Category Archives: Humour

Hill Farming, Humour

Un-Call the Fire Brigade!

Have you ever tried sliding up a slippery pole – it’s not easy, and that’s why you can’t un-call the fire brigade. Once they set off – bells ringing and sirens wailing they are totally committed and it would be churlish to stop them.

Yesterday we had a grass fire – unbelievable after six months of incessant rain, but I’ve always said that Mid-Wales is well drained and we’ve had a chirpy breeze in the last few, sunny days — we’ve even generated a little electricity. We’ve been out and about, trimming back the hedges so they don’t poke you in the eye during lambing, and sweeping up the moss that the ducks have been conscientiously collecting since October – a good time for a bonfire!

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One little splutter from the heart of the fire – that’s all it took, perhaps a superheated egg that slipped in with the straw from the chicken coop or an ink cartridge that tumbled from the not too tidy desk into the waste-paper basket with all the bank details that have to be burned. Anyway there was a bang and something small and very hot flew from the fire onto the bank.

The next thing we knew there was a pool of low level flame engulfing my stamping husband.

‘We need water!’ shouted Alison, who has come to stay, for a rest.

We fill up a bucket then realise that the fire is near the stream so run towards it with buckets – we make a human chain – but it only has two links and angina rapidly ensues as we run up and down the steep bank, up which the suddenly stiff wind is wafting the flames with amazing enthusiasm.

Alison’s partner who is stamping and beating the flames with a branch is now disappearing in a pall of choking smoke and the other link in my human chain is chasing her dog who has come to join in.

‘It’s out of control!’ shouts Ali.

Now there’s a moot point here – she could have meant that the dog was out of control. But the situation looked pretty dire to me and the temptation to have a little run on the flat was too much for my bursting chest so I ran to the house to call the Fire Brigade.

‘Emergency – which service do you require?’

‘We’ve got a grass fire, out of control!’ I pant.

Do you require the police, ambulance or fire service?

‘Why would I want the police or… Oh yes. Fire service!’ (You can tell I’ve been trained to deal with crises.)

Now I had not consulted before taking this action. I am usually a team player and I admit that this was not a simple oversight – I knew that my husband would have argued against involving a third party – even as he was being transported from me on a cloud of smoke he would be saying, ‘Nonsense! It’ll be fine.’

I had taken a unilateral decision for which I would be chastised for the rest of time… Especially as when I returned to the scene, the men had equipped themselves with spades and the large yard broom and at last appeared to have the advancing edge of flame under control – although my broom was smoking.

I ran back to the house and that is when I discovered that you can’t un-call the Fire Service.

All I could do was put the kettle on.

(Seriously though, our Fire Service is voluntary — they came very quickly  and we are very grateful and sorry if I wasted their time (and please note the personal pronoun).

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Humour

Bomb Scare!

Bomb Scare!

The Trannon Valley in Mid Wales is just about the most peaceful place you could find – the most violent living things, the trees (with all their pent up energy), have been known to lash out under provocation from a chainsaw, and knock a man off a step ladder or into the river and a gang of ram-lambs has been known to go on the rampage – generally though, ask any young resident, it is excruciatingly peaceful.

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Last week the sun came out and a lady in the village decides to have a clear out – her late husband had been a hoarder, by all accounts, as had his father. She is sorting through the memories – the wrong-size golf clubs and walking sticks, a pith helmet, belts and brasses and carved knick-knacks, a box of strange looking bulbs that don’t fit any known socket and keys with no locks, of cars long sold and of cases left in foreign parts. Here’s a brand new cricket ball and what’s this? It looks like a hand grenade. It is a hand grenade!

Now the lady is very sensible – un-flappable. She doesn’t throw open the bedroom window and lob the grenade into the field behind the house (where a grazing cow of a curious and determined disposition can pull the pin out a few moments later). Neither does she do what I would do which is put it in the bread bin or into the oven (where we put all precious things that cats and dogs are not to chew) and flee. No, she stays calm and looks around in case it has a mate (she’s lived abroad) and, sure enough, there it is in the bottom of the box.   It’s a mystery how she knows there might be two as she had never seen them before. Then, with all the sang-froid of a lady who sleeps with a pair of grenades under her bed, she calmly telephones the police.

