Eccentrics make the world go round
I probably appear fairly eccentric to a lot of folk: I don’t smoke, I don’t drink alcohol, and I usually only swear when someone whacks me in the shins with a hockey stick. Only on the most special of special occasions do I wear make-up or don any form of finery: I am at my happiest in comfy leggings and a pair of (even in the summer) hippopotamusly muddy wellies. [NB: Spellcheck changed that last word automatically to “willies”, but luckily I spotted it in time! Although maybe it cleverly predicted my meeting with The Naked Rambler later in this post...]
Looking at my parents, it was evident that I was destined not to fall readily into any particular stereotype. My mum (aka Supergran) was playing still tennis with (and beating!) teenage lads in the village till she was well into her 60s. Sadly her tennis playing came to a premature halt after she broke both wrists simultaneously in a spectacular fall involving a camera, some children, and a dog chain turned tripwire – but that’s another story...). Supergran once walked round a Farming of Yesteryear Show at Glamis Castle for an entire afternoon wearing two completely different coloured shoes, having been so busy speaking to all and sundry that she didn’t have time to look down at her feet until she returned to the car several hours later and went to change into her driving shoes.
Meanwhile, my dad (aka Farmpa) is regularly to be overheard telling anyone in the vicinity: “I’m nearly 80 you know”. But that doesn’t stop him being out on the land first thing every day, and often he doesn’t come back in for his lunch until the middle of the afternoon, having been caught up chasing runaway cattle or filling potholes in the road. He can only very occasionally be prised away from the farm – and that’s usually to attend a farm sale or to pick up spare parts for some malfunctioning machine or other. Farming is, quite literally, his life.
My parents’ non-conventional behaviour was perhaps most evident a couple of years ago when they decided to deliver a (full) hive of bees to the Sparrowholding . I did express concern about the wisdom of this operation, given that it involved a 40-minute drive up the M90 in the dark, but my worries were brushed aside and I was assured that adequate precautions would be taken. And they certainly were. In the picture below, you’ll see the gung-ho duo of hive removal men who arrived that evening, complete with one hive, complete with 30 thousand bees (give or take a few) in the back of the Landover. You’d think that given their great age, the pair of them would have learned to “bee” sensible by now...
Bee prepared!
Mark you, even their eccentricity pales into sorry insignificance when compared with someone whom I encountered today in a nearby village. There I was, sitting in my car slurping an amazing ice cream from the local Italian supermarket when an approaching figure caught my eye. He was wearing a broad-brimmed bush hat, a rucksack and hiking boots – and nothing else. For the figure plodding along the pavement was none other than the Naked Rambler, naturist Stephen Gough, recently released from Perth Prison after six years of incarceration for insisting on walking in public without his clothes.
Blending naturally into the scenery
Being an inquisitive journalistic sort, I hopped out of the car and walked alongside him for a few strides, to ask him where he was headed. Quick as a flash (perhaps an unfortunate analogy, but you know what I mean!), the UK's most renowned rambler produced a brand new OS map, which he opened partially to point out his planned route. By some strange coincidence, it went straight through Kinross, out into the countryside for a couple of miles and right past the end of our road. On a sudden impulse I said: “Would you like a cup of tea when you pass by?” His eyes immediately lit up and he said, “Actually, yes, that would be great. I’ve grown used to the taste of water, but tea would be really good." We rapidly ascertained that he didn’t have a mobile phone to let me know when he’d be passing (“Er, I did have, but the battery went flat while I was in prison for six years...” Of course, it did – idiot that I am!).
So I returned home, filled a flask with some tea (milk, with no sugar, as I’d had the presence of mind to ascertain during our briefest of chats) and drove back to find him already out of Kinross and heading south. On impulse, I had also popped a couple of cupcakes in a plastic bag, not being quite sure about the Ps and Qs of food acquisition when you’re wandering naked along the highways and byways of Britain. When I handed my paltry pickings over, he seemed genuinely grateful, but was obviously keen to get going – and as I’d noticed a police car lurking round a corner not far away, I didn’t blame him. His final destination, Bournemouth, is a dauntingly long way from rural Kinross-shire, so I wished him well for his journey and returned home. As I drove, I pondered a society in which violent robbers and gangsters often seem to be able to avoid the long arm of the law and operate with impunity, while a comparatively harmless eccentric can spend six years banged up in a Perthshire prison. It’s a funny old world, although possibly not quite so funny when you consider the huge amount of tax-payers' hard-earned money that has been consumed footing the bill for his extended prison stays...
