So bye bye Blighty........



I'm back in France,back in business, with all the cobs and their jobs..........



(lots of cheesy feet to trim!!).

 We're also finally back with an internet connection courtesy of a flash new satellite dish and very expensive new satellite broadband connection. It's been ever such a long break from the blog spot,but I feel I should catch up my news even if it hasn't been such a good year it's definitely been far more successful than the year before, even if the weather was hell bent on trying to ruin everyone's fun.

I see my last blog in June, an awfully long time ago, was due to be followed by one called SILVER LINING. I'm guessing that means around that time things weren't going so well, which was probably due to the whole Kevin fiasco and then my poor hurtly back,  but obvioulsy certain happy, bright things were occurring around all this doom and gloom. Kevin's fiasco will be explained in a later post as a warning to everyone who should know better, like vets and myself!

But I'm going to post my silver lining pictures up here now as so many of them are relevant to the my next installment, the one I came to the pc to do.( I'm thinking my life must be pretty dull as I haven't moved away from said topics a further six months down the line!)

There was a rather lovely tale about Sussex, our elderly hen who'd been rather ill, she'd spent a lot of time sitting about in a heap, looking very 'unperky'. So after lots of internet research we discovered that she could possiby be egg bound and that a hot soak might very well help;
.


So we washed out the poo trug and soaked.



While our fat grey mama hen who's probably only laid a dozen eggs in her whole live waited her turn to bathe in the magic spring and



Donut waited for her to finish cooking.
  Luke warm water doesn't cook a chicken fast, so Donut discovered, but it will with a little olive oil ( applied in the correct orafice)

) 
when coupled with a warm cosy night in a box on a hot water bottle, help with an uncomfortable egg. So the next day Sussex after much hefting and squeezing managed to rid herself of said egg ( a wrinkled old egg,grossly misformed with ridges and lumps) and feel a lot better in herself. At least this appeared to be the case as she was back to pecking and scratching round the garden albeit in a more sedate fashion than in her younger days.

We had another fowl fiasco around this time when our neighbour's young dog, which happens to be a former puppy of Mini's that he hasn't had " done" came up sniffing out our girls in heat. Failing to find a suitor available he decided he would try and eat a live duck instead. I know in the following photo the wound doesn't look that bad because she is all creamed up, but believe me, when i say she was half eaten
.
 

It was absolutely gruesome,you could see all the various bits,organs I suppose inside. I was all for a mercy killing, but the dogsbody wouldn't have it, (he's fond of the ducks and was due to be the mercy killer) so we did saltwater bathing and bandaging instead.



We did this for a good ten days or so, after which I had to leave for England so I guess she was left to her own devices. Poor little duck she was in obvious pain for the first week, although she could move around her days of heading off over the fields seemed to be over.Nature is a miracle healer though and amazingly she didn't get infection in our green pond and is now fit as fiddle, back to her former self you'd never know she'd ever had such a close scrape with death.

And talking of obvious pain, I decided about this time that I really had to address my bad back, it had been horribly painful, for a week I was fully incapacitated and it had really served to scare me. I've had an  on and off bad back for years, I started smashing it up with gymnastics before my teens. I remember one incident when I was learning to do back flips and my mum was stopping me from crashing, only this once she didn't succeed so I did a super back dive onto my head, resulting in an ominous crunch and a lot of pain. My riding years following on from that served to dish me up a few other corkers, one crash when I stupidly wasn't wearing a hat resulted in my going to hospital for head stitches. Despite the split in the back of my head it was my back that concerned me, after a couple of hours lying on the couch in the emergency ward in quite acute pain I became completely unable to move off the bed. I was quite insistent with the nurses that though they could see the head wound the problem was in my back.Try as I might they would not let me get an xray of my back done. I suppose this was my first serious experience of the NHS,hardly encouraging, so I'm never one to rush to them for aid now. Weeks of back pain followed that crash,  I could barely ride and was totally incapable of doing a rising trot. I suppose the doctor should have beckoned, but we were brought up to be tough so I grimaced and bore it.
The next serious crash that saw me in A&E in Witney resulted in them giving me an on the spot xray, the man came out white and told me not to move, trussed me up like a chicken and whisked me off to the specialist unit in Oxford. the consultant there performed all manner and means of tests on me and concluded that the crushed vetebrae had not been done at this time but some time previously. I knew exactly when. So I think on the whole I'm happy my back is as handy as it is but I am aware it's weak and have often worked on keeping it flexy with yoga.
Around the time I properly injured it this last time it had been getting tweaky and I kept waking up in the morning with the words' I must do some yoga again' on my lips. But I left it too late, so as soon as I felt I could start moving again I looked up some yoga for bad backs on the internet. Hell they must be having a laugh, I couldn't even reach my knees!
Little by little it comes back though and probably only three weeks later I was back at my old tricks every morning before I rode Mr P
;


