Poorly chook

What value a chicken?
You can get one in the supermarket that's lived in a tight wee dark cage for a couple of pence it seems or you can buy a free range organically corn fed bijou des rezzed, rights championed chicken for a bit more and they do taste different, its worth it. With the latter you can also see the happy smileyness of the chook all emancipated like.
But of course it's all removed for the majority of us into your local superdoopermat up the chilled food aisle and the cling filmed chook is in your trolley as easy as that before going home and sticking it in the oven.
Would we still want our roast chicken dinner, chicken burger, cock a leekie soup or chicken fingers - ours have claws - if we had do dispatch them ourselves?
When we first got chickens after 2 days one was near dead through bullying, one died because it was egg bound and the bully went back to the producer. One had to be dispatched by yours truly but I will not regale the story to you in case you prefer your chooks pre-cooked and bread crumbed with the dying bit out of site out of mind.
So although not my most favourite husbandly duty I thought the call had come through today to do the deed with one of our "girls".
She had been sitting fairly listless in the veg patch and when we went to investigate she looked poorly puffing away like a wee steam train with other signs and symptoms to say she was poorly.
Looking up "chicken is poorly" on google brought a multitude of suggestions and some of them where a bit far fetched to my mind with suggestions of remedies, medication, vets, 999 posts, medi-vac and surgery! (ok the medi-vac was made up), but if I had the time I'm sure I would have found such a site. "Chooks Away" or something as a name for the company perhaps.
Discounting all of these suggestions we decided to try and utilise our nursing skills with the administration of some watery porridge, a spring clean for the chicken des rez and some TLC. We did not consider the vet as we could have bought 3 new chickens for the price of one visit.
So it's night time now and the "girls" are in bed not as pets but as happy chooks who produce something tastey we like to eat, providing a little window on nature as they strut around. That is the value we place on our chickens, part of the family but not the kind of relative you want too close to home.
We shall see what the morning brings.....

p.s. before you worry I have never dispatched any relatives!

One coat emulsion and a brush

Yes, we have had the decorators in (well me), and its all bright and clean lined.
You know how it is - you sit in the same space for a while looking at the walls, the woodwork, curtains etc etc thinking the blog needs to be freshened up. I hope you like the new look white, white and well - white. With a little dash of red. The green was so last-whenever.
Stay for a while make yourself comfy, have a cup of tea just don't spill anything on the white sofa, in fact just drink it in the kitchen at the table with a coaster. Biscuits! There are pelican bibs in the drawer over by the window, crumbs - so unnecessary.
Please take off your shoes at the door. The white carpets will not survive the traffic from your shoes after the sludgey, slushy, salty gloop that is trailed around after a thaw. In fact for those with sweaty feet please put on the paper shoe thing over your socks, cheese stains are so hard to shift.
Oh and please keep small hands away from the walls, wet wipes are provided by the door as the walls will not take the marks even though it is washable emulsion in fact for those little loves who do not listen there are the dogs leads under the stair just clip them in, much easier to control. For those really uncontrollable little darlings there are disposable CSI type paper suits with build in gloves in a range of sizes beside the dog leads.
Now where did I put my copy of "Fastidious Neurotics Monthly"?

Overwhelmed!

Overwhelmed I am with all these social networking thingies. Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, Blogs , Forums, 12 Seconds, Good rec, Dailymugshot and on it goes.
Now I have obviously succumbed with a blog and a facebook page and I even have an unused twitter address but I have 2 questions

1-How does one find the the time to do all of these things?
Are we turning into a world of chronic non sleepers as we constantly analyse our vistor stats, comments and thngs. Indeed maybe this is why we have a credit crunch - productivity down because we are all tweetyfacespaceing and noone is working anymore.

