The Best Laid Plans.....

This post was going to be all about the wonderful time I was going to have trying out the sport of archery for the first time in the delightful company of the Silverwood clan. Then along came Storm Desmond with his howling gales and our first ever RED weather warning, this one for rain plus all the usual advice from the Police not to risk any un-necessary journeys. I won't bore you with the details as most of my readers will have probably copped their own share of Des by now and some will have struggled with the genuine hardships of flooding and damage which make our 'big puddles' pale into insignificance. I am in no way claiming 'hard done by' status; we just got a bit wetter and more blown around than usual. I postponed the archery till after Christmas and opted to stay here and look after the place, the livestock (and Liz?) rather than leave Liz on her own.

This tiny narrow drainage ditch is not usually visible from
our hill top. Here the concrete 'kesh' bridges are submerged.

So, I have some nice pictures of our "floods". The drain that runs into the River Lung below us has burst its banks as has the Lung itself, the local bridge named for our townland is almost up to its arches with the River so full and high, and the name-sake Lough is as big and full as any locals can ever remember seeing it. That was quite some rain that came down. We were worried for the trees near the house (and may have decided we need to do something about them), of course, but relaxed enough to be joking about conspiracy theories.

The bridge is nearly up to its arches with the 'Desmond Depth'.

Are these storms now being named, we wonder, to soften us up because Met Éireann KNOW SOMETHING about climate change that they are not telling us yet, perhaps that our standard N. Atlantic storms in November are going to be so powerful soon that we need to name them like Hurricanes? (gasp). More ridiculously, we wonder whether these storms are cunning enough to know that they can get named if they would only put in that little extra effort. Thus Abigail was not that impressive, Barney was getting there, Clodagh was definitely trying and Desmond was the best/worst ever. Do we have a Stephen King novel here? Sentient anti-cyclones?

The local Lough is no mean body of water this week. The tiny
white dots here are our wintering Whooper swans. 

Meanwhile, back in the real world the locals are all impressed by the size and fullness of the Lough. It has filled the whole valley, where it is normally a thin weedy ribbon of water half hidden by the bullrushes. Gossip has it that it was "always" this full and contained enormous pike one of which sits, stuffed, in a glass case in Liz's work-place. But then ten years ago the Dept of Civic Works (or what ever they are called) changed the drainage and allowed the Lough to empty much faster rather than hanging on to the water 'up here'. "You wait", said one local veteran, "..and in a couple of days you will hear of flooding in Boyle or Carrick. We never had that before. They should never have done that".

My new favourite 'weapon', this old cleaver was once the
property of John Walsh's Dad though he took to using it
in the cellar for chopping up kindling wood. 

So much for the rain and floods. We got off lightly this time and we are now enjoying some blue sky, calm (ish) days as the big puddles drain slowly away and the cat, Blue. stops cursing us for cutting off all his grassy walkways and hunting routes with water and puddles. We sympathise with the folk in UK who inherited Desmond from us and got the serious floods and damage. With this non-archery weekend over we are now coming up fast on Christmas and we needed to start thinking about festive food and, in particular, turkeys.

Liz dons farmer's wife hands and starts plucking this monster.

Our first 'customer' is Brother in Law, 'Sparks' who has this year bought one of those fancy-pants  American style, cylindrical, outdoor, deep-fat turkey fryers. He is due to cook turkey for a gang of mates this week and 'ordered' a bird from us, rather bravely, having no more idea than we did as to how it would 'do', how big it would get or what it would cook and taste like. This is our first year of turkeys and our birds are the old fashion 'heritage' variety "Bronze". These are old style "single muscled" birds where most shop mass-produced birds these days are white and 'double muscled' like Belgian Blue cow or a 'Beltex' sheep, bred to put on extra muscle in intensive systems and fed no end of special food, growth promoters and so on like a steroid-enhanced weight lifter.

Those massive wing feathers took some pulling. 

When these guys hatched in June, we had no idea how they would flesh up and I worried that we'd only be able to give Sparks an over-grown chicken. We were amazed and delighted at the growth rates on them and within 4 months the youngsters were nearly as big as their Mum (Barbara). Spark's bird was always going to be the biggest as he wanted his in early December but even so, we knew we were on to a serious weight bird and him only 6 months old at this stage.

