Singing Chicken

Before Quasar was diagnosed with mild liver damage, they ate only grass in summer and hay in winter. The vet recommended NAF Pink Powder for Quasar's condition, so I have to give her feed, to mix it in. Because she has feed, it's easier if he has it too. I also give them Biotin for hoof conditioning.

Four pots get filled every day. Two with Spiller's Senior Conditioning Mix, recomended by the vet because they are both getting on a bit. The two other pots get filled but not to the brim, and to one I add Pink Powder and Biotin and to the other two I add Biotin. (The third white container is 5 Star Magic which I add to the pot without the Pink Powder, but I am gradually weaning Skylark off this expensive stuff as I don't think it is having the calmimg effect it was supposed to have.)



Nearly a bale of hay gets crammed onto my trolley (you pull it, not push it, so it isn't a barrow), the four pots get tucked in, two buckets upturned on top, then I set off up the hill. Today was the first time I fed them single-handed since my little op.

What did they have for Christmas? This year they didn't heed any headcollars, hoof picks, haynets etc so they had apples and carrots.

Ludo had a haddock fillet then some duck and duck offal.

Happy New Year when it comes!

We were due to travel 350 miles or so on Wed 23rd to see my Dad but he told us twice not to travel in all the weather and traffic mayhem so we called it off. As it happened, things have calmed down so we could easily have done it. However, hub would have to have done all the driving and it would have taken a lot longer because he likes to keep stopping.
Mixed feeling. Dad dislikes Christmas and I love it. Travelling to someone who dislikes it takes all the joy out. BUT we were supposed to also be seeing a lovely friend and it's sad that we can't do that.
When we cancelled, more snow was forecast for here so we did a huge shop on the 22nd, bought a duck which we put in the freezer, then holed ourselves up. Got duck out of freezer on morning of 24th, put it in dining room and left it there until Christmas morning. It was still frozen solid! So was the soup, stuffing and bread sauce which I had made and frozen before my op, and defrosted on 24th with everything else. Well you can't go fast de-frosting poultry in front of a coal fire, can you? So our Christmas dinner was a steak pie cooked from frozen and we had duck and all the trimmings, and all the other courses, on Boxing Day. It meant Christmas lasted two days in this house.
I have pictured some of my favourite Christmas things. I would have taken the table cloth and napkins with me to Dad's and maybe the table candle centre, but when you travel away, you can't have all your favourite things around you. That's the nice thing about staying put.
I have shown you the marzipanned cakes. This year I decorated with edible gold stars (which you can't really make out!). Much quicker than my usual holly icing cutting. I was running out of time before my op. There are two table centres there, a home-made cracker, a hat from a cracker, a little Christmas tree spoon, Santa coaster, tablecloth and napkins (whot I made years ago) and my little revolving Christmas lantern. Maybe all a bit kitsch but I like them.

Those pics I put up last week were not very good. Now I have worked out how cancel the automatice flash, see the difference!









Lots of chocolates have been added now too.

(This is written on Christmas Eve but that's Fauna Friday. Not sure when I will publish this.)

Tonight, the main lights go off, seasonal spice scented candles will be lit, tree lights on, Carols From Kings will be switched on on telly, with the sublime words and melodies in my ears I will curl up and read poems such as BC:AD ('This was the moment when Before turned Into After'), Moonless Darkness Stands Between, A Child of the Snows (There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim...) and others.
The very best time of year. I sometimes think that all year, it's this that I have been waiting for. This for me is IT.

Have a lovely Christmas, all of my good blogger pals.

Exmoor ponies are built to withstand harsh weather. Don't feel sorry for them when you see snow sitting on their backs. Admire them instead. On houses with insulated roofs, the snow stays on. On a pony with a good, proper coat, the same thing happens. If the coat is efficient, body heat remains selaled inside, so ice and snow on a pony's surface is a very good sign. The longer hairs on the top of the tail wher it joins the back is the 'snow chute'.



What is that brown dust and how on earth did it get on the fence post and snow? Ah.... I know. It's pony grease. They - or rather HE (Skylark) - loves to rub on the wire. The grease in his coat has rubbed off on the fence and sprinkled on the ground.




My faithful morning magpie.The last pic of a magpie was not my own because it didn't show up that day! This is my own.

It's ages since I did a walk on here. It's a very (too?) long post, very sorry, but I won't be regular because I'm on hols/'sick' leave now (with laptop). All footprints my own.