That’s when things get exciting (because the emergency services run in packs these days) and that is how the cordons and the road blocks and the exclusion zone around our sleepy village arrive (although they miss Wenona, next door, who is having a nap). You can’t blame them for getting carried away — it is enormous fun for the entire constabulary – a team building day out – and one thing we do well in Wales is cups of tea and cake.   There aren’t many officers in Mid-Wales and they don’t get out much.

A local land owner is consulted and a sight is chosen for the controlled detonation — this enterprising farmer dismisses the opportunity of sorting out the badgers once and for all (perhaps too near his nephew’s house) but how about a pond, how big will the crater be? What’s that in gallons? Perhaps we could do one a little higher and the other down there and then we could have a waterfall, maybe even a turbine… We can claim subsidies for habitat creation and green energy.

Meanwhile the Bomb Disposal team are rumbling up the bye-ways from Cheltenham or was it Colchester – it is a long way away.

To everyone’s great disappointment (except perhaps the lady), the experts having made their examination, proclaim the grenades are dud – drilled and drained and filled with cooking oil by a spoil-sport or a practical joker sometime between 1915 and now and… Somewhere above our sleepy village someone is chuckling.

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Hill Farming, Humour

Bailer Twineology

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This gate is modern but not up to the specification required to withstand a rampaging pensioner in a six-ton digger.  It should be taken off and straightened (by a pacified person in a mended digger) and rehung by newly welded hinges on a brand new post without a rotten bottom but….

It’s winter, it’s cold, the ground is very wet and it’s getting dark etc.

So, in the short term we are thrown upon the traditional method…

Bailer twineology…

Actually its a’fusion’ technology — using nylon twine in the traditional way — although don’t forget that nylon has memory (which is more than you can say for the farmer) — It remembers how to undo itself so you should lock the knots — ironically that means reef knots and not Granny knots!

Substitute lower hinge
Gate shortened, opening enlarged — substitute fastening
God-knows-what-knot

The farms around us are particularly tidy and I fear that they are losing the ancient skills!

Here is a detail from a grade two listed traditional sheep fold — note the use of growing, self reinforcing, timber and many different technologies — all with their own integrity!

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Corner of Grade two listed sheep pen!

We try to keep these skills alive in a modern context  such as the algae-prevention modification of our rain water harvester!

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Wrapping the white plastic tank in black plastic prevents algae growth.

 

I am most proud of my four-minute-cratch (patent pending).

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It was erected in four minutes in a hail storm when snow was forecast.  I am particularly pleased with the use of grass collection bags from the lawn mowers to stop the sheep getting their feet stuck and injured when trying to climb in the ends.  The back is formed by the fence, the front is a hurdle and the top is half the oak door of the old pig sty, all held together by, guess what?  Bailer twine!

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Humour, Uncategorized

Sunday Craik – the pity of it all

God spends quite a lot of time in the pub — sometimes he’s there when he’s supposed to be at chapel — that’s what I say to friends who ask where we are bound on a Sunday afternoon when the good folk are heading down the valley to the chapel.

Yesterday there was an added incentive (for the pub, not chapel) — Liverpool were playing Man. City in the League Cup.  It’s not that Alan supports Man. City (he would warm to anyone in competition with Manchester United  — it’s an underdog thing.  The landlord is an avid Liverpool supporter which adds to the fun enormously.

‘Can we have the Rugby on?’ asks Alan as we arrive.

‘There isn’t any!’ snaps the landlord.

‘Wasps are playing against ‘Quins on BT Sport,’

‘Can’t afford BT Sport with the pitiful amount you drink!’

‘Do Wasps have a ‘B’ team? asks Ikey, ‘Bee team’, he repeats, at which point a man in an overcoat, a knitted Balaclava and thick scarf runs into the bar and sexually assaults several ladies, it is the muffled titter running around the room — a tribute to My Dad — it was the only joke he knew!  No one takes any notice — they never did.

The landlord asserts himself by switching on the commentary.  That way he can follow the action despite all the distractions we can throw at him like the full glass of Stella I knock across the domino table due to the excitement of a penalty — it misses Alan almost completely.

