless) borscht. I sat and chatted for a while but was quickly needing to get rid of lunch. Back to bed for me, then and Liz beating me into submission - SHE would do the livestock rounds and no arguing. The good news is that I woke up this morning with all pain gone and happily tried some toast to no ill effect. I have eaten normally today and drunk normal amounts of coffee and tea - no dizziness, no nausea, no sweaty hot flushes and no excuse to not go to Yoga on Wednesday. I guess a winter-vomiting bug picked up from somewhere, or maybe Liz is sneaking the strychnine into the BBQ chicken.

Liz and Liz at the blackberrying

Today also dawned beautifully sunny and warm, so we grabbed our tubs and buckets and headed off for the brambly hedges of the fields of a very good farming friend. The fruit grows lush and bold in those fields and, them being a silage fields, I know they never get sprayed with anything except slurry and fertilized with anything but inorganic NPK to help the grass after each silage cut. In an hour and a half we had quickly accumulated 4 kgs+ of lovely ripe fruit. The sun was starting to get to me (maybe not as fully recovered as I thought?) by then and Mum was feeling tired, so we stopped at the one big bucket. We have an option to go back for more. There are plenty there. We didn't even get all the way round the first (of two) field(s).

I think that'll do for this one. Here, though, is some lovely, mad, china Mum brought up as a gift. Thank you so much, Liz (snr)

Yellow and Blue

A sports fan? Well, maybe not.....

Go the Rossie Boys! When we upped sticks and moved from our old jobs to the 'Wesht' of Ireland, I seem to have come from one sport mad environment (the DHL/Sainsbury warehouse) to another (this whole country!). The local area is knee deep in fans of soccer and of the 2 GAA sports ('football' and hurling, use the 'football' word round here and everyone will assume you are talking about Gaelic-rules footie. The UK 'permiereship, Man-U and all that jazz is always specified as soccer).

A 365 pic from my "yellow and blue" period. 

All my friends and rels will know that we 3 brothers managed to get born without the 'football' gene strand in our DNA. We have had no interest in the game for our whole lives and what we know about it you could write in capitals on the back of a postage stamp. I have happily carried that on into Ireland and the GAA game but you'd have to be blind here to not know there was something going on.

The strawberry season is upon us.

The whole county is a-flutter with the yellow and blue Roscommon flags; cars, flag poles in front gardens, sheep sprayed in those colours. Roscommon has not, up till now been known for its sporting prowess but while all sporty eyes were turned towards an exciting run in the soccer 'Euro's' which took the national team to the final 16 for the first time ever, The (GAA) Rossie boys have been sneaking up on the final of the Connacht (province) championship. The 'Big Game' was to be against the heroic Galway team and 'we' were definitely underdogs.

Peas and beans from the polytunnel.

Liz had bought me the top for Christmas and had been talking to her boss (John, who is a genuine fan) about my hopelessness as a fan - all in good part, I have to say, and in fun. They had decided that I should wear the shirt for the main games in the run up as it seemed to be having a good and talismanic effect - they kept winning! With tongue in cheek, she also gave me some 'authentic' lines to say should I get asked any tricky questions (like "did you see the match?" for example). I am (allegedly) very happy with the season so far and also delighted that 'they' are finally doing up the (Douglas) Hyde ground because the surface has been unplayable all through the winter when ever it rains.

Summer fruiting raspberries

Well, underdogs or not, I wore the shirt as advised at the weekend and Roscommon drew with Galway, so there is a replay game on Saturday evening. My only other involvement has been that I thought it would be fun to do a series of '365' pics for the project during the intervening week, based on the Rossie colours blue and yellow, so I have been wandering about looking for anything to shoot where blue and yellow are in conjunction and are the main colours.

Coo. There's a whole exciting world out there!

Meanwhile, back in real life my dozen Marans eggs have now 'cooked' in the incubator and have started hatching but in an unusual way. Normally 12 eggs set on the same day in an incubator will almost synchronise their hatching - the theory is that they all feel each other moving within their respective shells, rocking about and hear each other cheeping, so they all get encouraged to greater efforts. You get a great surge of pipping and hatching and so few in the 'tail' end that it is not really worth keeping the incubator going in case of stragglers. Well, not for us this time, it seems.

Early Bird

We got 2 really early birds on day 17 (should be 21), followed by a pause, then a burst of 3 more on day 20 and only one today (Day 21). 6 chicks now, then, and the remaining 6 eggs all quiet with no signs of even any pipping. We are guessing that the strange spread is due to how the eggs were stored before we got them - they have managed to sneak in 4 days of early development before they ever went into our incubator so possibly they were kept warm.

A first try at mould-pressed, matured, harder goats cheese

I will give the final 6 eggs till tomorrow (Day 22) evening before I take them out and carefully open them (one at once, obviously) out at the compost heap. They may be sterile, addled or 'dead in shell', ones which failed to make it out of the egg. If any turn out to be alive (oops) I will put the rest back in and give them a few more days but I would be amazed if this is the case.

Blue the floofy cat in one of his more classy sleeping poses.

That's it for this one. I am afraid I have a cold and I am bunged up, fed up and not able for happy creative writing. Forgive me.