Preparations

With the Dans out of the way, we are now on the run-in to 'proper' Christmas, killing our own turkey, doing the big food-shop and any other acquisitive missions which become necessary, doing any food prep that can be done before the day, and generally getting the place ready for our Seasonal visitors. It is an exciting one, this one, as we are happily welcoming into our home at this important time, 3 people only one of whom we have ever met before. How brave is that? What could possibly go wrong? :-)

A very generous gift of this yule log table
centre decoration comes from a good
village friend, along with a bag of red beet
which he knows we love.

Yep. These people are our French Help-X volunteer from September, Augustin (a.k.a. 'AB') and his mother and younger sister. When AB was here helping, it was just a month out of his 5-month tour of Ireland and we worked out that he'd therefore be still in Ireland over Christmas. We wondered whether he'd be a bit lost in a strange city or might be going home to family for the holiday.

The car gets a jet-wash at the local valet place. It's not been so
clean since we've had it. 

We ended up inviting him back here for the 24th-26th and then, when he found that his Mum and Sister would be coming over to see him, we asked him to bring them too. Liz loves doing this 'hospitality' as you know and will love the chance to practise her French and reminisce about Paris and it will be great fun to see AB again. We will both thoroughly enjoy showing these French folk how Christmas is done in Ireland. Not sure what they'll make of it. We know that they are all really looking forward to it. I will tell you all how it went in the next post. Joyeux Noël!

Bringing the big turkey in for Liz to 'process'.
One dog, at least, is interested. 

Because of all this, we are in a frantic 'prep' mode but as the guests do not arrive until a Christmas Eve afternoon train from Dublin, we can do it all in safety and privacy - no-one to see our frantic chasing about. I dinged the 2nd turkey-stag (the one for here) on the 20th. I like to do all my 'killing' prior to the Solstice. It might just be a silly foible, but prior to the shortest day we are on a down-slope and it is OK to finish a few birds, but after 21st, when we are climbing back up out, it feels wrong to be ending anyone's time on earth.

Fast handiwork in the de-feathering dept. 

This fella looked nearly as big as the one Liz took down to the In-Laws last week. He continued to look that big as he was plucked out and 'dressed' (euphemism for disemboweling and removing extraneous lower legs, head and "giblets" (another euphemism)).

The trussed, short-fuselage version. 

Because they get a night dead, hanging up, head down, by their feet, they come into the kitchen with their legs straight out behind them. This guy, oven ready, gave us quite a scare, being "too big for the oven". We had visions of having to joint him up and cook him in bits - the 'crown' (bone-in both breasts), wings and legs.

Resting in the afternoon

I knew I could do better with a bit of amateur trussing, so I brought him back in from the fridge and heaved his legs into a squat-bend. He is a muscly chap but I prevailed. I lashed his ankle joints together and down to his 'parson's nose' and then ran my twine round under his armpits, shortening his profile by a good 6 inches. Liz always cooks these whole turkeys 'empty' with the 'stuffing' in a separate tray, to let the heat straight into the body cavity, so we can also push the front opening closed without any stuffing bulge. Even shorter. He now fits on the roasting tray, and therefore in the oven. He weighs 8.7 kg and we are very proud of him. He is survived by our hen bird who is only about 4 kg and will now be a keeper till spring. She may give us some eggs.

More left-overs. This one a burger risotto. 

What else have we done? The big 6 kg Christmas ham we brined and froze back in the Autumn had to come out of the freezer to thaw for 24 hours. That big joint gets boiled briefly and then simmered for 6 hours in (cheap, fake) coca-cola. It is the only time we buy 'coke' all year, not being fans of fizzy pop at all. The big lump of meat then gets cooled down and, before the Big Day, has its skin removed and then that fancy diamond design cut into into the sub-cutaneous fat. We stick a clove into each diamond and glaze with some combination of the coke-liquor and mustard to give the lovely golden colour to the baked ham.

Extracting venison marrow using a corkscrew for the dogs,
We did clean the corkscrew afterwards!

Liz has also been whizzing up stuffing mixes, soaking chick-peas for hummus and worrying about other Christmas specials like fancy custard, mince pies, red cabbage, cocktail sausages, pomegranates and so on. Liz went present-shopping to Sligo today, so she's now all over me for having 'finished hers' when I still have a mini-mission to do tomorrow. All good clean fun.

By the time I talk to you again, it will all be over.

Good Feedback

Good Feedback. Now there's a business-speak expression I have not used a whole lot since finishing at DHL in Dartford in June 2011. We bloggers write these reports and fire them off into cyberspace hoping that maybe someone is reading them and enjoying what we have written. We cling to the 'site-meter' reports telling us how many hits we are getting and listening out for comments each posting. But I have an additional incentive to keep writing and to try to keep this interesting; this has become, for me, my letter home to me dear aul' Mum, the 'Pud Lady' mentioned in some of these reports.

