Singing Chicken

Hello all. I won't be here for a bit. I mentioned bad news last week and I was going to say that feels like bereavement, then I did have very sad news of a death yesterday. The two together have knocked me right back and I am struggling with every little task. I hate to say this but when I heard of the real death I thought to myself ' Thank goodness for an excuse to be upset' (because people ask what's wrong all the time about the first thing and it's really too complicated to talk about. So now I can say it's the death.) Blogging is beyond me. I have published the comments that were here today but I don't feel up to answering them, except to say my friend's problem I mentioned on Friday is not at all his fault.

I hope you all have nice Christmasses. I might put up a post nearer the time, we'll see. You have all been very good pals to the Chicken and I really value that. I will be back but I just can't do this stuff right now.

It should be Fauna Friday but devastation befell me yesterday. I have chosen that word meaningfully. One of my worst nigtmares has happened for real, to do with my closest and longest-term friend. The extreme to which he has reacted is gargantuan. The blog has been quiet for a while because of this all building up. I will be back as normal when we have found what we can do.

Sorry it's long but you have Bernard to thank because of his post about illustrations last week.

If you weren't doing the job you are doing, what would you have done? Or, for retired people, if you hadn't done the job you used to do, what would you have done?
When I graduated in Classics I just didn't know what to do. I wanted to go to Newark and learn how to make violins but was discouraged from that by people who I thought knew better than me. I worked in a toy shop for a little while and wanted to learn woodwork and make toys - hard and soft - but the same people discouraged me form that.
I had already chosen Latin over music at school, although after I had made the choice one of the teachers said they might have been able to find a way for me to do both. Anyway the same people disouraged a career in music.
The people were parents, aunts, careers officers etc. I wish I hadn't listened.
Anyway, back to my recently-graduated days. After a couple of years of not knowing what I wanted and of doing admin and para legal work and feeling very oppressed by lawyer bosses who knew less than I did, I woke up one day and decided I was going to be a solicitor myself. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I was fed up of them referring to any non-lawyer as 'unqualified staff'.
I hate work. No job could ever be enjoyable for me. I wouldn't even want to work with horses and ponies professionally because when they are unco-operative they are too big, strong and dangerous and I wouldn't want to work at weekends or outside office hours (which I do in this job and hate it too).





I keep thinking I would have liked to have been a stock farmer, but that involves unco-operative big animals and it's 24/7 and I like holidays so realistically I probably wouldn't be a very willing farmer. The loss of animals would be hard too and I know I would get attached. Food farming? Too risky.
Plumber, electrician, carpenter? Too much exposure to insects in old buildings. Mechanic? Too dirty.




Cleaner? Too clean! (No, just yuck.) Hate cleaning. Health professional? Don't like people. Shopkeeper? Nope. People again.
Cook? Well it's nice when food turns out well, but it doesn't always. I'd be putting myself in the firing line for customer complaints. I'd be bound to slip up on some stupid health and safety hygiene rule.
Crafter? Yes, I think maybe a crafter, working just for me on my own premises and not having to see anyone I didn't want to. A bit like the appeal of farming without having to deal with sending animals to the abattoir or seeing them get TB.
However sometimes I think doing a hobby for a job takes all the fun out of it. So what else? Travel journalist? Being away from home - wouldn't I miss all these things I love about home, such as keeping ponies?
Ranting weekly columnist? Author? Now, yes, I think those would suit very well.



Opera star? Ha ha dream on! Stand-up comedian? Again the problems of being on the road a lot. Risk of comedian's block.
Might as well put up with what I've got. The decision wasn't from the heart it was from the head, but that doesn't mean it was right. Part-time writer and part-time crafter sounds ideal. When I've retired, watch those shelves!

Spring comes to autumn. Two eggshells fell out of the honeysuckle last Sunday. I think they are blackbirds' but all I have to go on is a picture in a Ladybird book. None of our bird books do eggs. The RSPB website doesn't seem to do searchable eggs. I have googled for them but couldn't find a good site with pictures. Even though I asked for UK only I got sites with American species. I will settle for blackbird.