Puddings, ponies, packages and potatoes
At the end of last week, I spotted a link on the BBC News website, inviting me to find out “Where are you on the global fat scale?” I should have known it would be a mistake to follow this alluring link into the virtual ether – it could only lead ultimately to deep depression. And it did. It also led to the discovery that my BMI is at the absolute highest it should safely be (25) by UK standards - the same as an indigenous Malaysian apparently. Other members of the Twitterati only compounded my misery by then announcing gleefully that they were equivalent to natives of countries such as Liberia and East Timor (i.e. both considerably lower BMIs). Thanks @gallopen484 and @ALifeInWellies ... You sure know how to kick a girl when she’s down ;-) My pursuit of svelteness was not helped by a rare foray to M&S this week, where a vision of loveliness met my eyes : a Jubilee-inspired Eton Mess cheesecake, which miraculously floated down off the shelf and dropped itself delicately and suggestively into my basket. It would have seemed churlish to refuse...
Anyone for pudding?
Fortunately for me, elephantine as I may be in global terms, I’m still not the heaviest female occupant here at the Sparrowholding – our Shetland and Highland mares, Little and Large, both tip the scales at greater weights than I. (Or at least I haven't checked, but they'd better!)
Little is still on a starvation diet because being a native pony, she doesn’t cope well with the richness of the summer grass and ends up with a nasty equine lurgy called laminitis.
Little: the expert pill repeller
The vet has prescribed her medication for a metabolic problem, but is she's incredibly adept at sifting the pills out of her feed and leaving them triumphantly in the empty trough. – very galling for the stablehand (aka Yours Truly). In desperation, we have hit on a cunning plan involving a pestle and mortar, in the fond belief that she’ll struggle to spit out every last tiny grain of the problematic pills in powder form. Mark you, according to the vet, they’ve never come across a pony who refused to eat these tablets, so no doubt contrary Little is busy sieving the powder through her teeth as I type...
4 of the 6 tablets left - rest of feed was cleared, of course!
Large is, as her name suggests, is rather ... er .... large. Like Little, she is following a restricted grazing regime on bare pasture at present, and is being topped up with a daily Halley’s Ad Lib Blox, containing alfalfa and straw fibre, but, critically, no sugar. Hmmm, maybe I need to be nibbling on Blox rather than Twix as part of my calorie controlled diet. (Don’t try this at home...)
Large: an expert electric fence jumper
Moving swiftly on from paddock to garden, I can report that one row of our potato plants (the red multipurpose variety known as Rooster) is flourishing in the raised outside bed (see below). Sadly, the plants in the row of Charlotte (salad variety, in front of photo) seem to be either non-existent or seriously stunted at the moment. And of course, we’re keeping our eyes peeled (note cunning potato pun!) for any signs of blight. The combination of warmth and relentless rain has been taking its toll in other parts of the country and this insidious disease is threatening to reduce many commercial crops to slime. All the more reason to try to protect our precious little crop! You never know, by the end of the season, we may need roof-top missile launchers (is this what's meant by "spud" missiles?!) on the Sparrow residence if there’s a national shortage.
Moving swiftly on from paddock to garden, I can report that one row of our potato plants (the red multipurpose variety known as Rooster) is flourishing in the raised outside bed (see below). Sadly, the plants in the row of Charlotte (salad variety, in front of photo) seem to be either non-existent or seriously stunted at the moment. And of course, we’re keeping our eyes peeled (note cunning potato pun!) for any signs of blight. The combination of warmth and relentless rain has been taking its toll in other parts of the country and this insidious disease is threatening to reduce many commercial crops to slime. All the more reason to try to protect our precious little crop! You never know, by the end of the season, we may need roof-top missile launchers (is this what's meant by "spud" missiles?!) on the Sparrow residence if there’s a national shortage.
Peas and beans and potatoes popping through the ground
Meanwhile, the strawberries in our small outside bed are still resolutely green, but at least they’re reasonably prolific. Our only problem is finding any of the eponymous straw to bed them with. The stuff seems to be like gold dust hereabouts, so we’ll maybe have to let the berries take their chances. The plants in the polytunnel have produced a few decent berries, but sadly most of them have been almost too small to be of any real use. Took a photo recently of one that was a rather endearing shape and texted it to the three Sparrow chicks as a fruity token of maternal affection (see below).
With love from mum
And in other news from the smallholding ... last week I eventually managed – after much prodding and pushing! – to persuade two chocolate fleeces into an former feed bag, which I then encased in two green garden refuse bags and despatched from the local PO to yarn and spinning devotee @EdenCottage. Not sure what her local postman thought about the smell of eau de mouton emanating from the package but, judging by the photos she's sent, @EdenCottage is already busy doing wonderful things with the wool. As an avid fan of all things ovine, I’m curiously excited about seeing our Shetlands’ ex-jackets transformed into something new, so I’ll be following her progress with interest.