As the match progresses the joy of winding up the landlord is irresistible — people who normally have no interest in football whooping with every Man City  tackle and berating the ref for every decision that favours Liverpool —  carried on a wave of affectionate teasing — warmed by our own mass action.  But Liverpool were never meant to lose.

If we want any more beer we had better shut up — during the penalty shoot-out there is a respectful silence — we have probably already gone too far.  The instant the winning Man City goal hits the back of the net the sound is switched off and program turned to Countryfile and someone says how Adam is a ‘really good farmer’ so everyone, relieved to change the subject, can discuss why he never has mud on his boots and where the puddles might have gone and why doesn’t he get a move on and swing that lamb.

 

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Humour, Sheep farming

Mothers and daughters — strong bonds, weak fences

We have weaned our 2015 lambs, and sorted them — with much baaing, a lacerated hand, a butted head, exposure to organophosphates (or similar), marital disharmony, horse-fly attack (despite aforementioned insecticide) and general fouling with mud and excrement — and that was just me..

Now the ewes are in one field and the ram lambs are happily in the boys-field. The ewe lambs are very unhappily in the girls-field. This is bound to lead me to extrapolate extravagantly upon the nature of the mother-daughter bond. The ewe lambs are screaming hysterically and throwing themselves against the double wire fence that separates them from their mums. The mums are lying down taking a well-earned rest and trying not to listen, you can see then clenching their teeth and staring into the middle distance.

Close to the fence but trying not to listen -- the mothers

Close to the fence but trying not to listen — the mothers

As night falls the baaing does not diminish and shortly after 2 a.m. there is a great crescendo and from the house I can hear the lower tones of the adult ewes joining in. I wait, it does not diminish, so I get dressed, grabbing the first garments to come to hand, the torch battery is flat — I stumble out into the starless night (where are all those shooting stars?)

When I get to the source of the din, all the female sheep are gathered around a crisis, all offering an opinion. Two ewe lambs are stuck fast between the two fences that separate lambs from mums; there is an old tree growing there that has pinned them down, resolute in its dimly remembered hedge-duty of separation.

I climb over into the narrow wire cage, ripping my new trousers on the barbed wire and pull the first lamb out backwards by its kicking feet and hug it tight then I carefully hook the lamb’s flailing front limbs over the top wire of the fence avoiding the barbs more successfully than I did with my own bottom (we’re talking 30 wriggling kilograms – the lamb, that is) then I heave. Amazingly it lands like an SAS parachutist, rolling like a pro, regains its feet and in a single movement disappears into the night. The ewes are impressed.

The second lamb is huge and heavy, I apply the same technique and deliver it as a breech from the womb of the old tree but, despite all the huffing and puffing, my strength then fails me. I do not let go; I shout for my assistant… No reply, not even from the dog. The louder I shout, the louder the sheep join in, and the denser is the silence emanating from the sleeping house.

Nothing is more motivating than having no other options, after a little rest, I hook its feet over the top wire and with all my might I heave and the second lamb disappears into the night.

Next morning at first light a morning chorus of ovine distress startles me from slumber but strangely not my spouse. Exploration, slowly as I am strangely stiff, reveals another lamb grabbed by the panicky old hedge. As I approach, the lamb butts at the base of an old fence post which, having rotted in the ground, slides to one side creating a hole and the lamb escapes.

Ewe-lamb trapped between two fences and (bottom right) escape route

Ewe-lamb trapped between two fences and (bottom right) escape route

In the light of day the problem is clear: the newer of the two fences is fine but the old one which it replaced is, though upright, not up to the sudden and unaccustomed onslaught of the mother-daughter bond. Hurling themselves randomly against it the girls have found all the weak spots. It will have to be removed as soon as possible.

Twelve hours later the last roll of liberated fencing wire is rolled towards the barn.

Recycling fence wire - the old will last longer than the new!

Recycling fence wire – the old will last longer than the new!

Remember Gladys ( our ‘should have been left for dead’ lamb — the one with economy ears but huge determination to survive)?  Well, on our final trip to the barn she passes us,  heading after the others, away from the scene and up the hill, far away from the mother’s field, tossing her head as if to say, ‘We’re grown up now — we’re off up the top!’

Gladys -- all weaned and grown-up

Gladys — all weaned and grown-up

My husband turned to me, ‘Did you notice anything odd about those ewe-lambs.’