If you don't want to know how these big, living birds turn into oven ready, plastic wrapped carcasses then skip this and the next 2  paragraphs. Then, of course, there was the problem of how do you cleanly, painlessly and respectfully despatch such a big bird. The books talk of a rather gymnastic process involving standing up with your bird upside down holding his feet in your hands. Juggle a broom handle across his neck, stand on it and pull his legs upwards, breaking his neck. I was not at all convinced that I could do this quickly and cleanly and with no stress to the bird so I have to admit that I fell back on good old decapitation, the trusty meat cleaver and a big chunk of wood. Thunk. Job done, 100% certainty of death.

A lively auction  down at the Community Centre to raise money
for the same.

Done well, the bird is grabbed and 'cuddled' so he stays calm though he might be a bit curious as to why he is being walked across the grass, through the puddles, out to the other side of the pond. At the very last minute you shift your grip to his legs and let him hang upside down with this head sagging onto the wooden block. He relaxes and possibly feels rather helpless but he is not in any kind of pain and then (thunk) he knows no more.

Our antidote to Desmond.

If anyone is thinking of trying this, just be aware that although the bird may 'die' instantly, he will kick off an unconscious explosion of wing flapping and leg-twitching which will go on for a good 30 seconds and will bleed out profusely through the neck cut. The flapping will splash this blood everywhere, so I do it outside and near some long grass, so that I can dangle the bird low to the ground and contain the blood that way. You always get some on your wellies and trouser legs, so it is worth wearing old clothes and being ready to rinse the wellies before you go back indoors! I take a dustbin liner out with me to 'hide' the dead one in so that I don't have to march back past my gang of curious geese, turkeys, chickens and Guineas with a dead bird hanging from my hand, making my way back to the shed where the bird gets hung upside down by his feet to bleed out into the bag. I don't suppose the birds feel upset or grief at the loss of their friend but it makes me feel better.

Polly doing 'Monarch of the Glen'

At that point the birds get handed over to Liz who loves the plucking and 'dressing' side of the job. My work is done (though I do help with the big, tough wing feathers). This lad we were delighted to find, weighed just under 10 kg 'fresh' (but sans head and blood) and then in 'oven ready' format weighed 7.9 kg (17 lbs). Liz went for the 'traditional' presentation, legs still on, some feathers still on the 'hands' and with the giblets (neck, liver, gizzard and heart) in a bag stuffed up his fundament. Sparks can cut off the hands and feet and make good gravy out of the giblets if he desires. Good luck, Sparks. You will be our first Guinea-Pig customer and we will be very interested to know how the boy cooked up.

Lights in the Sky.......

The bees are still nice and active on 1st Dec - it is very warm at 13ºC

At 20 past 8 on Sunday evening, a clear night with a near-full moon, I saw something I have never seen before, a streak of colour-changing flame shoot across the sky. It went west to east and from my perspective seemed to travel from roughly over Knock Airport, to over Frenchpark. It was faster than any aircraft and completely noiseless. It was flaming green to start with but the flames changed to bright red briefly before it winked out and was gone. It was over so fast that I realised that I had no reference point to help me know its height, distance or size. My most likely options were a meteor track (but I have only known meteors to be one colour (bright white/yellow) and always they are a sharply 'drawn' single streak; I have never known them with raggedy 'flame' shaped tails) and a firework, but you generally get a 'whoosh' noise with fireworks.

I had only seen it because I happened to be outside at that time 'patrolling' the dogs for a wee and a poo and had emerged from round the polytunnel looking that way. I was sure no-one else in the area would have been similarly placed and that my meteor would go unrecorded or doubted. It is perfectly possible that I have gone ga-ga out here with these crazy turkeys and bizarre Guinea Fowl and am now inventing alien abduction stories. Meep meep. Nanu nanu. Ah well, in for a penny, I posted about it on FaceBook and got the expected run of comments around whether I was "on the homebrew again" but then was delighted to hear that our friend Rob (he of the piglet catching adventures) had also seen it. He'd been looking out through a French door waiting for their St Bernard, 'Prada' to come back in from her pee/poo stroll in the garden. Then more and more people were commenting and it soon caught the attention of an Irish Astronomy group.

