Mopey hen and other birds...

Sundays just fly by round here, even rainy ones.  Up, late for me, 8am.  I'd like to lie-in, but I'm nervous/cautious of the dog now he's over 11 years old.  We've come down to the odd accident after 8.30am, and I don't like to chance it - not a good start to a morning really, is it?

So all fine downstairs, and I let the dog out, walked down the garden and let the hens out, back in the house, fed the dog, made tea and went upstairs to let Simon know the time - 8.20am, and he's usually out with his running group at 8.30am.....  it wasn't pre-meditated that I didn't tell him the time/wake him earlier, but I didn't get much thanks for letting him know either.

Washing machine loaded and on, breakfast at a leisurely pace, read a chapter of my book, dressed and Tom dressed, and as it was raining we set to and tidied Tom's room.  Knocked up a pan of leek and potato soup, washing load out, had lunch, and after humming and ha-ing decided to bite the bullet and walk the dog in the rain.  Forecast for heavy rain all day, so had to do it sooner or later.

Back home from dog walk, both of us soaked, towelled the dog, and then I thought I'd check on the hens, in particular the one in moult with the knitted jacket I'd made - to see how it was holding up in the rain.  Actually we'd noticed yesterday that it had developed a baggy gusset - she must have been pushing at it with her feet, but I was more concerned about the rain.

Turned out I was wrong to be worried about the rain. She'd managed to get the baggy gusset twisted round her legs somehow, impairing her walking, and worse, rubbing her legs on the wet wool, or the safety pins.  I was worried that she'd impaled herself, and as she was sheltering under the table which keeps the food dry I managed to catch her quite easily.

No. The safety pins were intact, but her wings looked rather raw as well as the legs, so I decided to take the jacket off. Some feathers have now come through, so she should be OK.  No. Wrong again. Funny things, hens.  Her companion had taken to pecking her.  I observed and it was obvious that this was more of a problem, not the jacket.  She had taken a pecking and her confidence was gone, so she was an easy victim.

I don't like having to do this, but I separated them.  Past experience has shown that when hens peck other hens it's a slippery slope if you don't act quickly.  Luckily I've got a rabbit hutch (no rabbits) which I use as my 'hen hospital'.  So I quickly gave it a spruce up, and with help from my daughter we moved her in.

Cup of tea, and the weather had brightened up, so I took the opportunity to sit at my kitchen window and observe the birds for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch annual survey - see link:

http://www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/

From my kitchen window 2pm-3pm today I saw:  bluetits, great tit, long-tailed tit, robins, chaffinch, starlings, sparrow, blackbirds, great spotted woodpecker, wood pigeons and collared doves.  I didn't see our other usual suspects - magpie, greenfinch, goldfinch, bullfinch and jay. But I did have my camera - the woodpecker was incredibly camera shy, even through the glass, and wouldn't pose when feeding but I caught him a couple of times...

It's really not easy taking photos of birds through a kitchen window..... but I tried.

Nighty night.  Kat :)

Izzy whizzy, let's get busy!

So..... to start the year, we've had exceptional flooding with rainwater overflowing from the sewers back into our and our neighbours' drains.  This lasted from 7th January and finally completely subsided by 13th January.  Our water services provider, Thames Water, took note of my daily call to log the situation and explained that the rain had put extra pressure on their drains and they were doing all they could about the 'hydraulic overload', but there was nothing they could actually do to alleviate my situation.

The situation was unusual for us in as much as when we've had previous incidents of this rainwater overflow/spillage from the drains, it has usually gone down within 12-24 hours.  And, our neighbours' drains may overflow a little, and drain off into our garden.  But this time the garden was awash for four and a half days, which meant that the hens thought they were ducks, and I'm not sure what impact the effluent will have had on the vegetable patch, or the health of my birds.  Needless to say, I'm on their case, and my County Councillor called me today (thanks Zoe) to see if Thames Water had called me back after she'd contacted them on my behalf (they hadn't).

So.... here's what we had to contend with, for over 4 days, in the hen patch...

Two weeks down the line, and one of the hens has gone into a serious moult. Which was unusual because they'd both moulted November/December ready for the winter.  The third week of January is not a good time to moult.  Now, the question is, was the floodwater contamination somehow responsible for the hen moulting again, or was it entirely a coincidence?

This is her today.  Actually, she'd lost most of the feathers at the weekend, so you can see the re-growth starting, and it took me a while to think of a solution...  and with a few clicks on a certain search engine I found some instructions to make...

Can you guess?  It took around 4 hours.  Well, it's been a long time since I'd knitted anything.  I found some wool I'd got in my 'projects' corner, and following the instructions from 't'internet' I started Tuesday evening, did some on Wednesday morning, and finished it off today.

Here's 'Brownie' modelling this year's winter collection hen jacket - seen in all the best hen runs around the land.

