Losing it

Our little flockers are due a short back and sides, this will help them in the hot weather and gives us a chance to give them preventative treatments for maggots and worms. It also means they leave the "salon" spray painted with our initials, striped blue for anti maggot and pink crossed for worms and flukes. I gives us something to laugh at other than football.

Ideal!

 Our backyard is very picturesque

 and is

 ideal

 as a training

 ground for an

 adventure planned for

 later in the year

with a couple of friends.

The silence of the pigs

Make sure your volume switch is easily accessible as you might need to turn it down quickly. This is the cacophony of noise encountered while feeding piggies. They get very excited when faced with yellow buckets of allure and boy do they let you know it. 

But once they get their rations, silence is golden.

Follow that!

There is no point having the longest day unless you fill it to the max with things to do, so yesterday found yours truly decorating a carnival float for the local town festivities. Last years dismal turnout of no floats and 6 entrants in the child's fancy dress show meant that there was a renewed effort to make the carnival a success. Or lose it.

Hence Red Kite putting on a Toy Box themed float, now naturally I cannot show pics of the excited little kiddies that took part, you will have to trust me that there were enough Scooby Doos, Tom and Jerry's, Penguins, Clockwork Ballet Dancers, Robots, Panda's, Mat Poppins, Minnie Mouses and me as a dinosaur riding cowboy to make the float look crowded. I ambled alongside throwing sweets at eager spectators or jumping on members of the crowd lining the street that knew me. The apprentice and rug rat MkII failed to appear due them both going down with lergy, so no pirate or Noddy and my beautiful and oh so patient wife sat at home with them her 101 dalmatian costume put aside for next year.

This was my favourite float complete with squashed hedgehog on the tracks.

We followed the band to the parade ground and

after a bit of judging the tank came first even though it was last, so to speak.

I thought work was over, so did George the dinosaur so he headed over to a food vendor for a Indian flat bread stuffed with dead chicken. George loved it but complained when I got gravy on his head.

Actually work wasn't over so after more judging Red Kite got 3rd place! And before any wag comments there were more than three floats.

Show over I got to move house

it was a tight fit but we made it onto the trailer for the ride home.

Where we had a confrontation with idiots on trials bike who tried to convince me they were farmers looking for their sheep. The fact that I didn't but their boo peep antics and asked them not to race through our property did not go down well with them and they resorted to swearing and threatening me as they had been looking for sheep for 30 years and what did I expect farmers to look like in the modern age. I responded by saying that I expected them to be able to tell me why they were playing shepherds, who's sheep they were looking for and where were the sheep anyway. This was all too much for the particularly fat motorised non shepherd who resorted to more foul language and they managed to get past Gerry and continue their riding along the footpath thus breaking several bits of section 58 (I think) of the highways act. Lucky for them their illegal number plates were too small to read otherwise they would have had a visit from the local Police who haver the power to seize nuisance motorbike riders toys.

Once Gerry was unloaded and free from the trailer we set of to the land of the Stable Sprite where I fed and watered his pigs. They were very hot piggies so they all had to be cooled down with a cold hose. This task went without incident save for yours truly accidentally locking himself in the dog kennel and only escaping thanks to an ingeious use of a two inch twig and amazing dexterity of my left hand.

Back at HQ we almost missed the finale, the sunset, so here it is.

The furthest point west the sun sets.

And there it was.

The longest day.

Gone.

The longest day

 An early start at Rock HQ for yours truly on a mission to discover my inner Druid.

 Perfect weather conditions meant that a summer solstice sunrise was guaranteed.

 So we waited, we being Rocky, Spotty, Reba and pathetic triever Poppy.

 Sunrise

 time

 sun worshipping K9

 Almost done

 Its a beautiful day.

 Walking back I got a second sunrise, this picture taken in the same place as the first one. Its strange to think its 6 years since my beautiful and oh so patient wife's father died. He made it an easy date to remember.

Having started the day so well and so early it kind of makes you wonder how much you can pack into a day. So let it begin.

Born free

 The apprentice and I went for a stroll this evening, its well worn trail, he knows the way, so he ran most of it.

 Its 2.2 miles, with some tricky bits

 through ancient woodland, I didn't see much of the apprentice, save for his heels for almost the entire walk/run.

 Where there was the possibility of Trolls he waited, better to be safe than sorry,

 but for the most part he legged it, ignoring the scenery, he had something else on his mind.

 This tree.

 Being the competitive type I managed to get in front at the end

but only so I could give him a push.

Same old story

Shock news. Lorry driver fails to deliver ordered items to Rock HQ. As unbeleiveable as England's performance in the world cup I know, but yes a lorry driver failed in his duty. It was the same old saga yesterday when lazy arsed lorry driver sat in lay-by looking at page three eating a Bombay bad boy pot noodle rather than drive the half mile down the lane to The Oracles farm yard where he was to drop off our new fridge freezer. This was after me having spoken to the courier company, made sure that they would not be driving anything larger than a 7.5 ton lorry, made it quite clear that they had a turning space, that they only had to drop the fridge freezer with our neighbour, there was no need to battle up our dirt track, fit the new appliance or re-cycle the old one, and most importantly made sure that the transport manager knew that we had used this courier company before and and their 7.5 tonner made is safely in and out again.
 Now all he had to do was drive, which is the major part of his job description, and find us. Having epic failed on that and once he was bored of looking at Chantelle in her g string and her opinion on the Kurds expansion plans in Northern Iraq, Steve the driver (and he really was called Steve, I have the text message to prove it) lobbed his empty Golden Wonder container into the hedge, took a bite of his Yorkie and departed with our much needed white (well gun metal grey) good.
Day two of saga, much different. After a discussion with the transport manager as to the error of their ways fridge freezer MkII was sent and its arrival time between 7 am and 11 am could not have been more difficult to manage. Chances are that new driver would arrive at the same time as Bin Lorry, other courier delivering sports kit, or me going to drop the apprentice at play school were high and of course happened. As little t was greeting his peers I got a call saying that the lorry was in our yard. I phoned my beautiful and oh so patient wife to meet me with the trailer and away I went only to find on arrival an empty yard. No lorry and no giant box containing fridge freezer. MBAOSPW arrived with trailer in tow. Quick conflab we decided that new driver, called Ian, had followed the sat nav and was in a farm yard, but not the right one. We knew where that one would be so soon we were with a rather confused Ian who was in a little Luton Box van who could have driven all the way to our house, apparently the transport manager was loathe to let him use the normal 7.5 tonner (much to Ian's disgust) as he wanted this job over with. Ian was insistent that he come to the house but as I was equally keen to get the job done before I was too much later for work so we wrestled the massively heavy carton onto the trailer and waved goodbye to Ian who was looking forward to getting back to his proper lorry.
Back at base the newest piece of was put in place without dismantling it or the cottage and the transport manager phoned to see if I was happy now. Clearly I am. This bit of kit is a vital part of next weeks plan when three little pigs (now big) get turned into a years supply of sausage, pork and bacon.

Against all odds

Mrs Hardy has been AWOL for a while, appearing fleetingly and then disappearing we know not where. A week ago she turned up with three chicks in tow. Given the vermin cats, birds of prey and foxes being partial to poultry the odds of survival are not good. However a week on all three are still breathing and this morning they were up to extraordinary antics. I could hear them but not see them, not until one flew from the cottage roof. Somehow they had got up by the chimney and even more surprising flew, not fell, flew down to land by mum. Fingers crossed they continue to thrive.