Dogs, Chickens and Vintage China

I'm feeling a little fuzzy this morning, last night young Mr Newman turned up and we spent an evening in the yurt swapping stories and drinking homemade wine. Suffice it to say that if you meet up with Mark ask him to tell you the story about the German nightclub / rave in the early nineties. I had heard it before but I nearly wet myself, again, Helen however hadn't and I'm not sure she's recovered yet. I told Mark about the famous Butcombe prowler. During the week one of our neighbours had interrupted one of the unwashed in the process of trying to nick their ride-on lawnmower and an email had gone round the village telling people to lock up their garages and sheds and not leave stuff out. This evening when we had gone out to the yurt I had opened the door to be confronted by the lawnmower, now I don't normally keep the lawnmower in the yurt but I had been cutting the grass in the field with the hand mower last week as the ride-on has died and I'd left it i...

I had a call from Mark Newman in the week and he wanted to sleep in the yurt on the weekend. We were intending to take it down for the winter but decided to leave it up and make a night of it on Saturday. I called Cath and Lyndon and asked whether they fancied coming over, having a meal, vast amounts of alcohol and sitting round the fire until the early hours. Once it was all arranged I resumed my normal pottering around the garden. Back to putting stepping stones into the chicken pen somewhat impeded by the idiot chickens who are determined to inspect everything I do as closely as possible, especially Spacker who sat in the hole that I was making for the paving slab, on the paving slab, in the barrow and momentarily on my back when I was trying to manoeuvre the paving slab into place. The others congregated on the barrow and provided commentary getting very annoyed with me when I dumped soil into the barrow and then getting very excited as they had something new to pick over. ...

Last Sunday I was intending to go for a bike ride with Paul Holyday through the new twin tunnels bike path in Combe Down. What with one thing and another we didn't make it as Pauls third eldest had announced a burning need to take up rugby the week before and had promptly been picked for a match on Sunday. I spent Sunday mooching about in a sort of disconsolate way, putting stepping stones in the chicken pen to try and make the coming winter a bit easier. The pen turns into a heaving morass of mud and chicken shit and is the cause of many an argument about who is letting them out or putting them away. At least with some paving slabs to walk on it won't be quite so horrific. We made a decision that we would do our bike ride after work on Tuesday. Paul messaged me and there was a protracted thread trying to establish where exactly I had parked the van so we could meet up. I had to meet Paul at 1520 and my van was only ten minutes away so I had a leisurely ride over and wait...

I woke up this morning to find a large llama in the field. It was trying to dismember the bunting around the yurt, the chickens were going mental and Henry was doing his best to bark himself into an early grave. The idiot chickens woke me up, closely followed by the little hairy git who was barking and yelping at the same time. I jumped out of bed and looked out of the window, my first thought was there must be a fox in the garden, but no, over in the field was a large white llama calmly eating the bunting around the yurt. I goggled somewhat thinking that maybe the TIA's had returned unbeknownst to me and were causing hallucinations. Fuck, any second now the blasted animal was going to start on the yurt proper. I hopped desperately around the bedroom managing somehow to get both feet into one leg of my combats and promptly falling over my boots. I eventually sorted myself out and legged it downstairs, Henry was doing a sort of rubber ball impression in front of the patio doors ...