Others of my Facebook friends commented that they were sure meteors could 'do' colours and one (Thanks Pete P) found this spectrum of possible colours. My green may have come from magnesium and the reds from Nitrogen, Oxygen and Neon 'plasma' emissions. It seems that the colours depend on size, height and velocity of the burning object in the heat of atmospheric entry and can also go in phases with different components burning off as the temperature changes. Replies to the Astronomy group had it visible from Killiney, Dublin, Donegal, Mayo and Sligo so I suspect that our thinking it was a Knock/Frenchpark thing was just our low perspective. It was high enough to be seen by anyone across the Irish Midlands. It may also have been a chunk of space-debris returning to earth.

Ah well. They don't last for ever and this washing machine
was so old it didn't owe us anything. We bought it in Kent
we think at least ten, maybe 15 years ago. 

Amusingly, I had just finished posting my witty comments about alien invasions and how the cats are outside so they would deal with it, shut down the computer and gone to bed when all hell broke loose - dogs running around barking, cats yowling. Aliens? Well, one alien anyway, after a fashion. Local wandering stray dog, Bobby had chosen this evening to pay us one of his visits and our dogs had detected him wandering in circles round the house and yard. Regular readers will know that this collie (see 24th Feb 2015 post) is a sweet, painless lad with not an ounce of malice in him who will stroll happily between the chickens and past the sheep with no intent to kill or chase.

Goldie still has plenty of grass. 

Our problem is that the sheep do not know this and to them he is a strange dog, so he can set them panicking and running about which is not ideal if they are pregnant. Not ideal anyway - they can still hurt themselves running at fences or trying to jump over the barbed wire. So we were back on the phone - we have the guy's number by now and we are on first name terms. He apologises profusely and zooms round in his 4x4 to collect the dog who by then I have 'at heel' down at the front gate. I am in my dressing gown and fleece jacket with a head-torch on. The dog's brother apparently has no such wanderlust and stays at home. It is only Bobby who strolls off across the bog-land and pops up either here or at another house just along the ridge top.

Looking promising for Christmas. Polytunnel spuds.

Meanwhile I have almost finished harvesting outdoor spuds and decided to go into the polytunnel and try an exploratory dig. I was delighted to find that the Sarpo Mira planted in there in August are now 'done' - lovely big, mainly clean tubers devoid of any slug or other damage. I do love a baking potato so tonight I tried them as jacket-spuds with beans and a bit of left over belly pork. Lovely and very promising for Christmas. My pic shows 1.9 kg hauled from the first plant (plus a little white 'British Queen' volunteer). Plenty more in the ground. Superb.

Good night then - watch out for UFOs. You never know.......

Fear the Deere

Storm 'Clodagh' sets the trees rocking and a-rolling.

Our latest named storm, 'Clodagh' blusters through but she is a lady characterised by plenty of wind and not so much rain. We all get nicely frazzled by the chilly blast but the puddles and gravel-shovelling of last week ease up and things are, in general, starting to dry out a bit.

The big black spruces in the 'Secret Garden'
take some punishment.

Over at the Sligo house rebuild, excellent progress is being made and, with the concrete floor/base now in, walls are now starting to grow from the new bit. These are no ordinary brick or block walls. The front of the house is built from proper Sligo stone laid flat (like brickwork) with proper 'bond' (overlap) and genuine 'coin' stones at the corners. The new back is going to dovetail into this and stay in keeping with the overall effect with the same stone work up to window sill height. The new walls are to be a 4" concrete block inner 'skin', with a stone wall (up to 8" thick) laid outside of this up to that height, after which there will be a fancy pantile water-drip shedding layer and the wall will continue up to roof height as modern cavity blocks rendered with smooth cement. Should look superb.

Not bad for beginners - the inner bottom of the wall.

The most recent 'games', then have been to build the block wall up to the window sill height and then more recently to start building the outer stone 'skin'. The main man freely admits to knowing a lot about brick and blockwork without ever having done much and knowing a bit about stone masonry without having done any! "I can talk a good game" he said to neighbour Jimmy (owner and driver of HUGE excavators). The wall you can see in this picture is the most block our man had ever laid and I am merely the 'help' - lifting and carrying blocks, mixing cement (in our mixer left over from our own house build), but both of us are delighted to find that "we" can actually do this, and do it pretty well.

