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Hap-py New Year!

We didn’t make it to midnight. We didn’t try, even. We opened a bottle of excellent English sparkling wine at 8:30 and called it a New Year’s Eve.

Spent today mooching around the house, which is EXACTLY my hope for 2024. To be perfectly fair to me, it’s been high winds and hard rain for a week – absolutely no chance to do anything else.

Happy 2024, y’all!

January 1, 2024 — 7:13 pm
Comments: 3

I’ll take his word for it

I gather Uncle B’s fruitcake was a resounding success. I’ll have to take his word for it.

Happy Boxing Day everyone. Go outside, look up – there’s the most amazing moon tonight.

December 26, 2023 — 7:18 pm
Comments: 7

We’re having a normal one

He found it! The absolute madman – found it!

We do Christmas as an evening meal, so if you’ll excuse me, I have rolls to proof. I hope everyone’s day was everything you wanted and you finally got that pony/motorbike/train set you’ve asked for every single year.

Merry Christmas!

December 25, 2023 — 6:57 pm
Comments: 5

Happy solstice!

I know what you’re thinking – the Winter Solstice is the 21st. Well, I got all sorts of results from a search, but most agreed it falls on the 22nd in our neck of the woods this year. Stonehenge was covered in the usual LARPing hippies.

Solstice is important to me because chickens. My life revolves around moving chickens – mostly roosters – into and out of chicken runs. On the shortest day (ahem, today) the last chicken voluntarily goes in at around 3:30 and on the longest day it’s more like 9:30. What happens in between is similarly compressed or expanded.

Tomorrow, we pick up the turkey (it was an eye watering £75 this year) and a few other bits and pieces, and then we’re done. See you on the other side!

December 22, 2023 — 7:27 pm
Comments: 11

Admire my festive holiday blister

Glue gun glue is hot, y’all. In fairness to me, I did know that, even though this was my first time using one. What I didn’t know was that it was going to drip through the middle of the wreath onto my flesh.

Weasel’s top glue gun tip: always keep a glass of water handy for these little accidents.

Not my work, I’m just replacing bits that have fallen off. I bought it on the high street, I don’t remember what year, but I remember we were in semi-lockdown at the time. The wreaths were displayed outside, but I didn’t have a mask, so to pay for it I had to stretch my arm inside far enough to reach the credit card machine on the counter, without breathing on anyone. I felt awfully silly.

Not for the first time, I really wish I’d kept a diary of those years. I’m sure I’ve blotted the dumber bits out of memory.

Anyway, all my pinecones are glued back on and my wreath is on the door. Festive!

December 12, 2023 — 7:46 pm
Comments: 7

I failed Hallowe’en

As fine a pumpkin as I’ve ever had and did I carve it? I did not.

I kept putting it off until today, then we got home just as it was getting dark. Poop. Just to rub it in, we passed tons of beautifully carved pumpkins all the way home. There was one house with, like, eight on the porch.

I’m still going to put it out at the end of the drive tomorrow. Believe it or not, I’ve been doing that for years and nobody’s ever pulled over and drop kicked it up the house.

I wonder if an uncarved pumpkin will last more or less long than a carved one?

Happy Hallowe’en everyone!

October 31, 2023 — 7:23 pm
Comments: 11

They took to it

Halloween. Brits never observed it, back in the day. They knew we did, but they didn’t.

Like this guy. Not the skeleton; the guy who owns the skeleton. This is a farm shop we sometimes go to. Picture doesn’t do it justice – he has thousands of pumpkins. And dozens of customers for them. Parking lot was rammed.

I’m sure most of them will get ploughed under and turned to mulch, but it was amazing to see so many gourds in one place.

Same place I got my knucklehead pumpkin last year. Same place I saw the big spooder the year before.

I’m sure Uncle B still thinks it’s an infernal American cheek, or some such British harumph.

October 23, 2023 — 7:14 pm
Comments: 6

Happy b’day Sam!

Not Uncle Sam, my cockerel Sam – hatched on this day in 2018. Making him kind of an oldie (my bantams live on average 3-5 years). Mo is three days older. The boys seem a lot more durable than the girls, though.

July 4th was never one of my favorite holidays. I mean, Stars ‘n’ Stripes forever and all that, but it’s always hot as hell on the 4th, and then add open fires and explosives? Take me to my fainting couch!

But happy Independence Day to all you 4th of July enjoyers!

Perhaps you can help us settle something. Uncle B and I have, our whole lives, believed the expression “salad days” meant happy days generally and referred to that brief season in summer and fall when fresh salad was available (pre-supermarket).

I’ve only recently read that it actually means your youth or heyday or glory days. And it was backed up with examples and Google searches.

What’s your notion? And if we got ite wrong, how did we manage that from 3,000 miles and two different education systems apart?

July 4, 2023 — 7:18 pm
Comments: 7

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

I didn’t think I had any Irish forebears at all, but during my free two weeks of Ancestry.com I did discover some of my people left from Irish ports. Who knows?

Also, I didn’t find any evidence my mother’s mother was French, as per legend, except for the French-sounding last name. I traced her line all the way back to a Texas home for imbeciles and decided that was enough genealogy for me.

Have a good weekend!

March 17, 2023 — 6:55 pm
Comments: 5

My jeans are tight

Happy Boxing Day! The turkey was splendid. The little popup is relatively new here, so they think it’s voodoo. I always double check with a meat thermometer anyway.

It’s a big bird, so we thought it would take four hours. It took two and a half, so we had to hustle the side dishes along, but it all worked out. I still feel urpy from my excesses.

I’d very much consider roast beast instead of turkey, but beef has got so expensive and it often, after all that, isn’t very good. We at least know this (very expensive) bird from a (somewhat local) farm is going to be top notch every year.

What’d you have and how much is left?

December 26, 2022 — 7:08 pm
Comments: 10