Tuesday........

I know ...twice in two days, I shall need to go and have a lie down!

I've said it before and no doubt will say it again ...these grandchildren are lovely little folk but the bugs they bring with them are virulent little devils. After copping 8 colds from darling little T over the winter he is now wanting to share his tummy bugs......arrgghhhhhhhhhh! Meanwhile the culprit has left the scene and is well basted in sunscreen and up to his knees in sand on a Spanish beach and does he care? ...does he hell! I remember bemoaning this to a friend ...he shared my thoughts ...'We had always been so fit until the grandchildren csme along ...we really thought we were dying!' So I am 'off sick' and wandering around trying to catch up on mundane things, having a little sit down....a read here, a potter in the garden...A DIVE to the bathroom....another cup of weak tea.....and off we go again...

However it is beautiful in my garden at the moment...'garden' did I say that word? Dont be daft...this isn't a proper proper garden as wot I would wish for ...there are no defined areas, no veggies, haven't got a clue what half the plants are. Strange really that we live in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty' and yet the soil is basically toxic spoil. The miners had gardens, we've read about their allotments .....ah ha but they weren't down at this level, they were much higher in what is now woodland. The old maps that have the field names on show 'garden patches' high on the hillside with fields nearby labelled 'The sky high field' 'five day math' and the very mysterious 'slatterns graves'.

In my meanderings yesterday I took some pictures of the garden in the sun, and of course my 'garden ornaments '....while neighbour that hates chickens with a passion is at work, I let my little flock of Buff orpingtons across the track into the garden with me. They are so funny its as though they know they musn't linger on the track...I open their gate, they tear across and through the gate and they stay until tea time and then we do the process in reverse. The big boys play in the duck's water bath, then they all have a zzzzzzzzzz in the sun.

So its another day at home ...I did ask the parents of that germ infested heap of grandson....'How long exactly did T have this bug?' ...'Oh only about six days....' came the blithe reply as they waved goodbye on their way to Spain. ...Whaaaat! SIX days ...fanberludytastic... d'you know I'm sure I would get less germs snogging one of the sheep than a cuddle with T! Well I am on day six so I hope I will be back to work tomorrow....I'll just put another toilet roll or two in the fridge ...and see you in another four weeks...........

quick dust round needed....

From the dates it appears I haven't set foot in here for a month! A whole 4 weeks! I haven't however been sitting about contemplating my navel ....far from it in fact.

We have been out and about 'sprotting' around the locality looking for bits of useful history, taking pictures by the memory card load, walking ...usually in the rain ...why does it rain on a Wednesday when that is the night for designated 'walks on the wild side'?... and a street party ...yes another one!

It was a hot Saturday afternoon when with a friend we made our way over to the Kingdom of Trelystan for a wander round Mountainear's lovely garden and a peep into Trelytsan Church. What a 'peep' that turned out to be. What an amazing jewel that is, from the moment the gate on the roadside is opened to the track across the field to the centuries old Church surrounded by some of the oldest gravestones I have ever seen, my imagination ran riot. Where did the congregation come from? Why here? Why up on this hill in the middle of nowhere is there such a Church? As they key in the door turned and the door opened slowly I was craning my neck to see inside. It was dark, the windows are so small and quite high. The roof is almost folding in on itself, rods stretch from side to side whether to carry the heavy old lamps or to stop the roof moving in I'm not sure. The huge stone flags on the floor would have a long old story to tell. The single stained glass window with the most amazing shades of blue twinkled in the sunlight. No pale wishy washer colours for the Kingdom of Trelystan ...no fear ...more like 'lets sock it to 'em' vivid blues and scarlets, emeralds and gold.

There was a barrel organ with golden pipes near the altar, according to the written description it had a repertoire of 20 hymns. I wander what they are. The thought of fairground type music accompanying olde English/Welsh hymns started to make me chortle.

We stood quietly, reading avidly all the information we could gather.....behind us something rustled and moved...light footfalls like a child skipping...we turned ... stared at each other with eyes like saucers...not a word was spoken ....oh well...time to go.

