Gallows Humour...(If I'm Spared)

There were some lovely poppy pictures among the blizzard of
Armistice Day posts on Social Media. This is not my pic,
just one I blagged off the Internet.

A return to blogging, of sorts, though I'd ask you to indulge me in one more where I wax philosophical and slide in a  bit more navel-gazing. All triggered by the combination of my life-threatening episode and then (now) having too much time on my hands to sit and think, plus a bit of Armistice Day and all that talk of death and surviving. It is natural to have that stuff at the front of your thoughts and then we listened to one of Elizabeth's 'History of Rome' podcasts with the title "Chickens Coming Home to Roost" and, Bingo! I had a framework on which to hang all my random thoughts.

Love some of the pictures that Windows uses on log in screens.

When you are young and vigorous.... indeed, right up to your 61st Birthday in my case, you assume you are bullet proof. Well, I did, anyway; perhaps I should speak for myself, not go generalising. You assume you will outlive all those people older than your self, the next generation upwards and all who are obviously, visibly less healthy - more over-weight or heavy smokers and drinkers. You only half listen to news reports of the bed crisis in the Health Service, people sleeping on gurneys in hospital corridors, long waiting lists. Those things affect OTHER people. Cross those bridges when you come to them.

Larch down by the main gate. It's deciduous
but only does this thin yellow for Autumn
colour.

When I was working in the UK as a 'baby' Manager, the firm (Exel) launched a campaign to try to control the level of absence among 'the lads' (the warehouse order-assemblers, or "pickers"). Some may have heard of it; it was called "Bradford points". You racked up points for the number of sick/absence episodes times the number of actual days taken and certain levels of score started you on the disciplinary trail - counselling, verbal and written warnings, through to eventual dismissal.

Oak leaves.

Some of my colleagues went a bit wild with this, using it as a tool to "get" at the lads they saw as lazy or shirkers and it quickly gained a bad reputation.

Our new patch of forestry to the north of us, down in the bog

I may have been a bit smug - I had the best attendance record on the site; just 3 or 4 days sick in 20+ years - but I like to think (I hope!) I was a bit more compassionate and gentle with the stats than that. I disciplined very few and sacked none. Now, of course, with the wisdom of 20/20 hindsight, I can see that I would have been out on my ear if they'd applied Bradford to this 2018 episode - 2 weeks in hospital and now 16 weeks unable to work! I am glad my conscience is clear on that one.

Geese near the front drive.

We are both amused to by the 'gallows humour' around some of the conversations we inevitably have on the subject. My big yellow hi-viz coat is definitely past its sell by date, a bit tatty and threadbare in places. We both wax a bit pragmatic when it comes to spending money on these things till we get me through the heart-operation and we both remember our belovéd friend Diane (known to this blog as 'Diamond' early on).

Beech lit by the evening sun.

When she was well on with the cancer, struggling through the chemo and bone marrow transplants and so on, she managed to stay, mostly, quite happy and chirpy. We'd be chatting away about what we might do 'in a while' or after Christmas or even into the next year and she'd suddenly drop into the conversation with a twinkle in her eye and a mischievous smile, ".....if I'm spared, of course". She was half-joking, of course, not trying to shock us. She was enjoying the chance to say such a semi-dramatic thing for real.

Rooster pot-au-feu under construction. 

But what else is new? The cooking has taken on a bit of a French theme with a couple of house favourites appearing in the authentic style as learned by the Woman of the House while in Toulouse s a young 'au-pair'. One is pot-au-feu. I did this to our latest rooster. It is basically a one-pot casserole of the bird and big chunks of veg but when you serve it, the dish comes out as 3 courses. You start with a bowl of the broth or soup. Only then do you dig out some vegetables and then, finally some of the meat which has had 3+hours slow cooking and falls off the bones; no need to carve.

Horse Chestnut sticky-bud. Excellent source of "propolis" for
the hive bees.

The other dish is 'boulangère', in this case lamb, but you can do it with any meat. This is another 'peasant' dish from poverty stricken rural France. The idea would be that in the village, very few folk could afford to light an oven every day, but the local baker (boulangère) would have had his oven going every day for the daily bread, so the local ladies would assemble that day's lunch (including spuds) in a one-pot casserole and trot along to the baker for him to stick it in his oven while it cooked. I guess they handed over a few centimes for the use of his heat.

That 'hen in question' has developed int a fine rooster. Bad move.

Evenings are drawing in now and I have had to bring my poultry supper and bed times forward another quarter hour so that everybody is locked up safe before it gets dark. Everybody gets fed now at 16:15 and they are locked away at 17:00. Touch wood we have not actually seen the fox since 3rd September but we just know he/she will be back as soon as it gets frosty.

Finally we had a bit of a disappointment (but no damage done). Regular readers will recall our enjoyment of one of our best ever Help-X volunteers, Laura who mowed the place to within an inch of its life when she was here in May. She was delightful and were sorry to see her go.We told her she'd be welcome back any time, working or just resting. Well, last week we got an e-mail from her saying she was still "out there" Help-X-ing  but had a problem with a booking in Portugal and asking might she swing by here for a week. Of course, we said and started preparing for her arrival. But then she found a farm in the south of France, much closer to her home and didn't need us after all. Ah well.