Well we had a great holiday. Here's a picture of crates left from apple picking.

While I was away I had a call about one of the ladies in the office, the one who is always off sick. She had to have her appendix out. Now she is off for at least three weeks. I'll have to look after her work. I may sound unsympathetic but if she didn't plaster her weekend drinking and cavorting feats all over Facebook then phone in sick every other Monday, I might show a bit more compassion. Well I hope this might mean she is off a bit less often, if the troublesome thing has been removed.

All morning the phone has been red hot. The office. Please will you phone Mr. So and So now/this morning/ today. It's urgent, has to be today etc etc. I very grudgingly phone Mr. So and So on this home phone at my expense, only to find that it was nothing that couldn't wait. Why can't they just say 'She will ring you tomorrow'? I can't say too much as I am working at home and not off, but if I was off, they would have to get them to wait. It's very annoying. It's as if they can see I was really in the kitchen making yellow split pea and smoked bacon soup!

So work is going to be hard until nearly Christmas. Dad has gone more doolally again too so I have a lot to sort out there with his Power of Attorney and other things. It's all very difficult.

Laurel and Hardy have been to our house this week - or so you would think. I have been painting. I have to do it barefoot or else how will I know when I have trodden in spilt paint until I have walked it around the house? I touch it by mistake, touch the doorhandles etc. Oh, the silliest thing. I had no white spirit but found barbecue lighting fluid worked just as well. It has a squirty hole at the top and it shot out like a jet over the bathroom sink. I hastily washed the are down. Come bedtime I thought the toothpaste tasted awfully strong. Oh no. Lighting fluid must have got on the toothbrush. My mouth glowed all night.

During the summer we had a new shower, with a new switch installed outside the bathroom. The landing door now falls against this switch when opened, so something was needed to stop the 'clonk'. A chicken doorstop was the answer and I just finished it this week.
I copied the template onto newspaper from an ornament iron chicken I have in the house. The newspaper shape was laid on gingham fabric and cut out. I part stuffed it after sewing to see what size of gusset was needed. A gusset was cut out of cardboard, tested for fit then cut out in fabric. I kept the cardboard in as a base and sewed the gusset on, incorporating the feet, which are of doubled and folded felt. I put in a large smooth pebble for weight and more stuffing. Crest, dangly chin bit and tail feathers were made with felt, with card inside the crest and feet to keep them stiff.
Chickens' eyes are hard to come by. I had the same problem with the chicken tea cosy. I can only get teddy bear eyes or goggly eyes so I chose beads.

The bathroom door conks against the radiator when opened, so my next project is..... a seahorse doorstop. Watch this space.

There won't be Fauna Friday (or any other post) next week as we are going away for a week. Bye!

I love the copper beech outside the bedroom window at this time of year. Some leaves are still green and some are like bright copper. When it gets to its real copper beech stage in the end, the dark red stage which really defines it as a copper beech, it's not really the colour of copper at all, more very dark bronze.
I took 16 photos of the same view then I whittled those down to eight. Now, which one to show you?
There is an ordinary beech and a copper beech right next to each other so we always have the green and the golds together.

We have had more complaints about our naughty boy. He has been attacking the chickens on the farm this time. I am very worried because Kid With Attitude is the farmer (with her Dad) and she is liable ti take matters into her own hands. I have offered help: provision of cat repellent pellets, construction of a run (but they are free range all over the farmyard). She has declined. I have said to please, please feel free to soak him with water but please don't injure him in any way as he is our pet. He hasn't killed any but she reported feathers all over the yard on a different day.

When asked, she couldn't say she had actually seen him doing anything the second day so I said that I have seen other cats near the farm too. Just because he has been seens once in the hen coop in all his 6 and a half years doesn't mean he is the perpetrator of every ill that befalls those chickens. I have in the past seen Ludo's ginger friend Charlie walking down the lane to the farm so there's a second suspect.

I'm not trying to wriggle out of this. I love all animals and hate them to suffer. Ludo is a hunter and a roamer and if he has done anything then we are responsible but it's too easy for people to make him a scapegoat.
I just hope he will find somewhere else to pay for the next 6 and a half years at least and that this will all blow over.