Back out in the summer sun we read inscriptions on gravestones that were beautifully carved in weathered stone, a family of buzzards wheeled and mewed high above us in the clear blue sky and we wandered about those who had been here before us.....

Sunday................

A Sunday afternoon and I persuaded the shepherd to veer from his normal route to let me take some atmospheric pictures along a lonely valley. Once this valley was busy, a route for monks to the nearby Priory, more recently working men on bicycles going to the mines, now just sheep bleat and a silage harvester whined in the distance like an angry wasp. The smell of honeysuckle fell over us as a sweet veil. We stopped and started all up the road with me either climbing up gates or standing on the side of the truck to catch a view of the Devil's Chair from a different view point. Just below those jagged rocks there were once poor communities trying to hang on to the valley sides in tiny stone cottages built by hand with fields the size of a large lawn. They are all gone now and the cottages have all but returned to the earth ...ashes to ashes etc.

Wednesday................

Another wet Wednesday walk on the wild side found the intrepid band gazing into the depths of a long mining tunnel hidden by undergrowth. We searched for a cottage ...I saw it last year ...it has gone now. The rock faces towered above us as we stood quietly listening to a stone dropping two hundred feet down an open mine shaft. Two rows of barbed wire are the only hint of a hazard. A flock of coal black sheep jumbled around in the lime green bracken below us as we clambered down the rocks to the old farm at the bottom. They have gone now, the farmers, they wont be needing their boots again, they are there under the stairs waiting for warm feet that never come. Somebody has been in and rooted through the detritus left behind, looking for things to sell on no doubt. The roses still flower around the door and a pot of lilies stand on the step but the farmers have gone now and they wont be coming back.

Saturday dawned fine but rain was forecast ...there was much scurrying and to-ing and fro-ing along the track as dishes, trays and indgredients all swapped about. The sun held on and the rain never came and by 7pm one of our amazing street party gatherings was underway. There was a theme chosen this time for the first time ...The Wild West...very fitting. Now our street parties are becoming rather well known in the area and before we knew it there was a crowd of cowboy hats and boots that would have done credit to a scene from a John Wayne western. But the prize had to go to the clever couple who put a different interpretation on the basic cowboy and Indian theme. She was resplendent in a beautiful green and gold brocade sari number, with a golden shawl and a red caste spot straight from Mrs Kumar's family tree whilst her husband attired as Bob the Builder - hard hat and rigger boots, tool belt and claw hammer was the original cowboy builder. Did we laugh!

There were little dots running around in home made fringed tunics with feathers in headbands looking as though they had just come off the North American plain. The inevitable bonfire was lit as the dusk fell and the older children built little fires in brick hearths and toasted slices of bread. There were hilarious party games involving string and large bolts and tubes of cardboard. There were choruses of 'happy birthday' for the two birthday boys , a neighbour was 60 and my youngest was 17. As the crowds diminished the circle gravitated to the fire and the singing of good old fashioned country songs started...I could still hear them as I fell asleep on my pillow...apparently they were still going strong at 3am.....I wasn't!

For Sale or Not For Sale?

I get to somewhere mid March and I am so fed up with wind and rain, mud, mud and more mud that the 'For Sale' sign starts to be just a phone call away. For at least three months I do not see my home in daylight ...I wander about like a mole crossed with an olde English sheepdog peeping through my unkempt fringe wishing fervently for tarmac and sodium lights ...then all of a sudden...spring charges in with violets in the hedge rows, woodpeckers hammering like mad things and the cuckoo joining in the chorus.

The grass turns from a muddy mess to stuff lions could hide in within days. Suddenly the whole world is bright green and pulsating. The birds are deafening, a blackbird sings his heart out in the tree opposite the bedroom window and the pigeons coo themselves into a frenzy. Now I know why I am here on this windy hillside facing Wales .....because it is simply beautiful. We haven't had a meal indoors since last Friday. Bodran's clingy clangy wind chimes gently peal in the breeze sounding like the Angelus in a little Irish town.