This is not a joke.  There's a cold snap coming, so I hope she feels the benefit.  I won't go into detail about trying to catch a hen single-handed (I've usually got one or two children to help me herd them into a corner), but she made me have it for a while, and then I had to catch her a second time as she'd pecked and pulled and managed to undo one of the buttons to try to free herself of this unseemly contraption....  so the second time I went in armed with safety pins.... ha!

Ah me.  It's all happening here.

Nighty night.  Kat.

All change!

New Year, new starts.

My new job at Witney Library starts 20th January. I'm very happy about it as it's a permanent contract - 14 hrs, Tuesday morning, Wednesday afternoon and all day Friday.  Whilst it's fewer hours than my present contract (18.5hrs), I'll be glad to have my weekends back.  For the past two years I've worked every Saturday morning at Grove Library, and I'll be helping out by working alternate Saturdays until the volunteers take over at the start of May.  My contracts at Grove were only temporary,  and were due to end at the end of April, so I'm lucky to have a permanent contract at last.

As parents you (try to) do what you consider to be the best for your child.  For many and various reasons we've gone down the private education route - up until now.  Phoebe's well established at her lovely girls school in Abingdon, no worries there.  Sadly, last week we received an e-mail/letter from Tom's school inviting us to a meeting to discuss the future of the school.

Unfortunately we'd already experienced the demise of the local prep school here in Wantage, which is why we ended up taking the children to a school in Faringdon....  Not ideal.  Not local. (10 miles commute).  Not environmentally friendly, not good for forming friendships, not good for fuel consumption and wear and tear on vehicles.... in all, not what we'd chosen, but then the choice was taken away from us.

And it's been a lovely lovely, school, our children have done well, and although there had been 4 head teachers in 5 years, we thought we'd weathered the storm, and stuck by them.  Now it seems, they'd been subsidised by the parent company for the past 9 years, and they're no longer prepared to keep losing money.

So, here we are again, with the parents campaigning, raging, fighting, kicking, screaming, calming... forming a group, and negotiating, thinking, scheming, planning, hope against hoping that they can overcome the obstacle, and find a solution, rise above it, fix it, mend it, start it again, start over, afresh, new and clean, bright as a button, like a child on their first day of school.  And I hope they can.

Because we can't.  Because we've done it before.  And last time we waited it out and that was a mistake.  Because the school slowly disintegrates before your eyes. Week after week the children gradually drop away, like a rumour, drip away, like a whisper, if not in your class, then which class, how's it hanging together now, by a string, by a thread, by a cobweb?

So we're doing what we think is best.  Again.  And I'll not say anything further about it until everything's done and dusted because it doesn't seem right.

And, if that's not enough to be getting to grips with, on top of all that, we've had our own situation with the local floods.

We've had a long-standing problem with our drains.  Or rather we experience problems with our drains when the main sewer/foul line is inundated with rain water. And on the occasions we experience a problem with our drains, it's usually sorted itself out, and receded within 12-24 hours.  I could go on, but it's a bit of a bore.  Suffice to say for the last 5 days we've been overflowing at the inspection chamber at the front of our house, at the inspection chamber at the rear of our house, and also from our neighbour's inspection chamber onto my hen patch and vegetable patch at the back of the garden.  For 5 days.

Today it's finally receded and we've been able to sluice it down, rod it out, and start to feel that we're back to normal. Except we're not back to normal.  Normal's not normal when you expect your drains to flood when there's heavy rain.  So I've been on the phone - a lot.  And I'm going to be on the phone - a lot.  And I fully intend to get this resolved because I'm completely fed up of them taking the piss (pardon my language), or should that be them NOT taking the piss, because no piss was taken anywhere as it all overflowed into my garden.

Our two district Councillors visited and viewed the situation on Friday, and on Saturday I had a good chat about it to my County Councillor and I'm not letting this drop until something happens, because what's been happening for the last 5 years is just not good enough.  So here's where I pin my fight.  And I'm right in the mood for it.

Watch this space.

Kat.

Bed time routine

I'm all for bed-time routine, both in the house, and outside it - in as much as putting the hens 'to bed' is, obviously, part of the daily routine.  We call it 'putting the hens to bed', when in reality, they've usually put themselves in, and just need the door shutting to keep them safe for the night.

This time of the year means locking them up when it's gone dark - usually from 4.30pm on-wards, although the days are already 'drawing out' and if the weather's nice they may still be hanging around outside at 4.40pm.  They're definitely inside by 4.45pm, and the recent wet weather has meant I've left it until gone 5pm to be certain they're inside and to give myself the job of heading down the garden only once in my rain attire.

This careful planning and well trodden routine is sometimes put asunder by their hen-ladder having fallen down during the day - bad weather - or if one's gone in and somehow dislodged the hen-ladder for the remaining hen.  Which is what I found around 5.30pm in the pitch dark on New Year's Day.

The hen-ladder fallen to the ground, one hen in and one hen out, not exactly distressed, but confused, as if by walking away from the scene and then returning, it would magically straighten itself into what was normally there.  So I put the hen-ladder back and then retreated to give the hen space to approach.

