Kes comes a-visiting

Dad must work today so he's out early for a while - long enough that the Angel B spots the missing car and volunteers to let us out for a chase about. It's a beautiful warm day, so we can stretch out on the terrace and watch the world come and go. The Geordie roofers working on the "Home-for-the-Bewildered" behind us shout to each other and sing along to the reggae music on the radio. Very surreal - No Woman No Cry in an "Auf Wiedersehen" accent.

We get a nice walk round the allotment, and Dad spots that the new French beans are pick-able, so returns with hoe to do a bit of hoeing, and bags to harvest into - beans, chard, toms, courgettes, salad potatoes, raspberries and a carrier bag of perpetual spinach. So much in fact that he can pass a bit to the neighbours

He heads for the SB Cambria (barge) hoping to deliver a saved newspaper to da boss (Basil), but Basil has swapped his volunteer shift out with friends Mark and Cath, and the Jack Russell, "Kes". Dad invites these guys back to the terrace for tea after their stint, and we get to "welcome" Kes into our abode. Welcome? Meg and Haggis, quick sniff, decide it's Kes and are immediately chilled out to the idea of this "invasion" (especially when Mark and Cath make a fuss of them).

Me? I'm not so sure and I have a few gruffs and growls along the way, not sure if this interloper should be here, or be borrowing my stuffed robin toy, or getting on my Dad's lap. I settle down soon enough though, and we wander round each other being polite, but keeping a wary eye.

And then there's the rock! Kes has a thing about rocks. When she gets bored she attacks them. She chooses a likely one, about fist sized and starts paw-ing at it with her front feet, the pouncing on it, dragging it towards her using her paws, and scratching all around it vigorously, as if there might be a mouse under it. Kes and the rock are soon zooming across the ground in a bewildering battle.

On this occasion, I'm on Dad's lap, looking down at her warily, when she suddenly starts poking at a suitable pebble, in the pebble-gutter at the edge of the terrace, then pulls it out onto the terrace. I am outraged, leap onto the patio table and shout loudly at her "Yaff!". She stops, taken by surprise at my shout, but then starts on the rock again, dragging it across the terrace, and reversing herself in front of it. I try a few more shouts, but she keeps going, so I have to lep' down off the table and check this out. She won't listen to me and I shout at her to stop till the humans, looking on in bewilderment and confused amusement, shut me up.

The nerve! Moving Mummy's rock like that!

Deefer

Garden Feature

Our garden has an impressive new feature - a huge red tower crane looming over our trees. Here for the constructing of the flat-pack Home-for-the-Bewildered (which our man on site Bruce says will only take 3 weeks till the roof is on) it is at least 4 times as tall as the Paulownia, so probably 80 foot!

We watched it unravel from it's neat HGV sized lorry, as if it was some kind of "Transformer" toy, the main tower being jacked into the vertical and telescoped out, and the long horizontal "jib" being swung out, seemingly over the houses, into it's final position.

Uncle Jim let us out at that point, so I had to race down the garden and shout at it. Well, you would, wouldn't you? Now it's being swung about hither and yon moving bits of H-f-t-B into position. Impressive.

Meanwhile we have Googled "Kes" and find she is an attractive blue eyed blond of alleged elf extraction.

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/VOY/character/1112400.html

We are not entirely sure why you'd name a scruffy long haired Jack Russell after her, but it kinda works.

Deefer

Pegwell Bay, Kes and Cambria

Yep. It's time for your regular shot of the progress on the restoration of Sailing Barge Cambria. Double click the picture to expand it up to full screen. You can see that all the frames and floor planks are now in, for the box-like mid section of the barge, and that the big long curved "inner wales" have now been put into place, helping to bring out the lovely curved shape of the hull, higher at the prow and stern than she is mid-ships.

These old girls, loaded with 170 tonnes of bulk cargo (wheat, cattle feed, coal, rock, bricks etc) sometimes sailed with only 12 inches of free-board at the mid point - ie any wave more than a foot tall would be lapping over the side planking, so they sailed with the hatches covered over and batten'd down - it was said that as long as you could see the stem, stern and mast, you were OK!

Mum and Dad are now in the thick of judging (assessing) gardens for "Gardening for Wildlife" and of villages for the Calor Village of the Year "Environmental Action" category, so this weekend is a bit of a come and go session. We don't mind. We get a sweetie as they leave and the joy of a welcome re-union on their return. So today they are off to do a garden in town, then back. Then off to do another at the old coastguard cottages in Pegwell Bay.

They come back enthusing about that one - there are not many gardens where you are a-top the cliffs, looking down at a kestrel nest in the cliff, and watching the fulmars patrolling up and down, eye-ing you suspiciously (and ready to spit that foul fishy goo if they think you're too near their cliff edge!).

Finally they're off to look round Charing village for the VoY thing

Only after that do we get our walk. We go down to the creek, and boatyard, and call in on the Cambria Visitor Centre, where-at, one of Dad's mates and his wife are holding the fort. We all troop in to be met by his long haired Jack Russell, 3 year old Kes (named after a character in Startrek, apparently - we'll have to google it, not being Trekkies).

We have a short shout but then we all settle down to schmoozin' up each others' "parents". Mind you we thought it was a bit cheeky when Kes, trying to love up Dad who was leaning back on a wall, jumped from floor to lap and then Dad's shoulders, looking down on him from the back of his neck as if she were on the back of a sofa! A new friend.

Mum and Dad are off to try out a new Italian Restaurant in town "Villa Toscana" - more on this next time.

The longest Day

Deefer