A Long Lost Twin Brother?

Blackthorn blossom.

We are at peak blackthorn blossom time here in Roscommon. The hedges are white with the froth on the still-leafless branches. We are amazed every year by how few actual sloes can be had from these bushes always loaded with flowers. Some of that is down to the 'haircut' given by the contractor hedge trimmers as soon as they are allowed (September) but the local bushes do not seem to produce many fruit even on the field sides of the hedge.

Blackthorn

Meanwhile, by happy coincidence, I have found a friend who was born on exactly the same day as me, almost 60 years ago. Friends of the blog will recall that a couple of our archers have produced a lovely baby girl, now 8 months old, for whom Liz once knitted a hat in the colours of an archery target. Well, a group of us were chatting at one of the shoot coffee-breaks a couple of weeks back and one friend started quizzing me about a significant birthday which I had let slip might be fast approaching. Eventually I admitted that it MIGHT be this Friday, April 14th, where-upon the baby girl's Mother (Yulia) pricked up her ears and looked at me in amazement. She asked how old would I be at this birthday and it turns out that baby (Feliz)'s Dad (name Colly) is also born that day and will be the same age. We are therefore some flavour of 'twins', all be it him born in Dublin and me in Hastings. Small world. Happy Birthday for Friday, Col' !

The ceiling goes up first holding up the insulating wadding

Huge progress in the Kitchen project. K-Dub contacted me last Friday asking if we could have a crack at it on Saturday and get all the "slabbing" done. Slab is the word used to describe the modern 'dry lining' plasterboard which is bonded to a sheet of dense (and fire-proof) insulating foam of various thicknesses. We use 30 mm on the ceilings and 70 mm thick on the walls. We also used a bit of foam-less old style 'plasterboard' where we needed to marry in to the existing 'old kitchen' ceiling.

Slabbing in progress

Our ceiling also had armfuls of fluffy wadding wedged up between the rafters just because K-Dub had a load left over from his own house. We can all remember handling this material when doing the parent's loft in Hastings, when the wadding was itchy fibre-glass and you had to work with sleeves rolled down and without wiping your hands anywhere sensitive (eyes, neck etc) or you would suffer terrible itching for days. The 2017 version of this stuff is much more forgiving - soft and barely itchy at all.

View from 'old' to new through the new arch. 

The task also involved framing up the arch through from new to old kitchen so that we could slab round all these corners but this was money for old rope for K-Dub, a Master Carpenter. It took him about half an hour while I pretty much followed him round picking up discarded off cuts of slab and sweeping up shavings and debris.

...and we're done. Slabbed out and awaiting
the plasterer(s)

I was also chief gloop-mixer. The wall slabs are glued to the uneven wall by mixing a bonding agent to what you chefs will know as the "soft peak" stage. This thick gloop is trowelled onto the wall every couple of feet (horizontally and vertically) in big dollops which stick out from the wall a good 3 inches. That way the slab is sure to touch the 'peaks' before it hits a sticking-out chunk of the stone work.

A slab profiled to butt up to the exposed-stone
wall

Another interesting feature of this task which may be worth sharing is the way K-Dub copes with a flat-sided slab butting up against a very uneven, stone and cement wall. It was fascinating to watch - you butt the slab up against the wall and then wiggle a pencil down the wall to create a template line parallel to the bumps and dips in the stone. The bumps and dips in your line are always just enough to cope with the 'deepest' bump/dip. The spare outside the line is then nibbled out with an ordinary wood-saw and Bingo! When you offer up the wobbly edged slab it should now touch the wall most of the way down. The plasterer does the rest, neatly filling in the small gap without messily splashing plaster on your nice clean stone-work.

Probably best not to ask.

That's the theory anyway. The "plasterer" here, though, looked like being K-Dub and I for a while, neither of whom can plaster, at least not in any free-flowing way that a pro would recognise. K-Dub has, in fact, done it on his own house, with plenty of this fancy edge-against-stone but he will freely admit that it was more of a 'tape and joint' style job (The American Way) using pre-mixed formula and around 6 cycles of slap it on, let it dry, sand-paper off the excess and repeat. We could do it but neither of us was looking forward to all that sanding and the Lady of the House would definitely not have wanted all that plaster dust drifting through her kitchen for however many weeks it would have taken.