I remember the first spring 11 years ago. Down the track a musical family would practice their instruments each evening sitting in the middle of the field. Well would you want five kids practising brass instruments in the house? No ...nor me! We always eat outside when we can and would sit listening transfixed to the music coming from the long grass. Couldn't see them ..only hear them. On band practice nights the same five children would walk up to the village hall, still practising as they walked. They never spoke...just played as they passed and we thought we were living in the faery lands of Mary Webb for sure.

The houses along the track host two rather large street parties during the year in June and November. On Saturday we had a 'bit of a do' to arrange the June event. Needless to say with a huge pot of communal curry, naan bread, home made pizza and a couple of school dinner sized puddings a party was born. The wine flowed, the sun dipped over Cader Idris, the guitar came out and ably led by the junior school teacher the singing started. 'The Fields of Athenry' turned into 'Wiv My Pit Boots On' and 'Babby's Yed' all mixed up with a couple of Abba favourites, The Seekers got a look in and a couple of hymns crept in as well. The youngest partygoer was our grandson of 13 months whilst the eldest was about 75. As the dusk fell all the children from the eight different families gravitated to a groundsheet under the holly tree and with two black labs as pillows they curled up like a large nest of puppies.

I sat talking to E who just marvelled at the scene in front of us ...how all the children had played together, how the little ones had been looked after by the big ones. How safe it all was, the families all intermingled yet all at ease. Even the pets were all there, dogs and cats lay under the collection of mismatched piebald chairs....just how it should be.

No I dont think I'll make that call for that 'For Sale' sign just yet ...well not until next March anyway....just remind me that I do get through it ...just like Christmas...yuk!

Mother Nature and a gooseberry bush

Remember at Sunday School or in the infants class when the topic turned to the Bible and God and you could nearly 'see' a big old man with a long white beard and a kindly rosy face like everybody's grandad. So...who was his wife? Mother Nature of course! I can 'see' her now ...a cross between Hannah Hauxwell and my mum. A force to be reckoned with indeed. Anyway during the last few weeks of lambing and weather and gardens and soggy lawns me and Her have had a few set to's ....they take me straight back to being 15 and not allowed to go to the dance when ALL my friends were...and my question is still the same now as then ...'WHY?'

We moved into this hovel on the hillside in April 1997 and the following spring I bought some lovely plants from a plant sale at Bridgnorth market. Forsythia ..it flowers, Mock Orange...it flowers and smells, Golden Buddleia...it flowers, proper geraniums...they flower and have spread and a camellia...nothing! Nice leaves... shame about the flowers. It has even been mentioned with posterity in a local version of gardener's questiontime...too dry, wrong soil, wrong position...sod it! I left it there on the corner of the flower border and swore at it profusely over the years...threatened it with the bonfire, watered it with the hosepipe with great force ...all to no avail.

For a similar amount of years I have also been fighting with a gooseberry bush that insisits it WILL grow near the front door in a crack in the front path. I have cut it down, weedkillered it, creosoted the stump, boiling water the lot! One poor drunken friend fell in it one hot August night as she left...could never work out why she was covered in long scratch marks the next day.

Last year in a particularly fed up moment I uttered those fateful words ....'OK, OK you can stay....I'm fed up with trying to eradicate you'...BUT Mother Nature can we have a bit of co-operation here? If I let that swine of a thorny bush stay right by the front door, in everybody's way could you at least do something about old misery down there and let's have a few flowers?

They exist not three feet apart ....Gooseberry bush larger than ever, loads of flowers this year, bumper crop expected ...dozens of legs WILL be scratched. People will wonder why this batty woman has a gooseberry bush by the front door...'what a stupid place to have a gooseberry bush!'. I've heard 'em say it!

Camellia however ...wait for it.....covered in dark red flowers...for the first time in 11 years! Good old Mother Nature...awkward old cuss!

The end is nigh!

Only three mothers left to produce and by the looks of them they aren't in any particular hurry..August will do. So tomorrow it's back to the paying job...proper clothes and shoes with heels. That fortnight went past with the speed of light...well for most of it on four hours sleep a night ...perhaps that's why it went fast.

