Staying Healthy

That crab apple and blackberry jelly. 

We, jointly, are not great fans of the medical profession and try to spend our days staying healthy and avoiding doctors, dentists, hospitals, opticians and the like. We try to eat and drink healthily and avoid breaking things or damaging ourselves. Liz has been doing Yoga for ages and I have just started. But, hey, neither of us are getting any younger and when the above plan meets the combined forces of the medical profession it tends, like us, to creak.

A well weathered chunk of elder.

Recently those medics have got all their ducks in a row and lined up a synchronised assault on our health fortress; we have just had to cave in. Between us we have received demands for breast exams, overdue eye-tests and, most pressingly, Liz has been going through her own private Dentist Hell. No more detail on any of this specifically (patient confidentiality etc) but we have lately been involved in runs to Sligo, Roscommon and local centres armed with forms and appointment cards etc. One of Liz's 'experts' is not even as lowly as a mere 'dentist'. No no. He is an Advanced Dental Aestheticist. Now!

The Hubbards at Day 55 look a lot more like chickens now.

This is all well and good and is no doubt "vital" and "advisable" but we do not love it and we wish they would all just do what they need to do and then return our dusty files to the shelf marked "OK. Leave these people alone for another 5 years...They have suffered enough". We are happy to return the favour by being healthy at these lads and not pestering them for more expertise.

It is National Potato Day (apparently) so here is a spud
flower and a fly. It is growing in our Keyhole Bed as a volunteer
and does not seem to know it is October.

Meanwhile livestock does not stop growing while we take time out to get our acts together and the pigs, in particular are "finishing" (that farmer euphemism for 'they are big enough now to be booked into the butchers for their final journey'). They are booked in to Webb's in town and I just need to train them to go easily into the trailer so that they will do this for me with not a bother on them on the day.

Another session on the kitchen gave us
a roof frame.

Regular readers will know that we have previously constructed a "race" of fences running up from their pen to a place where I can "plug in" the trailer. I just need to show them that this race is OK and that the trailer holds no fears which I do by feeding them all their meals  on the 3 days leading up to departure, IN the trailer. It is horribly cynical and feels like an evil betrayal but in this way, by the morning, they trot up into the trailer for their breakfast and barely notice as you click the ramp shut behind them. Obviously it hurts and wrenches a bit but if you can't do this stage, then you shouldn't really be in pigs. We know that the butcher we choose is also going to treat them with respect.

Very few clouds for a proper lit up sky, but I quite liked this
sunset shot today. 

Very little else to report today. The Hubbard chickens are at Day 55 and looking much more chicken like (as opposed to dinosaur). The ducks are all in full flow egg-wise so we are actually getting more duck eggs than chicken eggs, despite the opposite disparity in numbers. The kitchen extension chugs along.

Sunset cattle. 

We had a session at it this week where we laid the mini-wall of 4" blocks (top left in my picture) to fill in the triangle between Tígín and old kitchen extension and we built as much roof frame as we could (on account of the wet cement in the mini-wall). We also had to engage the "customer" to start planning where worktops and white goods would go, shelves, power, doors opening in or out and hinged left or right. Decisions decisions.

Gay Pareeeee

Project Erroll rumbles on and passes a significant milestone. The depot in Maidstone which has been Dad's place of work for the last... oooh... 20+ years, despatches its final cases of chilled goods (ready meals, meat, fish, cream, yogurt, cut flowers etc) and shuts its doors.

There is abit of bitter-sweet ceremonial fun as they select the longest serving employees to throw the switches which kill the refigeration for the last time. The plant here is based on CFC gases which are now illegal. The site has some future as a non-refrigerated depot but this wont involve Dad.

Mum and Diamond, meanwhile, swan off to Gay Paree to catch up on the shopping trip they normally make before Christmas. Bit late Ladies, but we'll let you off this time, especially as Mum has left Dad with explicit instructions re our expectations as to sweeties at bedtime. This is normally Mum's job as Dad is snoring by then! Mum manages to forget her phone charger, so communications have been sporadic and minimal from Le Continent but sufficient have got through to warn Dad up to be at Ashford International at the prescribed pick up time on the required date. Woe betides.....

Dad swerves work for the afternoon, booked to meet Boss of Cambria Volunteers, Basil down at the barge where they have to show a group of History Students from a local school round the barge, the visitor centre and the diminutive gunpowder barge SB Lady of the Lea. This latter is built small (and very well) to be an army ammunitions barge carrying gunpowder and ammo from the works in Waltham Point, down the narrow River Lea with its many locks, past Tottenham and into the Thames proper. She is like a half-scale model of Cambria and could ship 47 tonnes of cargo (Cambria's payload is 170 tonnes).

Dad rushes away from that 'meeting' thinking that next stop is a dental appointment in the Medway Towns, but gets a voice mail saying Dentist has thrown a sickie and all this afternoon's dates must be postponed. Shame! (says Dad in his most convincing voice!)

As for me, I have a "hurty back leg" which is a serious affliction for a dog as it impedes my ability to jump up and scrounge sweeties and to lep' on the furniture. Dad can't see anything wrong but I squeak convincingly when he probes around my toes looking for splinters etc, so I am being officially rested up a day or two to see if it goes away. The theory is I'm such a scatty bird I just caught my toe in some crack or crevise while chasing a c*t.

It's the weekend!

Deefski