Had to smile at this after our dog-prints in the new concrete
picture. This is a discarded Roman tile unearthed in Leicester.
2000 years on and dogs are still messing with we builder's heads!

By (another) happy coincidence I still have on my phone the number of one of the Mayo brothers who did our whole house back in 2011 and who subsequently became a great friend, sheep-mentor, breeder and supplier of store lambs for several seasons. A quick text to him confirmed that he was still in the plastering game, had lost my number but often thought of us and would be more than happy to come round in the week to look at the job and give us a price. More on this soon. If it works, it will save us lots of time and dusty mess.

Finally, every time I come into this blog-site to write a post one screen shows me how many views my most recent epics have had... how many people have clicked in to read them. Now, I gave up any dreams to have as many readers as JK Rowling ten years ago and have been happy to chug along with my 30-40 readers whom I know are mainly family and friends. My recent post about Senator Frank Feighan and the artist fella, Brian John Spencer amazed and delighted me by breaking this mould with a score of 210+ views - a record, I think, for the blog. I put this down to FF and BJS 'tweeting' links to it and my mention of it in the interview he had me do with him on 'Audio-boom'. Looking around I have had a couple more with good scores ("Stirring it" on 13th Jan had over the hundred and "Legal Beagles" had 136), but my norm is still between 28 and 80 so you won't find me on the Booker shortlists any time soon. Thank you for reading these who ever you are.

Tiddly-Om-Pom-Pom

Rocking the hi-viz coat and wellies in this
rendering by our artist fella, Brian John
Spencer

With our series of inbound visits last week barely seen off the premises (see previous post) I needed to get packing for my out-bound mission, off to the UK to see family in Hastings and old mates in our former stomping ground of Faversham in Kent. Family these days is my big-bro, Tom and 'me dear aul' Mum, 'Pud Lady' in these pages. Mum is about to go, like me, through a 'significant' number Birthday - she is soon 90 as I am soon 60 so I wanted to spend a bit of quality time with her this time instead of my all too frequent "flying visit" style trips.

Shiny Vauxhall Astra hire car, only days old, outside Mum's.

The mission was to take the normal shape - an Aer Lingus flight, Knock to Gatwick, and then hire of a car in UK for the running about. The first part of that was easy, the 2nd nearly came unstuck and turned into an hour and a half in car hire hell at the airport, and got me indoors at just after midnight.

Primroses and magnolia in Mum's front
garden

It was partly my fault and partly that of the Aer Lingus website where I booked my flights (and car) on line. I saw no-where who the car hire firm actually was (Hertz? EuropeCar? Avis?) but that's not been a problem - you just wander round the big foyer and try your name and booking reference at each till you strike gold. Aer Lingus have also moved their flight from mid afternoon to 8pm-ish too, but I didn't think that would be an issue either. Anyone hearing warning bells yet? What I'd actually written down was Aer Lingus's ref number for my car.

Battle Abbey. Mum in wheel chair centre bottom of pic.

We touched down at 9 pm and I walked to the car-rental 'room' and started my hunt, frustrated at each by having to stand in a short queue before I could even ask my question but also running out of desks to ask at. Finally, I was advised to go try the 'Inter-Rent' porta-cabin out in the dark where the 'indoor' desks said the guy had been evicted from North Terminal by building works but hurry as he didn't normally work late and might be closing.

Mum has map and is ready to explore
Battle Abbey and Senlac Hill

Off I went, increasingly fed up, to find one man soldiering through a queue of 8 customers at the end of a 13 hour shift. I suspected that if I queued for the 45 mins I might still be blown off with a "not our reference number" line. No such problem. The guy (Alex was his name) was as helpful, friendly and professional at my end of the queue as he had been at the 'beginning' - a true hero. Above and beyond. He had my name on his list, sorted me out a Vauxhall Astra and sent me on my way at 10:30 pm. Aer Lingus and Inter-Rent get my vote. You can keep your Hertz, Avis and EuropeCar. I got indoors by just after midnight to find Mum and Tom waiting up for me - Thank You very much, both.

