Nollaig na mBan (Ladies' Christmas)

The tree stripped and Christmas packed away for another year

Say it "Nollag na Mahn" for that authentic Gaelic effect. Readers who were with me in January 2014 will have already heard of this break and 'day-off' for the hardworking ladies of the household. This is a tradition in the West of Ireland which is thought to pre-date those blow-in Christians and their 'Epiphany' malarkey (when the 3 wise men finally rocked up to the crib and Bethlehem). The ladies of the household, having slaved for 2 weeks for their men-folk, finally earned a day off. The men would hold the fort, feed the livestock and do the house work.

One of the marmalade kittens does justice to a bit of left over lamb

In my head, I was proud of the lads! I imagined them feeling sorry for their ladies at last and gallantly (patronisingly? chauvinistically?) granting them the day off, "generously" palming them an amount of spending money and helping them into the buggy to which they had already hitched up the mare. Have a nice time, ladies.

A nice range of egg colours. Top is a duck egg. 

Not a bit of it apparently. Back in the day the law and (even more important) village tradition of what was right said that this was their right, entitlement and due and they did not need any man deciding that they could do this. They'd done their 2 weeks and they were outta here. If Mr Farmer got a slice of cold pie left for him in the meat-safe then fair play to him.

Ash bark.

The tradition has died out a bit and is forgotten in most areas, but out here in the West it still hangs on. Locals will shy away from organising public events (dances, social nights) on 6th Jan because "people like to organise their own family things around Little Christmas" (the other name for it). Mind you, Liz tells me that in the cities , the bar/pub/restaurant trade has started to try to re-introduce it hoping that the gangs of local women, released for the day from the chores of home and the kids and bent on shopping, might finish their free days with a meal of a few drinks with the girl-friends. As a quick aside to this, the lady currently curating that Twitter account (see previous post) tells us that in the Amish (Plain People) areas of up-state New York, they celebrate "Old Christmas" on this date.

We did a reasonable job here, making sure to look after Lizzie. She got a nice lie-in, then taken shopping in Roscommon. There was a lunch, then a relaxing afternoon and then I cooked the supper and she is even now  sipping gently on a glass 'Barefoot' Malbec. A small stash of chocolates sits waiting on the dresser. That, we guess, is it. The 'real' Christmas is done and tidied away, and the Ladies' Christmas has now followed it for this year.

Warm socks.

That's it for this post, too. I am being brief (can't be rattling away in here when I am meant to be looking after the good lady!). I was hoping to bring you pics and news of the 'splatter' of tiny webbed feet but those little ducklings are taking their own sweet time battling their way out of the shells. There were 7 eggs. As I go to print, Rob tells me we have 2 out of their shells so far and more 'pipping' (chipping their way through) but these little mites don't all survive this stage, so I won't do an update till we are sure how many 'survivors' we have.

11ºC today and plenty of bees flying. Plenty returning, too, with
their 'shopping baskets' full of  ivy pollen. Happy Nollaig na
mBan, ladies. Not too many drones around in January to be doing
the house work while you're gone, mind.

The one single thing we found lacking thru Christmas was good old fashioned holly. In all my dog walking and car-mounted exploring, I could find no bush from which to steal a sprig for the Christmas pud, only neat little clipped specimens in gardens. We have every other broad-leaved species, but no holly, so we were off today to the local garden centre. Of course, since then, as is the way of these hunts, we have seen holly bushes everywhere and we know that they can be propagated from semi-ripe cuttings.

An optimistic tree growing in a wall.

Well, we have one now. May it live long an prosper. We paid €5 for ours. We were amused to learn that a local shop was selling prunings for use in wreaths etc at €7.50 PER BIT! No flies on these local guys when it comes to merchandising.

All Good Things

All good things, so they say, must come to an end, and we are now at, or coming to, the end of some crackers. Once again, I do not have many pics specific to these subjects (at least, not ones I haven't already used), so I will fill in with some nice '365' pics. That is one of the "things" anyway, so it works... ish. The other two are Christmas itself and my week of being curator on 'that' Twitter account.

We would normally dismantle Christmas here at some convenient weekend between New Year and 12th Night, demolish the tree, pack all the 'stuff' away into its crates but we were both enjoying this one so much that we had decided to do the job on the 5th (the 12th Day and all that). However, one of the delightful kitten-cats (we think) did a very smelly poo, we thought, under the tree and Liz, faced with a pot-holer style elbows-down crawl under the low branches to locate and remove the offending item, unilaterally decided that enough was enough. Demolition day is today!