I saw the saddest sight last night as we fed the sheep. The ewes with the lambs that I have been topping up with bottles had decided they didn't like their little field and had wormed their way through the fence into the big field. They all raced back to be fed of course ...when they had finished they gathered up their offspring and left following the sheep track back up to the big field. They never called for Big Bob, Nelly Knock Knees or Little Wilbur. They never even looked back. We watched as the three little lost souls looked at each other a bit bewildered , they had always had a mother here before to run to ..but now nothing. They made their way into the little shelter under the wall for the night ...first time alone.

I woke up in the night hoping the fox hadn't called on her way home from the valley.

At 5:30am I held my breath as we approached the field ..out of the little shelter came three hungry little souls..looks like this is their 'lot' now.....fed and happy together they were back in their shelter before you could recite 'baa baa black sheep' ...I know ...its survival of the fittest and all that...but their little faces last night when they realised their miserable mothers had just gone. Sheep ...who'd have 'em?

Finally, for I may be gone a little while, some pictures from our day out with purple people last week......

Yes the flowers are real and the sky was that blue and the happy gang on the bridge at Dingle Nursery.

l-r ..Woozle, ElizM, Mountainear, CCA and Bodran

Big Bob and boiler suits!

Still not suceeded with Big Bob .....his mother will simply not give in and feed him. He was delivered Friday lunchtime, I had to ring the shepherd to come and do the business. Despite sitting in the field all morning from 8am watching for my moment to wade in it never came and I could see she was starting to get distressed. It took the two of us to sort out the eight legs of jumbled up twins and when eventually the first one was delivered we both said ...'Blimey thats a big 'un!' A bit more untangling of head and legs and Big Bob flopped unceremonially onto the wet grass....he was huge. The shepherd left me as soon as mother and twin sons were in a warm pen and she was licking them both as though her life depended on it. Although the eldest soon staggered to his wobbly legs poor old Big Bob hadn't got a hope ...his legs just were not strong enough to hold him up. By this time all mother's attention was on her standing son and soon she left Big Bob alone in the corner.

I left them alone for a while in the hope that he would struggle up but no. Poor old Big Bob ...his first journey in a vehicle was in my coat in the boot of the car as I brought him home to the dog bed and the heat lamp. Labrador surrogate mum Kim always has to wade in here to help ..she carried on licking him where his mother had left off and after a couple of tube feeds of colostrum straight into his tummy and the heat of the infra red lamp he began to take notice. Soon sucking from a bottle but as for standing up ...not a hope. He was like a giant frog ...and sat quite happily in the dog bed under the lamp. A bit of physiotherapy was called for and I gently massaged his very long legs to get them stronger.

He stood for the first time on Saturday ...but would do the splits at a moments notice. Grandson Toby arrived .....he sat on the step transfixed at watching this wooly creature trying to walk, especially as it is an art he is only just getting the hang of. Toby chortled, lamb answered and they both wobbled round the kitchen floor, a bit like a very bad attack of country dancing.
Big Bob went back to the sheep shed ...sitting on my knee looking out of the windows. Sadly his mum had forsaken him ...sometimes they remember they had twins and if they talk to each other in that strange little grunting way you know you are home and dry....not this time. He bellowed at her and she said ....'sod off!'

Every four hours we have a performance fit for a circus as one of us gently traps mother and re introduces Big Bob to her feeding machinery ...she doesn't like it one little bit. She flinches and bucks like a stung pony but he hangs on in there...I don't know who will give in first, her or us but one way or another it wont be Big Bob!

Eldest son, partner and grandson came up to the fields the sunny afternoon we had last week ...yes there was only one ...I sort of noticed. Toby smiled and laughed as he stroked the hard woolly bodies of the smallest of the lambs. T had arrived beautifully smart in brown linen trouses and a buttercup yellow top, make up, hair done exactly right. Young mum out with confidence ...get the picture?

As we cooed over Toby and the lambs I noticed a familiar sight in the hedgerow ...a ewe in labour. We watched from a distance for a while and as it was obvious she was not going to deliver without assistance I crept accross. T came with me. I made to hold onto the ewe ...she decided to run away ...knowing I had got to stay hanging on I yelled to T ...'grab her head!' I hit the ground and was dragged like a rag doll across the field but T launched herself and with a blood curdling cry grabbed the errant sheep by the neck and sat astride her. Within two minutes we had delivered twins and gently removed ourselves from the birthing scene where mum and twins got to know each other in the warm sun.

