Dead or Alive

Keeping chickens is an interesting past time with some excellent rewards ( I could have said eggcellent there but thought it was too obvious). They are interesting to watch as they roam around the garden. We have always free ranged them but their idea of the free range is much bigger than ours, as they are now very adept at escaping to explore hither and tither.
It is quite amusing to see them sprint from one end of the garden to the other when the shed is being opened always prepared for the fact that on this occasion the open door may lead to a handful of corn or bird seed rather than the staple layers pellet diet. Although this has back fired on them occasionally as they creep into the shed unseen and end up being locked in resulting in a chicken hunt at the end of the day at their bed time.
It's very Jurassic Park like seeing them run around Darwin was right you know.
However at times the whole "Good Life" thing like the elbows in Tom Goods jumper is a bit worn. This morning when dawn broke she wanted out of her house, in the height of summer this is before 0500 rather than the 0548 this morning. Sometimes it seems they are content to have a long lie something I was hoping for myself this morning!
Of course when they want out being at the bottom of the garden they need to shout " let me out" they cluck. Maybe I'm a light sleeper but the worry that neighbours may also be hearing this is a great alarm clock. Up I jumped on with some clothes and stumbled bleary eyed to the chicken house and opened the door. Out she pops like some Hollywood starlet stepping out of the limo onto the red carpet.
Mindful that she just might make more noise as she protests that the red carpet does not have enough bugs to eat, Divaesque? I decide to open the gate and let her explore the whole garden rather than her fenced area- a week end treat or a sign of weakness from me?
So I trudge back to the house and crawl back under the covers and almost there when clucking starts again but much much closer has she got into the room? No she is sitting on the garden furniture (right outside the bedroom window) surveying her domain and crowing about it. This behaviour is soon discouraged by a swift opening of the window and accompanying warning related to impending chicken Armageddon or something.
So of she trots and back to bed for me it's still only 0609 after all. 0812 and I've managed to get more sleep however that is now definately a thing of the night due to the annoying incessant habit she has of tapping on the patio doors tap, tap , tap , tap. I have no idea why she was either a woodpecker in a previous life or she is a frustrated drummer?
I appreciate that I described the birds in this post in both singular and plural as I can't get used to their being only one now after her sister died of old age a few weeks back, (however we have signed up to take some battery hen escapees so they will be arriving in a week or so they are a sociable bunch of creatures).
It's a good job the death was not suspicious involving a visit from the CID ( chicken investigation dept.) as in depth questioning may have caught me in the wrong mood at the wrong time like 0548 for instance.


-- Post From My iPhone

Hugh Grant

Last Saturday I was doing some research into this event. To me it is quite a challenge, daunting even. This is a man who never really took to water sports I could run and that was enough for me the closest I came to a swimming pool when I was wee, was a bath in the sink. Thankfully those pictures are no longer available having been buried along with my mother.
Swimming was just not for me it being the only thing that I dreaded on the school exercise curriculum only taking part when all escape options had failed. However I never strayed far from the shallow end or if feeling brave the edge of the pool at the deep end, a hand in constant contact with the red tiled guttering of the local swimming pool "Viccy's" named after Queen Victoria and built in the latter part of her reign.
The water for the pool was heated by the steam by product of the steamie as it was known in Glasgow or the wash hoose in my part of the world this being,
where women would take their family washing to the communal wash hoose in the time before every house had a washing machine or indeed the arrival of the American style launderette.
The wash hoose must have ceased to exist in the late 60's at this location as I can remember my Mum occasionally taking our washing there. Most of the times it was hand washed in the sink but I must add not at the same time as me, the sink was not that big. This was of course all before the family bought a washing machine which made clothes washing and indeed the washing of me much easier.
Anyway Leith history lesson over swimming and me never really hit it of I think the main reason was that I have a slight (Latin coming up, prepare to be cerebrelarised) Pectus excavatum (PE, or “funnel chest”/”sunken chest”) in which the sternum is depressed, and so the chest looks hollow. It did cause me some angst when I was younger.
Back to the swimming story, so it never really happened - swimming - not properly until I was in living in Saudi Arabia and had the luxury of a swimming pool in front of our apartment block. Running was not as easily undertaken in Jeddah, for a variety of reasons, therefore swimming came into play.

(This was the hospital where I worked in NICU, the King Fahd Military Hospital, Jeddah).
Over the time there my swimming greatly improved and an hour swimming was achieved by the time I moved on to pastures new. The uncertainty that I would not be able to complete my SCUBA training due to my weak swimming also provided a driver for me to swim, swim, swim. My genetic inability to float is / was another reason to doubt whether water sports are for me but that's another story, as is the one about Fegrig and his amazing sea water collecting sinuses.
Back to last Saturday researching the Great Swim and all that it entails, realising pretty early that Lake Windermere will be chilly cold and a pair of speedos will not do and I would need a wet suit. I therefore delved deep into the cupboard and rediscovered my diving wet suit to see if it would do basically no. Although only a 5mm suit it is too inflexible to swim in as one would be employing a different swimming style from any swimming done whilst diving.
However I had to try it on to see whether this supposition was correct, all the time the clock ticking away to the start of the Scotland vs Ireland rugby international. With both parts of the suit on (known as farmer john's don't ask me why) I walked through to the mirror accompanied to calls that the game had started, so after trying it on and checking it, confirming that it was not suitable. With excited commentary ringing in my ears I decided that I had to watch the game, especially as Scotland had made a very encouraging start and I did not want to miss the inevitable Scottish score (optimist me!).
So there I was watching the game in my dive suit, (a fact that caused some debate amongst the twitter community) but at least I did not have my dive goggles on in the style of Hugh Grant in the cinema scene from "Notting Hill".
Sadly however after a good first half like a bad case of pectus excavatum Scotland also sunk!

