Get me to the Ship on Time

Dan and Dan last November. Happy Wedding, guys!

We trust that by now, our good friends and frequent guests, Dan and Dan(ielle) are now Mr and Mrs Dan, married late this morning on a cruise ship somewhere (I think) in the Med. We all wished them well early this morning via Facebook and text messages when they said that they were scheduled to do the job at around 11 on board. As expected and for a load of good reasons, we have not heard anything since (They were kinda busy, we guess!) so we just hope it all went off without a hitch and they are now 'done'. Happy Wedding Day, you guys. See you soon-ish I expect.

We were, of course, involved in this set up in a small way as it was on one of their visits over here that Dan proposed. They were heading from here to Galway at the end of a stay and Dan secretly asked us for a suggested route which would include suitably beautiful scenery where he might stop the car and leap out to go down on one knee. People who know Danielle, know that she is such a bubbly, talkative soul, that he might have expected trouble getting her to go quiet so he could slide the big question in edge-ways. We had suggested driving via Cong and Connemara; plenty of scenic lakes and lovely views that way.

The ducks support the cause.

Dan headed off and found a suitably beautiful lake-side spot, stopped the car and got them both out. Ring-box hidden in his hand, he lunged down on one knee but just at that split second Danielle turned away and, overcome by the gorgeous lake-scene, scampered off down the beach towards the water bubbling over with plans to come back with canoes. Dan was left there on his knees while his intended got further away, wondering whether to shuffle forward on his knees or get up and walk (Take 2?) and Danielle only stopped gabbling when she realised it had gone a bit quite behind her and where was Dan? All sorted out in the end, Dan proposed, Danielle said 'Yes' and the rest is history.

Pedro at the whittlin'. 

Other than that, not much happening. We have the Help-X lads, Manu and Pedro with us till Saturday and we are continuing to be delighted and impressed by the whole deal. This place has never looked so tidy all at once; they have worked so hard bashing the nettles, docks and rushes, mowing as well as occasionally helping us move sheep about or rounding up cattle which have escaped into the lane.

Pedro and Manu 'relaxing'. 

They have finally caught some fish - 3 roach in the River Lung by Feigh Bridge. That was a relief. They'd been trying and trying at various "never fail" , popular sites and not even seen a fish never mind hooked one or landed one. They are off down there to try again even as I type this. They expressed an interest in wood carving so I supplied them with a big old spare fence post, chisels and an orbital sander, with which they intend to create a totem pole with face(s) on. They are struggling a bit with this as the wood proved to be very hard and dried out but we live in hope.

Hand made bamboo ball-point pens. 

They made a little diversion into hand-made biros made in green-bamboo tubes. These are very clever, with their ends at the joints in the bamboo and with the lids made in tube just big enough to telescope over the smaller pen-tube. Very clever. They have cooked for us once already but, when they decided to ask to extend their stay to Saturday, they offered to cook again. We are promised some kind of Spanish beef dish tonight. We are looking forward to it.

2 Hubbards jointed for the freezer.

Meanwhile, the Hubbard birds are so big now, that even though they are only 64 days old they are looking harvest-able. We have therefore 'offed' a couple, which came in at live weights of 3.38 and 3.58 kg respectively and the 'dressed' (oven ready) as 2.66 and 2.70 kg respectively. 5 lb birds at 64 days from a genuine free-range system with no growth promoters or excessive "pushing". Amazing.

Two Labradors

There are suddenly two new dogs in our lives, both Golden Labradors, both very sweet and well behaved, one extremely welcome, the other not so welcome.

First up, 12 week old pup Tess, now owned by our mentors Anne and Simon, replacing a lovely but ancient black collie cross named Shannon whom they recently had to have put to sleep. Tess is just plain GORGEOUS, soft, sweet and gentle and apparently devoid of any bad traits. She likes and gets on well with all (9?) cats that live on that small holding, gets on well with the other older dog and shows no inclination to chase or harass the chickens, ducks and rabbits.

Anne and Simon brought her up here yesterday to meet our lot and she was the perfect guest. She got on immediately with our pups, Towser and Poppy and was great with the 'kittens' as well as with the humans. Regular readers will not be surprised to know that we had a minor issue with our occasionally grumpy-git Deefer but that was honestly all Deefer, none of Tess herself. Deefer sometimes reacts to visiting dogs by trying to get on my lap and then getting 'green-eye' jealousy if the dog comes near.

When down on the ground she is lovely with the other dog and will even join in the games that started between the three pups but she needs to 'own' the immediate airspace round her Dad. We have never been able to cure her of it. It is worse with Diamond's Patterdale cross 'Rags', much to Liz's, my and Diamond's frustration; Deefer has never learned to love the completely harmless playful, trying to be sociable, advances of Rags 6 years on.

So, we had a lovely visit and the dogs played and we chatted.

Labrador No 2 is a huge, handsome, beautiful boy who we are calling, for the moment, Mutley. He first appeared about a week ago, frightening Liz half to death by arriving while she was cooking late one dark evening  with the lights on in the kitchen and the yard light on. Facing the cooker she noticed movement in her peripheral vision and jumped 6 feet in the air. "There's a bloody great dog in the yard!" she yelled, and so there was. Mutley had arrived!

He was very friendly and seemed to be courting us, even rearing up on his hind legs to get a better view of Liz. We wondered if he was a lost stray and were even thinking of trying to collar him, get the phone number off his dog tag (ha!) and phoning his owners.

It slowly dawned on us that he wasn't an innocent stray seeking human company, he was a randy suitor with the scent of Poppy on heat in his nostrils. She's been on heat a couple of weeks now and I have been naively walking her up and down the lane outside laying trails of pheromones which lead straight back to this house, in a land where we KNOW most dogs are allowed free roam, off the lead and rarely with name-tag IDs on them, especially 'in the country'. Yes I should have known better. I feel very stupid, and it's a lesson learned.

This all sunk in today when I went my usual walk down to Feigh bridge and on the way back, while we were still 20 minutes from home, we suddenly had Mutley with us. He must live down that way and had seen or smelt us go by. He closed in on us and suddenly I had three dogs all excited and barking, trying to pull backwards to 'engage' with Mutley. Towser, bless him, was doing his level best to defend 'his sister's virtue' (loudly), Poppy just wanted to say 'Hello' and Deefer was trying to walk alongside me, to heel, on her best behaviour but was going to have a go if Mutley started anything.

In this noisy procession we made our way home and Mutley came all the way with us, past all the neighbours who were, mercifully, out or at least not looking. Mutley is big enough that he can just jump the front wall, so he came all across the lawn and I shuffled my dogs indoors. Liz and I have then spent the rest of the afternoon variously out there with him trying to persuade him to leave, or indoors trying to ignore him while he patrols outside and stalks us at each exit. He is, unfortunately not quite so good with cats as Tess and had a bit of a chase at one stage with a very surprised and upset Rolo, who escaped, hissing, up a tree, but to our immense relief Mutley does not seem to have any bad feelings towards our free range chickens or to the rabbits. The rabbits are in a run which is Westie proof, but I would not like to put it to the test with a Labrador nearly as big as Liz. As I type this at ten past 6, it is dark outside and the hens are, at least shut up safe. Mutley is taking it in turns to admire Liz through the 3 kitchen windows and just occasionally the Westies become aware of him and set off barking (again). We don't know whether he will be there all night, lying in wait, but he has no name tag, so we can't even contact his owners, who might be worried for him.