Some of the hens are coming back into lay at last and the
surviving Marans hen has started (dark brown egg)

This afternoon, then, we have been finishing Christmas including me going back over the rooftops etc and all along that 48m fence you have heard about in other posts concertina-ing up the fairy lights. We're done. We both agree that this has been our nicest and most enjoyable Christmas for a while though it is hard to pinpoint any specific reason. Everything about it seemed to go off well from the start - planning, lists, preparations, the visit and everything we wanted to do. The food and drink were well judged and superbly executed, the present buying/giving was a success and the subsequent wind-down has been beautifully relaxing. Peace and good will to all reigned. We are all still smiling even as we pack the paraphernalia back in its crates. May we have many more as good as this one was.

Horsehair caught on a fence.

I noted in the previous post that inter-leaved through the back end of this Christmas was my week of being curator of the @smallholderIRL Twitter account. That too went very successfully and well and seemed to hit the right note(s) and has met with widespread thanks, approval and praise. That is always nice because you are always aware that you are firing off these soundbites that you think are funny, wise, appropriate, pithy or what ever but the 2500 followers out there are 99% unknown to you. They might vehemently disagree with your opinions, not find your quips funny, be irritated by your timing or tone. Some (we call them 'trolls') are just miserable gits who get their kicks by saying rude, nasty or provocative things just to see if they can get a rise out of people. All life is there and it can be tricky finding the right approach.

First 365 pic of 2017?

Lovely when you do though. I was fortunate in my assigned week running from St Stephen's Day (Boxing Day) to New Year's Day, so I had a couple of rich veins from which to draw my 'copy'. I had all the 'Wren Boys' tradition on St Stephen's Day, all the leftovers cookery, cold turkey sandwich jokes etc and then I came up with an inspired plan for New Years. Again, no idea if it would work - it might have fallen flat. I decided to 'First Foot' any followers who might not have a bloke to do it, or might not have heard of this Scottish tradition.

Happy New Year! First Footing 'treats' for the
Twitter account

I had set the account up during the day, telling them what to expect and all about First Footing, told them they needed to have the back door open before they open the front, to let the old year out, then I'd "arrive" (on Twitter) to greet them and hand them (a picture of) the plate containing the bread (signifying food), coal (warmth), salt (savour) and whiskey (good cheer). It was easy enough to do and went down OK - there was a reasonable smatter of comment, 'like's and thanks, though I did get the impression that most were a bit flummoxed and plenty had either gone to bed early or were at a 'proper' celebration with real First Footers. Ah well.

Icy Puddle

Nobody boo'd me off stage anyway and I woke up that day to run the account till 5 pm. when I had to hand in the 'keys' so that boss-lady (Margaret Griffin) could set it all up for this week's curator, a lady who does her small-holdering in up-state New York (would you believe - the account does 'foreign' guests now and then). This lady is currently amazing us all with tales of farming among her neighbouring 'Amish' folk and lovely pics of the area with snow on the ground and all those lovely Amish horse-drawn carts and buggies trundling through it. She tells us that they sometimes see bears and moose strolling about. They are, I think, only 'small' by USA standards - she talks of 100 head of cattle including a 60-70 head milking herd of Holsteins. They are within spitting distance of (I think I have this right) a National Wilderness Park called the 'Adirondak Park' - a MILLION acres of wilderness!!! Makes my week seem quite pedestrian!

Incoming female Mute Swan. I thought for a while she'd
land on my head but luckily she veered off. 

Also now in its final month, a project of which I have spoken countless times since we started back in February 2016 (and before it was actually born). This is our '365 Lisacul' thing, a photo 'diary' of the year (actually 366 as it was a leap-year) in, of and from the 18 townlands around our village. This was Liz's 'baby' really; she had borrowed the idea from our good friend Nathalie Banaigs who was in charge of the one done by Faversham, the town we lived in in the UK. This with Nath's blessing, of course.