The very first 'coin' stone goes in. (bottom centre)

It has been a fascinating experience for me and so, so different from my 'proper job', which was desk-based, keyboard tapping 'Systems/Planning Manager' in a big food warehouse; my hands permanently soft and smooth. I have been especially taken with the process of building the corners, re-using (or finding new) the huge 'coin' stones which have to sit flat either aligned with the back wall or the side wall, their neat 90º corner outwards and their length having to be bound in with the smaller wall-stones. On a very cold, wet Saturday "we" (mainly the boss!) laid the new back side to the west gable end including it's 'step' in to the new wall-line and the corner at the other end of the extension, both up to the required 3' height. We rock, if you'll pardon the expression.

The first bit of masonry 'we' had ever laid. The old original gable
is on the right and the white breathable membrane covers
the new blockwork against which the stone is laid.

I must admit that in the cold and wet I was getting so perished that I was considering calling it a day and my thoughts turned to those hated 'Games' afternoons at school where I was forced to play football. None of we 3 brothers ever had the football gene in our DNA and the school was really well set up for sport. Many schools had huge grounds in those days and ours had room for many pitches. Pitch 1 was inside the grit running track of the school's grass-banked stadium. On that and the nearby Pitch 2, the first-teams did their practise. Both my brothers will remember that we were always sent right out to Pitch 8 for our begrudging, risible, pathetic football, where we froze to death in our shorts and gloveless hands, praying for it to all be over.

My office.

No such torture though on Saturday for we stone masons. Riding to the rescue came the ladies and our little 3-year-old helper, the 'catering department' armed with extremely welcome and deliciously meaty warm pasties, sandwiches, apple turn overs and hot drinks. We FELL on the goods and wolfed them down. We were quickly back to feeling human again, restored to a second wind, though we did not have that much more to do. We finished off, cleaned the gear and tidied up - we have to bring the mixer, genny etc out with us in the van as there is nowhere secure to leave it on site. It was a good day. We were both delighted to retreat to our separate homes and get out of the wet coats and clothing. I even had a fire going by the time Liz returned from her own morning's work, volunteering in the pop-up craft shop.

My English readers may not be aware of one particular Irish institution and 'national treasure', the most popular chat show on Irish TV, known as the Late Late Show. This airs every Friday evening but on the last showing of November gives itself over to the children, Christmas and a million TOYS and becomes for one week only the "Late Late Toy Show". It attracts the biggest viewing figures ever (around 1.9 million which may not seem much compared to a 'Fools and Horses' Christmas Special in the UK but is almost one third of the whole population here). The children are chosen from all round the country and they come to sing and dance, demonstrate the toys and generally make mayhem in the big studio. It's a hoot and we always try to watch it.

Another nice artisan beer I have found, Kevin Dundon's.

I love particularly the section they do on farm toys, which this year gave space to two superbly farmer's son types. One was showing off the toy tractors and farm machines and professed to be a fan of John Deere though he did say that his best friend would not agree with him and the two regularly had ding dong arguments about whether Massey Ferguson were better. This JD/MF rivalry is as fierce in farming circles as when the petrol heads set to discussing Porsches vs. Ferraris or Jeeps vs. Land Rovers and our lad here coined the expression "Fear the Deere".

The geese are still pumping out a few eggs.

These shows are always followed by the Social Media crowd, especially Twitter, with everybody 'tweeting' comments in real time as they watched the show, and the 'Fear the Deere' was quickly taken up by the delighted followers. Even show presenter, Ryan Tubridy said there ought to be a tee-shirt with that on. John Deere would be fools not to exploit it! The 2nd 'farmer's son' was a superbly chubby, rosy cheeked, be-hatted lad who ended up doing a brilliant, 2 minute rap around a tractor stopping but the funniest aspect for me was that I couldn't understand more than about 3 words of it. Excellent TV.

Everybody's Spare Bloke

"You're like everybody's spare bloke at the moment" That was how Liz described some of my recent days spent dashing hither and yon doing bits and pieces for lots of different folk and happy to not be achieving much at home while it's so wet and windy and I can't do much in the garden. Need some coal bringing to your house from the local PO? Need a lift out to the tractor repair man where your tractor is now fixed? A lift to work? To a training course? I'm your man.