At the Queen's Head, Icklesham, near Rye (Sussex), left to
right, myself, Mum and Tom

To cut a long story short, I had a lovely time both at Hastings and in Faversham and very pleasant company with friends, family and former neighbours all delighted to see me and me to see them. My time in Hastings was blessed by 2 superb, warm, sunny, blue sky days, so we took the hire car and Mum's wheel chair and went on a series of little scenic tours, interspersed with meals, coffee breaks and the inevitable games of Scrabble.

Fish and Chips. You can always rely on the Queen's Head
for a decent portion. Top left of the picture is an equally
generous crab salad. 

On Saturday, we drove all round the lanes 'behind' Hastings looking at the spring flowers - carpets of Lady's Smock, primroses, wood anenomes, celandines etc and the chance of an early orchid. We drove down to Hastings sea-front along by Marine Parade and pushed the wheel chair all along to the newly restored and re-opened pier, out to its very end (it is all nice and flat for this pusher's 'maiden voyage'). We headed out to the family's favourite pub/eaterie, The Queen's Head in Icklesham (near Rye in Sussex) where I managed a fish and chips 'fix'. We bimbled out to the famous Great Dixter garden (Northiam) where there was advertised a "Plant Fair" for Mum to buy a specific Clematis she wanted ('tangutica').

Mum surveys Senlac Hill from the top. I reckon if those Normans
had had to push their Mums up in wheel chairs then they would
not have won the Battle.

On the Sunday we headed out to Battle Abbey and Senlac Hill, the site of the famous 1066 Battle of Hastings, where the pushchair crew had to step up a gear. This battle, as any school boy knows, involved the Normans (and William the Conqueror) charging up Senlac Hill to knock the pesky Saxons (King Harold's mob) off the top. The Abbey was build on top of the hill (afterwards, obviously!) to commemorate the victory and the bits open to the public include the hill. Even the wheel-chair friendly walk route which is lightly gravelled just to slow you down a bit, includes some of the top-slopes of the hill inside the 'skirts' of the abbey, so there was some good heavy-breath slog up the slopes even though Mum is not 'heavy' to any degree. You put any 'little aul' lady' in a good wheel chair and try it, be my guest.

Oh we do like to walk along the prom, prom, prom? Hastings
sea-front and Pier shrouded in sea mist.

On the final morning (Monday), Mum and Tom had a funeral to attend, so I nipped back to the sea front to get some pictures, having deliberately not taken the camera on our walk, my 'maiden voyage' as wheel chair pusher. Sadly there was a thick sea-mist and although it always looked like it was just about to burn off, there were to be no sunny pictures that morning. The sun did not break through till I was heading off after lunch, bound for Romney Marshes and Faversham.

Tom, Mum and myself. 

In Faversham I was to meet our good friend John W, former husband of Diane (Diamond on here) and their disreputable looking Patterdale Terrier cross Ragworth. The plan was to spend the evening with John (we had a lovely stroll round the Front Brents area and north side of the Creek), have a bite to eat and then I'd stay the night in his spare room. On the Tuesday morning I could then work my way round as many former neighbours and friends as I could net before I had to head back to Gatwick in the afternoon for my flight home. Thanks you to all of you who I did meet and who I missed - better luck next time maybe.

Plenty of sailing barges still in the creek despite 'bogey-man'
developer, Michael White allegedly killing all the ship-wrightery

I got to meet and have a nice chat with a friend who I only really know since leaving Faversham (chatting on Facebook etc), Griselda C-M and her husband, staunch supporters and 'activists' of the Creek Preservation campaign. I met film maker Mike M who I know from Cambria days (he made the "Red Sails" film). I had nice chats with neighbours from both sides of our 'old' house in Whitstable Road (Jackie and then Betty and Jim). I met another good friend (Dave) in town as I was wandering about and I also got a good look round the Standard Quay and Iron Wharf areas of the Creek (the south side).

Every town should have a Pirate Ship.

A footnote to that last sentence should probably include mention of the latest "attraction", a rather mad Pirate Ship. This rather disreputable looking piece of fakery (a load of wooden 'topsides' added to an old wooden hull and flying the requisite 'Jolly Roger') turned up in Faversham a few months back, mooring up for a rest en route to Spain, crewed by half a dozen lads from (John tells me) ages about 30 to 50. They didn't manage to stay long as they didn't fancy paying the mooring fees (Why should we? We're Pirates!) charged by Faversham's 'bogey-man' waterfront developer, so he had them 'evicted' using a local tug-firm. These boys rather robustly (I was told) untied them from the quay and towed them down to moor them outside the sewage works outflow where they remain to this day. They have to get aboard and disembark by scrambling across a dodgy grass bank and some mud and then teetering up a long, springy plank in best pirate tradition.