.
Roast pork dinner. In the tray, roasting potatoes, onions, parsnips, carrots, turnips (or maybe swede to you) and apples


Pear and Ginger sponge pudding with ginger sauce

There is a brandy bottle in the background because it's Christmas cake and pudding making time again.

And finally, for you, Helsie, because you love the Royals....a photo of a page from the Radio Times....


You should be able to zoom in on it but if you have any probs just let me know.

This post published itself when I didn't intend it to so I retrieved it and and kept it as a draft. I was saving it for a time when I didn't have much to say. However Kath spotted it and left a comment, which I saved until the post was published. So you are there, Kath. You must have wondered what was going on.

Hello. Some may call this a swede lantern but to me it is a turnip lantern. This what we all made at Hallowe'en when I was young and I thought I would make one this last weekend. I never even saw a pumpkin until I was in my twenties and had moved to the deep south.
For a while we were in East Anglia and it was there where some kids rang on the doorbell and yelled 'Treacletroy! or so it sounded. ''Em...sorry, treacle what?' 'Treacletroy!' Hubby said they meant 'trick or treat' so I said to the kids 'Well, can I have a trick then'. They said they didn't do tricks so I said 'Can I have a treat then' -'No, YOU'RE supposed to give to US' So I said 'Well, what for? Are you not supposed to do something first? -'You're supposed to give us money' -Yes, but what for? A trick or a treat?' Confusion. 'Oh I see, you just want me to give you money. For nothing?' I can't remember if I just let them down gently or if I succumbed and gave them a 2p piece . I hope the former!

To return to turnip lanterns, I am sure turnips were bigger in my pre-teen days. There was ample room then for a face. You will see in 2011 I have started too high with the eyes and didn't have enough room for a mouth. I used an apple corer for perfect circles. Back in those days when I was a child we just used a knife. My Dad started it off and we would finish. Then you made a chimney in the lid and holes for string, put on your costume, took up a bag for your pickings, lit your lantern, stepped out, met your friends one by one on the way and went 'guising [which the teachers said was short for 'disguising' and I'm sure they were right].


We put on home made costumes, bed-sheet ghosts and cardboard pointy-hatted witches being the usual, but one little lad once went as a clock face made of a huge piece of paper one year and it poured with rain and blew a gale. There wasn't much left of his paper clock face by the end.

You knocked on doors and you all had a prepared showpiece ready. You would say 'Please help the 'guisers!'Some let you indoors, some made you perform on the doorstep, some just grumped and some never answered at all. Then you did your piece. No one would have dreamed of just going and asking for the goods without preforming something first. I used to recite whatever poem we were learning in school, or maybe sang a little song. Others too sang, told jokes or did a little dance routine or maybe played their recorders.


When we had all done our pieces, then the gifts came out. Usually nuts and apples but sometimes sweets and sometimes even money. You held out your bag and it was all put in loose, the nuts and fruit along with the coins. We'd thank them very much and off we would go until we have covered every house we felt comfortable about trying, then we would all go back to somebody's and count everything all out. Each of us kept what was in our own bag. I think the money I received started off my saving up to buy Christmas presents.
Maybe after that somebody might be having a Hallowe'en party when we 'dooked' for apples. Putting your face in and grabbing one was difficult enough but some hygiene conscious parents made you drop a fork in and that put the tin hat on it. It is really, really hard to spear a floating apple by dropping a fork!



Ah well, I have gone on long enough.

I found a new path last week. From the secret plum tree (which bore no plums this year!) I thought I saw a hint of a trodden path to the left so I decided to see if it went very far. It went quite a long way and I had to trample and fight a bit with overgrowth but eventually it got wider and there were some recently felled and sawn logs. I thought I must be trespassing but I carried on and eventually popped out on another very well known path, at a very obvious opening, where you get the view in the top pic. I recalled that there was a path westwards from that very point shown on the map and I had puzzled for years over where it actually was. I am sure that opening was not there before last week. The tree cutters must have re-opened it. Thanks to them, I have a new circular route.