Pud Lady (named for her marvelous steak and kidney puds) is of that generation (she's 86) that never got to grips with computers (except for word-processing), the internet or blogging, Facebook, Twitter and all that jazz. She does love, though, that we have moved to Ireland and started this small-holder life and she is hungry for news and fascinated by all the goings on. When we were living in the caravan and had no access to the printer, my brother Mark offered to print these posts off (in the UK) and to include them in his own letter home which already contained his 'blog posts' and other news. He has kept up the habit even though we are now installed. Thanks Mark - much appreciated.

Pud Lady is therefore now getting all my news, and probably knows more about what we are up to than when we lived in Kent, just 45 miles away from her, I am ashamed to admit I was never that good at writing or phoning. We know Pud Lady is enjoying it because we also now get old-style 'snail mail' letters from her every fortnight included in the UK-addressed forwarded mail posted on by my other brother, Tom. Thank you for these Mum, they too are much appreciated. Today's has them impressed by the height of our daffodils and comparing gardening notes (we are both keen gardeners), describing their snow and Tom's family's children's off-school adventures, and looking forward to the RSPB's "Big Garden Birdwatch" which we used to do every year. See? Good Feedback. Everybody is happy!

Liz has just described today's weather to Diamond as varying between lashing rain in strong wind, and glorious blue sky, sunny warmth. That's no exaggeration. I am trying to build three tough, fox proof rabbit runs and a tough, fox-proof house for the geese. The rain has driven me indoors, so I am trying to work in the Tígín which is a bit tight for space but nobody wants to be using an electric circular saw in the wet! The 2CV trailer has been pressed into service as a mighty sellotape-dispenser style wire mesh machine. The heavy 30m roll of 1" square weldmesh is threaded through with a pitch fork handle and slung across the trailer box so that I can unreel lengths of wire, hooking them over the back of the trailer while I go along laboriously cutting each strand of wire.

The plywood and rough-cut "2-be-1-and-a-half" lengths are in the car port and the tar-felt is already in the Tígín. Sparks has run power and lighting to the Tígín, so it's not a bad shed to work in. I tend to rough out a plan of what frame and sheeting I will need (mainly so I can go buy enough!) and then start with this but then let the part built frames dictate actual sizes and saw cuts as I go along. The width of the mesh (92 cm, 3 feet) dictated the width of the run and I went with half that for the height to minimize waste. 3 metres length we thought would give the rabbits enough space to run about while leaving the thing light enough for us to move it about from grass to grass. You can see from the picture that I have, tonight, completed one run. This one is for (Buck) Rogers, our bought-in male bunny who is now separated from his ladies. I had a bit of blue fence-paint left from an earlier job, so Rogers's house is painted blue to go with his eyes. Ahhhh.

When the paint's dry we'll drag this one outdoors and get some sunny pictures of it (with rabbit!) to give you some idea.

Photo Sharing

Just to let y'all know that Mum has now put dozens of Dad's pictures up on photo-sharing website Flickr. They are on www.flickr.com and look for user Cuigcead. They are not quite up there yet, so try again in a few hours/days.

On the website, type cuigcead into the search field, then when it fails to find any pics call that, click on "people" and you should get Cuigcead listed with a small purple flower icon. You will need to create an account and then set Cuigcead as a 'friend and family'; which she will need to accept. Hope it's all worth.

Deefer

Fran's Pictures

Dad finally gets round to opening the CD of pictures of the narrow boating holiday sent to us by Fran and Commander Dave. Like us, they spent the holiday with disabled cameras so we were all struggling to get some decent pics, using camcorders on single shot etc, but there are some good ones in here. Thanks for that Fran and Dave - hope you're keeping well. I have also emailed a selection off to the Silverwoods. I love the one of their entire family as they emerge from Standedge Tunnel. Brilliant.

After heavy rain overnight Dad nips down to the barge to see if anything is dripping through and is pleased to note all the through-deck leaks are now cured by a combination of his and Richard's painting, plus Shipwright John's re-caulking. The couple of tiny leaks remaining are not through decks, but rather at joins between, for example, skylight and deck. They will need some other kind of fix.

Dad must also provision up for Mum's Birthday meal tomorrow. The deal is the Birthday girl or boy gets to choose the stylee of eating, restaurant or home, and Mum rather fancies Dad cook a spectacliar for the two of them plus Diamond and John, so Dad's had to nip off in search of 'spectacliar' ingredients. No pressure. One cause of stress which has gone away, though, Amazon have just managed to sneak in delivery of part of the present. They'd been running a bit close to the wire, with the big day being tomorrow.