We stood up, brushed ourselves down and turned to look at the rest of the flock only to realise there was another little bergler doing the same performance behind us. We had to reassemble and do it all over again. As we got up and brushed ourselves down for the second time T looked down at her once immaculate linen trousers and yellow top.....'Can I have a boiler suit for next time please?' Needless to say son and grandson had left the arena to the professionals and were asleep in the car!

I sometimes wonder what on earth the girlfriends of my three sons must think as they become aquainted with our strange ways, weird animals and the lambing field! Bless 'em!

Only 'ewe'...........or me -v- Mother Nature

Yes I am still in the lambing shed ...only three to go in the ante natal field. In the post natal fields the lambs are starting to group and play along the hedgerow like all healthy lambs should. I defy anybody not to smile when they spring into the air and skitter away looking for a playmate to play King of the castle with on a lump of turf.

The characters however are still in the special care shed and only use the paddock surrounding the shed. Mothers lacking in milk with two hefty lambs sigh audibly when I appear with the bottles...they just never give the mothers any peace to make milk. There are two sets of them and one poor little lamb whose mother simply never did come to her milk. She adores her little knock kneed daughter with a passion but simply can't feed it. In a big commercial flock all these little 'problems' would have passed away by now ..but we aren't commercial, I dont suppose that today we are even 'viable', we were once, but not now, its just a hobby and no doubt the day will dawn when we will have to seriously consider whether it is sensible to carry on but until that day I will continue in my daily pitting of wits against Mother Nature....and we will have a collection of lambs that we refer to as the 'travelling wilberries'

Good old Mother Nature ...the survival of the fittest and all that. This year with a poor wet cold spring the ewes simply havent had the grass to make oodles of milk and you can see them making the choice when the lambs are born as to which one is the strong one, the one that will feed the quickest, the one that stands up first .....then if we didn't interfere they would walk off and leave MN take its course. Some we win ...some she will cheat us on ...she doesn't always fight fair. N delivered a set of triplets, S, M and L in size. At the very same time another mother produced a single ...to try and help out a bit N took a triplet (Wilbur) to the single mum rubbed the afterbirth over both of them and she was happy enough......fed both of them. Two days later she realised she had been had and began lamb abuse big style. Meanwhile original mum fast asleep in the straw suffocated M ...not for one moment thinking it would work I grabbed Wilbur and tied his dead brother to his back put him in with the mum and lo and behold she took Wilbur back. Poor Wilbur, he had funny feet...it was as though he was running about on his wrists, but with daily physio and numerous bottles he is now as fine as the runt of the litter can be.

Good old 'Wotabitch' from the post below ....she hated her single lamb...never mind twins, decided she had done her bit last year and that was it. It took five days to gently persuade her that her daughter was in fact a worthy cause. One late night I was holding her while her daughter fed ...it was as though she was being stung by a bee on the botty...up she jumped ....landed me and the lamb flat on the floor, the torch went out....and there we were groping around in the dark.....she learnt a few new words that night. Eventually she gave in and accepted her fate but when she went out in the field she wouldn't stop running...lamb at foot she just has to run. All the time.


When I return to the paying job next week I shall be going with badges of honour... I am black and blue with bruises, not a finger nail left, chapped hands and last night to cap it all I shut my hand in the door of the truck......added to which I am fed up with the daily dose of rain, wet clothes and the mud .......oh dear... the mud. It has been hard work this year, how on earth we managed to wallpaper the hall, stairs and landing two years ago during lambing fornight I shall never know. I had ideas to finish the bathrooms during this fortnight but I am having difficulty just keeping up with the washing and cooking...more mealtimes than meals ...a sure sign its lambing time. The good side to it however is the fresh air, the non stop exercise ..I have lost pounds....and the job satisfaction...second to none when it goes right and I can look Mother Nature in the eye and say 'would you agree to a draw?'