I agreed to be the safety net / back stop. I would take at least 1 (actually always 3) usable picture EVERY day without fail from 1st Feb 2016 to 31st Jan 2017. I am delighted to be able to say that, so far at least, I have delivered this with no missing days. It has had its moments and frustrations and I have been unable to make some of the pics I had dreamed up work but over all it has been a blast. I have learned a lot and certainly hunted down all manner of nooks and crannies in the 'patch' which I would probably never have been to without the incentive.

I guess I know more bridges, lanes or corners where one townland finishes and another starts, than do most of the locals. I have also met lots of lovely people whom I would not otherwise have encountered. Plenty of them stop in their cars when they see me nose-down in a ditch trying to get just that angle on an orchid or something, or trying to pick my way through a bog where they know there is no safe path! Oh, so YOU'RE the camera guy!

New Year's Day sunrise through the trees.

Well, just 28 more photography days to go on that one - wish me luck. I'm not out of the woods yet. Then Liz and the team have the fun job of selecting which pics go in for what day. She has 30 contributors at this stage. It would be quite fun to be a fly on the wall that day.

Roast lamb, sprouts and chestnuts.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we are now settling into the New Year and starting to think about 2017. 2 livestock issues are pressing. We are off to meet our prospective piglet supplier in a couple of days. This guy is a new breeder of Oxford Sandy and Blacks (OSBs) who was setting up last year when we got our pair of gilts from our man in Kildare - you may recall that we had only to do the short drive to Boyle because he was driving up here anyway. It was to this new guy that he was going, to retrieve a sow, to take her back to Kildare to get her 'in-pig' (pregnant) by one of his home boars. Secondly, we have some duck eggs in our buddy Sue's incubator. These were laid by our surviving duck and we hope, fertilized by our surviving drake. Those two (William and Mary - some kind of connection with the 'of Orange' royals due to the Duck and Orange thing) are now our "parent generation" thanks to Mr Fox removing all the competition. The slap of tiny webbed feet is expected any day now (5th to 8th -ish). This will be our first Christmas (Re)Stocking. Geddit? OK, sorry. I'll save the witticisms for Twitter.

Speaking too Soon

Our own ham and our own green tomato chutney make for
a delicious "left overs" sandwich. 

Sometimes I "go to print" on these blog posts with a funny feeling that I may have spoken too soon - my confidence and complacency; my urge to rush a good story onto these pages will be my undoing. This has been close to the truth no fewer than three times over Christmas as I will now relate. The pictures may not be relevant but you will probably cope.

Still some chocs left when I took this. All gone now!

Three posts ago I was happily relating that we had decorated the Christmas Tree, that the kittens had had a brief play with low-hanging baubles but then got bored and moved on and that we'd sat down with a Gluhwein thinking "Job well done". Not for us the horror stories of trees wrecked by cats. I even included a picture of my old favourite decoration, a plaster lobster dressed as a waiter delivering a tray of 'beignets' (fried buns), a prized souvenir of my one and only trip to New Orleans.

For a party claiming not to have drunk much
we were still well laden for the "drive of shame"

Well, no sooner had I gone to press and my back turned than the kittens managed to upturn the tree with Liz seeing it all in slow motion ("NooooOOOO!!!!) and diving to save it but too late. Very little damage done but my lobster hit the tiled floor and smashed into 3 pieces. We have found his body and his arm holding the tray of beignets but where his tail 'flukes' have gone we have no idea.

A first sign of Spring - the daffs in the
lane emerging.

Next up, my joy at having solved the jackdaw problem with my bloke, accompanied by Soldier the Cat, shinnying up those ladders to demolish the jackdaw nest and fit our jackdaw-cage pots to prevent anyone moving back in. Storm Barbara had other ideas. The next morning saw one of the 'cages' lifted out of the chimney pot and dropped into Liz's rose garden.

Odd disco lighting effects from the sun
reflecting off the fancy candle-cover at the
bottom of this picture. 

The design of these, you may recall, involves a flat cone top like a Chinese 'paddy-field' worker's hat, with a ring of outward-sprung rods which you pull together to fit the ends down inside the bore of the pot. You can imagine that the 'hat' must give a fair amount of lift, like an aircraft wing 'aerofoil' in a cross wind, and I suppose the wagging back and forth in gusts might 'walk' the legs up the chimney bore like a ratchet. Being worried about the lack of draw (caused in the end by the jackdaw nest) I had asked the guy to position the pots high up, well proud of the chimney. My mistake. He is coming back to put the fallen one back - I will get him to set them lower this time.