Last Saturday, I had to deliver some cards in the locality. Off I went, left out of the door, left again, card handed in to L. Has she enough supplies? Does she want to join us walking over the hill to our car next week? She doesn't like going alone for fear of falling. She's fine she says. On uphill, past the ponies and over the stile on the right. Rather than walk the lanes, I decided to go via the paths where no one had trodden. I love 'virgin' snow and being the first to tread, except for the animals. Once a tractor or landrover or even just human feet have been on it, it's defiled and not pristine any more. I wish people wouldn't venture out before me! Especially when they don't have to, but just want to go and play in their big gas guzzlers.

The path climbs and I look back to the village and the ponies from halfway up.



Along a little ridge of an old hedge boundary, long gone, and over a stile. Good views from here but it's misty today.
Along the side of a hill where the sun rarely reaches. This is where cuckoos nest in summer. There are snowy conifers above to my left and the little valley to my right, with scattered farms and homesteads. Here in summer too the bilberries are plentiful beside the path, amongst the heather.

Over another stile and along a track. Little tussocks of grass (mollinia maybe)



catch the light.

Over the stile by the gate



and onto a track.



At the end the path divides. I have to put a card in the post box on a gate but the box lid is weighted with a roof of snow and is fused down fast by hard ice. I can't open it and I certainly can't walk up their too-steep and slippery drive so I carry on walking, over the causeway beside the frozen snow-covered lake.



Then I remember the cards are in a plastic bag. I walk back, take a photo of where I've just been,



fall over, tie their card in the bag and fall over again, tie the bag to the gate, fall over again, pick up my soggy pile of cards and go back over the causeway. At the end I pick up the road to the right. It's very slippy in the tracks left by a vehicle. Remember we used to make slides in streets and school playgrounds and queue up to slide doen them as fast as we could? What fun I have all the way home. Wheee! Wheeee! Wheeeee! I have some near misses. Oh well, hosp on Monday anyway, for my op. They can do my broken limbs at the same time. Ha ha! What fun!

On past the little cleft to look at the icicles. There's a path down there to the house where I'm going next, but I think I'll stick to the road. It's rough and steep down there and an invisible snow-covered bog lurks at the other end.


More exhilarating sliding. Each time I end up sliding round and facing backwards. Probably because your anti-fall balancing instinct makes you lean one way.

To the T junction and I'm nearly back home. Turn left, past a little group of trees where a blackbird is tucking into hawthorn berries. Deaf M with the the loud telly at the next cottage complains about the number of starlings but I say poor things. They have come all the way from Russia and Scandinavia and are hungry too. I see 4 robins in M's garden.

Cards delivered at 3 more houses, then 2 more on the way back down again, turn left and back home.
I have to admit to mixing up my lefts and rights on occasions to foil people, but I haven't today and won't do it any more.

Guess who got the slivers of Christmas cake that were cut away before marzipanning? Those two, mainly.



'My' robin and



'my' magpie who follow me in the mornings on the way to the ponies.



Above is a picture of my thumbs, both straight. Below is a picture of my thumbs, both bent.



And because I am fauna too, here's why I might not be back here until Wednesday. I have been keeping my head down so as to get things done while I still have the use of that left thumb. Trying to get things up to date at work by day and trying to get cooking etc up to date at night at home. You see, the thumb on the left has 'trigger thumb'. It's more common in fingers apparently, and it's more common for them to be stuck bent inwards than stuck straight outwards. Anyway, this began in early August with a barely discernible 'click' on bending, which got gradually worse and it has been stuck straight like that since mid September. It's caused by a swollen tendon not being able to move freely in the joint. Trigger finger/thumb is usually treated by steroid injection :0 but by the time I had gone to see a doc then gone to X-ray then gone to a consultant, he took one look and said it was too late to try an injection :). He said it was so severe it needed an almost immediate op for surgical tendon release or it could get set like that for good!

What a relief. I had fretted night after night and lost loads of sleep worryiing about having a steroid iinjection. So my op is on Monday 20th and I am soooo looking forward to it! I will have my thumb back (eventually) and before that I will get to lounge around a ward reading books, then I'll get to go to sleep uunder general anaesthetic - and that ward is the one place where even my boss can't get hold of me!

I am not so much looking forward to the weeks afterwards when I will be somewhat limited in my actions (driving, picking up files etc) and will only know how hard it is when I wake up on Monday and try to put my shoes on. Ah well, I will not complain. This is a mere trifle. People go through the most terrifyiing things. You only need to look at some of the blogs I follow. We should be grateful for the little easily fixable things like trigger thumb.