It is all go, though, in the small holdering business. Today we had the local plumber (Paul C) round to move the sink unit and dish washer around in the kitchen. I saw him onto the premises and then abandoned him to it while I went shopping, leaving the dogs shut into the front room so that they couldn't come and 'help' him and nor could they escape and wreak havoc among the poultry should he leave a door open by mistake coming and going to his car for tools. As well as doing his job he was mightily impressed by the size of our young turkeys  and interested to get a look round the place as he has a hankering to do something like this himself; sheep, pigs, poultry etc.

The sheep explore the 'New Bit'

I returned from shopping just as he was finishing, so as I sorted out his money, we got talking and I was showing him round but I'd left the front door open knowing that the dogs were safe in the front room. Unbeknown to me, two of the young turkeys had wandered in and were checking out the kitchen. I bade farewell to Paul and came back in to release the dogs who headed in a bee line to the kitchen where I suddenly had noisy mayhem as two big turkeys were suddenly in a panic to escape dogs.

One was at each window scrabbling and flapping to escape through the glass and the slower of the two had already had a couple of dozen tail feathers ripped out where a dog had grabbed him. If you've never seen an near-adult turkey poult  close up you might not appreciate how big these boys are - this was not some tiny starling or sparrow come down a chimney fluttering ineffectually against the glass. These are great clumsy 6 kg oafs blundering about knocking everything that was on the window sill flying - cups, eggs, the wire chicken-shaped egg container, jars and a wicker basket were raining down. These boys' wingspan is wider than the window and their feet nearly as long as the sill is wide. In a bit of a hurry I had to evict the dogs, calm the birds and then reach past them to open the 2 windows before shoving them bodily out. Mercifully, no harm was done except for a broken egg cup. And to my nerves. The birds, in their panic had also poo'd copiously so I had a bit of fun cleaning up before Liz would come back and enjoy her new kitchen lay-out.

Sheep in the pig run.

Regular readers will know that I have invented a new area for the sheep - needed to let them into some grass in the pig-pen, around the compost heaps and behind the chicken house, so I had erected some short runs of fence and would use my new sheep hurdles as 'gates' in the gaps. This all started on Monday and it has gone very well. Sheep, when introduced to a new area will generally beat the bounds to see what they have that's new and taste a bit of the vegetation all around to find out where the best bits are. Ours were no different and spent the first hour or so exploring the new area. We are calling this the 'New Bit' for want of a more sensible name.

Craft pop-up shop in Ballaghaderreen

Liz's knit and stitch club are getting all 'ambitious' this year and, instead of just selling their stuff at craft fairs, they have decided to run a 'Pop-up Shop' for 4 weeks in Ballaghaderreen. The members are all 'manning' a rota of volunteers to keep it open from 10:30 till 5pm Monday to Saturday. They have called the shop "Kuirky Krafts" if you are interested and it is out on Pound Street just off the market square on the road out to Sligo on the left. They are reported to be doing very well and having to re-stock with new stuff as the stock sells - it is all nice hand made stuff and there are many Christmas gift items to be had.

Fierce concentration at the dress making.

Finally, for those following the recent goat story, I am sorry to say that the 'lonely' Billy pigmy-goat did not love his newly acquired 'Nanny' as a goat should and had started bullying her. She is potentially 'in-kid' so needs a quiet life, but the lad took against the idea of her eating anything. Even when two bowls of food were put down he would chase her about to stop her starting to eat either and was even found giving her some quite vicious butts in the hip and abdomen.

Ooops. The dogs got this young leveret before I even knew
he was down there in the long grass, frozen in fear. 

Obviously we have had to separate them. We did this by creating a 'wall' of pallets and concrete blocks so that now they can see each other and Billy can bleat pathetically that he has been denied his cuddles, but she can eat and do the pregnancy thing in peace. I have heard that Charlotte is now trying to convince Mum that she really needs us to go and retrieve Nanny's former 'friend' over by Knock so that she is not lonely. Good luck with that one, Charlotte.