All packaged up and ready to go: 2 chocolate fleeces
Weebruv (he may be 46, but he’s still my little brother!) obviously reckons he doesn’t have enough on his plate looking after the farm, horse feed and sawdust briquette business, plus multifarious guinea pigs, dogs, ponies, cats, wife and kids (not necessarily in that order!). So today he and his trio of offspring headed off to St Andrews to uplift some hens. We received an excited text this evening, complete with photo of their first egg, “hot” off the hen-press. Fortunately, as our neighbours up the road from the Sparrowholding have free range hens, we are in the perfect situation of being able to enjoy local free range eggs every week, but without having the distinct tie of tending any endearing feathered friends ourselves. What some might call an 'eggsellent' plan!
Hot off the hen press
Music festivals, dislocated shoulders and banana bread
Last weekend we spent most of the daylight hours in Edinburgh (watching Scotland’s U18 hockey boys playing in the Celtic Cup) and the nights back at the Sparrowholding, where we were serenaded in the misty distance by the steady thump of drums from the T in the Park music festival. Usually this auspicious occasion in the Scottish music calendar heralds the springing up of a tented village in our garden (as per last year’s photo below). However, this year - with the daughterly duo 500-ish miles away in Cambridge (i.e. just out of earshot) and Son&Heir busy wielding his hockey stick in Edinburgh all weekend - none of my brood was attending "T".
Despite their absence, I did still do a late pick-up run on Saturday night – to collect DaughterNo1’s boyfriend plus two of DaughterNo2’s friends (another parent having done the Friday run). Amazing that even without the darling daughters here, they still manage to involve me in raking out my old taxi hat! Fortunately my several years of previous experience prompted me to take a roll of bin bags with which to bedeck the seats and floors of the trusty wee Corsa. Just as well I did, too, as the mud at TITP on the Saturday was welly-deep (see photo below). Talking of wellies, early on Monday morning I spotted a lone muddy welly lying on Kinross High Street. The car park of the town’s Park and Ride area was a sight for sore eyes too (NOT!). I really don’t mind all the extra folk in town, the slight inconvenience of roadblocks and the inevitable noise that the festival creates, as the visitors undoubtedly give the local economy a welcome boost. What I do mind, however, is the ubiquitous litter that’s left lying in the aftermath. Perhaps festival goers haven’t come across that quaint Scottish expression: “Pit yer rubbish in the bin, ya tumshie!” (Direct translation: please put your detritus in the waste disposal receptacle provided, you turnip)...
Campsite at T in the Park
Mud, mud, glorious...
Lonely without you
Er, hello: does anyone here know what a dustbin's for?
This week has seen a catalogue of poorly creatures and plants in and around the Sparrow residence. Little, the Shetland pony, is still suffering from laminitis (painful swelling of tissues in her feet caused by rich summer grass). This means the vet has consigned her to the stable, which she hates, as well as prescribing a cornucopia of pharmacological products (already costing more than the said Shetland pony herself is worth). Also downing the painkillers (though not equine ones!) yesterday was Son&Heir, who was on the receiving end of a particularly pernicious tackle by a Welshman during Sunday's international match. Result: Welshman - 1; Son&Heir’s shoulder - 0. Spot the strapping in the photo below - and the makeshift sling concocted by the team physio out of a Scotland tracksuit top! To add insult to injury, the Scots were 1 goal up against the Welsh for almost the entire match, only to concede a goal in the last 17 seconds before the final whistle. Very frustrating, but nothing like the frustration felt by another Scottish sportsman on Sunday afternoon, I suspect!
One-armed hockey bandit
One day I'll play for Scotland...
In addition to the warmblooded wounded warriors, there’s my out-of-sorts orchid, a gift from the daughterly duo a couple of years back. Despite having flowered prodigiously for the past month (about five delicate flower heads on the go currently), it is looking distinctly peaky. One of its leaves has turned yellow and appears to be mouldy. Anyone out there know anything about the maladies of orchids? I'm desperate to save the poor plant, but I suspect it might be on its way to the great greenhouse in the heavens if I don’t instigate dramatic orchid-healing measures soon.
Poorly orchid
And now (I saved the best for last) to the final photo for this post, which shows a masterpiece of culinary endeavour created around midnight this evening by DaughterNo1’s boyfriend and myself: a chocolate and banana loaf. We can confirm that, in the words of the song, it was "truly scrumptious" as we couldn't wait till tomorrow to check. BF is actually an Oxford engineering student, but that is of little consequence to me: what is of considerable consequence is that he can cook - well. Not only that, he tidies up after himself, and has been known to stack and unstuck the dishwasher twice in one day. After my experiences (the stuff of horror films) of trying to get Son&Heir not to leave foodstuffs growing - er, I mean lying around – in his room, it is a complete revelation to have an incumbent lad who assists on the domestic front. Not only that, he’s paying us rent each week while he does his internship in Perth. Which leads me to wonder whether I could perhaps enforce a similar rent arrangement on Son&Heir who is now back home. I suppose it's always worth asking (even if you know the answer in advance...).
Chocolate and banana bread - a midnight treat!
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