I bored people enough in January, so suffice to say we took a car to the main road last night by shortest route. Walked to it (2 miles) this morning. Left house at 8.20. Got to car 9.10 (steep hill, deep snow). Got to work at quarter to 11. Is it worth it?

We put the tree up last week. That's earlier than usual but we had guests staying and I wanted it all Christmassy for them. That means we had the whole house to clean, which was a huge addition to the long list of stuff to do before Christmas.

I always feel that familiarity is what people like at Christmas. 'I heard the bells on Christmas Day the old familiar carols play...' says Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I went to a church meeting about our annual carol service. The minister wondered if he ought to introduce changes but the vast majority of people, including him, are against much change at all. We don't want political correctness and modern trendy-speak in our hymns. We want them as they are, as they were. People who only go to church once a year still love singing the carols they've known since their childhood.

I think most of us like to be doing and seeing the same old familiar things at this time of year as in so many years before. We get out the box of tree decorations and it's "Oooh, remember this?" and "Ooooh! How nice to see that again!" There's the fun of getting out the Christmas crockery, coasters, tablecloth and napkins, the smelly candles etc etc. Here are some of my favourite things to hang on the tree.




The glass angel from Brobury, Herefordshire




Red stained glass angel from Devil's Bridge, Cardiganshire, alongside a gilded walnut



Glass bird from Prague



Quite a life-like toy robin



Small tile from Assissi

Every little bell from round the neck of a chocolate reindeer or Easter bunny and any bow from any box of chocs gets kept and added to the box of tree decs. I haven't put the chocs on yet and there is no spare twig for any of them!

.....because I have almost lost my voice. I am trying not to talk. This is the second time in two months that this has happened, but this time big things rest upon it. I have my little solo on Sunday night (singing 'Long the Night') and I so want to be able to do it.

I'm also just trying to get lots done before Christmas, on both the work front and the home front. You know how it is.

I thought I would just show the marzipanning of the cakes. Remember them? Baked (and burnt!) in October.



Put icing sugar, caster sugar and ground almonds in a bowl. Combine, Pour in 2 beaten eggs and some drops of vanilla extract. Mix it all up into a dough.



Slice all burnt bits off the cakes. There, see? No one will ever know. They are lovely and moist and brandy-soaked.

Roll out. Apply to cakes. These have been 'fed' with randy for 8 weeks so I don't need to waste good jam to attach this substance which I don't even like to my lovely cakes.

I can't stand marzipan. If you put vanilla and not almond essence, it doesn't have that ghastly marzipanny flavour, but I still just pick it off, and the icing, and eat only the cake.

Pony and horse owners will be familiar with these. Snow builds up under the hoofs and forms sort of platform soles, on which they totter about quite ably. Then as they walk or run around, the ice blocks fall off and new ones form. There are a lot of these dotted about all over the field just now.

Here are one or two pics of the Christmas stall which T and I had on Sunday. The picture of the person is probably T, but it might be me.

Top pic, these are my own small contributions. But not the mince pies. These were T's. A few other people gave us things and it was HUGE success. I haven't counted the money yet but I have big expectations. People would hand over a tenner for something costing £3.00 and say "keep the change". it's all for charity. When I did this on my own, I used to get about £27 on average. When you get a few more people together you get a whole load more stuff, especially with T who has retired and has the time, and so you get tons more money. She made 144 miince pies! It was a scrum! I did Christmas puds, mincemeat, shortbread and those paper snowflakes of which I sold about 3! (There were more in that biscuit box). I spent hours on them. I won't next year.



Second pic a closer up view of the miniature cakes T had baked and decorated. It doesn't really show, but she made lots of half an quarter size oones for people on their own.



Last pic, the only one showing the entire stall. We had home made chocs, marmalade, chutney, jam, the odd tin of soup, table decorations, some plastic holly, crackers (bought ones) and other small Christmassy bits and pieces. I look forward to next year.

I was waiting for this! I don’t have pad of clay and was very keen to know who was inhabiting this hole. I t looks like a rabbit, doesn’t it? It just that we hardly ever see rabbits here so could it be a hare? They don’t nest in holes but maybe they use them in winter. I wondered if it was a fox hole but those tracks aren’t foxy. Also, the tracks go one way, only the once. Did a hare use it as a one-off overnight 'roost'? Probably not. According to google, hares don't go underground, even in winter. Further snowfalls most days this week covered the tracks and there were no fresh ones so it was just a visit. Nothing has gome in and out of there.