Our 3 roosters hang in the polytunnel to
await processing in the kitchen

Finally, I told you that we had taken the fox trap back to Sue and Rob's, confident that our fox was shot dead and the problem solved. I was not happy the following morning to find that *someone* had got at the three roosters we had hung in the poly tunnel overnight to await processing in the morning. A head had been pulled off one leaving a bloody, strap-like, skinned neck hanging down and a small puff of torn out feathers on the grass  outside the tunnel. My heart sank. I was convinced it was a fox, though I was surprised the beast had not ripped down a whole bird (or all three). Mum in Law (Steak Lady) has since suggested that it might, in fact, have been a cat. That makes more sense. I had not thought of that.

A litre tub of yogurt and one of those roosters make the basis
of a rather fine curry. 

Other than that, we have just been chugging our way through all those left-overs, recovering and tidying up the place, making the most of the relaxing days between the two main events.

The Ministry post us details of a new grant
scheme but we are too small to be eligible

I have been serving my 2nd ever week (1st was in January) as the "voice of Irish smallholders". Well, the Twitter voice anyway - I am this week the "curator" (= guest twitterer) of the @smallholderIRL Twitter account. If you don't 'do' Twitter or have no  experience of it, it is quite fun. It is a very fast and chatty but very lightweight and ephemeral space where you can look in, chat away to who ever is 'on' and then drop off again. You can only speak in 'soundbites' (140 characters) so it is no place to go for a heavy, wordy discussion, though some people do post links to longer articles. You can click through to them or not according to preference and time available.

The '365' project is about to enter its final month.

Like Facebook, users tend to accumulate like-minded 'friends' and coalesce into groups. The small holder group currently has 2500 'followers' not all small holders. When you log out it 'twitters' away without you with hundreds of snatches of chat a bit like stepping out of the pub for fresh air. When they are said, they are quickly gone, pushed down thread by more recent 'tweets'. As I said, 'ephemeral'. Nobody really goes in and then back-tracks down the old stuff, though there is a way of getting it to 'remember' posts where you were included, replies to your posts and so on. Occasionally posts or links strike a chord with lots of posters and the 're-tweet' them to pass them on and that story spreads far and wide, it "goes viral" in modern parlance. It is basically harmless fun but I love the fact that I can share my experiences with 2000+ other small holders all trying to meet and solve the same problems, enjoying similar weather, admiring the same sunsets and munching on their turkey sandwiches and pickles.

Talk to you again next year.

Show Some Decent Restraint

Santa did us proud this year.

There it was then. Christmas has come and gone. I am not about to bore you with a blow by blow account of all the food, drink, presents and all that; I will just give you a few details and comments and post up a few nice Seasonal pics. Over all it was a very good one in which we thoroughly enjoyed a very relaxing few days with Mum-in-Law (Steak Lady) here to stay for 4 nights.

She will, I am sure, not mind me saying that we thoroughly enjoy her company and she is one of those ideal kind of guests who seem to get along superbly with our style of hospitality. She needs no entertaining or keeping busy and completely relaxes. She loves all the food we serve to her and has all the drink she needs. She sleeps well and we are like a pampering spa-bath to her sense of well-being. She comes out with expressions like "I feel so much younger" or "I woke up so happy" and "It's like a 5-star hotel" or like Lourdes.

An Eve pint

She arrived on the Friday, so was here for the whole of the Eve, the Day, St Stephen's Day (Boxing Day to you Brits) and part of today. She came with us on an Eve visit to Carolyn and co (where-at the new house has that open-to-the-rafters kitchen and there is room for a 12 foot tree!), went to 'Midnight' Mass (9:30 pm) with Liz and came out to Sue and Rob's with us today when we nipped over to return the fox trap and the ram, Silas. We packed her off this afternoon with a wicker basket full of cold meat and left overs, a sack of ash-logs and a tray of 30 eggs (from Sue). A very successful visit. If we ever need to get into B+B ing we feel we could cope.

Regular readers will know that the main meal on the day was to be roast beef, a change from normal imposed by Brer Fox. That was not the only change away from our "normal" traditions. Normally we have a mad wrap-ripping fest as soon as we awake, up on the bed which leaves very few presents for downstairs. Steak Lady was likely to prefer a bit of a lie-in so we decided that we would just do the whole thing later. We would wait for everyone to wake up naturally, have a nice leisurely scrambled egg and salmon breakfast and only then do presents. In practise that took us round till gone 11 am by which time I needed to walk the dogs, so I sneaked that in too. We finished up at around midday.