The Creek's main developer finally gets
permission to convert the first of these
 lovely wooden weather-boarded grain
warehouses into a restaurant and wine bar. 

That's about it. I grabbed a spot of lunch with John and then headed for Gatwick, there to hand my car back in with none of the Friday night dramas. I flew home painlessly to be met at the airport by the Lady of the House and got a noisy welcome from dogs and livestock. And so to bed in MY OWN BED (well, my half of 'our bed'). No matter how lovely it is to go travelling, there is something special about finally getting home and being able to sleep on that old familiar mattress.

Thank you to all involved in this break. If I have forgotten to name you specifically, then I apologise for that.

Stirring It

The 100-400 mm 'pap' lens I use for the moon close-ups
and some of the wildlife pics.

A short-ish post, this one and another where the photo's bear little relevance to the main story. When you know what that is about you will understand, I am sure. The pics in this one are some of these final '365' project shots saved from the dying embers of the 'year'. There are also a few 'snow scenes' from the rather pathetic flurries of wet sleety snow that we have had over the last day or so. Who can resist a Christmas Card scene after all?

Candle Snuff fungus growing in our front lawn.

My "Stirring It" title comes from the main task today. In my youth, our family in-jokes and clichés frequently had us accused of "stirring it" and family members were occasionally awarded the 'wooden spoon' for stirring above and beyond the call of duty. The job, which I volunteered for before I knew the detail of what was involved was to help a friend re-start a fancy septic tank system which had become a problem.

One of our favourite Irish cookery books, Theodora Firzgibbon

Our septic tank here is the basic one, a single tank where digestion happens (if you're lucky and you don't put too much bleach down it!) followed by a big pit filled with broken stone and beach pebbles which drains away sideways into the half acre field as a whole. This one today was a much more fancy affair; a real eco-bio-digester arrangement with 3 formal chambers and then the stone-filled pit but followed by 3 beds which take and use the nutritious clean 'water' outflow.

The first beer that came to hand as I came in from the snow
and North wind; Shepherd Neame's 'Summer Sizzler'

The first is yellow flag irises, the 2nd tall bull rushes and the 3rd is willow which, I am told. puts up 20 feet regrowth every year and which they can harvest for making hurdles, wicker work or even, if they wanted to shred it, bio-mass for solid fuel fired heating.

First snow flurries.

Their problem was that after a particularly warm and busy weekend in August (lots of guests leaving...um...deposits), the digestion process in Tank #1 had been over-whelmed and the solids were now acting as a dam. We needed to re-mix this crusty mass and get everything gently flowing again in a down-hill manner. Ah well, in for a penny, as they say. We had to ignore the fact that the first snow of 2017 was all over the ground. I had made it there after all. These guys live up on what is called an 'upland bog' here. They are at the top of a mini mountain but that does not result in the good drainage you would expect. Their land is basically bog or forestry with only a few acres round the house 'improved' to grassland or hard standing.

The full moon sinks towards the snowy
ground

To cut a long story short, an hour or so of stirring and scraping the deposits off the sides of the tank had it all chopped up and converted back into a flow-able "slurry" which we could now see was starting to move downhill to the next tank and the lady suggested we wash our hands and come indoors for warm sausage sandwiches. Job done. I wish they were all that easy.

Snow in the lane this morning

The snow had been forecast since Tuesday and I was yearning for it like a child. This not because I wanted to rush out and start a snowball fight with the neighbour's children or build a snowman, but for the '365' picture potential. I am almost at the end of the year of photography now and seriously short of inspiration on what to submit for 'today's three photo's'. There are only so many pictures of ruined barns, cute calves and pretty flowers that you can get away with and some Christmas Card snow would give me an easy ride for 24 hours.