I fancy myself as a wildlife tracker but I’m not much of one. Whose are these? Fox, maybe. It's surprising the numbrof different criss-crossing tracks all over the ponies' field. There are also the little things (mice? voles/ rats?)that come to the water but the tracks were too indistinct in the photos.



The Exmoor pony. Note the green areas where they have scraped the snow with their muzzles to get at the grass.

On Monday morning I saw the tracks of a little creature like a ratty thing or hedgehog, but dash it all I didn't have the camera. Grrrr!



The lesser footed Foody



Ludo



I disturbed the jack snipe again but didn’t get its footprints. This is a bird that visited the garden. I think birdie prints are my favourite.

I have the laptop back (minus lots of documents I hadn't copied elsewhere :( ) but since it came back it is doing something VERY annoying and I think some bloggers will know how to unset it.
When I hover over something, it just opens it up! I hovered over the print symbol and it started printing about 12 pages I didn't want to print. I hovered over the 'send' button whilst drafting an email, and it sent the email! I wasn't ready yet. I hadn't finished!
I hover over web pages and the whole page gets highlighted in blue. It changes websites when I don't ask it to.
Please, before I spend £1,000's of pounds by mistake, can someone tell me how to put it back to how it was, when I used to have to actually click on something before anything happened. I think someone in the repair place did this to it because he doesn't like using his fingers or something, but for me this state of affairs is much too dangerous.

And another thing: It has no sound! Ii have been to My Computer, and to Sounds and Devices (or something) then when I click on that, it is all grey under 'Volume' so you can't click anything and it says 'No audio device'. Well it used to play sounds. I like to watch telly on it and radio and go to YouTube. Now that door is closed to me unless I can find out how to give it an audio device. I'd like to give it something else but it'll only end up in the repair shop again so i'd better not.

I was cleaning in the kitchen on Tuesday night and saw a little green thing on top of the cooker hob. What was it? A curled up caterpillar! (No, I don't know what kind it was)I think it had been hibernating in some moss at the edge of the skylight, crawled in a crack and fallen down. Lucky there wasn't a pot of soup simmering away!

I thought I might tuck it away in some hay in the shed in the morning as it was too cold to go out, so I put it inside a lettuce leaf in an upturned jar lid on the worktop. I thought I would enjoy having a little winter pet. Anyway I picked up the lettuce this morning, expecting to find a dead caterpillar, but I found no caterpillar. So it's gone off to roost somewhere in the house.

Last time it was about car parking in the village. This time it was about Christmas Leave. I had a what would you call it? 'Holiday Offensive' sounds too offensive, but I had a big well, not a 'go', that sounds a bit aggressive. I had a good long talk withh partner 2 about Christmas leave. I'm fed up seeing all other local firms close between 24th Dec and the first working day in January, when we stay open. That means if you want the full 8 days you have to use3 days leave. Out of 22 that is a pretty poor deal. We have all been moaning and groaning about it for months but last week the rest of them wanted somebody to go and ask for an extra three days. I said 'Oh, not me' then I turned on my heel and said 'Alright. I'll go and speak to him now.' Off I went, had a good old 'go' and it was not made easy for me by partner 2 just chucking counter arguments at me all the time and bystanding colleagues shying away when I asked them to back me up and say what they had been saying behind closed doors. Partner 2 said he would speak to Partner 1 (who is incredibly mean and dosn't seem to like holidays) but not to expect anything because in the current climate we are lucky to be employed at all. You can imagine what I had to say about THAT.



Well well, an email came today. "For this year only ..... closing from 24th December through to January..... extra 3 days' leave" YESSS!!!!!!!!!!!! YESSSSS!!!!!!!!!

We'll see about the 'this year only' bit. We'll try to argue next year that it's a precedent. The year after that, it really will be a precedent.
HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now to get thm all to go one by one to say hw much thy appreciate it. And then the sam again after Christmas. I was one of the ones who had kept 4 days back. I will still use one this year, but now I have an extra 3 to start next year on. Will not stop telling them throughout 2011 that I am so grateful, hoping it will bring about the same decision next Christmas.