At the same time, I was taking groups of up to 5 photos of the same scene. This new camera you see, the basic manual came in the box but the more advanced manual is online. I found that very annoying that when you buy something nowadays they don't bother to give you a full manual. You are expected to download it. I got round to that last week and found that I can make it fully manual if I want to. That is great because although it's much easier to work than the other one, I still felt it wasn't letting me have pictures of exactly what I could see and that's what I want from a camera.


There's the same scene but with the 'wrong' setting.


And another pair, one deeper, one more washed out.

This is the real reason for having that shed in the spring. Helsie thought we must be acquiring a new animal. True, we gave the firm a deadline of end of March for its completion because of the returning swallows, but the reason for having it is to store the ponies' supply of hay for the winter. There are 70 bales in this stack and there's still room for the car if we care to put it in the shed.

There is still enough grass so the stack won't be started on for a few weeks yet. There are still two more small fields with a week or two's worth of grazing in them, then they can go back to the their usual and favourite one and have hay. Nice for them; more work for me.




There they are, pictured with their heads just where they like them to be - in buckets!

For those not from here, 'all is safely gathered in' is a quote from a well known harvest time hymn.

I heard something on the radio on Tuesday on 'PM'. Something about fish foot massage. My immediate thought was that they must mean massages of fishes' feet by people because they couldn't possibly mean massages of people's feet by fish. So I said to myself 'But fish don't even have feet!'
I mentioned this to a friend later, who burst out laughing and asked why fish with feet would be anyone's first interpretation. Surely the radio presenter meant people having their feet massaged by fish. So I said 'How would you train a fish to do
massage, even if it did have hands as well as feet?'
'No, no, no' came the answer. Apparently people can sit in shopping centres and put their feet into pools to have them nibbled at by fish. Well, how was I to know that? Is that weirder than fish with feet?!

Anyway, off I went to Google Images. There! Fish with feet!

I haven't been here for a while. We went to see my Dad for a few days and although he isn't much worse than he was in the spring, I feel he has crossed the boundary between just about coping and not coping. I have been in touch with his elderly/mental health care team (or whatever they are called)and they are going to call on him and arrange help for him. Last time, they said if he refuses to accept it then they can't do anything so I said I feel this time he has to be told he needs help. They are going to ring me back when they've seen him.

Just before I went off from work for those few days, we had the Christmas holidays hoo-hah again. One of our staff had been told by the senior partner that we would be given the days as extra, as last year. Then the other partner disagreed, so then we were all told we would not be given them. Each partner blamed the other. The office would close and we would have to take the closed days out of our annual entitlement.


As you might expect, I don't think this is fair. It's legal but it's not the way every other firm operates. Last year I rang round all the firms in three towns and asked them what Christmas hols they got. They all close for the days between Christmas and New Year and they give the in-between days as extras to annual leave. I told the boss this. I didn't say I had rung around, I just said I knew people who worked in those firms, as I do. We had a long conversation and it was all amicable. He said things like 'If the staff here would come in on time and stop playing on the internet and not leave before their contractual time then I might think about it' and he expected me to tell them all. He said other things too. I am as guilty as anyone of the time keeping and internet playing and not being a partner I am only another employee so I said that was for him to do. [And anyway, on my first day, he said to me 'no one is watching the clock here. I don't expect you here at 9 on the dot and if you want to pop out during the day for anything, you just do that. As for annual leave, no one is counting'. I thought 'What a place! What a boss!' So I reminded him of that]

I thought I might be getting somewhere because I suggested he use it as a 'trade-in'. But anyway I left his room feeling quite heartened and said to my waiting colleagues that there were things he wasn't happy about and that they should go and ask him. My pal B said 'go on, go on, go on, tell me' and stuff like 'You're not my friend if you don't tell me what he said' so I felt forced into telling her something he had said about her. She blew up and stormed into his office, me pulling at her jumper begging her not to expose me. Of course he tore strips off me and was quite obnoxious for days. Hence my silence on the blog (although I was away too).