2-Who would find what I have to say interesting?
Now don't get me wrong there are some interesting, witty people out there who do the social networking thing very well. But do we really want to read that the author
"went to post office , bought a stamp, licked it and stuck in on the envelope"
Or
"bogey is my pet puppy he is lovely, this is a picture of him being lovely"

I would like to think that I try harder to entertain describing to the reader about the stamp being purchased whilst at the same time detailing how my dogs bit the armed robber who was in the process of trying to rob the said office, sitting on his chest with his arm between their jaws before the police arrived. The post mistress describing them as lovely dogs before I licked the stamp applying it to the envelope containg my audition DVD addressed to

Big Brother Do I Have the Master Chef in the Jungle X Blog Factor

-- Post From My iPhone

The Magnificent Seven

It's winter, the ground frozen, snow covering what little food there might be available for the little birds,(aw, nice) that try to scrape enough food to keep them going until spring. So being the nice caring people that we are, (let's forget the lapsed RSPB membership), we do our best to help out.
You know the sort of thing the fat from the bacon, the occasional home made suet and seed hanging things. Looking like the misguided attempt at the night school candle making art class that one joined in the hope that your scented and sculpted effort would be just as good as those purchased from Habitat.
But fatty things are a bit sticky and messy and involve the dogs to an uneccesary degree as they become entranced by the porcine odour whilst involving themselves in a competition to see who can push more, who can get themselves to the flavoured hand first. This will mean that their snout and tongue is closest to the fat flavoured hand of yours truly. A result for them but what it means to you of course is that you have 60 kg of dogness pushing at your knees with a dog slavered hand as the final insult, mmm?
No for us it's the cleaner and more democratic throw the bird seed all over the garden approach to food distribution and when the winds die down up goes the bird table for those who prefer "a la carte" to the "buffet".
So far so good with lots and lots ( up to a 100) of mostly wee or weeish birdies all having their picnic on the grass, having it seems a good time. Occasionally they will be joined by the chickens who like some cheapskate interlopers at a music festival jump the fence and join in.
What really bugs me though are these gate crashers who are a bit camera shy and fly off when you go outside, so images from the text book only I'm afraid.




Much bigger than anything else in the garden and they always arrive in numbers like some wicked gang of bandits in a "western" style adventure who ride in making noise and mischief, harrasing the timid locals and stealing all their food. They actually live in the woods about a mile away as the "crow flies" with their favourite haunt a local chicken and egg producer. This bloke who owns this is fed up with losing so many chicks and eggs (all free range), to these bad guys.

I keep inwardly hoping that like in the western a "Magnificent Seven" will fly in and despatch the wicked banditos. Until then however I will keep thinking of ways to get rid of them myself but just don't tell the RSPB as I am sure some of these thoughts are unlawful.

-- Post From My iPhone

Here is the news?

Well here I an on my way to a meeting not
a social type meeting, not a meeting of the wood walkers society, no a business meeting.

Now I take great store in dressing appropriately and generally this means a shirt and tie, sometimes a suit or at the very least a jacket and trousers in order for me to look smart, professional even.

Now thats all very well when it is dry and the weather is suit friendly. But what do you on days like today?

You could dress as usual jump in the car, step out of the pod at the other end and spring into business mode. A few problems with that today
1- car snow bound, or at least requiring lots of demisting and deicing before driving off.
2- the potential for poor weather even driving there and back. Forever the optimist what if I got stuck or had a slidey type bump and I had to walk in suit smart shoes etc

No, decision made walk to train station about 15 mins away ( although in 9 this morning but that's another story), let the train take the strain but dress for the walking at both ends. Result smart wool coat, jacket, long sleeve smart t- shirt ( a dress down option, a robing bridge to the bottom half), walking trousers, thick wooly socks and the essential well loved boots.

All looked fine this morning but half way through the journey one is aware that the snow has not reached here, no sledges behind employed and definately no sled dog teams.

So arrive at meeting explain dress code for the day and the rationale all the while the view from the window suggests just a damp, dreich Scottish day, not the worst snows for 18 years as promised by the friendly news reader the night before.

At least when you sit down you feel in the same boat as news readers as they also look smart from the waist up!



-- Post From My iPhone