Hey ho. Just like when you were a child, snow always seemed to let you down, flurrying down in disappointingly small quantities and failing to "stick" (we used to say "settle" in Hastings) no matter how many times you looked out of the window. Well, it is no different for 59 year old '365' photographers and I was not to get my Winter Wonderland. I had to try to make the most of the dusting and a convenient full moon.

I have to be careful what I wish for, of course. The year before we arrived here (so 2010/11) they had a brutal winter with temperatures down in the -10ºC area and 18 inches of white stuff. People were nipping off to the village PO in tractors because there is no gritting or snow ploughing round here. You just have to stock up on supplies, shovel your drive (and the neighbour's) clear and wait for the to-ing and fro-ing of farm vehicles to make the roads drive-able again when a thaw comes.

We don't want too much of that. I'd sooner do without the 365 snow scenes. Stay warm.

A Long Weekend in the UK

I am safely home from my adventures in the UK. I enjoyed myself and had a great time. First stop was to head for Hastings and the Pud Lady who, at 86, is still very well and zipping about the house on the wheelie zimmer cracking out superb suppers for returning sons and beating them soundly at Scrabble. The latter mainly by flexing the rules as required, like when Ovaltine will fit across a treble word. Ovaltine is now not an actual brand name, by the way, but more like the word 'hoover' which have gone into 86-year-old "standard terminology" meaning any malted night time drink in general...... it says here. Mum is always right, as you know. We had a great time swapping news and catching up on things, later joined by elder brother, Tom and gossiping late into the evening. I stayed around for the following morning too, departing after lunch.

From Hastings off up into Kent, seeking out 2CV Llew who, as well as having a spare carburettor for my 2CV, also wanted to take me for a drive in his restored Citroën 'Light 15' (Traction Avant) of which he is rightly proud. This is a lovely car, the car of choice for Hercules Poirot in the TV programmes where Hercules was played by David Suchet, of whom more later. It has grey leather seats and wooden paneling on the dash etc. It is 5 years older than me, being built in 1952 and sounds as sweet as a nut.

Our route took us from Herne Bay, out by Reculver then through Grove Ferry and Preston (near Canterbury) to Llew's workshop, so we were bowling along country lanes with the long nose pulling us round the corners and Llew occasionally greeting people with the Mr Toad style klaxon horn, Parp parp!

Diamond and John. 1st Anniversary bouquet.

From there back to Faversham and Diamond's for supper and an overnight, which none of us copped when we set it up, meant I'd be there 'gate crashing' Diamond and John's 1st Wedding Anniversary. Never mind - we all coped and Diamond laid on a lovely supper of chicken, ham and mushroom pie followed by her speciality home made lemon ice cream. A lovely comfortable bed too and bacon rolls for breakfast. I took John down to his almost-complete, restored town house down in town to admire the lovely new woodwork, windows and fittings. It is going to be gorgeous when it is all finished and they can move in.

Time then to return the rental car to Gatwick Airport and find my way through the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station and then via Circle line to Tower Hill and thence to St Katharine's Dock where 'our' sailing barge, SB Cambria was to go on static display as part of the Classic Boat Festival, part of the Mayor's Thames River Festival. I am a bit of a country bumpkin and these trips into the big smoke are always scary adventures for me. They say, though, if you want to know the way, ask a policeman and there were hundreds of them about because they had just broken up a National Defence League march trying to recreate a Moseley Black-shirts demo. Which way to St Kat's, Officer? They were queuing up to help me!

The barge was only just 'locked in' to St Kat's and had been moored up by the crew from Sea Change Sailing Trust, who use it for sail training charters ("Making a real impact on the lives of disabled, disadvantaged and socially excluded young people and vulnerable adults")

https://www.facebook.com/SeaChangeSailingTrust/info . That crew (Skipper Richard, First Mate Hilary and 3rd Hand, 'Stretch') had handed their youthful charges over to their land-based responsible adults, tidied up the barge and handed the 'keys' to our 'Boss of Volunteers', Basil B. We had to get on board, fine-tune the tidying and ready the boat for a likely onslaught of visitors - this was a sunny Saturday, yards from the Tower of London and Tower Bridge and we had a bloomin' great 'advert' up in the form of our huge red-ochre topsail with its Rotary Club logo, glowing in the sunshine, 75 feet up! We were expecting 'busy'.

