O’Neill Coat (Again)
Posted: Tue 30 December, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic Leave a comment »Back in February I wrote about my fantastically warm O’Neill coat, which only gets worn a couple of times a year, because it’s so damn warm. I’ve had it nearly ten years (I worked out while walking Hound this evening) and worn it less than 50 times all told. But when it’s time to wear it, I know it’s time to wear it – usually because it’s below zero by 4pm, and I’ve had to scrape the ice off the car windows in order to drive home from work.
Tonight was the first time of wearing it this winter – and I suspect there’ll be a few more nights like it over the next week if the BBC Weather report below is anything to go by…
Away for the weekend
Posted: Fri 5 December, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Travel Leave a comment »And again, we’re away this weekend.
This time it’s to go to the wedding of one of Herself’s friends, over in Oxfordshire. So we’re going away early on Friday for other reasons, seeing my family on Friday night (two separate occasions within a week, that hasn’t happened in years) and then staying Saturday night at the hotel where the reception is.
Hound’s staying in the kennels she used to use regularly over near Wokingham, so there’s a fair amount of mileage being covered along the way, but it’s all for the best.
And on Sunday we’ll collect Hound and then come home.
Busy busy busy.
Unsettled
Posted: Wed 3 December, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Travel Leave a comment »I have to confess, I really don’t know how Hound survived the weekend.
We went up to Marple (just outside Manchester) and had rented a cottage for the weekend so that we could take Hound with us, rather than diverting via Berkshire in order to put her in kennels with someone who knows her. Normally this is no problem – we’ve done this on our trips to Ireland, the Lake District (twice) and Devon. Hound walks in to the place, sniffs round, lies down, and is fine.
Not in the case of the place in Marple. The actual house was fine – we both quite liked it – nothing special, but enough for us to stay in. set right by the canal, it was fairly quiet, and suited us well. But Hound hated it – she just didn’t settle at all. In short, she was a total pain in the arse, unable to settle down when we went to bed, kept on mooching about, scratching the carpet, the lot.
On the Friday night it ended up with me going into the living room at about 2am, and sleeping on the (very small, two-seater) sofa. As soon as I’d done that, the pox-ridden cowbag went and laid in her basket and slept.
On the Saturday night she was even worse, and finally settled at 2.45am. Again, it ended up with me on the sofa, that being the only way she’d lie down at all. Before that time though, she came this || far from being strangled. Or, considering the proximity of a nice cold canal, drowned.
We’ve no idea what it was she hated about the place – but there was obviously something ‘wrong’ with it. We’ve never really seen her in that sort of mood before either, so it was definitely something novel.
Equally, come the Sunday she was most eager to leave the place – she was in the car before we’d even started to pack up, she just had this complete urge to leave the place as soon as possible. Very strange.
Ethical Gifts
Posted: Tue 2 December, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Customer Services, Festering Season, Thoughts 1 Comment »
In general, if I am going to be buying people gifts come the Festering Season, I’d rather get them something they actually want. Yes, it means it’s not such a surprise, but personally I don’t see the point of buying something that the recipient will find to be utterly useless.
For that, wishlists are bloody great – they keep the surprise, but at least you can list a number of things that you actually want, rather than “Oh, just buy me anything. You know me, you’ll find something“.
Anyway, for those times where people don’t have a wishlist, and do stick to the “Buy me any old thing” ethos, I now tend to buy an ethical gift (Water supply, chickens, etc. to some remote third-world area) rather than buying something useless. And so I thought I’d bung up a quick list of places with ideas I think are great…
- World Vision‘s “Must Have Gifts” for projects around the world.
- Sponsor A Tree do a number of Trees for Individuals in packs of 5,10, 20 or 30 trees
- Slightly more expensive is WaterAid’s shop where you can buy water supplies etc. for projects around the world
- In the UK, Garden Organic have the ability to Adopt a Vegetable, where £20 pays for the seed handling, propagation and storage in the Heritage Seed Library. There’s a list of the veg varieties available here.
- Still in the UK, you can also support the Cats Protection League or sponsor a dog through Dogs Trust (something Herself does already)
I’m sure there are plenty of others, but these are the ones I tend to support/use. If you know of any other good ones, add them to the comments!
The Girls
Posted: Sat 29 November, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green, Green Garden, Photography 3 Comments »When it snowed last weekend, I finally got round to taking photos of our hens. It’s taken a year, but I knew I’d get there in the end…
Gladys
Elsie
Flo
And that’s the girls.
Hens – One Year On
Posted: Mon 17 November, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic 6 Comments »It’s amazing to think that it’s already a year since we got our hens – and I still haven’t actually put up any photos of them, as promised in that linked post. And in fact, it’s a year today that we got the first eggs from them – and since then, we’ve averaged at least two eggs a day for the entire time.
In fact, the only reason we haven’t averaged three eggs a day is because Gladys has gone broody three times this year. We knew when we bought them that the Light Sussex was prone to going broody, so it’s not really been an issue anyway, but it’s just impressive (to me, anyway) that the main thing that has stopped any of the hens from laying has been a natural biological imperative.
All the books we got when we first started thinking about chickens warned that the birds would moult every year (and thus not lay for anywhere from 1 to 4 weeks) so we were expecting that, and it’s never happened. We actually expected far less egg-laying than has actually happened, what with expectations of moults, all hens going broody, laying seasons and the like.
We’ve been really pleased with having the hens – and as we’re now looking at upgrading the hen house, it looks like we’ll be getting more hens in the new year. That should be fun – so long as we can sell the increased numbers of eggs somewhere, we’ll be fine.