Patterns and Toiles, Bows and Arrows

Three and a half tonne of pea gravel arrives.

The heavy rain falling here while I was away, in the skirts and train of Storm Barney pointed up to Liz how worn and threadbare our driveway had become for want of a refreshing layer of gravel. Great puddles form down in the dip by the main gate, so that you struggle to open the gate without getting your feet wet. The drive slope is OK but at the top where it levels out, more dips and low points give us a few more puddles which push out a tideline of floating larch needles so that you can see how big they were even as they drain away.

The turkeys and Guinea fowl explore the new garden feature. 

My first job then, on return from the UK was to order gravel but I knew that the entrance to the sheep field was also getting a bit worn and sloppy, so I went for 3 and a half tonnes, the convenient size of load from our very reasonably priced 'man who can'. This man is also helpful enough that he let me take most of the load "up at the top" but kept a bit back to drop at the main gate on his way out; saved me a considerable amount of barrowing. Good man! The turkeys and Guinea Fowl were quickly on hand to explore the new heap and marched about all over the top of it till they decided it had no potential as food.

The three 'yows' having a lie down, but are they pregnant?

It is now my job to barrow it about and 'fire' it into the holes. The sheep turn out to be not entirely convinced that this represents an improvement to their field entrance and they are very wary of walking through this 'soft' surface; their sharp little feet quickly sink down through the 3 inches of gravel and don't seem to stop till they hit the original mud. Ah well. It's cleaner for the wellie-clad humans and we have delibrately chosen round-edged 'pea gravel' rather than the more abrasive 804 'maintenance' gravel because we had visions of all the sheep going lame with sharp 804 stones stuck up between their toes.

Whooper Swans - picture blagged
from the internet.

In another winter story, we are delighted that "our" whooper swans are back. These birds breed and do their 'Summer' up in Iceland and are normally here in this land of 1000 lakes well before now but this year, being very late, had not yet delivered them. Our quota seems to be 20-30 birds on the local lough - I had 15 by Saturday and now have around 22; they don't seem to move around much once they have flown in though you do see small groups (families?) coming and going.

They look beautiful down on the water - you can see them from the lane running along our hilltop - but the main attraction to us is the fluting bugle calls as they chat to each other down there. If the air is still or the wind blows from our SW you hear lovely bursts of honking and fluting when you are in the garden or, more commonly, when I am in the orchard, exercising the dogs of an evening. Once you hear them there is no mistaking them which is quite handy as they are difficult to tell from other swans just on the visual clues. They are midpoint between mute swans (bigger) and Bewick's (which are smaller and don't come this far 'wesht') and can also be told by the yellow on the beak extending down below the nostrils. We'll stick with those lovely calls, I think.

Cutting a piece of the final cloth out round a panel of 'toile'

Meanwhile, indoors, Liz has now been to enough of Carolyn's "Sewing Machine School" classes to be confident to take a step from making cushions and table cloths (very good table cloths, mind) into proper dress making. Specifically dress making for herself which is a landmark stage (I read). It frees up the dress maker from having to buy off-the-peg clothes which nearly fit an average 'size 12' or what ever, to being able to make clothes which perfectly fit the unique body shape of the wearer (which is presumably nothing like 'average').

Dress in kit form. 

This has landed Liz into the world of making and cutting out paper patterns and then from these creating the 'dry-run' temporary version of the garment out of muslin, callico or (in our case) an old sheet. This is called the 'toile' (pronounced twal) and I read that you can actually keep and wear the toile around the house if you finish it. Most people adjust the panel sizes on the toile and then create the shapes on the real cloth. That's been my job - helping Liz, who is by then dressed only in skimpies, to try on and pin up the toile. I know. Tough job, trying not to stick pins in your wife's skin, but somebody has to do it. The latest on this first go is that the garment is now pinned up in the final cloth and the machine is whirring away like a good 'un, though we do have the occasional issue with darts stitched up on the wrong side and the occasional outbreak of mild swearing. It probably happens behind closed doors in the best of seamstress/tailor/draper workshops.

Nephew M Silverwood (centre) is getting pretty good at the
archery. Maybe he'll teach me some tricks?