We weren't wrong. The public started arriving way before we were ready and kept on coming - queues and queues of them non-stop from mid morning till we could start to close the 'shop' with relief at 6pm. We were a bit disorganised  and short staffed and did not get our 'clicker' head-count thingy out, so we can only estimate but it was definitely a record, and might have been as many as 900 or 1000 but they all got a proper show round, a chance to photo themselves by the ship's wheel, for the kids to try out a hammock and to see the (107 year) old restored Captain's Cabin aft, and the "new yachty bit" (accommodation) for'd. We talked them through the history of the barge and the restoration and present use as both the 'Sea Change' boat, but also the Rotary-sponsored Respite-for-Young-Carers role. We encouraged them to drop a few quid in our box, write a comment in the Visitors' Book, and buy books, pens, book marks etc from the shop.

We were so busy that a number of pots of tea were made but then went cold and stewed where nobody had time to stop for a cup, and most of us had abandoned mugs of cold coffee or tea 'parked' around various bits of barge. At one stage I was bounced by a lady from a local radio station who asked me to give her a potted version of my spiel in 3 minutes into the microphone. I did OK, managed it without stumbling and she said she liked my 'rich' voice, but I have no idea which radio station I was on (West of London Radio?) or whether it was ever transmitted. It was meant to be going out on the Monday.

It was mad, too, on the Sunday but by then we'd been joined by 2 more staff so we were able to properly man the gangway and count people on board, as well as controlling the flow a bit. We know that we had 919 souls that day and sometimes 48-50 on board at once. It was thick and fast again but great fun. After 6:30 pm each evening the boat was ours and we could relax and recover. The marina had set up with the marina-side eateries, for boat 'owners' to get discounts, so we ate in a lovely Italian (20% off) on two of the nights and a Wetherspoon's on another night. The marina also has a lovely office building with showers and loos for the berth-holders and a restaurant upstairs

The Monday was a whole different kettle of fish. It lashed with rain and it was, anyway, a Monday, so all the kids were back at school and grown-ups back at work, so we had a big fat zero visitors before lunch and only 6 all day. They got luxury treatment, of course, but we were able to 'lay off' three of our staff mid afternoon to let them get home prior to the rush hour. We watched old barge videos and kipped in the hammock. At one stage, Cambria Trust Patron, David Suchet (yes - he of the Poirot role) phoned the barge. It turns out he has a flat at St Kat's, overlooking our berth so we all rushed out onto the deck to wave at him up at his window. We could hear his wife in the background telling him not to be so silly!

Then it was Tuesday and I was done, with my flight home from Gatwick to Knock leaving at 12:50. I helped with the breakfast washing up, stripped my bunk and packed. I bade them all farewell (they are there till next Sunday, 15th) and trundled my wheelie-case back along the pontoons to Tower Hill underground. No sooner was my back turned, apparently than rock legend Rod Stewart and wife Penny Lancaster showed up and had a look round, as well as nicely allowing 'us' to photograph them on board etc for our own Facebook stuff.

But now it's all over, and we have come to the end of this year's planned visits out, or in and we are on the comfortable chill-out into autumn. It's been a blast.

(Almost) Eco-Vandals.

Sometimes the jobs you think are going to be a pain in the butt turn out to be really easy and the ones you thought would be easy are the difficult ones. In the former category, we had firmly placed persuading Broody Betty and the Hubbard chicks to 'move house' into the adults' coop after we'd stolen their home to give Goldie the rabbit back her peace and seclusion. We had visions of trying to gather the chickens up at 'bed time' and shepherd or move them from A to B. You can not move Betty if you do not also bring the chicks as she gets anxious that you are stealing her babies. The babies, equally start to shout and holler if they think you are trying to drive them somewhere where Mum isn't. They scatter and nip around behind you lest you try to corner them and they are fast, plus there are 8 of them. The only way (without upsetting anyone) is to move all 9 birds at once, all being able to keep the rest in sight all the time. Tricky.

Up to now, at around 19:30 pm she would gather the babies around her and hunker down on them at the top end of the cattle race, not actually going into 'her' run till I appeared with food and whistled her up. I do a two-tone whistle which all the stock now come to know means "Listen up! Food may be available!". She would then bring the babies running to get the food in the run, where-upon I would shut them in.

