Feathered Nest

Gusty winds the other day must have dislodged this nest, I found it on the ground

It’s a work of art, dainty, only four inches wide and two deep, it’s constructed from a wide selection of materials, lichens, mosses, twigs, we could identify, both cat and the dog hair and it’s  lined with feathers

We were impressed by it’s craftsmanship and as Tom commented

‘ And just think, birds haven’t got any hands.’

He has a point, you try building that with no other tool than a beak!

Sadly they will have to start all over again, with better foundations.

Risk Aware

I bought some hairdressing scissors, at Boots the Chemists, I’ve written about Boots before. At the the till the sales assistant sighed, ‘I am sorry the display on my till tells me I’ve got to check, are you old enough to purchase sharp pointy scissors; are you?

Well, old enough in years, but I’ve probably peaked from a safety pointy of view; without my glasses on its probably not such a good idea to let me loose with them, not if my husband and children wish to retain their ear lobes.

The assistant continues, ‘It was the same at Christmas, we couldn’t sell Christmas crackers to anyone under 16 years of age in case they made explosives from them, FOR GOODNESS SAKE, I lived in Northern Ireland with my husband when he was in the army, I can tell you how to make a bomb big enough to blow a hole in a wall and it wasn’t from Christmas crackers.’ she is well in her stride now, ‘What you need’ and she proceeds to give me the ‘recipe’ …………….

And if you think I am going to publish that information you are wrong, Tom and Joe read this blog, from time to time and they have tried building flame throwers already.

Blowing in the wind

Why, oh why, is there so much litter, stuck to every tree and branch and barbed wire fence

The litter lying and flying about the place seems worse than ever this year, in particular, polythene bags and plastic wrappers

Every barbed wire fence, (this is an ever so ethical Co-operative Society carrier bag.)

every thorn bush, seems to have tatters of poly bags attached. Along with the domestic waste is the black wrappers from the bails of silage used as winter fodder for the cattle,

I am not sure if the reason it ’seems’ worse this year is to do with the fact the local council has changed the way it operates kerb side refuse collections, so people put out a lot recyclable items out for collection, but in plastic carrier bags, or if it has been like this for a long time and it only now I am out and about with the camera and actively looking at the landscape, that I am noticing it more.

Maybe it would be more constructive, rather than moaning about it, just to start collecting it, this is what Joe wants to do, he fancy’s getting hold of his Grandmas ‘long reach grabber things’ and setting off on a mission. I am not sure his Grandma, would want to give them up for such a task, seeing as she usually uses them to reach cereal packets off the top shelf in the pantry, we will have to ask.

A green and pleasant land

I followed this link on Gadget’s site this morning and it left me reflecting on how I would fair if I lived in a city; not very well I suspect.

The weather has been dramatic today, big roller coaster clouds mixed with bright sunshine strobe lighting the hills,

 

I took the dog for a walk this afternoon, past a house that we considered buying when we moved back here from Scotland. Woffle’s  post got me thinking about the choices we have, or don’t have, about where we live.

I feel I have been ‘National Lottery lucky’ about where I’ve lived my life, the very early years were on a farm, then a small and pleasant council estate, (complete with a couple of ‘police houses’ and a  resident police dog) it had lots of ‘greens’ where we kids messed about for hours and if we got bored with that there were plenty of hay fields, sledging hills and wooded areas to build dens in, a park, a playing field and a youth club.

When we lived in Scotland you could open the back door and walk off into the Ochil’s; I never went away to university, so I never did the grotty flat in the less than pleasant part of town, I am indeed very lucky. Not that I would wish you to think that that this area is crime free, ask our neighbouring farmer what he’s had stolen and his face will darken like today’s clouds,

 

before he gave you a long list of stolen machinery and equipment and the detritus of drugs misuse can often be seen scattered around beauty spots.  I am sure my parents fretted as much as we do, about our kids safety; as we grew up in a post ‘Moors Murders’ era our safety must have been constantly on their minds. Some times the cities dross makes it out this far to do its dirty work, its often burnt out stolen  cars in isolated lay-by’s, but its been far, far worse.

But I have never lived in a home where I haven’t been happy to stride out the door, in to a garden or the country side, where I am simply in my element, in a city I would be like a fish out of water.  It may be a tad over dramatic to say I would wither and die, but I am sure a part of me would.

