Being a Fairy Godmother - CyberMummy ticket up for grabs….

I have decided to become a fairy godmother, because circumstances have meant that I can, for one day only and that day is June 25^th 2011.

I have one CyberMummy Ticket plus expenses up to £100 on offer. The reason being is that I cannot go to CyberMummy this year as I have just found out it clashes with my eldest’s Sports Day and however much I love blogging there is one rule that stands firm: family first…

OK I do bend that rule a lot especially if the boys have wound me up and I need to get away into the sanctuary that is my office…

That aside I have decided that I will also offer travel/hotel expenses up to £100 as I know for some people it is not the spending the day in London and attending CyberMummy that is the problem but the actual getting there that is the difficulty. Travel is getting very expensive especially if you forget to book in advance!

I would like to offer the ticket to someone who would otherwise not have been able to go. So if you know of anyone who is in that position or even if it is you yourself please leave a comment with the address of your blog and I will start getting  names drawn up and I will let my boys decide who they would like to see go to the ball - so to speak!

I ask nothing in return but that the person who gets the ticket has a wonderful time and tells me all about it so that even though I won’t be there I can at least keep up with all the gossip, news and views…

Veggie Power!

“I must eat more veggie – tarbles,” announced Bog Boy. These are words I never expected him to say, let alone without prompting.

I had to ask: “Why?”

Bog Boy: “I HAVE to get big and strong.”

Me: “OK then….”

Bog Boy: “I need to be big and strong to ride my bike.”

Ah yes, his bike. Bog Boy has just inherited his brother’s bicycle and it is quite a step up from his Thomas the Tank Engine bike and I secretly think he thinks it is a bit too big.

Me: “Why don’t you get on it now and have a try.”

Bog Boy with conviction: “I might fall off!”

Me, calmly and a little disinterestedly as if I don’t care at all: “You might…but if you rode it on the lawn it wouldn’t hurt if you fell off.”

There is a pause while Bog Boy contemplates this little nugget of information.

Bog Boy, decisively: “I NEED to go inside.”

Me, surprised and a little bewildered I thought I had got him on that one: “OK!”

Bog Boy with the conviction of one who knows what a boy has to do: "I NEED to eat a carrot….."

Depression: Doing something about it....

I hate having depression. It is pants. It is worse than pants, it is a bugger. I get tired and I never seem to be able to catch up with myself. I can last a long while but then I collapse and can do nothing. And I feel weak, and silly and stupid and I hate myself for it.
So during May over a period of 31 days I am going to do something about it.  So as not to bore everyone I will blog daily on my other blog "Cage without a key" and update you on my progress. I cannot guaranteee any of it will work but I am going togive it a try.
If anyone has any top tips on how to deal with the perennial blues then I am up for it as long as it does not involve eating fish, which I hate. Especially mackerel. Unless it is smoked then I am OK with it.

The Reluctant Royalist

The Daily Telegraph: Kiss me Kate

I think I am turning into my Nan; I mean today I was welling up as I watched the Royal Wedding. I really felt as if I was going to cry, I was so moved and this is from me, the person who back in November when the engagement was announced between Kate Middleton and Prince William, could only think: “Well at least I’ll get a day off to do the garden.”

In 1981 I couldn’t have been less interested. At the age of 15 I thought it all a great big bore and I was furious that my riding holiday had been curtailed so that we could all watch the Royal Wedding on the box as a family.

I couldn’t think why everyone so excited about Prince Charles – he isn’t exactly good looking - or why they thought Lady Di was so perfect. He seemed horrendously old I couldn’t for the life of me reason why she would want to marry him. My Mum and Nan however, sat enraptured while I huffed and puffed and flumped about longing for the whole thing to be over so that I could watch some decent telly or else go down the caravan at New Quay and have some fun at the seaside. Anything had to be better than all this gushing flouncy stuff I was being forced to endure. The afternoon seemed never ending.

For my Nan it was the start of a love affair that endured to her death; she adored Princess Di who could never do any wrong. She read everything about her, watched TV programmes and would expound in great details all the wrongs done to that poor beautiful woman; for Nan was a romantic and she decided her loyalty lay with Diana, a saint who could do no wrong. An angel. How she would have loved today.