Having had the first Sunday in Advent, now I feel I can put on Christmas music and welcome back my Christmas crocks from their hideaway cupboard. I love the familiarity of all these little things at Christmas. I feel sad every Twelfth Night when I put them away and just want it to be next Christmas. Now it doesn't feel as if it was that long ago.
Emma Bridgewater designs don't stay the samee one year to the other, hence the two types of holly crocks.



I think this little cup and plate set is actually Australian, though bought in Shrewsbury.

It's f-f-f-f-re-e-e-e-EEEE-e-e-e-zing!!! From now on it's wellies in the car every day. I was caught out on Friday. Didn't know that snow was on the way so set out in just court shoes then when I got to work, it started. Didn't half feel stupid creeping about the town trying to stay upright doing my shopping in such unsuitable footwear. Neeedless to say, I love this white world.

I took copious photos of the pink light cast on the white hills by the setting sun on Saturday afternoon but won't bore people with those just yet. Unlike in January, on this occasion t's measured in inches rather then feet (though still stopping the cars). It's time to get excited now about ChristmaaaaAAAAAAS!!!

The question became ‘Why not Exmoors?’ After I lost Ginger Parkin I looked at some ponies for sale locally and nearly bought a Welsh cross dapple grey mare but she needed work on her jumping so I decided I would just think about her. I began looking up breed societies because I fancied a pure native breed, for their cuteness and hardiness. My favourites were Highland and Connemara. I gave no thought to Exmoors, Dartmoors and Welsh Mountain because they are ‘small breeds’ and I thought I needed something around 13.2 hands.

The sales lists arrived but most were too novice, too old, too big, too small, too old and often too expensive. I didn’t mind mare or gelding but I wanted something broken for riding but young enough to have for a long, long time, say 5 to 10 years old.

I can’t remember who made me think of Exmoors. Maybe I had just decided to widen the net, but when I did contact the local rep of the Exmoor Pony Society, she said that lots of light adults rode them and they didn’t look silly on 12.2 hand ponies because the ponies' bodies were quite substantial and riders' legs didn’t dangle down or meet underneath in the middle as you might expect. She said I could come and try some out even though she had none to sell.

Off we went and they did look cute. The first things I noticed apart from their mealy noses (obviously) were that they were wearing no shoes, they had thick, short necks, relatively large heads and this ‘hooded’ eye. These are all the classic Exmoor characteristics. I really liked them. I saw the lady ride some, and she was taller than me but didn't look wrong. Then I tried two or three and although they were about 12.2 hands, it didn’t matter. Quite a lot of people don’t actually need the size of horse (or pony) that they think they should have. These little things will carry grown men across moors all day, so long as the rider doesn’t weigh more than 12 stone. Well, they probably can carry more than that, but that is the recommendation of the breed society. The rep lady said she would find out about Exmoors for sale and put me in touch with any possible vendors, so that’s really ‘Why Exmoors?’



I’ve said enough for today again. Another time it’ll be about ‘why that particular Exmoor’ and how I first got Quasar. Then another time about Skylark’s arrival. I will leave you with these photos, taken yesterday morning. The top picture is Quasar (looking across the sun – sorry) and the blue sky background one is Skylark.

Can I just say, because it’s Fauna Friday, that I had just been to the rushes to smash the ice on their spring and a jack snipe flew out. I heard the THRRRRRRR!!!! of its wings and saw its beak silhouetted against the frosty hill.

Sometimes I don’t post because I just don’t know what to say. I can always fall back on ranting about things I’ve heard on the radio on the way to work.

They played a bit of ‘music’ that was going to be played live on a train today somewhere in the US. It went “PINGGG!” “Thud” “BOINGGGGG!” “Clunk, clunk, clunk oooooooooooo!” Well I’m glad for the passengers that they will never hear that above the train noise because frankly it sounded like the sounds of a train breaking into pieces which would just cause mass panic and a rush for the emergency stop button.




Barak Obama has a spiritual advisor. Well, good. Not wanting to be politically incorrect, I’ll just say that something that reminds you that the world isn’t just about money and tangibles; there’s as much going on about inside heads and hearts, imaginations and emotions, and how we might like to live our lives (even if we can’t or won’t). It says on the internet that he has been ‘hijacked’. That’s why I didn’t mention the ‘r’ word.

Then they said ‘“RSA doesn’t only stand for Royal Society for the Evaluation of Aunts” (or was it “ants”?). Well that would be RSAE, so of course it doesn’t. What were they on about? Maybe I just didn’t hear properly. There can’t be such a society. It turned out it did stand for something to do with drug or alcohol addiction.