sweasel.com

I wish you had a ‘tweet’ button so I could share your posts with my 2 followers.

Love your blog, all the best to you and your chickens.

Or maybe, you could make it a ‘cluck’ button.

Mapp is my hero (heroine). She took that needle without a flinch.

If it’d have been me it would have taken a platoon of poltroons to hold me down.

She’s a very good chicken, indeed.

Your ladies are looking marvelous!!! Hope Mapp gets better soon, sick sux. Yes, you need a “cluck” button….

I remember the ’77 Jubilee very fondly. Perhaps with the rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia, it seemed to be blazing sunshine for the whole event. We had a party in our front garden to which the whole street was invited. Weird to think that was 35 years ago. Uncle B will remember Party Sevens of Watney’s Red Barrel, which tasted like earwax. CAMRA had yet to really get off the ground so that was the staple BYOB tipple. I was a bit young to be drinking beer but I remember making a beast of myself on sausage rolls.

I’ve been slowing working my way through the “Midsomer Murders” series on Netflix. Something like 20 episodes were directly or indirectly related to a murder at a or because of some village fete (which they inside on pronouncing “fate”). Take great care – you should be fine, though, as long as you don’t go around telling people you saw something odd and just as soon as you get a chance you’ll be letting the nice policeman know Mrs. Codswallop-Hinton couldn’t possibly have been in the tea tent then because you were looking for her to get her to contribute to the Save Our Canal Bridge charity.

Funny that you should mention it, AliceH. I was going to post that stoaty’s starting to sound like Joyce Barnaby.

AliceH, I thought that was how fête was pronounced? It’s certainly how we were taught to pronounce it in French classes throughout seven long years of secondary education in the US. Well, OK, the long “a” sound was slightly less long than that in fate, but definitely not as short as “fet.” Or, is this one of those UK borrow-word things? Which would make perfect sense. . .I just didn’t know.

You’re right, redd. There’s a touch of Joyce Barnaby about the weasel, which is high praise indeed. Joyce rules.

Gosh, Hark. I just listened to number of audio dictionary versions of fête and most of them were pronounced “fate” (UK and US pronunciations).

I’m certain I learned more of a “fet” (though not quite) pronunciation. This is the closest to the pronunciation my (not) French teacher used. Sounds like saying “fate” while forming the mouth the say “fet”.

Well, my lovely wife and I will celebrate this Friday with a bunch of beers in Manchester (New Hampshire). I mean, anything for a few drinks, and the queen of some weird island is a good excuse for a few more. Hoorj!

What? No snarky posts yet from the King of the Purple Puffy Nipple People of New Zealand yet?

AliceH–sokay. Lord knows my French is pretty much the equivalent of the skeleton of a leaf–anything substantive is beyond me. So, I think we are at one. Oooohhhhmmmm?

Hmmmm let see …. I’m just saving myself.
From my bio-weapons days we were working on a virally deliverable prion protein.
Of course, Sweasle is feeding MRO to her little flock … well done Sweasel!

It is strictly against Defra regulations to feed meat to chickens, so I am in violation of the law here. In my defense, that really is the cat’s plate and his lunch. They just ran him off it.

I suspect the pronunciation is more significant than you might think. Bearing in mind that the common English people tend to be of Saxon lineage and the aristocrats of Norman French — and the two have mingled less down the centuries than you might think — I suspect a good old Anglo Saxon (as they refer to themselves) would disdain correct French pronunciation in favor of an Anglicized version.

There’s a famous old pub in Rye called the Ypres. You can call it “Eep” if you want, but nobody will know what you’re talking about unless you say “Wipers”. Cracks me up.

Rye was sacked and burned by the French several times and had its church bells stolen. They returned the favor and got them back in the following century or so.

To this day, mobs of French schoolchildren on holiday descend on Rye (a tourist town with a lot of shops) like a plague of locusts and shoplift the town dry. We have a friend who works in a shop there who told us lurid tales of disdainful, smelly Frenchmen.

They will never, EVER make a proper union of this mess.

What will you be doing on the entertainment committee, Sweas? Playing banjo? That should liven things up somewhat.

Man, I can’t wait for this thing to be over. All this bunting is doing my tits in.

Shimmying up a ladder hanging bunting, I suspect.

Fukushima

http://news.msn.co.nz/worldnews/8476915/woman-finds-two-headed-bird-with-three-beaks

WE always had a few ‘banty’ chickens when I was growing up. Great-grandma loved hers. That said, I don’t believe she ever fed them off a china plate.

MC

My daughter posted a photo of “Brit Kats” on FB today…she says the whole country’s gone mad for Her Maj, and the American girl is loving it. I’ll be there a month late for all the fuss, but I hope I can still buy Brit Kats.

Setting my alarm for WBT!

Fiesta!

It appears in all sorts of subtle places, Nina. Kingsmill bread quietly renamed itself Queensmill for the duration. There’s bunting EVERYwhere out here in the country (yes, we stuck a few Union Jacks in the hedge). Reports of the British Caliphate come from people who live in horrible inner cities.