Nan didn’t have time for the Royals as such, I don’t think she ever would forgive the Queen Mother for being beastly to the Duchess of Windsor, in fact so partisan was she that I seriously think if she had ever met the QM she would have snubbed her in the way only the Welsh no how.

Today would have been meat and drink; and I can see her in my mind’s eye sitting in her green velvet chair, avidly drinking in the sights and sounds from the TV; commenting scathingly on the fashions and how some people really should know better and why on earth did the young wear so many shockingly ugly hats.

Then she would see the bride, she would have been in paroxysms of delight, gurgling with joy and exclaiming how beautiful she was and how elegant and saying look that’s how it should be done you can tell she has style and state and look how graceful. Today she would have taken ownership and started another love affair… and today I found myself understanding exactly why.

For today I was spellbound and I kept thinking of my own wedding and my own vows and I thought of all the hope resting on those young shoulders and I had such admiration and trepidation for their future.

A Royalist me, reluctantly admitted….

The Rat Man cometh

rattus norvegius

“It’s not the rat’s fault it was born a rat.”

Not the words of comfort I wished to hear yesterday evening but I bit my tongue and showed the Rat Man the problem.

He said nothing and in the way of true countrymen got on with surveying the scene in utter silence. I tried an opening gambit but with a slow raise of his arm I was curtailed. I longed to spill out my woes, to make excuses for the chickens, but the Rat Man now moved swiftly round the pens his expert eye taking in all the detail he needed.

He gazed out to the middle distance, rubbed the ground with his feet, bobbed down to take a closer look at the hut doors. He peered under the sheds. Standing up he walked purposefully back to his stolid green Land Rover, opened it up and started to talk. Caught slightly on the hop, I rushed over to catch what he was saying and was about to apologise for not reacting quickly enough when I realised that he was in fact talking to his dog.

I was just beginning to feel superfluous when he started to hand out an array of large wooden boxes and a basket of the meanest looking traps I had ever seen in my life.

“I only want to kill rats,” I thought, “not men!”

“Now you mind those fen traps, snap your fingers hard they would. Make you cry.”

I smiled weakly and tentatively put the traps on the ground.

“So who’s going to help you then?”

I looked blank.

“Who’s going to help you with the rats?”

I was slightly non-plussed. “Err, you?”

“Well, I can, but it will cost you. Better if you were to do it yourself. I can teach you.”

“Oh great, “I thought, “I am going to have to deal with the buggers!”

“Oh! Yes!” I thought, “I AM going to have to deal with the buggers!”

Sometimes I have great ideas like calling the Rat Man but sometimes I just don’t actually think things through as much as I should. Of course I cannot have him come out here every day twice a day when I am paying him £32 an hour plus £22 travel.

For the next hour he carefully told me what I had to do and helped me set all the traps, patiently going over the routine several times as I struggled to cope with task at hand.

I have no qualms about disposing of the dead rats it was killing those that may not be dead enough that I know I would struggle with.

“Whatever you do don’t try to hold one that is alive,” he warned darkly.

I looked blank

“Quick as a wink it will bite you and it won’t be pleasant.”

I blanched.

“Best thing is to shoot it. Rats may be a problem but that doesn’t mean that they should be in pain when they die. The art is to do it quickly and cleanly as possible.”

I tried to look enthusiastic as I contemplated this philosophy. Perhaps I would be able to take it better if I did not keep looking at the empty chick pen.

“I don’t hold with poison except as a last resort; don’t want rodenticide to enter the food chain if we can help it," he continued. I nodded not completely with the program but coming round to the idea that like all true huntsmen, this fellow knew and admired his quarry.

“Now we can get on top of this infestation but you will have to get these pens sorted, a good foot of wire at the bottom of the pen should help all the way round, rats’ don’t like having to work too hard see. And put wire on the bottom of the door, they don’t like having to gnaw through it.”

I looked at all my beautiful newly built pens and started to calculate the cost of keeping my hens anew…

“And don’t expect to kill many initially; rats are Neophobic,”

“Well them and me both!” I thought as I wrestled with the fen trap while trying to control my fear of having my fingers broken in one quick snap.