Finally, you may, like us, have a mental "bucket list" in your head; those things you are determined to do before you shuffle off this mortal coil. One thing on mine has always been archery. As kids we brothers used to go and watch the (Hastings?) Archery Club doing their thing on one of the practise pitches at the top of the land owned by Hastings Football Club (the "Pilot Field"). You could watch them from Ochiltree Road which is/was just round the corner from us, though (another story) we would occasionally climb up the mud bank from one of our childhood 'dens' and pop our heads up into the bushes at the end of the field where we could see (and were probably in danger from) the arrows coming straight at us!

I have longed to have a go ever since but have never quite got into it - there were no doubt archery clubs and groups when I was at Uni (both sites) and there would almost certainly have been clubs in range when I lived in the Fens, then Chatham and Faversham. Step forward then, Mrs Silverwood, who posted to Facebook some pics of the children all wielding bows and arrows at a beginners session down in their nearby big town. This is their latest activity - you'll know that clutches of children work their way through a good range - these young ones have been through Irish dancing, GAA and other sports, baton twirling, karate and more. It seems my best chance of ticking this sport off my own bucket list has landed in my lap. I have been invited to come down on a Saturday afternoon, join the gang in the archery on Saturday evening, get a bite of supper and stay the night. I just have to cope with getting my head around young M being streets ahead of his Uncle. He has taken to it like a duck to water, apparently and out-shoots them all. Maybe he'll teach me a trick or two and I won't miss the target EVERY time. More on this when it has happened.

Finish Holidays!

The plane home. 

Finish Holidays! That was the expression (with a sigh of regret) Diane's Greek friends would use on the last days of trips to Poros as the girls packed up their belongings and prepared to join the 'Flying Dolphin' fast ferry out back to the mainland and the plane home. That was me today; back to Ireland after a superb and very enjoyable break in the UK catching up with relatives and friends, former workmates and, in one case, meeting for the first time some chums who I 'knew' quite well but only through the internet.

All his days seem to be 'bad hair' days. The rather disreputable
looking but very sweet Rags (Ragworth)

Of course the 'main event' was a trip home to see Mum ('Pud Lady' on these pages) and, as it turned out, 'big brother' Tom who was around the house for both my visit days. My main base was Daine's husband John's place in Faversham so huge thanks to him for TOPP hosting. He has a spotless (and very newly refurbished) house and the bed in his spare room is easily the softest and most comfortable bed I have slept in for years. He was also keen to try out his cooking skills on the guests, so we were treated to a succession of the likes of "Panackelty" (a northern layered 'stew' of corned beef which he used to do instructed by Stockton-on-Tees born Diane) and Hungarian Goulash and side salads which were so generous that they dwarfed the main course.

Miles and Paul with the 'heavies'

The 'internet' lads are 2CV owners (which is how I first 'found' them) but also keep a smallholding and I had been following their antics which ran in parallel to ours as they got to grips with sheep-owning, bee keeping, turkey poults and chickens. I knew too, that they followed my blog and as they live at a mid point between my Faversham base and Mum's place, I couldn't resist schmoozing them up for a visit so that I could put real faces to the Facebook stories. I was also dead curious to see the two 'species' which we don't do here - heavy horses and the tiny 'Dexter' cattle. I begged some directions and we decided a time and date. I just had to rock up in the very bright red hired Vauxhall Astra. There was even the promise of some home made onion soup and excellent bread.

I'm 6 foot 1. These are BIG horses.

The visit was a huge success and we got on like a house on fire. Miles and Paul welcomed me enthusiastically and we had a good 'farm tour' which took us everywhere. Their place is a chocolate-box beautiful period farmhouse near Rye, recently restored and improved in keeping with local listed-building regs. They have a vintage grey tractor which I covet (as well as a quad bike!). The horses are three huge geldings with feet as big as dinner plates - Shires and Clydesdales if memory serves (do jump in and comment if I have this wrong guys). They were quiet and gentle but quite curious about this new person in their field, so I got well 'loomed' over. They run with 2 standard sized mares to keep them company. The Dexters were two mums with calves at foot. Like us they are currently without pigs (wrong season). The onion soup was to die for. Thank you so so much M+P.

From huge horses to tiny cattle - Dexters.