Its for the brain

Glucose is for the brain it needs it to survive, it keeps us ticking along. It's apparantly inbuilt that we crave sweet sugary things - the brain again.
This brain need coupled with my genetic make up - Scottish, makes a "sweet tooth" a natural health hazard.
The teeth have suffered I'm sure, although I have been comforted (self denial actually) by my present Dentist that a mouth full of mental fillings is more a reflection of 1960's-70's dental practice than anything else. The road works approach I think it could be described. As in when a hole develops in the road along comes the tarmac lorry and fills it in, perhaps with some drilling to make the hole bigger first.
Sweets, sugary juice and other things they where all there I admit it but I can never get by the injustice felt that I brushed my teeth faithfully and still have more mecury than a large thermometer.
As one gets older you become wiser, taking better care of one's gnashers, no doubt influenced by cleaning the false teeth collected from patients in my early nursing career.
Then you visit your sister in the US of A who put's the coffee perculator on and offers you coffee syrup for your fresh brew and that's it, your teeth almost recede in some relexive defence mechanism, they know what's coming.
I don't often go into coffee shop places thinking it's massively overpriced and hyped but do see the need at times, perhaps when a big comfy sofa and a warm drink is the prescription to fight a cold tiring day.
Before it would have been a large white coffee with sugar but now in true coffee user style its a large flat white, no froth full fat decaff coffee with a shot of caramel syrup - please.
Now having researched this blog post I feel pleased with myself that according to one of the coffee emporia's websites there is less calories and sugar in the syrup than the sugar that I used to pile into the mug.
So guilt over and maybe like my younger sibling I now need a pre-paid coffee card...maybe not!

Where's the parachute?

So there I am sitting on a plane all strapped in with nowhere to go. Made all the more tedious by a queue to get airborne and then it starts!
From just behind the monotone delivery kicks in as a fellow passenger relates his experience of hotel living in London. Although not entirely sure I think he has discovered that the person sitting alongside him is a hotel executive, poor b***** Who by now 20 minutes later feels Im sure like enacting the scene from Airplane where the passengers who listen to the main characters sob story commit suicide in a multitude of ways.
This guy is as dry and monotonous as several packets of cream crackers and without any rise and fall in his delivery there is no respite, no undulation, no humour, no anger he is a robot!
We've had the merits of his favourite hotels (all 2 of them), his gold card frequent sleeper status, suites or rooms, breakfast good and bad " I like porridge" says he.
It would not surprise me if it had to be oats with water and salt. The suggestion of fruit porridge or sugar making him lose a nights sleep,"and I get up at 0430 and in bed by 9 pm". Rock on you monster!
45 minutes and we are still going strong, what I wouldn't do for my ear phones right now but they're in the locker five rows back. Can one remove ears with a plastic airline safety spoon? Why stop at ears what about tongues? Yes a tongue, someones tongue!!
If all Scots were like this the rest of the UK would ban travel south and build a big, big, big scarey fence to keep us out.
The desperate thing is that he keeps dropping in the phrase " the interesting thing.....". He knows about things you see because he grow up in hotels "interestingly..."
Another 20 minutes to go, will I be able to resist the urge to use my position - emergency exit seat, interestingly - to escape the monologue, the torture?
I've already given up my name, rank and serial number and next to go will be my recipe for muffins!
God thank you he has stopped or did the executive use her spoon?





-- Post From My iPhone

Where's the scraper?

So here I am sitting on the plane still half asleep even though I gave into the corporate coffee culture and bought a frothy mocciskinnyfatlattecinno with a shot of caramel in a vain attempt to keep the body ticking over and the brain fuelled or should that be jump started?
The plan -


up early ( too early for a sensible breakfast), drive to the airport hop on board the plane a wee trip across the Irish sea and get breakfast there in Belfast before work proper kicks in.
It seemed a good plan but that was last night before the plumbing below the kitchen sink leaked resulting in some never before utilized plumbing skills being brought into play. Then the washine beeped in alarm with fault F12 and despite having a fight with the thing nothing happened still a F12 fault. Well I suppose it sounds better over the phone when you call for help " Yes it's a F12, please hurry !"
Then you look for the guarantee paperwork and then you look again and again before it's found. By this time you realize that it's only 4 hours before you are getting up!
This brings me back to the beginning. Less than normal sleep, no breakfast and we are delayed because of the icy snow that fell overnight.
The plane is now being deiced and scraped. My empty waem is now thinking I should have had breakfast as well as wondering why planes don't have covers that they can put on the night before?


-- Post From My iPhone