Singing Chicken

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.