Busy week.

yuk! this weather is truly foul!
I’ve barely had any sleep because the gusts and gales are sweeping noisily down my chimney, makes the bedroom cold too.The sound of wheely bins whizzing up the road propelled by the gales doesn’t help either.  Also swear the roof tiles are on the move but hey, could be worse, would hate to be flooded.

So what Have I been up to….we’ve had a fairly busy week.

Chickens are not loving this foul weather, I gave them a treat of corn on the cob, spring greens and some porridge oats yesterday and that perked them up a bit.

The dog spent the week sleeping. He’s keeping a low profile hoping he doesn’t get chucked out in the rain for a pee. It’s a greyhound thing.

T is still recovering from his operation last month. He went back to school for one day last week, they didn’t follow my instructions re putting him in a bean bag and that aggravated his wound site. masses of bruising and pain followed so he had rest of week off and today we try again. Not holding out much hope though….

H isn’t my favourite little chap at the moment, I think his hormones are starting to kick in, he’s starting to be lippy, stroppy and moody with a ’so what?’ attitude. He’s ‘forgotten’ to go to his guitar lessons twice now, so that’s £14 an hour down the drain. Which brings me on to the highlight of the week! He put his trousers containing his 2 month old phone in the washing machine. After a 2 hour wash at 40 degrees and a 1400 rpm spin cycle, needless to say it’s now dead. I point this out and get a reaction half cross, squealed/shouted ‘ god!, mum! “everyone” makes mistakes why are you picking on me?’ … yes but ”everyone” didn’t put their phone in the wash H, YOU did!

I’ve bought him an iPod nano for Xmas what’s the betting that ends up with the same fate as the phone?

h and blue dog

Patient Safety meeting

Yesterday was a bit of a stressy day to do with the aftermath of my poor Dad’s death and ensuring there is never a repeat. I still can’t go into too much detail because as I’ve said before, there is an Inquest pending.

Anyway, my sisters and I had a meeting with the ex deputy chief medical officer regarding an update to our first meeting where we outlined our concerns and these concerns were taken on board.
This meeting looked at the implementation of the new patient safety guidelines drawn up after our first meeting, covering a variety of bases. We also had a discussion surrounding the use of NICE guidelines and whether they should be formally challenged so that they are applied on an individual patient presentation led basis and not just as a money-saving tool, which is the primary purpose currently. This is currently being investigated.
Overall the meeting went well and I do feel progress is being made, we are scheduled another meeting just before Christmas.

All this stuff always make me sad though, it hurts to think about dad, about the way he died, about the circumstances that led up to his death and obviously because he should still be here.

After the meeting we went to visit the tree on the edge of the wood where we sprinkled dad’s ashes back in May.

Anyone ever done this? there’s no sprinkling of ashes that gently whisp off and curl in the breeze to be carried off forever… no, you open the pot, gently tip and it all goes ‘ thunk’ to the ground and resembles cat litter. Not what we were expecting I assure you. Although all three of us instantly looked at each other and laughed, hard.
I’ve been to dad’s tree three times now since we sprinkled him in May.  Dad is still there, in a little mound. He likes it so much there he’s staying put.

Sweet dreams Dad x

Dad

 

Chicken hotel pics for English mum.

It’s up! but it’s not quite finished, I need to ship lap the walls/roof etc but it’s warm and dry. The left half is enclosed with the other half having the door, so if they want a bit of privacy to lay eggs its sheltered and still fairly dark. It has a single roost along the length and bark chippings as litter.  The chickens seem to love it! already working out to sit on the gangway and taunt posh.  Serves her right….

new coop

… but so far it seems to have stopped most of the squabbling.

now some gratuitous chicken pics from today, just because they are cute.

pru and piper

dave and flower

I’ll try to get a pic/video of  posh and pecks rolling around like loons in the tub of mud for next week .

(off to put them all to bed ) vx

Posh. The ex battery hen

Ok, so I might have kinda gone ‘off on one’ with my last post.
Today things have calmed down a bit….well things haven’t but I have.

So to my chickens and an insight into the personality of Posh. The ex battery hen.

My 7 chickens, who already have a nice large run, now need a re-jig with their accommodations largely due to the madam known as Posh.

Currently I have two coops one small one for the Pekins and 1 Plymouth rock and the ex-batts big coop which is home to Posh, Pecks and the other 2 Plymouth rocks.  During the day  they all get on fine.  Fine except posh only likes pecks and vehemently hates the rest of the rabble.

At dusk pru and piper have been going to sleep in the ex-batts coop with posh and pecks. Now though, they are going in to go to bed and then being unceremoniously squawked at, pecked and pushed out of the door by a certain self appointed ‘guard’ chicken. I’m taking this to mean Posh wants her house back.