Blessings, count them

It’s been very cold over night, -4.1c  and it’s a bright and beautiful morning

I’m setting off in a few minutes to be an enthusiastic parent,  standing  and cheering  at the finish line of a junior fell race, whilst I am there I shall count my blessings

Yellow

Because we all need a little sunshine sometimes

Gaudy, primary, in your face yellow, the colour of crocus,

forsythia and daffodils, all the flag waving flowers that promise spring, just the thing to spread a little cheer. Mr Mans Wife if feeling a little blue, the black dog of depression is snapping at her heels, I hope she feels a little brighter soon.

Evicted

The ‘Gang of Seven’ sheep are out of our field and garden and they staying out.

We have had enough of them, and as Stony said, we could get DEFRA involved to find out who owns them, they are double tagged, but first you would have to catch them, as you can see they ready for a stand off, we are just not set up for catching hold of sheep with attitude.

So we’ve herded them out and closed the gate, I think they are from the other side of the hill, but the grazing is scant that way, so at the top of the lane they turned  right into business class, not left into economy

I did feel a little ’sheepish’ and guilty though, as I drove to work yesterday morning, they were just trotting down the drive to the ‘big house’ the gardens down there are for more precious than ours. I often find myself drawn in to local ’stop it’ ’save it’, ‘find it’ campaigns (and you would hope by now the owner of these errant sheep, would have noticed they were missing)  but to be honest I haven’t the energy for this one, again. This year some one else can sort it; I’m off out, closing the gate behind me.

Roses Red

Roses are available in other shades, but not that you’d notice on valentines day.

I was in on the start of it, St Valentines day becoming big business in the flower industry in the UK.

As an ever so keen trainee florist in the late 1970’s St Valentines meant no more than half a dozen extra orders and me pleading to be allowed to stick up some paper hearts in the shop, then it grew and it grew, it grew exponentially, year on year; we would try and get more adept at coping with demand, but we were ‘fire fighting’ rather than managing the job, trying not run out of stock, trying hard not have many red roses left on the 15th, trying to balance staff costs, van hire and wastage. In the early days, the supply chain and the varieties grown were not what they are now, it was Russian roulette as to wether or not you could secure a good quality supply of red roses, your profit could easily be written off in replacement roses for your customers if it all went wrong.

It will I suspect be hard for any one who has not been involved in the industry not to see February the 14th as easy money, but it’s not, backing the horses would be a better bet. It wasn’t all stress city, we had some laughs at the antics of our customers, and the complexity of their love lives, so here are tips and tales for the big day.

• Dear staff member, I know you are in a rush to take down the customers orders but please do not abbreviate ‘valentines day’  in the ‘delivery date’ box on the order form ‘VD’, it just doesn’t read right on the customers receipt
• Parents, if you have three teenage daughters that you christened Sally, Susan and Samantha, don’t blame us if WW3 erupts when we deliver a dozen red roses addressed to Miss S Smith, we don’t know or care which one of the three Miss S Smiths it was intended for, you sort it out.
• Dear Miss Average we have hundreds of orders, we can’t  remember if the guy that ordered your flowers looked like Robbie Williams, use you imagination, if it’s anonymous you can imagine it is from who ever you like.
• Women will order and send flowers to themselves, to wind up their partners.
• Guys will come in the shop with their wives, the wife will select her valentines flowers, the husband will then helpfully suggest she ‘Nips across to Marks and Spencer to do the rest of the shopping’, he then pays for her flowers and order a two dozen red roses for his mistress.
• A bus drivers will park their bus (with passengers) outside the shop whilst he collects an enormous  red heart  of flowers and the biggest teddy bear in the shop for his boyfriend and wrestles them back on to the bus.
• Policemen will hide single red roses in their truncheon pocket (don’t suppose it looks so cool on the utility belt that they have now, not good for street cred.)
• Octogenarians will wedge bouquets of roses in their bike baskets and peddle off up the road
• It is a crisis if the van door falls off, two inches of snow fall over night or some one kicks the shop door in at 3am on the 14th of February to steal a shelf full of teddy bears.
• To the Dad who ordered a bouquet of flowers for his 13 year old daughter, because he knew her 17 year old sister will be getting cards and gifts and he doesn’t want the younger one feeling left out,we think you are a top dad, you made our day and restored our faith in human nature.