Yesterday, by the photocopier, I found a memo pad

I had to take part in a music hall concert the other week. Someone lent me a book of 100 songs and said 'choose one'. Well I wasn't frightfully taken with a lot of them but I chose The Honeysuckle and the Bee. At nine days' notice I couldn't reliably learn it all by heart so I thought I would have the words on something picturesque that the audience could look at, rather than some dull black folder. I googled 'honeysuckl'e in Google Images, found a nice photo and copied the outline and coloured it with pencils, then made up my own bee. They seemed to be quite amused by it.

It's time for another duty visit to my old Dad. We go today so I am setting this and Friday's up to publish in my absence.

Driving to unaccustomed parts, it's easy to whizz past speed cameras before you realise they are there, or come out of a speed limit you didn't even know you were in. I don't feel I can relax until it's a good three or four weeks since I got back from somewhere, then I know nothing cross and nasty is going to land on the mat. I went away on a course last Wednesday (yes, to somewhere nice but I didn't see any of it, being stuck in a hotel on the outskirts) and kept noticing the cancellation of restriction sign when I hadn't even noticed I was in a speed limit area.


I was travelling in front of one of those spy camera vans this morning. Do they work the cameras as they go along or is it only when they are stationary?


You know, I feel that those cameras that watch you speeding and even parking for too long in car parks are unfair.


If it's a man standing at the side of the road with a speed gun or a man in a car park kiosk then it feels more like a 'fair cop' but when they get lazy and just shove cameras everywhere it is no longer a level playing field. It's not person against person, it's person against machine. If they can't be bothered to come and catch you in person, they should leave you alone. And in the meantime I am going to get a picture of two fingers being held up and put that on the numberplate when I park in one of those places. It's an offence not to display, but they won't know it's me if I'm not displaying.

Someone told me that if you spray your numberplate with hairspray, those car park cameras can't read it.

Then other times I think it's daft to tell you the camera is there, or to let people have devices in their cars which tell them where the cameras are. The idea of them is to catch crims so why assist the crims by telling them where the cameras are? They'll only slow down for the cameras then speed up again when out of range.

I think I have one opinion for when I'm in the car and another for when I'm not.

All this might suggest I an aggressive 'speed merchant'. I'm not. When I'm travelling I just like to go as fast as I can/am allowed and I get annoyed by people in front going at 2 mph slower than I would like.

In the pic is a thing called a porridge spurtle. A very good old pal once gave me it to cheer me up when I was down. I hardly ever make porridge, but when I do I use rolled oats and I make it with SUGAR. Hah! So there! I wonder how many purists really do eat it with salt. Porridge with salt? Not for me! When I was about 9 I had to stay with my auntie for a while when my Mum was in hospital and she made me porridge with salt in the mornings. Without so much as a 'by your leave'! I just piled on double my usual amount of sugar to counteract the salt and it was really horrible!

As for consistency, I like it so thick that you can stand a spoon up in it. As my auntie used to say "It sticks tae yer ribs!"

Spelling? I have seen 'porage' which looks all wrong.

I use my spurtle for anything sweet, as you can probably see. Oniony flavours from wooden spoons that are also used for savoury dishes are a no-no. The spurtle is permanently stained because of all the stirring of bilberries and other summer berry fruits.

This is old news really, but the world porridge making championships were held on Sunday in Carrbridge. I didn't know there was such a competition. I wonder who won?

Seen on a wall in Tihany, Hungary. If we hadn't been hand luggage only I definitely would have bought one.

Looking at it now, I see these are all ducks. Well, they did have chickens too.

Whortleberry Wonder from my Exmoor cookbook, made with bilberries frozen since July. I don't know about 'Wonder' except I wonder what it was really meant to be like. It was like bilberry soup with blobs of boiled cake mix in it! Tasty enough though.


St. Nicholas Pudding but again I forgot the plums on the top and forgot to do the plum sauce. May try again next weekend!