In my family, such patience would be known as "showing decent restraint" and although across all the meals we ate enough to be as fat as fools, we also found ourselves (rather to our surprise) being restrained in the drink too. Maybe we are growing up at last. We had bought a rake of booze and more arrived from Santa but we would sit and sip happily at a Gluhwein, a wine, a whiskey, a beer or a G+T according to taste. Nobody got unduly 'squiffy' and there were no hang-overs. All in all a great success.

St Stephen's Day ham. Fans of the supermarket version may
think it not bright pink enough but that would just be because
they do not know that the pink is an artificial effect of using
dubious chemicals like nitrites in the cure.

Food and drink might go off at a tangent over the few days but the smallholding and stock 'show' must go on. Today we needed to head over to Sue and Rob's with the fox trap and the young ram we have been using to service our ewes.

Silas says his goodbyes to the ewes. 

The ram, Silas, is a tiny, 2016 ram lamb who we employed more for the practise than in any expectation of high lambing success. We are not 100% sure he managed to mount anyone but whether he did or no, he needs taking off the ewes now. The gestation period for ewes is 5 months, which brings us now to the end of May and I will need to be shearing the ewes to prevent fly-strike. You should not put pregnant ewes through anything as stressful as shearing, so we dare not risk Silas doing any 11th hour 'jobs'.

Silas walked out for loading into the trailer
behind me. 

On the fox front we are becoming a bit convinced now that we shot THE fox and solved the short-term problem. We have not seen hide nor hair of a fox since very early December despite our 24/7 fox watch and my frequent torch-beam hunts for eye-reflections after dark. I am not being complacent yet and I get the horrors at the thought of having to confess to you guys that we relaxed, left the chickens out unprotected and came back to another blanket of torn feathers all over the grass. However we did think that the fox-trap was no longer useful (for now) and Sue asked for it back, so that got loaded into the trailer alongside Silas.

A memorable trifle - the 'fruit' was a compote
of cranberry, apricot, date and raisins cooked
in orange juice with cinnamon and cloves.
The custard was of duck egg yolks. 

While we were on getting rid of surplus 'males'  it also became apparent that Mr Fox had left us out of balance in the chicken dept. with regard to the rooster/hen ratio. Ideally this should be around 7 hens to one roo'. That way he can cope with getting round them all each day to keep the eggs fertile, but each hen gets only a manageable share of his 'lurve'. We had 4 new Marans roosters coming of age and had lost a good few hens to the fox. We were starting to witness distressing 'gang-rape' scenes and some hens were getting threadbare and very unwilling to come out of the coop of a morning lest they got jumped by the roo's, sometimes 2 or 3 at once.

Hard to beat, bacon and cabbage. The cabbage gets cooked
in the liquor from the ham-boil which, in this recipe includes
ginger beer!

Time to 'off' some roo's. This is the least pleasant part of poultry keeping but you have to be able to do it. It is not fair on the hens to leave that situation to run. In fact it is not too difficult but we had Mum-in-Law up and I did not want to do any of these dark deeds with her present. I decided to crate the roosters for the day and sort them once Mum had been packed off.

The '365' show goes on too.

They roost high in the rafters of the barn (roosters seem to claim the highest, safest perches) and chickens cannot move about in the dark, so the wise poultry-man knows to catch them at night with a small torch. In this case I merely had to reach up and lift them by the legs, lowering them down into the crate without a fuss. Then I could move them easily to sort them once Mum had gone. They are now 'late' and will get plucked and dressed tomorrow. It may be my imagination but an air of calm and serenity seems to have descended on the rest of the birds. They now only have our old #1 Lieutenant Colonel Buff Orp rooster and one Cuckoo Marans boy. I will let you know how we get on.

Finally you might recall that St Stephen's Day here is the day for a rather bizarre but nice old tradition  of 'Wren Boys' when gangs of youths would work their way round the village carrying a caged wren and threatening to kill it unless the householders gave them gifts of money or food treats. They would wear straw 'mummers' costumes to disguise themselves. One old boy locally says he can remember when there were plenty but that they used to visit the "singing pubs" rather than houses. The tradition has almost died out now but we got one group last year and we were hoping for more this year.