This time I expected her to hunker down the same way and wonder when I'd let her into the (now occupied and closed) run. It was raining gently, so I also worried they'd all stand around in the rain, confused, getting chilled and wet. I under-estimate Broody Betty - she never ceases to amaze me! We noticed during the day that she had been taking the babies in and out of the adult coop through the pop hole, so I'd been making sure there was food for them on the ground. When the evening came, instead of hunkering down in the cattle race, we were delighted to see Betty lead the babies into the coop through the pop hole and when I crept over to peer in, there she was on the lowest perch with 8 little chicks all lined up next to her! Sometimes you see the sweetest things in this line of 'work'!

The only issue then became that the 8-Ball (who are also Betty's "children" but now 17 weeks old) became a bit alarmed that 'their bedroom' had been invaded by all these extra birds and they milled around inside and outside the pop hole trying to work out how to get through all this 'traffic' to their normal places on the 2nd and 3rd rung of the perch ladder. It grew dark and they were still milling so that in the end I wandered over to 'nudge' the final two into the coop and shut the pop hole door. Peering inside I could see confused 8-Ball birds climbing into egg-laying nest boxes or standing in corners or trying to get to the 2nd rung without using the first rung. The Hubbard babies were sitting on their perch like they MEANT to stay there! They all sorted it out to their satisfaction, anyway and were all in good spirits when I opened up in the morning. We await this evening to see if things will go as smoothly.

And the easy jobs? I am hoping that most of my readers will have heard of Gunnera, that gargantuan exotic plant looking like a giant rhubarb which grows beautifully by the lakes and ponds of English stately homes. I remember one, particularly, growing by the pond at Great Dixter, near my home in Hastings; we have somewhere old pre-digital pictures of my two brothers and I standing under its huge leaves.

Well, we have a non-descript gap betwixt the lawn and the front wall out by the main entrance to this place which needs a special plant and is also taking some of the drainage of rain water running down the drive; puddles accumulate in that corner. Well, Liz has a 'significant' birthday coming up very soon and fancied a Gunnera to fill the gap - it would be different and distinctive, we thought, so I set about trying to find one as part of Liz's birthday present. Luckily, in searching the internet for places I might buy one, we came across this article in the Irish Times website.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/gunning-for-gunnera-ornamental-wonder-or-ecological-menace-1.1327571

It seems that far from being a good idea, Gunnera in the damp West of Ireland is an ecological nightmare, a thug and a dangerous invader. It is up there with Japanese Knotweed and Canadian Balsam, not to mention grey squirrels and the pond-weed Crassula. "Years after its indictment as an ecological menace", says the website, "this huge plant still creeps invasively along the cliffs, streamsides, roadsides and damp meadows of the western coast, shading out native vegetation and building up huge seed banks to crowd out everything else". It goes on... "In Ireland, Gunnera spreads largely by its creeping surface rhizomes and the scatter of plant fragments, rather than by birds eating the seeds. But by 2008, it was recorded at 1,168 locations on Achill, forming dense thickets on marginal agricultural land and fringing the island’s bog roads with its enormous leaves."

OK, we thought, maybe that isn't such a good idea, then!

We went instead, to our local and very helpful small local garden centre in Castlerea when the Son of the business listened to our story and steered us in the direction of a white flowered shrub which was new to us, Amelanchier canadensis. This will do us a good height and a nice spread to fill our gap and will look lovely from the lane as from the front door. It has gone in with the usual 'introduction' - a cardboard collar over the ground, a 3 inch mulch of calf poo and our two talismanic expressions to wish it luck. I use Geoff Hamilton's well used "There! That should get away nicely!" and Liz goes with Alan Titchmarsh's privately admitted to "Grow you bugger!". How can it fail?

The Fire Hills

We are all off for another weekend of caravan living where we can meet Mum and do a proper family weekend again. We're missing that and looking forward to all this being over so that we can start doing it for real again on the other side of all this mallarky. First, though, Friday sees us off to the Fire Hills, Hastings's answer to the Burren scenery - rabbit-grazed close turf and gorse thickets constantly in flower. It's Friday morning and full sunshine, so the world and his wife are out there walking the dogs. We meet hundreds.