Inspired by Helsie who chronicled one of her days, here's my Saturday. I have deliberately chosen a typical good Saturday.
Got up at about 10 with cup of tea in bed.
Put on riding clothes, saw to ponies. Tested the 3 secret apples on my secret apple tree but they weren't ready to pick. Had breakfast on the patio. Oatcakes, damson jam, Jordan's Crunchy cereal without milk, orange juice, tea.


Went out for a ride. Helped myself to blackberries and Quasar helped herself to thistle flowers. Met another horsey person and we talked equine stuff.
Sat on patio and had cheese salad for lunch with a pot of tea. By now it must have been about 2 0'clock.
I was meaning to make St. Nicholas pudding but I forgot to get prunes the night before. Why? They were on the list. Drove to the garage shop but they had none (as I expected). I'll get some tomorrow when I'm in town for church.


Back I went to the garden. One of my favourite things to do in sun is just to sit in the garden. All this time, hub was indoors on the computer trying to sort out some hitch with his aeroplane game. I think he finally emerged into the garden and had a sandwich at about 3.
I started looking through song books as we have a 'do' next Saturday and I need to decide what to sing and play. We also have a harvest supper in church next Monday so had a run-through of our duet about 3 times and also went 3 times through the short play. (I am in the play; hub was just pretending to be the other characters). Finally getting it without mistakes.
Finished my book 'Into Thin Air' and sat back and watched birdies. A flock of long tailed tits came squeaking and picking through. Did a little weeding. Just revelled in the sun and the light coming through the leaves.
Thought I would make blackberry crumble instead of the St Nic's pud so I went round the garden collecting them then got hub off his chair to walk up the road at about 6-ish to get more berries, and took this pic.


Ate as many berries as we picked.
Time to cook tea. It was his turn so we had a steak pie (from the butcher's shop) with mash and peas, followed by my crumble, which I forgot to photograph.
After tea, watched Casualty (sometimes I really don't know why!)then Johnny English on DVD with a gin & tonic. Alright, alright, I know some people just scoff down their noses and say Rowan Atkinson really only appeals to kids. Well I really enjoy anything he does and I found it tremendously funny.
After that thoroughly enjoyable day it was bed time.
Unlike Helsie's day, mine involved NO WORK!

I was rather quiet last week but I'm not quiet now. What a day Thursday was. Came in on Wednesday night at 10.30 and the electricity had obviously been off and just come on at 10.15. I could tell from the cooker clock which starts from 0.00 every time it goes off.
Got up on Thursday morning. No electric again. Tried to phone friend up the road. Phone not working. Walked outside and saw neighbour tinkering with his car. He told me some transformer had 'blown' and it was being fixed. Ah, so that's why we got no warning of a shutdown, as we should, and usually do. It was my day for working at home so I had no computer and no phone. I had planned to do some cooking and washing but could do neither. Well, until about 2 o'clock when it all came back on again.

Some people with a digger came in the morning to dig up someone's pipes so with the digger going all day the nearby carpenter's dog barked ALL DAY. (That's the one that bit me some months ago. Scar still there).

In this glorious hot, sunny weather, of course I was outside so had the noise ALL DAY.

My choice. I could have sat indoors, but no way. Not on a day like this.



I've been reading a book 'Into Thin Air' by John Pilkington. He walked across Nepal alone and 'my hopes for the walk...were....that by immersing myself for a few months in a harsh environment I would learn how to cope with physical hardships and by analogy with the more metaphysical problems of my own life. I was not the first to be seduced by this fallacy...'

He met with a holy man on his walk and this holy man's philosophy of the author's annoyances such as noisy people in the next hotel room, or his despair at the ugly deforestation of Budi Ganga valley, was that those acts themselves are neither right nor wrong. Those are simply the values which we project onto them. All such incidents should simply be accepted as the passage of time.
Well, if we all had that attitude we would never do anything. It's alright for a holy man who lives in isolation in a cave. In our world, things go on around us all the time and we have to interact. I feel when things affect you it's impossible to just sit back and let it go. We are all conditioned to be aware of our rights and to be aware that there are lots of things that we don't have to just accept and can change. Some of us - the 'doers' do the changing, others (like me) let the doers do the changing for them, or else put up until it stops.