Another 'not mine' pic, blagged off the Internet.

That is pretty much it for this one. Good Luck, now.

A 50-Pound Pull

Nothing to do with us - just a superb Birthday Cake picture
posted to Twitter, made for a lad called Jake who is 6. I'm not
100% comfortable with encouraging the love of chainsaws
by 6-year olds but they probably have it under control. 

Rain, rain and more rain. It has not stopped all day. Everything is dripping including the coat I wore to walk the dogs at lunchtime (dog towels for them and a complete change of clothes and a shower for me!). Everywhere depressed has puddles and everywhere else the ground under foot has that sloppy, spongy first half inch. Deep joy. The ducks, ducklings and geese are, of course, loving it while all the other birds are happy to cower indoors in the various sheds, car-port and the wood store. It drains away fast enough as soon as it stops raining but it's a nuisance while it is so wet.

We have re-started archery after our February 'recess'. No, not some political 'holiday', but the owners of our hall/venue ("The Hub" in Castlerea) take the whole complex back for 3 weeks while the town's Am-Drams stage an elaborate musical and make a pot of money. This year it is the famous show "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" and the players need 2 weeks to construct the set and rehearse on the proper stage and then a week to perform it.

Fly true you arrows

We got the venue back in time for our 19th Feb session. The session included dragging all the gear (big target butts, straw roundels etc) back out of the hidey hole we had put it in for the 'Scoundrels'. That may have contributed but, Boy! how I ached across the chest and shoulders that night. It is quite vigorous stuff, this archery and my bow is a '50-pound' draw.

I got one in the right place, anyway!
Centre-bull, 10 points!

With your right arm (in my case) extended out straight holding the bow, you then pull the string back to level with your mouth with a force of 50 lbs. We lash off 3 arrows at each of 12 targets per round and 2 rounds in the 2 hours. It's not breathlessly exhausting in any kind of 'aerobic' way but it warms up all those muscle blocks and tones you up really well - you know you've been there and over the weeks you build up some power. I shouldn't have been surprised that I went so 'rusty' on the three weeks off but I did and I was. Ah well, back to it now weekly to get all that tone back.

If you are impressed by the 50 lb draw thing, then don't be too in awe. Back in Medieval times everyone in the village would have been obliged to practise their archery every Sunday and the elite long-bow men who did such a good job at, e.g. Agincourt would have been pulling 120 lbs+ (historians think up towards 200 lbs) - those guys had a range (all be it not hugely accurate) getting up towards a mile and would have 2 more arrows in the air by the time the first hail of arrows was falling on the enemy ranks. Archaeologists have found skeletal remains on some of these battle sites where the chests and shoulders of the men seemed all deformed and non-symmetrical. Archers, of course, doing it every week of their lives since they were about 6 years old and developing a frame to cope with the massive forces. Makes our 50 lb pull and lashing arrows 60 feet down a Badminton hall seem quite puny!

A nice change yesterday in the supper menu as Liz took us back to her youth and the time spent in France, doing au-pair to a size-able family down by Toulouse. "I just fancied a bit of boiled fowl" she opined and re-created a trad French 'Pot-au-Feu' supper from one of our frozen Hubbard birds. This would have been standard family filling food belovéd of the thrifty housewife and I could see why. In brief it is a single-pot, chicken 'stew' where the whole carcass, intact, gets slow-cooked in stock and veg for several hours. It would have been some tough old rooster back in the day and all they could afford. You serve it, though, as a three course meal. First comes the 'soup' - the stock eaten as a soup with a chunk of crusty bread and cheese floated in it to mop up the delicious 'grease'. This would have used up the last of that day's bread, bread being bought fresh daily in those parts. Next you would get a plate full of the vegetables and finally the meat would be brought to the table so that you could (easily) pull off a thigh or what ever and a dollop of home-made mayonnaise. Three very satisfying courses from one pot and one chicken. Bon appetite!

My only other news concerns a social visit to our small holdering friends, Sue and Rob. My plan was just to meet up, catch up on the gossip, admire their new-born goat kids and maybe scrounge a cup of coffee and a slice of fruit cake. S+R had other ideas. Sue seems to have a decent sized incubator running right round the year so always has "too many" chickens and geese. At the moment, there are a gazillion roosters running about the place so she tried to ply me with one but Friends of the Blog will know that we have our own issues with roosters just now so I had to decline. Not to be denied, she then tempted me with some nice young poults who (if they are female) will make splendid replacements for our fox-losses. I came home with 6. She also gave me half a dozen unfertilized duck eggs in exchange for fertilized ones not yet laid by our birds (yes, for the incubator, of course!). Thanks so much for those, Sue and Rob and for the rest of the hospitality and farm-tour. You are salt of the earth.