Mr P. thought that this looked interesting but utterly ridiculous;



Although certain aspects of it he was familiar with;



he knew only too well how to put me in this pose, indeed this is what I was warming up in anticipation of. I just hope he doesn't feel inspired by it and assume all this practising means I enjoy being dumped upside down.


The dogsbody got pretty handy about this time too, he started doing much desired jobs like

;

building us the long promised garden fence and wicket gate. For five years we'd been squeezing through some double metal gates that no longer opened since I'd planted a hedge behind them in anticipation of the fancy new entrance. seemed like I jumped the gun!
And he made a flash birthday present for my little sister's doggies, tastefully modelled here by Muddy and Donut

;

Marie surprised us with a fabulous yummy treat of yabbies, cooked and ready to go

;

Apparently they had been given to her by her neighbour who rears them in his ginormous garden pond, although she had really enjoyed them she didn't want the whole lot. They were gratefully accepted as I have never had crayfish before. I must admit that while they didn't disappoint in taste, I was rather struck by how tiny they were
;


Infact by the time you've got through all the fancy housing they are little more than a decent prawn in size. It seems a rather a tragic waste of all that beautiful armour!

As a thank you to Marie since my back was all in riding order we invited her and Ian on a trip to Mont Cerisy for a ride on Rog followed by a picnic, prepared by us

.

Mont Cerisy  is  the ruin of a chateau built by english gent many moons ago in a tragically beautiful location atop a mini mountain all it's very own. It must have had splendid gardens in it's day, the mature trees that are left behind are magnificent and there is a pretty little lake

 

with rhodendrons, all around. While it doesn't offer quite the majesty or display of Longleat it is fabulous nonethless,made all the more so by the fact that admission is free to anyone, anytime.

I say a tragic location as it's story seems to be quite sad,
"The castle was build by English lawyer Lord Burkingyoung in 1870s and sold to the Corbières family in 1885. Prince Franz purchased the property, following the fall of France, in 1940 and stayed there throughout the summer 1940. Last time he visited the castle in November the same year. After Franz' imprisonment and subsequent escape from Nazi custody, the castle was confiscated by the German military and served as a command post for the Lutfwaffe until 1944, when it was destroyed by the Americans. "


This photo was how it used to look, as taken by Prince Franz in 1940.

So it's not only me that has bad days! What a waste of a place, it suffered the same fate as Vire our local town, once a beautiful walled city perched on it's rocky outcrop  but after being flattenened by the Americans it was rebuilt with concrete in a hurry.The effect is not quite the same! At least everyone can get to enjoy the ruins and park of Mont Cerisy, they are beautiful enough, the slopes of the mini mountain are covered in tress and riddled with tracks offering far reaching views to every side.

My final piece of happy news from early June was that we got some feedback from the little pig we gave away. She went to a lady more potty about about her animals than us who called her Poppy and set about seeing if she could raise her a 'house pig'

It looks as if Poppy was pretty pleased with this plan;


One spoilt little pig!