I’m not sure it has anything to do with the pecking order, as Pecks is very tolerant (unless you try to nick her corn cob) she lets the little chickens snuggle up with her and is generally agreeable. Our pecking order is established and Pecks is the top chicken, posh is second in command. But I think it’s more than a good cop/bad cop scenario. I definitely think it’s a personality issue.

Basically, posh is and has always been a grumpy bitch! She can’t find it in herself to be nice. She’s the reason I have to feed them all separately.  Posh, apart from being a stroppy cow, doesn’t ‘do’ sharing. She’d rather chase the small ones off if they come near, corner them and then peck them on the head with much malice til she draws blood.( I had considered putting her in the pot but she’s a scrawny thing so that would be pointless) sometimes if she is in a particularly bad mood the 5 small ones aren’t even allowed to set foot on the ground…. thus I’ve had to build them a shelf just high enough that Posh can’t be arsed to try to fly up to.
Posh, unlike Pecks is not a cuddly ‘pet’ chicken, she likes to do her own thing and she’s not interested in being Mrs nice chicken unless there’s something in it for her. for example :shake a tub of live wriggly meal worms and she’s your best friend-til it’s all gone and then you don’t exist.

So now thanks to posh I’m  having to design a new coop for 6 (but big enough for 10 chickens side by side) so Posh and pecks will have their own house back.
Which begs the question: Will there now be harmony in the chicken run? with posh around I doubt it…

November already…

the pooch

November

How did that happen?

It’s been a very turbulent year with more ‘downs’ than ‘ups’.

So a quick re cap…this year started with my dad being rushed to hospital with a cardiac arrest and complete heart block (allergy to paracetamol caused that it turned out)  He was unconscious in ITU and gravely ill for a few weeks. So me and my sisters totally girlified him during this time.  (what? it’s not like he could argue ;o) )

Samantha took charge of his feet which was a job no one else really wanted to do, they were yuk! they had crusted and were in general need of a tidy up, I bought half a ton of lush products for his drawer and softened his skin, did his hair, gave him a manicure etc.  His corner of ITU smelt lovely. Eventually he came back into conciousness and just stared into space for a few weeks, my eldest  (t) sat with dad and just rambled and burbled  verbal claptrap at him for an hour at a time.

When he did properly come round he was unable to speak cos of the tracheostomy.  Us girls trying to work out what he was mouthing at what seemed to be 100 miles an hour was impossible, but he saw the funny side.

Then came the charades game… which didn’t help much cos he could barely move.  So we still didn’t know what he was rambling on about.

Em lent him her iPod and put abba on for him, the staff rigged him up a tv so he could watch a spurs game, then they got him a dvd player so he could watch only fools and horses.

When he could speak, the stuff he said, and conversations we had, were tremendously odd! amongst other oddities  he thought he was supposed to fix the monitoring machines, that  the light above his bed was a broken telly and his dog was running around being naughty in ITU

(dad) ” heeeeere charlie wol….”

(us)-um…dad? thats a table. not your dog…

so eventually we made progress and he got less odd, but only a bit.

(dad)..’why am I stuck in this airport?’….

One morning He rang me up as I was on my way to itu at 10:50 (visiting starts at 11 am)

‘tor?’

yes Dad

‘where are you?

on my way to the hospital.

‘what for?’

to see you?

‘  oh. …I’ve been waiting bloody ages’

I’m ten mins away dad, visiting starts at 11

‘no it doesn’t’

yes it does

‘no it doesn’t’

yes it does

‘ian said that’s rubbish. see you in a minute then’ ‘CLICK’

so, he had lost the plot, the fairies nicked it (drugs) the drivel he came out with had us and the nurse looking after him in fits of giggles  (I did wonder on a few occasions if he was doing it on purpose!)  so we had a few more weeks like this, Dad recovering against all odds and then he was then moved on to a main ward. The differences in care were astounding and alarming, however, we maintained the twice daily visits for a good couple of hours a time and dad was still on form. We had such a giggle despite the circumstances.

When emma was with him one afternoon he accused her of being pissed….she wasn’t though.

Given that it became our job to secure his painkillers (don’t ask) sam popped her head over his t.v to make him jump and the most massive wide smile crept across his face! “my co-codamol friend!! he exclaimed… we laughed.

But due to hospital inadequacies dad died. We never left him while he was dying and we were there when he died.  (can’t say too much about that as there is going to be a coroners inquest (by jury) in february 2010.)

pecks

So what else?

well I got some cute little chickens,  two ex batts – posh and pecks , two pekins-dave and flower and 3 plymouth rocks- pru, piper and phoebe. my little babies

T had loads of trips to a London hospital culminating in an operation, which failed, and has recently been re-done. he was also diagnosed with moderate autism.

H has been diagnosed with ocular torticollis and has to have physiotherapy on his face

and the cherry on the cake so far?

Husband was made redundant this morning effective as of the end of this month.

bollocks to 2009 then