I also shone my head-torch on the hen-ladder so the hen could see it was in place and would toddle along nice and quickly....  No.  This was not to be.  Backwards, and forwards, backwards and forwards... this was starting to do my head in.  All that was left to do was start chasing it round the muddy patch of ground in the pitch black, but for my my head torch... and I've done that once too often!

She obviously wanted to go in, but, but, but.  Ah-ha.  My years of experience clicked in, and I tried to 'think like a hen'.  I see now.  Of course.  It's not bedtime at all.  It's daylight.  Time to scratch and peck, scratch and peck....

I used to have just an ordinary torch, but my husband treated me to a head-torch after he'd babysat the hens at half-term, when I was 'up North' with the children.  He thought it would be easier to manage the gate catch and hen-house door with two hand free instead of encumbered by holding a torch.... And I'm really pleased with it, and wonder why I'd not had one sooner.  But I digress.

The beauty of my head torch is it had two levels of illumination.  Thinking 'like a hen' I dimmed the beam, so the light shining towards the hen-ladder now resembled a dusk-like light, and 'hey presto!' the hen went up the hen-ladder and into the hen-house.

Took a little longer than usual, but we got there in the end.

Night night!

Another New Year's Day

So, here we are again, reflecting on where the last year went, and lamenting how quickly it passed by.  No?  OK.  Happy New Year to you and yours, wherever you may be.  We'd been invited to V's party last night - to bring the New Year in, and the children were welcome along as well.  The children amused us (and were amused by us) playing charades, so it passed the time remarkably quickly considering that I was the sole adult who was sober.

I'd been banking on Tom (7) not lasting, and needing to go home early, as an excuse (I've never been a 'night-owl'), but blow me down he actually went the distance.  It was Phoebe (13) who's head was on my shoulder at 11.30pm.  Still, we're all tired out now, and it's early nights all round.  Need to get back into a routine, school next week, and all that.  I'm back to work tomorrow, but it's a 'short' week, so no matter.

We took a day-trip to 'big' London on Sunday.  A train ride from Didcot Station took us up to the big smoke in an hour.  We hopped onto the Tube and got off at Marble Arch to head into the 'Winter Wonderland' in Hyde Park.

No time to stop and gawp at the men holding court at Speakers Corner, and there was some kind of parade/march amassing - something to do with a Muslim celebration of the birth of someone or other, which was all very orderly and most of the participants were dressed head to toe in black.  I did enjoy the march marshals with their loud-hailers standing by the pedestrian crossing, behesting us to 'Wait for the green man, ladies and gents, not yet, not yet, now!'.

Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland appeared to me to be nothing other than an excuse for a very LARGE fun fair with all the associated nonsense and thronging masses of the great unwashed and pickpockets.  We'd decided not to do the ice-skating, but had opted instead to book in advance online for the 'Ice Kingdom' experience....  wrap up warm we were warned, it was -8 degrees inside.... and it was.  It had to be in order to keep the ice and snow sculptures frozen.

 The sculptures ranged in size and subject, from the small, and cute, to the larger.... and cute

 ... to the immensely huge!

and not at all cute.

 The scale and artistry of some of the pieces was truly impressive, and we took the scaffold walkway behind the castle...

 some people stuck coins to the ice... whilst others tried to prise them off the ice....

to exit the castle 'ramparts' you had to go down the ice slide - which wasn't as slippy as you'd imagine.

There was more to see, but you get the idea, and by this stage Tom needed to go to the loo, so we scurried past the last few things, and skipped the ice bar (which served various beers, spirits, and hot chocolate) as well.

After lunch (out of the Wonderland - we didn't fancy eating 'on the hoof') we returned and had a ride on the big wheel.

I would have taken more photos - super opportunity, clear sky, but, I do still suffer from Vertigo, and as much as I'd like not to, once we'd got the top I was longing for us to get back to the bottom.  The ride controllers had other ideas, and the whole thing went round a second time before we disembarked and got back on solid ground.

We had an interesting journey from the park to Paddington Station.  We ended up in a black cab because the tube was temporarily closed (barriers all down, crowds pressing, no announcements until we heard sirens, so we surmised there must have been an 'incident' - euphermism for 'accident' (or other) so not wanting the children to see too much of the darker side of life in the city we legged it to the surface).

Our cab driver was the least chatty of his kind, and the traffic was abysmyl.  One particular bottle-necked double parked street had a woman walking down the middle of the road to the impasse (us versus a white car) and saying 'I'll just see if we can get someone further down to move along', or words to that effect....  Several similar streets later, a slight bump from the rear back flank of the cab to a parked vehicle, and a quick nip wrong way down a short one-way street to a large square, and we got to the station.

I don't spend much time in London anymore, and I'm glad of that.  Still, you've got to stretch your comfort zone once in a while, and it was a good family day out.

Night for now.  Kat