Apparently rats don’t like new things and will avoid them at all costs but once they get used to them they accept them as part of their daily lives. Hence the fact that I could keep the traps where they are placed forever and still catch the rats for apparently they will not learn to avoid things they know will kill them as their fear of new things surpasses any other.

“The inside of a rat’s mind is unfathomable, a bit like the Rat Man’s.” I thought.

RATS!

Rats. I hate the f******s. I loath them. I really, really, loath them. From their beady black little eyes, their greasy coats and scaly tails. They are vile.
I hate them with a slow burning passion, an indignation and a righteious one at that.
Thye have killed my chicks. Taken from under their mother, dragged those poor terrified little things through the fence, killed them then taken them to their nest near the moat and devoured them. Not satisfied with that they have also got one of my poults through the raised slatted floor of the hen house by grabbing one of her legs as she sat on the floor, held it while they evicersated her then tried to eat her through the slats. I found her lying there feebly trying to get away this morning. I put her quickly out of her misery.
I don't like rats.
And I obviously have a rat problem.
I hate using poison but now I see no way round it. This unseasonably warm weather has helped the buggers to breed like mad and my chickens are suffering as a result. I will never get rid of them , nor will I ever get rid fo the grey squirrels, but I will get on top of the problem. I have to, or I will continue to lose more of my chickens and that I cannot stand. All the ones I reared in the incubator are now dead bar one and to be honest I don't hold out much hope for that unless I hold a vigilence all night to keep the rats away and I can tell you from experience the buggers are bold and my presence is hardly going to make them falter.
I was stil at college and working one Christmas on a farm where they had some beef cattle and  one or two dairy cows. I was there at a difficult calving. Thhe calf  was weak and looked as if it wanted to give up the ghost from the very minute it was born. But I wasn't going to let it. I nursed that calf all night and the next day, it seemed to grow weaker but I would not let it go. Every time it closed it's eyes and looked like it had decided to die I would thump it awake, keeping it alive but you'll never guess what. Even though I was there keeping this creature alive, the rats had started to eat it and I didn't even notice in the dark. They started to knaw on its tail. I couldn't at first work out what had happened and the calf was too weak to make any fuss.  I spent the second night keeping the buggers at bay as well as keeping that calf alive. I grew to hate them then, it was a personal thing. And it's personal now.
PS. As for the calf, he survived though his tail had to be amputated about half way up.

Sportsmanship….

Grandpa has just spent three hours putting together the Boys new Table Top Table Football, he’s even begun to talk Mandarin or perhaps he’s just being diplomatic. It looks as smart as a new pin despite the fact that I know it’s what my Nan would call “cheap-by-junk”; a curious Welsh phrase which I feel quite sums it up. Far too much time spent on something that really isn’t worth it.

Anyway Grandpa has relaxed and is now talking normally thanks to a judicious glass or two of G&T. I do love that traditional English past time of a libation after Six o’clock and the curious expression that somewhere in the Empire it is always six o’clock does help – especially when flat pack, children’s expectation and holidays all roll into one!

We relax in the evening sun talking of everything and nothing, the occasional raised voice as a point is perhaps too forcefully put but hackles are smoothed with practised ease as can only happen among relatives keen to please and far too happy to see each other after such a long absence. Optimism in the face of reality.

The Boy storms out on to the deck. “It’s not fair Bog Boy won’t play properly. I hate him. I won’t play with him. He’s always doing it wrong!”

Grandpa remarks dryly: "Berlimey three hours’ work and hostilities break out after 10 minutes!”

I respond: “It’s boys Dad, you never had them. You may be a boy who grew up with boys but you never had any of your own.”

The Boy is still chuntering: “But it’s soooo unfair Bog Boy is just horrid. I try but he always gets it wrong.”

We hear Bog Boy wailing in the background: “Boy was horrid! He hurt me!! I’m telling on you Boy I’m telling.”

Bog Boy round the corner and sees his brother already ensconced in the protective arms of his grandmother.

He falters a bit. Then, welling up: “He wouldn’t let me win!!!!!”

Ah, yes Sportsmanship…the next great adventure in my parental learning curve…..