dead hens and conkers

This week, Felix mourned his favourite chick, Charlotte. The f*cking Fox. Yes. Again. We found her after half a day searching; floating downstream with puncture marks in her chest. Felix's grief knew no bounds (yet again). He howled. Another black chick (luckily a cock so no great loss) also vanished without trace (yes, heartless me - what did I say about the giving of names?! Ha!)

Felix carried the empty dead Charlotte-less thing to it's quickly dug hole and I had to screech to my dh to be careful not to dig anything rotten up - cats, guinea pigs, other chickens, they are all higgledy piggledy and hastily buried in this deathly spot, I effing know I effing know! he shouted back, not pleased to be burying yet more of our unlucky livestock. Fe tenderly lay her in the final resting place. Then he set to. Found just the right stone in the stream, let it dry and took his chalks and sticks, flowers etc to make her a proper grave. We all stood around at his wishes, like true mourners. She certainly was a nice fluffy white thing and almost at point of lay, how I wished it had been her mother instead who was far past her laying prime. Felix seemed much cheered by his efforts and Esmé heartily pretended to cry (and laughed a bit too). It reminded me of a scene in a novel once read whereby a child at pet's graveside says, 'now come on boys, pretend to cry!' or something similar and I wondered too if Esmé and her forced fake grief/joy were perhaps scary early signs of psychopathic tendencies. Creepy.





Jollier times were had collecting conkers and thwacking chestnut trees with giant sticks in order to collect many hundred more than we shall ever need. We can never have enough it seems and now vast piles of them spill from forgotten baskets in the hallway. It's all about the collecting (and dh being forced to smile whilst carrying The Beauty's pink-basketed conker haul).

















Elsewhere in the kitchen rose hips wait to be transformed and little hands helping as always with baking (esp when there may be raisins to steal).





The little sad bit that stole into my heart though was this: the one now chick less mother I saw whilst dolloping out leftover breakfast porridge into the grass the next morning. She did this classic mother hen thing of clucking frantically to her now gone chick to signal 'food!'. Then rushed forwards, picking a bit up and crumbing it for her babe. No chick dashed in with pecking beak. I stood and watched until other hens clucked in, scoffing and screeching. The mother, a little lost, tucked in slowly to her breakfast too.

In the end.



~~~~ R.I.P Charlotte (fat white chick on far right) ~~~~

holiday III :: castle sands and around town

This is the sheltered tiny beach, grit instead of sand and a million and one pebbles, rocks and angles and all. I love some pictures of Felix I took there, just the one here though. They show him exactly how he truly is: absorbed so easily, happy in his own company and skin - in his own space. He so easily dreams. I admire these qualities greatly.











Around town and on our daily walks here and there (usually to and from beaches). See the distant students in the middle of cycling boys? Some really do wear those hilarious foppish gowns that billow importantly behind them in the wind. They have this funny thing: first year students must wear the gowns covering both shoulders, in the second year one is permitted to wear it from one shoulder and in the third hanging from two... I suppose those taking a forth year must have it trailing half way down their backs. The idea (my dh tells me) is that as the years progress, students shrug off academic ignorance. I am laughing typing this (not that you'd know) because of the disgusted and sickly look on my dh's face as he told me this (he was once a student here) and in due course hated all such pomp and ponce. I asked tongue in cheek, so did he have a gown still? Pah. Never did. Or rather was bought one and sold it in the student union for a tenner in order to buy in another round..... this is the man who's student days, I believe, consisted solely of playing rugby and drinking beer from his own shoe. Anyway, lots of memories for him here that I get him to make me laugh with :)

holiday II :: west sands

This is the vast expanse of beach that whips you into submission. You need a hat I reckon, for most of the year. Glorious skies, miles of sand gradual changing texture. Not one pebble, nor many shells but of the long razor variety. Sitting here at home surrounded by trees it's hard to remember I was just there. I love seeing so much sky at once. You can feel you are flying, even with feet planted firm. The whole outward exuberance of physicalness that happens on the windswept beach means simultaneous inward turnings and musings of self. I get as blown away in my heart as I do in body. The sea turns me into a hopeless romantic, see?



...for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea
~ E.E Cummings

autumn holidaying I :: the harbour

We've been to Scotland. It's the same place we go every year (even pre-children my dh and I went here, largely (erm, make that utterly and because) it's free! But it's great. Really great. I love how my kids have this mental repertoire of what they want to do, from what they remember doing the previous year. Which means we do exactly the same things each year. For us, at home, land locked on the Welsh border, just being by the sea and doing nothing at all would be quite enough. Is quite enough. The drive (oh lordy, two days either end of the holiday) means once we are parked up and unpacked we lock the car and don't get back in until the holiday is over. The sheer amount of walking means end of day flopped outness, that lovely sort; scented with salt and wind (and sometimes rain, it's Scotland after-all).



The holiday was spent on the three favourite beaches, each with their own moods and feel: one grazes from the old castle walls and is a tiny pile of gritty sand and rock but has a pool slashed into the rocks to skim stones and is sheltered from winds. Another is curved in by the harbour wall and houses magnificent rock pools at one end, the harbour at the other. The final is a huge wide expanse of sand, dry and pale yellow, dunes and grasses, stretching to biscuit flat wetness that goes on just about forever when the tide is out. Which to pick from each day was our main question. Or which first....