The visit 'home' was also a great success. Brother (Tom) and Mum were on fine form and we had some lovely chat catching up on the gossip and Hastings stuff. We played some Scrabble and although we both beat Mum, it was not by much and we reckon she was happy with our argument that this proved she had reared a couple of genius sons. What's wrong with that? Mum is, of course well able for the pair of us and whizzed around cooking us a lovely roast chicken lunch which she insisted on carving to show us who was really in charge here. Tom and I might be 58/60, but Mum trumps us with her 88. There's no arguing with that.

Pud Lady at 88 attacks a chicken. 

I also managed to sneak in a visit to see the widow of my old work mate Steve (see post of 3rd July this year entitled "Hen and Two"), who was also the breeder of our oldest bitch, Deefer. Jean (that lady) still has Deefer's mother (Mollie) and brother (Archie) though she has had to have the 'dad' (Hector) put down. It was fascinating that the dogs well remembered me after 4 years and were straight way into clambering all over me and loving me up as I tried to drink the proffered coffee. Thank you and the very best of luck, Jean.

2CV Llew on the roof fixing down some panels. 

Another Westie who remembered me straight away was Boris, belonging to old mate 2CV Llew who has featured many times in this blog. We'd arranged to meet for breakfast in the Wetherspoons pub in Herne Bay, "Saxon Shore" (and very nice it was too!) But it seems that these days I have a taste for the buildering and can't keep away from it, so when Llew said he was roofing his new workshop in Herne village on the Wednesday and I'd be welcome to help him, I found myself agreeing to go at this all day despite the arrival of the British Isles's next named storm, Barney.

Llew's new workshop.

Llew had already created the frame of this 16' by 16' building in 2 inch steel box section and angle-iron (it's what he does for work) so we could do a day of Llew being up on the roof fixing down the panels while I was 'man on the ground' cutting panels to size and the 'firing' them up to him, plus scurrying up and down the ladder bringing him bits, connecting up power tools and helping to fix battens to the erected panels so that they would more securely take the next ones. All good clean fun.

Hidden treasure, Derek's old Roller.

The workshop is in the yard of a superbly "wheeler-dealer"  type guy who by coincidence knows our part of Ireland quite well as his son has just bought a former nunnery in Lanesborough (on the Shannon) so he's often in and out of Knock airport. He also turns out to have a lovely Rolls Royce under a sheet in one of the garages which Llew wishes he would use to drive the two of them to the local pub. It would make quite an impression, thinks Llew. Probably have to wipe the fish and chip grease off the fingers before you got back in, though, mate. Anyway, we got his roof done despite some impressive gusts of wind from 'Barney', working right round till last light, so dark that we needed a torch to go round rounding up the tools to tidy up at the end of the job.

John's lovely little "Faversham" stove - really meant for
boat and yacht cabins. 

My final call was to drop in on good friend of this blog, Mazy-Lou, where John and I had been invited round to supper and Mazy was known to have been BAKING. Anyone who knows Mazy will be familiar with her legendary baking skills and we were due a steak and kidney pie with 2 kinds of pastry (she uses shortcrust on the bottom and flakey pastry above) and multiple veg, a fruit crumble and then a cheese course all washed down with excellent wine. She did us proud. We were full to groaning point by the end and had to take a couple of "trou Normande" breaks to recover between courses. An armagnac and a good coffee sorted us out for the journey home.

One of John's plaques - made near to where he was born by
Osbourne Plaques, this one includes a Thames Barge bottom
right. 

Of course, with me away, Liz was left in charge of the farm and coped but reports that she was run ragged what with work and a training course she had to attend, so was really missing the chance to drink a whole cup of tea without being interupted. There was also a day when she, too was away at the Dublin 'Knit and Stitch' show/trade sale and I cannot close this post without thanking two more people, our fellow small-holder friends, Sue and Rob (of the various piglet adventures) who stepped into the breach and came to let chickens in and out in the day-light, safe from Mr Fox. We owe you guys. So that was it. Aer Lingus flew me home this afternoon on an interesting, Jet-Stream affected, turbulent flight (it was like being driven home over rocky roads in an army truck! They "suspended" the refreshment service for half an hour for risk of bouncing hot drinks over the passengers while the pilot found a calmer altitude). Liz has had her tea and all is well with the world.