Since the ‘big boys’ got into selling flowers and the Internet has taken more sales away from the high street,  the game has got even more risky, its helped to Stabilise  prices, but now instead of fire fighting too much work, the majority of independent florists will be looking to hang on to their share of the market, this year the will have to watch out for bad press in as ‘green’ sector of the market becomes more interested how the flowers were grown. Nothing ever stands still in business, forwards or backwards never still.

 

Technorati Tags: Red roses, St Valentines flowers, shopping

Next to me

I’ve driven past three petrol stations to get the Tesco’s filling station, you see I’ve got a voucher, that entitles me to 5p a litre  off the price of fuel, it’s not something to be sniffed at with a fuel tank as large as ours. The red light on the dashboard has been glowing longer than I would like, I don’t like running on empty. At the pump a large yellow plastic tag makes a point, ‘This Pump Is Not In Use’ I glance along the row of pumps, yellow tags all the way, no diesel available. At the pump next to me the ambulance response car if filling up, the paramedic bowls me a broad smile ‘You’re going to have to go all the way to ‘Churchfield’ if you want diesel, they’ve sold out; I’m all right I’m petrol’ he adds a little smugly.

I am now grumpy and planning my next blog post entitled why I hate Tesco’s, so rather than getting my discounted fuel I will have driven an additional 10m to get my fuel, I can’t leave it any longer I am at work in the morning, and there are no fuel stops on the way to work, there is no nothing on the way to work and to add insult to injury the voucher expires tomorrow

What a waste of time and diesel, I grump some more, all the way back to Churchfield, the petrol station at Churchfield does have diesel,  it all so has pumps that are so old and slow you run the risk of getting an repetitive strain injury whilst using them. A car pulls up at the next to me, its and elderly Rover car, well loved and maintained, it probably lives in a garage, it has velour cushions on the parcel shelf, I would be willing to bet it spends the summer taking a modest caravan to green field Caravan Club sites.

The lady driver of the car asks if I can help her, she explains

‘I’ve never put petrol in the car before, my husband always does it; but he’s in hospital and I need to see him, I need to make sure I don’t run out of fuel.’

So I give a crash course on how to use the pump and not to put diesel in your petrol car, (I figure she has enough on her plate) we only manage to squeeze in £17.43 worth, so she was worrying a little early. Whilst this is going on she tells me how her husband has

‘Had a stroke, he just collapsed, just like that; on the kitchen floor, right next to me, no warning, no nothing.’

She tells me ‘what the doctors have said’ she uses words like ‘ massive,prognosis, damage’, and whilst I don’t know much about theses thing I know enough to know that this isn’t sounding good. That filling the car with fuel is going to be one of many challenges that she needs to face in the weeks and months to come.

So by the end of this I realise that grumping over a Tesco’s fuel voucher, really is a waste of precious time and energy

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: Tesco, Diesel, Petrol, Grumpy, Rover, Caravan

Can’t See the Wood for the Trees

A paper free office? what paper free office?

Do you remember how we were promised, a decade or so ago, an office without bits of paper? That the computer would get rid of the need to hoard paper and documentation.

Where did it go wrong, I seem to have just as much, if not more than before, I am not good with paper, documents seem to take on a life of their own the moment I put them down and its not helped by the fact my filing is lax. Some bits of paper distract me more than others, it is of course the bright interesting ones, they are like panicking bystanders at the scene of an accident, they draw the attention away from bits of paper with urgent and serious needs, the quite ones, in buff coloured envelopes, that lie motionless and unopened, at the bottom of the pile; documents like my tax return.

The taxman (or women) has stuck to me like a leech *

there is no longer anything complicated about my finances, I no longer need to fund my accounts golf holidays,by paying him to fill in my forms, it’s now all straight forward, I go to work, submit my time sheet, go home, get paid, end of story, now please dear tax person, go away and leave me alone, I’ve got so many bright interesting things I want to read, but I suppose, as the deadline for submitting tax returns (30th of January) is bearing down, I’ll just have to find the dull bits of paper to prove the point.

* Sorry dickiebo, if you were squeamish about like last weeks dead mole photo, your not going to like this one

Technorati Tags: Tax return, Inland Revenue, Leeches, Filing, Documents, Lost documents, Accountants, Golf holidays