‘No.’

‘One of them seemed to have testicles…’

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Humour, Trecking

Cadair Idris

Kahlil Gibran wrote that you may appreciate that which you love most in a friend more in his absence — ‘as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.’

Before we climbed Cadair Idris this week-end we, who are related by divorce, stopped to look at it more clearly from the Wynford Vaughan Thomas monument on the edge of the Cambrian ridge of mountains where we live, which faces Snowdonia across the Dyfi valley.

The Three Peaks of Cadair Idris on the Left

The Three Peaks of Cadair Idris on the Left

The car park at Minfforth is guarded by machines that must be placated with money, large sums in small denominations; all around there are people turning out their pockets and emptying  their ruck-sacks onto the still dewy grass, women grovel under car seats and crying children are parted from their pocket money.  The gods or maybe the giant Idris himself takes pity on us and sends down two messengers, wise men who have run to and from the summit before breakfast (2 hours for £2.50), evangelists of physical fitness who press a pound coin into my hand which we add to the other sticky, dog-hairy coins that we have gathered and feed them into the machine.  I anoint my nearly-nephew with midge repellent.

The path is initially steep with stone steps which climb up through Cwm Amarch.

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The stream is swollen with recent rain and there are spectacular waterfalls in the wooded cwm and dappled shade.

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After 300m or so the Cwm opens into a wider basin and we climb on up to Llyn Cau where we resist the temptation of a glacial dip and the greater temptation to fill up our water bottles (there was some discussion here about exactly whose fault it was that one of the water bottles was missing and  which of us would die of dehydration first and would you actually kill for water…)  50m further up the path the third water bottle was found, presumably rummaged into obscurity during the search for money.

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The path goes up to the left from where the above picture was taken and thence skirts around the top of the rock wall around the lake, the peak in the centre is Craig Cwm Amarch (791m) Mount Ham Sandwich in our nomenclature.. From here you can see the whole of the northern half of Cardigan Bay, all the way to Anglesey.

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The intrepid can peek over the edge at the lake below.  The summit is called Pen y gadair, which means the top of the chair, that’s Idris, the giant’s chair — Cadair Idris  (don’t start me on the Welsh language — it likes to change the first letter of words to make it difficult to find them in dictionaries. My chair would be fe nghadair…  I think )

In order to reach the summit we need a pep talk and some motivational  counselling to fortify the nearly auntie as we have to go down and up again and over lots of wobbly scree and boulders with the ancient wobbly knees.

At this point the nearly nephew changes into a mountain goat and disappears.  It becomes eerily quiet.

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Above is the summit.

Here we are at the pinnacle of our achievement –.WP_20150808_059

me and the mountain goat.

Now it’s a gentle walk along the ridge to the third peak Mynydd Moel (863m) and then down the long, steep scree below Scotch Egg Crag and the total annihilation of the goat’s father’s sister’s first husband’s third wife’s knees.

It was six miles, graded hard (by somebody) over 3000 ft up and, I’m sure, at least 10,000 ft down!

The Photographs today are courtesy of T.Q.Beckett (all rights reserved)  I forgot to replace my battery.

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Humour, Racism, Thoughtful

Thames Wash — The Boris Effect?

I am sitting on a slippery leather seat which is angled inappropriately for my personal posterior; it requires more weight and breadth for stability; it has been moulded by myriad larger arses than mine – smokers probably, sitting near the door, not for ease of escape in case of calamity (like me — one eye on the unrolling ribbon of tarmac ahead and one on the little red hammer to smash the escape windows when called upon by cruel fate to do so). No, the usual passenger in this warn National Express coach seat, though placed (like me) for ease of escape, nips out at each stop for a quick drag – a cigarette, one at Shrewsbury, one at Telford, one at Birmingham and a real gasper outside the Coach Station at Victoria.

I have now had a satisfactory and free, unisex wee, or perhaps it was a pee, with a bewildered old lady up from the country and a number of large foreign gentlemen, and now I wait in this sunny travel hubbub to be collected by my daughter, who worries about me getting lost in the metropolis. Secretly I know she thinks that, if left alone to wander the streets, I will provoke personal attack or arrest because of my uncontrollable urge to engage strangers in conversation and to make unwanted eye-contact.