Sadly, at least down our way, it’s looking to be wet for the festivities. See if you can catch Sunday’s flotilla on TV…that should be awesome, rain or not.

My mother called them banties, mostly cajun. She called self-important little men banty roosters.

Those plates came from China, but that’s the only sense in which they are China. I got them, 4 for a buck, at Ocean State Job Lot. That’s the last survivor.

Yep, ran into tesco for a few things at noon today and it was stupid with people. They were parked in the lanes of the parking lot and it took me about 10 minutes to find a place to park, good gravy. But yeah, the entire country seems to be going mad for the jubilee. i think it’s funny. Of course, here in Hull, not many people care since those who are ethnically british (which, oddly enough, I am) are in the minority but the city council is more than making up for the lack of British pride in the local citizenry.

I’m still amazed that the Brits could have had such a long bloody civil war to rid themselves of the monarchy only to invite them back 10 years later. That’s nuts!

Hell, redd, I’m amazed that we Americans, who’s ancestors died screaming in the bloody mud so that we didn’t have to give a shit about the royal wedding, still flock like subjects to every discussion of the royal family – the diamond Jubilee! The Royal Wedding! Princess Di! What are the royals up to today? Who gives a fuck?

I don’t understand it, but i guess that just adds to the long list of things I don’t understand.

Oh, and stoaty, I’m sorry to say this, but I just lost a little respect for you – you took a freaking chicken to the vet? Seriously?

You know that they actually kind of taste good, too, right? And throwing her into the stock pot would be a lot cheaper than a vet bill? Or do you guys get free vet services over there, too?

Comment from redd
Time: June 1, 2012, 3:59 pm

I’m still amazed that the Brits could have had such a long bloody civil war to rid themselves of the monarchy only to invite them back 10 years later. That’s nuts!

I think the reversion to monarchy [which was the most common form of government] was based in large part on Richard Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell’s son and successor as Lord Protector. Oliver had the history, force of personality, and reputation to hold things together and run them. Richard had no military experience, had taken little part in government until he was named as Oliver’s successor, and was not a natural leader.

England was broke, and like the later French Louis XVI had to call a Parliament. That did not work out well for him either, and he was forced to cut the spending on the New Model Army. Which NMA deposed Parliament. Eventually things were so chaotic that Richard had to flee to Europe and what passed for a government asked Charles II to return.

I think that they were looking for a symbol of unity to try to prevent a return to a civil war. It seemed to work, because while the Stuarts did not go totally peacefully, the path to the Glorious Revolution was relatively bloodless outside of Ireland. And no succession since has been contested with military force in Britain.

Subotai Bahadur

I really admire Queen Elizabeth, she’s been a wonderful person from the very start, and someone you can admire. The institution though… its basically just welfare for the very rich and pompous, and it probably would be best to just fold it all away after she dies. I mean, look at the alternative.

Ouch Goober… I can so totally see why she took the chickens to the vet… they’re not food, they’re pets. You don’t eat pets, even if they are “food”.

Anyway, The Brits, from what I understand have lost a lot of respect for the QEII after the whole princess di thing. No one seems to want charles but there’s hope with william and harry.

I was trying to explain to some aquaintences that we have a strange attraction for the royal family, an attraction we really don’t have for any other monarchy. And I know if that if Mom were to take these Brit Kats back to the states people would LOVE them. Even though I’m sure our founding fathers would shake their heads and sigh.

I wish they had the Queen in an open barge being rowed down the Thames, Tudor Style!, as part of the celebration.

“It is strictly against Defra regulations to feed meat to chickens” Whaaaaa?!?!?!? That’s chooks mostest favourite food! You oughta see mine when I bring out a pork chop bone, slice of ham or beef rib. Like little sharks they are, clucking and tweeing with glee.

What kind of cruel, unhinged yahoo would force an animal – against its will – to be a vegan?!?

Sickness, I tells ya.

[Goober — even here in California, one doesn’t eat family…]

Nothing funnier than a hen running with a wing bone in her pecker!

Something for SWeasle.
Flick through to about 10-ish if you are bored.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zinrptrdLk&feature=plcp

Great photos of the day: http://goo.gl/dOMMs

Is it too much to ask to see photos of Mapp, Lucia, Violet, and Vita wearing little tiaras???

The more I look at that photo, the more it screams out: CORONATION CHICKEN(S)!!

The ECW was less about getting rid of the monarchy than of getting rid of one particular monarch – with a generous dose of religious excess mixed in. The Roundheads having taken over didn’t really find a way to govern lawfully; the Long/Rump Parliament never faced a new election. Then Cromwell and the New Model Army decided they could just run things. Which they did very annoyingly. When Noll died, there was no “constitutional structure” that anyone cared for – so they reverted to the monarchy.

More remarkable perhaps is the return of the Spanish monarchy after fifty years, despite the repudiation of the last reigning monarch, and the indirect association of monarchism with Franco.

France has a weird history too – France twice overthrew a Bourbon king and then enthroned a Bonaparte emperor. Then after the Revolution and Napoleon I, the Bourbons returned for 33 years. (Though to be sure they came back with foreign armed support.)