It's after lunch that we head for the caravan planning to hit Faversham early enough for Dad to do a couple of errands in town and then heading out to the boat yard to set up and wait for Mum to finish work. Dad lights the big log-burner chimney fashionned from an old LPG bottle by 2CV Llew and sorts out the power and gas for the caravan. There is nice red wine breathing. Mum arrives with a chicken to spatchcock and roast but they realise there is no roasting tin and no foil. The chicken gets jointed instead and then slow-fried in butter (which becomes "braised in its own juices"). It's a warmish evening, so we eat outside, all be it wrapped in some chunky jackets and coats. Mum has brought some cooked rice along (Thanks Diamond) and green salad. All the 'braising' is good news for dogs, as we get our normal tinned food enhanced by delicious gravy.

The bed in the caravan proves to wrangle into a king sized double bed. We know this because the fitted sheet off the bed from home only just fits round all the cushions and there's acres of space for all of us. The caravan games become a sort of practise run for when we move - Mum and Dad are looking at buying a second hand caravan similar to Llew's to use as home while the house is not yet habitable, so Mum is having fun 'playing caravans' imagining how she will organise the living side of things while we're first over. The feeling is we'd prefer a slightly bigger van so that we can leave a bed permanently set. It would be annoying having to convert back from bed to 'table and seats' every morning and back again each evening. We'd also need the shower to work. (Llew has not set his up as he does all that at home). We've sussed out though all the heating, lighting, kitchenning, storage and even emptying the toilet "cassette" (don't ask).

Both mornings at the boat yard are really frosty, with white rime all over the cars and grass. A taste of things to come, maybe, but in the caravan we are as warm as toast. We wait for the sun to melt the frost away before anyone takes a car out to source breakfast or the papers. Mum is also keen to blitz the caravan, which she finds a bit 'bloke-ish' under Llew's command. Cleaning materials are obtained and multiple saucepans and kettles of hot water are heated up so that all the cupboards, worktops, kitchen equipment etc are cleaned and put away. Dad jokes with Llew that he won't recognise the place but also won't be able to find anything. Llew laughs that he "hates it when women do that" but I don't think he's serious. We also dispose of some seriously old ketchup, BBQ sauce and bean tins, replacing them with new. There is also a very old solid jar of Safeway coffee at the back of a cupboard. How long have Safeway not been in existence?

Fun times had by all. More on this weekend in the next post.

Deefs

Old Roar Gill

Memory Lane today for Dad takes the form of Local Nature Reserve "Old Roar Gill" at the top end of Alexandra Park in Hastings. The 'gill' bit is a sandstone gorge with, at times, impressive noisy (roaring?) waterfalls and a foaming white stream. It may be 'gill' (as per the nature reserve signs) or it may be "Ghyll" as in local roads Ghyllside Avenue etc, nobody seems to have decided. Perhaps it is one of these place names that pre-dates the populace being able to spell and/or being bothered about how you spelled it. Anyway, it's a lovely leafy walk down in the bottom of the gorge even though today there was precious little water, several completely dry waterfalls and no roar.

We precede this mission with our now regular stroll to Ochiltree Road and the archery fields (where we notice they have a team of young offenders doing community work clearing scrub - we approve!) and a small diversion to go see Watermen's Close. This barge-related location turns out to be a set of almshouses established by the Company of Watermen and Lightermen of the City of London, a quiet little retirement community set up in 1973 in the St Helen's Woods.

The Scrabble-athon between Dad and Pud Lady continues and honours are still even. We hear from Mrs Silverwood that she is keen for Dad (and therefore we dogs also) to head for Ireland as she is loaded down with assorted Silverwood childrens school runs and taxis to after school activities. Dad is asking her to be patient just a few more days while we get the main car serviced and the Irish part of Project Erroll up and running. We have put a surveyor / engineer in to the 'probable' house today to assess whether the septic tank is legally positioned relative to the property boundaries (Don't ask - it's an Irish thing) and to have a quick scout round for any other issues he can see. If that all comes back positive, Mum and Dad can sign something called a "Contract of Sale" (light blue touch-paper) and then pretty much sit back (and in this case decamp to Silverwood's and be Uncle again) and wait for it all to chug through. Days, Mrs S, rather than weeks. Hang in there.

Deefs