She hugs me then takes me firmly by the arm and steers me into a newsagent’s to top up my oyster card – which I have remembered this time!

I wonder where the poor have gone – the street vendors, the alcoholics, the dog shit, the End-of-the-world-placard-man? London is eerily clean these days (what has Boris done with them all?)  I sniff the strangely pleasant air and we decide to walk by the river, through Battersea Park and to sit on pristine, plumped-up cushions on the steps of a modern pub. Frances goes in to get the drinks and a man in a well ironed shirt (and trousers) comes out to have a look at the front elevation of my pretty daughter’s obscured and un-categorised associate — me.  He realizes instantly that I must be her Mum, he says “Lovely weather,” and goes back in, and we sip local micro-brewery summer ale and watch the gulls, the cormorant, the geese and the helicopter flying up and down the Thames.  A lanky, middle aged man with a shaved head and yellow roller- boots wobbles past and a beautiful girl on a bicycle feeds treats to a little dog in her bicycle-basket.

Phoenix rising in Battersea

Phoenix rising in Battersea

That evening we, my two daughters and I, sit at a pavement table outside a restaurant in Clapham replete with Eritrean food and chat to the staff and I remember… I remember travelling this same road, let me see…

Forty years ago, I was in the back of a maroon Jaguar (the sort John Thaw drove in Morse), tired by two weeks on-duty and nauseated by the smell of leather and spent lighter fuel (everyone smoked everywhere then).  It was a dismal grey dusk with the traffic lights too bright and splintering into the dingy, sooty, half-light. Young black men were standing in groups on the pavement next to the junction when suddenly my, soon to be, father-in-law wound down his window and shouted racial abuse at what he believed to be the indolent unemployed. I cringe as I write this – as I did then; the lights changed and we sped off towards leafy Surrey. As I look back I catch the sad eye of a boy accustomed but still surprised by such unprovoked and vitriolic hatred.

Times have changed.

Thames Wash

Thames Wash

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Hill Farming, Humour, lifestyle

Suddenly Summer!

‘We’ll do that in the Summer!’ we say, ‘In the long balmy days, free of water-proofs and wellies; when the sheep look after themselves and we can enjoy all the things that drew us to this place.’

Summer

Summer

‘We’ll do it after shearing, and after we’ve wormed the ewes and caught all the lambs and sprayed them against “fly strike” and after we’ve immunised them all (it’s too hot to tag their ears yet), and after we’ve sprayed the nettles and cut the thistles (and Alan’s mended the rough cutter — and by the way, the dish-washer’s broken), meanwhile we’ll spray ourselves with midge repellent and cut the thistles by hand — will you sharpen the sickle and the bill hook.

Digger rests, engulfed in Summer

Digger rests, engulfed by Summer

And while our rough cutter waits for Alan  and the digger with its poorly track awaits attention from the mechanic, all around us grass grows, you can almost hear it, and men work through the long days into the nights to cut silage and bale it all before the thunder storms come.  The mechanic rushes from farm to farm to keep the wheels turning.

The bracken, which should have been cut by now, stretches to the sky and spreads to shade the sheep, who far from being relieved by the removal from each of a couple of kilograms of organic insulation and carpet fibre, are now bothered by the sun.

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Seeking shade in summer pasture

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Sheep shadow

They use their bodies to mark out the exact outlines of trees on the hillsides — sheep shadows, and they pant and look at me accusingly as we might ask the Almighty why we have to suffer so at the hand of cruel destiny.

We sheared them on the day before the heat wave struck and as I walked into the first hot summer sun  where they had been lying the buzz was deafening so that we looked about for a cause (continuing the biblical) — a plague of flies had hatched that day and roared in anticipation.

That day we lead them through the woodland to our upper field where the orchids grow and where there is hardly a fly in this shady pasture — like us, they don’t know how fortunate they are.

Orchid in the Summer Pasture

Orchid in the Summer Pasture

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Humour, Travel

Hot Tarmac Addiction?

Our friend Glyn is drowsy with counting sheep, coming up the valley every day, after a day’s work, to be jostled by our impatient flock because this is the time of year that we go gallivanting.

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In the last ten days we’ve travelled 1300 miles (that’s not far –I hear you New World readers say). It’s far enough in this overcrowded island!