I could go and speak to the carpenter about his annoying dog barking for example but I'm not a confronter, even in the mildest, friendliest sense. I'm too timid. I'd rather just gripe to other people. I am from a family of moaners. I have complained on this blog about the family who sometimes come to the cottage two fields away and let their children scream all day. I have never said anything, I'm just waiting for the day the children are too old to do it any more, which will be a few years still. They will just say 'Dogs do bark' and 'children do scream'. (Yes, but that much? And ALL DAY?)
However to do simply wait for the expiry of everything that annoys you, you will be waiting until you die!
Meanwhile, I shall just whinge on the blog. I come from a family of moaners. They are never happier than when they're 'girnin'. Just tell me when I am starting to get like my late auntie, then I'll try to moderate it a bit, but of course by then it'll be too late.

Above is a souslik, or European Ground Squirrel. We saw them in Tihany on the short grass by the lake which was grazed by the cattle I put on here last Friday. When I first saw one I thought it was a meerkat, then I saw the information board which said they were putting the cattle to work on grazing so as to keep the grass down naturally and to try to improve habitat for souslik. It certainly was working. They were popping up everywhere, then popping down again when we got too close.

Like meerkats, they have sentries which stand guard and when danger approaches the sentry lets out a high pitched squeak (which I never actually heard but maybe it's beyond human range) then everybody shoots back down their holes.






Here is a closer up view of one sitting in the grass.

Where did tractor runs spring from? Until this year I had never heard of them, but this summer there is one on just about every weekend. Well I'm glad the tractor enthusiasts can have fun in this way with their tractors. The only things is that they are very slow on the roads and on these twisties we have here, they can hold up queues of traffic for a very long time. However most of them will pull in at lay-by's to let the queue past. That way I don't get held up getting home for my Friday tea when the three vintage

tractor owners in the village are setting out the night before for a Saturday event! That's the only strong opinion I have about these runs. Don't come between me and my tea.

Actually, having googled 'tractor run' I find that they have been going on for decades, even round here. I just didn't notice.

This is an old traditional Hungarian cattle breed, called Magyar Something or other, grazing the meadow at Tihany. I could not get her to turn her head and show her horns better.
Next week you will be treated to another creature that lives alongside the cattle.

Following from last Friday's post, I must now add that three swallows returned to the shed on Friday after I had posted, and two were there on Sunday and again on Tuesday. I think they just went away to find more insects. I think they have been roosting at night and getting up before I came in in the morning. I went in there with a torch last night to put in a sack of pony food and at least one was in the nest and one sitting beside it on the beam.
The wheatears were last seen at the Wheatear Wall on the 8th September. They always leave early.

Someone on the radio said that if David Cameron wanted to convince Americans that Britain really is great, he needs to remind them that we gave the Banksy. Who or what is Banksy? I thought it was an Australian flower.

When I used to share an office with a pop fan I was forever saying 'WhooooOOOOO???!!!!' whenever she mentioned any popular singer. Now, I know I can easily google to find out who this Banksy is, but sometimes the instant access to knowledge about all things kind of spoils the mystery and the process of finding things out. (But it can save embarrassment. I was always the laughing stock of this colleague and her peers.)

The baroque Abbey Church on Tihany peninsula on Lake Balaton

I got a nice comment from Ann about my country photos from Hungary last week. Here are some townie ones now (with some from Slovakia too).
I know, I know, I know, some need to be slightly re-aligned as rthey are a little askew, but if I didn't post them now, I never would. I will take too long fixing them and by then it'll be too old news.


View of Tihany town across the Tihany Inner Lake



Danube and Parliament building, Budapest




Chain Bridge, Danube and Parliament building


Novo Most (New Bridge) and Bratislava Castle viewed across the Danube. You can get boats to Vienna from here! That's something for the future. Takes about an hour I think.



Bratislava Castle viewed from a typical street


Nighty night, Bratislava.

( I only discovered lasrt night that my camera has a special night time setting to reduce the fuzziness. Ah well, never mind, I like the pic as it is)