Now, as I write this at 11:30, the skies are finally clearing and the sun is breaking through so I expect we'll get to go out for our walk soon.

Deefs

One of us will kill her...

Mum returns with an amusing story from Hospital. She's booked in this afternoon for an appointment but there's been a hold up and the waiting room is backed up 1 and a half hours (not too many people - these are quite long appointments). Everyone is quite philosophical about this - these things happen and it had been 2 hours but the staff and Receptionist had worked through their lunch hour to help catch up.

Everyone is quite philosophical (sitting, reading etc) EXCEPT that is for one tulip from Margate who decides the way to deal with it is to start shouting her dissatisfaction at the Receptionist from across the room (staying in her seat). Everyone feels a bit awkward and embarrassed. Mum also feels hungry because she's missed her own lunch and has been sitting there a while.

Eventually one of the staff comes out and explains patiently to the lady about the hold up but says the current "victim" will 15 more minutes, then there's just (Mum) and it'll be her turn. Mum spots the opportunity to nip for a bite of lunch and visit Diamond (who's in the same hospital), while at the same time helping the harrassed Receptionist and maybe shutting up the large, loud, Mrs "Margit".

She has a quick chat with the Staffer, and then clears it with the Receptionist, that she swap places with Mrs Margit and nips out. "That's very sweet of you", says R, "but why would you do that?" Mum (in a whisper) says that "otherwise that woman will shout at us all for the hour and one of us will have to kill her".

She smiles as the R tries not to giggle, and as Mum slinks out she hears the R start up... "That very nice lady who has just left has generously volunteered to let you have her appointment time.... etc". Unfortunately Mum was out by then but we all hope the loud one has sufficient shame to be crawling with embarrassment.

Go Mum!
Deefer

The Girls are Back

...ahhh that's better. We tried to post on here last night, and the auto-save kept killing us. Just a big red and yellow stripe, and no news!...

All is returned to normality here (well nearly). Diamond and Mum are back from their 10 days in the Greek island of Poros, and to prove it, here is a shot Mum took on her new camera, of a Greek octopus-fisherman beating 7 bells out of an octopus to tenderise it.

I say "nearly" - all is in fact not well with young Denis, Diamond's dad and Rags's owner. He's in hospital at the moment, so we are thinking of them.

Dad's bought steak and fizz to celebrate Mum's return (crawler!) so we get a small amount of that. Everybody's tired out though what with all the overnighting and whizzing to and from airports, so we all crash out at just gone 8pm, like a couple of old gits!

These old ones - no stamina!

Deefs

Party's Over

Ah well, back down to earth with a bump after the porky excesses of yesterday. No matter. There is the welcome prospect of Mum and Diamond returning from the Greek island of Poros at about midnight (no doubt Dad will be sparko, but we will be ever watchful and alert, and will spring into yappy action (jumping across Dad's nethers in the process) at the sound of the key in the door.

Also coming up soon, the promise of a trip to Hastings to see Pud-Lady and Stamp-Man, and then the exciting prospect of a joint dog-walk with bro, sis, real-Mum and real-Dad plus any other hangers on, waifs and strays we can rope in. 7 - westie bundle!

Gotta love it!

Deefer

Flower Pots and Washing Machine Dosing Balls

Real Mum (Mollie) went in to vets today for her spay operation. Recovering well. Reported to be "sitting up in bed". Must find out name of Hospital Ward and visiting hours, so that I can take along bunch of grapes, well-thumbed "Womens' Own" mags and a bunch of flowers which the nurse will refuse to put in a vase. That's it for Mum in the pups dept, but she scared everyone to death by getting milk-fever badly when we were about 4 weeks old. Luckily all ended happily

Good things for pups to chew. 3 inch plastic flower pot. Nice satisfying stiff "give" to the needle-sharp teeth. Given enough chewing and biting you can splay out the rim of the flower pot with a pleasing Nottingham lace-work effect. Disadvantages are when gripped by the lower rim between puppy teeth, upper rim, at 3 inches higher is outside puppy eye-line, hence entire face effectively buried in pot. Not so good when evading Haggis at speed, due to impaired vision. Collisions with door frames tend to damage forehead, neck and street-cred

Slightly better, washing machine plastic dosing-ball (well rinsed). Same al-dente bite and semi-transparent, so can see door frame approaching at speed but large shiny sphere enclosing entire nose tends to look like a circus clown false-nose and draws comments from humans like "Look at that muppet!". Not good for street cred either, but hey, I'm a cute white pup.

Have heard comment to the effect, my bum is a little crusty tonight, and Dad waving beard-trimmer around muttering stuff about Brazilians. Also landing strips. Not sure what that's all about

Stair-count maximum now 5 (bottom 5)

Deefer