We picked our way over the mountain pass to South Wales at walking pace, avoiding the hundreds of road-runners who were jogging up on the hottest day of the year. We gave them wide berth to allow for heat-exhaustion-wobble, weave and collapse while also avoiding the pulses of road racers on two wheels coming the other way (only two lanes – this is Wales) – pelotons of cyclists, who had just crested the summit, had heads down and were hurtling in squadrons, turbocharged with huge potential energy and suicidal intent, lemming like, towards Brecon.

We glanced at the stunning scenery and at the idyllic path on the other side of the valley, made for walkers and wondered what it is that draws humans in such numbers to tarmac. Our musing was ended abruptly by the thud of a discarded plastic bottle flung, elite-runner like, against our windscreen by a mature but plucky lady with exceptional BMI and poor aim, probably due to chaffing.

As we eventually sped away from the last — or rather, the first of the runners and the last of the cyclists, the bikers started to overtake us, flashing past at every opportunity, like when one slows down to turn right! I have a horror of killing a biker and they come to Wales in huge migrations at holiday times: Hell’s Angels – 1950’s re-enactors on vintage Nortons with side-cars – even an intrepid band of ladies, several with L-plates, on Honda ‘50’s almost grinding to wobbly halts on the hills (though that was on the A30 high-speed dual carriageway in Cornwall!)

We made it to Cornwall without fatality, and back.

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Just when we thought we were out of danger, we had to set off again for a family funeral in Scunthorpe – more of that later.

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animal psychology, Humour

Domestic Deity or Just a Damned Cat

The cat sits, ears a point, disdainful of his subjects, on a laundry basket throne or next to the TV.  All eyes upon him, (of course) he gazes at nothing in particular, waiting to be served.  I have never questioned this — I am a cat-person, in his thrall, trained since birth, a hand maiden of the mighty Mog.

‘Don’t get up and feed him the instant he meows!’

‘But he’s hungry.’

‘He’s just a damned cat!’

My husband is not a cat-person — here’s the dilemma — the main cause of tension in our household.

Guinness

Guinness, The Fat Cat, epitomises the power of self-confidence.  He strutted into our house three years ago, stood his ground when the dog rushed up to him. Their noses touched for an instant, the dog was transfixed, then wham, the paw of steel, the dog was dismissed, blooded, dominated.

Guinness moved in with his own household — his man, Midnight.  Cat psychologists say domestic cats are solitary, that is nonsense — Guinness has a butler, his own Jeeves, someone to see to his personal grooming, to suffer fur balls on his behalf, to hunt for him, to taste his food, to intercede with the other servants (me and the dog) and to do his meowing.

Guinness and Midnight

Midnight, (‘now he’s a proper cat!’ says Alan) is The Fat Cat’s batman, they met in a previous life, not in the army, but in prison — prisoner of war camp — Stalag 46, in Brighton, in the war on the Feral Feline Freedom Forces.  The Fat Cat was in charge of escape and very good at it, but so confident was he that he would present himself every morning outside the prison, at the camp commandant’s bungalow for breakfast.  After breakfast he was marched back to the pound where the other prisoners greeted him as a hero ( the Steve McQueen of the Cat Rescue).  He would eat again and sleep all day, Midnight, The Proper Cat, watching his back.

He, The Fat Cat and his side kick, were released on licence to live under house arrest in Worthing, that pit of iniquity (I was chased by a mugger once in that East Sussex town fallen from glory).  Once respectable, it is now a forest of parking meters roamed by drug addicts, prostitutes and cats. Still uncontainable, it was here that he forged links with the underworld — colluding with local foxes, pimps and mini-cab drivers, wandering the streets at night, his were the green eyes under every illegally parked car, his DNA was on every discarded take-away carton.

He came to Wales, under cover — he’s a sleeper, don’t tell anyone.  Urban gangster lying low — some say he worked for a Russian bank, no one knows the full story.  Now he’s free to come and go he mainly does what he does best — he’s a sleeper after all.  Under his protection, Midnight (his faithful lieutenant and proper cat) does the rest — Farm Cats Inc.  (Non-exec. Chairman: Guinness, ‘The Fat Cat’)

Farm Cats Inc. — FC and the Hit-man

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