Singing Chicken

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.

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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.