Well, we got some. They were rather tiny and young, they were driven round by Mum, they arrived wearing Christmas jumpers and Santa masks and singing 'Jingle Bells'. Ah well. They tried - Mum said it was their first outing but that she remembers doing it as a kid herself. We gave them a good supply of chocolate biscuits and euros to encourage them.

The Solstice and Barbara

The 'last quarter' moon visible on Solstice morning. 

I honestly think that these days, the Solstice means more to me than the highly commercialised booze, food and present buying fest of Christmas. We try to get into the 'magic', we do the tree, the lights, the gifts, the fancy food and the drink but I can't honestly say I come out of the other end with any new sense of optimism or any conviction that things will be different on the 26th to how they were on the 24th.

Jetting off on the same morning

Nope. Now that I spend so much time out of doors and out in the weather, the solstice is the one which grabs my attention because it marks the time when we change from the rather depressing shortening of days and long dark evenings to the days getting longer at last. In my head we start the climb out of winter into spring, to warmth and sunshine.

Deefer is quite happy with the sleeping arrangements

Don't worry. I have not suddenly gone all Druid on you or pagan spiritualism; it is a purely gardener/farmer thing. I am fascinated by how this works. I know, of course that the day length is practically stationary around now and the 'change' from decrease to increase is infinitesimal, measured in seconds. The daylength graph is similar to a sine wave curve and the solstice is right at the bottom of the curve, where it runs almost horizontal (or at the top, likewise for the Summer solstice). The rate of change accelerates till the Equinox (March 21st) when, if memory serves, each day is 3 full minutes longer than 'yesterday' - a big enough change that you can 'feel it' and you know that in a week Sunday will be roughly 20 minutes longer than last Sunday.

The one-headed, 32 clawed tree wrecker. 

So I have had my solstice and I am mentally now in an up-turn, all be it I know that it is a huge long haul through March and April before we see any real warmth and we dry out a bit from this wet, wet, wet. In fairness again, this winter has done amazingly well for rainless- and windless-ness. It feels as if we have had no real rain through from mid-October, all through November and through December up until the aforementioned solstice when it all went a bit 'Pete Tong'.

Storm Barbara weather warnings

Solstice day (21st) saw the weather warnings for our first named storm for 2 months, Storm Barbara. The B-name tells you how good the weather has been. Normally we'd expect a load of these storms through November and we'd be well into the G, H, I, J or K by Christmas. Barbara promised plenty of wind and rain but the eye was going to skirt up north of us and slam into Scotland.

A miserable morning as Storm Barbara hits.

We battened down the hatches, of course, with concrete blocks and ratchet straps on bee hives, hutches and chicken coops and all tall stuff like ladders laid flat on the ground. We got the blow of wind through today as promised, from 0600 to 1800 but the only damage we suffered was when one of our new jackdaw-pots went airborne and landed in Liz's rose garden out front.

This year's 'turkey' is this 5 kg Aberdeen Angus rib roast

Of course, Solstice or not, Christmas still comes and we get involved and have a good time. This year we have 'Steak Lady' staying which is always a brilliant time. We also, famously, have no turkey as Brer Fox helpfully removed all three of our nearly grown turkey poults a couple of weeks back. Rather than try to sub in somebody else's turkey we decided on a complete change from 'tradition'; Liz nipped off to our belovéd local traditional butcher Ignatius G (who 'does' our lambs) and ordered a big ol' beef rib roast. "How big will you be needing it?" asked Mr G. "It's for 3" said Liz and Mr G started to indicate "about this thick then" holding thumb and forefinger only a couple of inches apart. "Oooh No", said Liz, "I need 3 ribs - we have 3 dogs too!"

All manner of Christmas goodies - these are dillisk (seaweed)
and cheese biscuits. 

I collected it today and a more magnificent chunk of beef I don't think I have seen. It is local Aberdeen Angus and weighed almost 5 kg. It will do us proud. It was very reasonable in price too and Liz, checking out UK prices worked out that it would have set us back around £80 in Kent. We are looking forward to it.

That'll do me for this time. Guest now in place so I shouldn't really be rattling stuff into the PC and ignoring my hosting duties. You all have a great Christmas now and I will talk to you again on Tuesday when it's all over.

Nollaig shona dhuit!