Author Archives: alywilks

About alywilks

Will write for money. Or not, especially if it's about horses.

Sealing the deal, the old-fashioned way (YUK!)

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I bought a galvanised hen drinker from a dear old Wiltshire man a couple of days ago.  He’d found a stash of them in the back of his dreadful old shed, and thought he’d make an honest penny by flogging them.  I needed a new one ever since Tallboy (enormous, ancient polo pony) trod on ours by mistake.  I’ll never know what a very large horse was doing in the hen run, and he was so old and sweet that I didn’t make an issue of it.  But from then on the hens have refreshed themselves out of a saucepan, which gives the hen run that ‘tinkers backyard’ look.

So when I saw an advert on a dog-eared postcard in the Post Office which said “Hen Drinkers ten quid”, written in wobbly pencil, the moment seemed right to restock.  I knew the address, one of those cottages which look very picturesque from the outside as long as you don’t have to go inside.  All thatch, and tiny windows, and rising damp.  He came shambling out, and we went and admired his line of hen drinkers and they were very nice.  In fact mine seems new.  Somebody in his family at some stage obviously had an obsessive hen drinker habit, and just couldn’t go past a farming shop without laying another one in.

So all was fine and dandy.  I produced a ten pound note and picked up the hen drinker and – here is the point of this blog, stick with me – he spat copiously on his hand and offered it to shake. Yuuuuuuuuuk!!!  Complete, utter gross-out!!!

What on earth do you do?  What would YOU do?  Here is this sweet elderly chap with his hen drinkers, pleased at a sale and wanting to seal the deal in the traditional way.  And there was his leathery palm covered in spit being shoved in my direction.

Well I’ll tell you what I did.  I shut my eyes and shook on it.  Our hands met with a squelch, and I walked away with a happy smile while he waved at me over his picturesquely rotting fence.  Then the second I was out of his sight, I wiped my hand on grass until it nearly came off.  Then I rushed home and soaked it in Dettol.

And the funny thing is that while I was walking away, my hand covered in slime, I was thinking:  “well at least I can write about this in my blog!”  Sure enough, it’s been very therapeutic, so thank you for that.  And the hens just love their new drinker.  So on that positive and wholesome note:  HAPPY EASTER!!!

The Black Moth sails AGAIN!

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It’s been a trying day so far because Indie declared himself a pirate at an early hour.  His tail went up beyond the horizontal and his ears became pure Anubis, all clear warning signals that the Jolly Roger was being run up the flagpole.  So instead of a mild mannered whippet we had a pirate on board.  And pirates don’t use floors.  They walk along the tops of sofas and chairs, and they jump through serving hatches and they land on breakfast tables and skid along the top spraying breakfast china as they go.

They don’t eat normally out of bowls either.  They find things they shouldn’t have, and crunch them noisily up behind immovable furniture.

You can’t blame Indie, I mean the Black Moth: he’s just doing what a good pirate does.  Once the Black Moth has hoisted the mizzen, primed his cannons and sailed into the kitchen (cutlass clenched between his teeth) then basically it’s the end of order and reasonableness until he sails back out again.

The Black Moth has so much energy.  It’s not that he hasn’t been for a walk – he has: a long one in bitter cold wind.  And he’s fed the hens and fed the geese and fed the horses and chased the sheep too (very invigorating for all concerned, that was – pirates find sheep most stimulating).  But all that was a warm up for a fun morning indoors with me trying to write despite small arms being fired and planks being walked in every direction.

The labs heard opening salvo of warning cannons and took to their baskets at once, where they will shelter until the all-clear is sounded.  Scarab the cat was briefly captured and held hostage, but he has a useful armoury of his own and fought his way free.  Or so I thought.  He’s sitting in the computer cupboard at the moment pulling out cables so perhaps it’s something more sinister – he’s been co-opted by the Black Moth and is now a bosun, or Second Mate or something and none of us will have any peace ever again.

I remember when Indie was a tiny puppy and I wrote in this very blog that he seemed thoughtful:  well, I was warned!  He was thinking about being a pirate when he grew up.  And here I must add a quick PS – as I speak the Black Moth has annexed one of my newly planted pansies from outside and is hurling it around the sitting room, but still I wouldn’t swap him for any other whippet in the whole world, not even if they were of the school prefect rather than piratical persuasion!

The rise and rise of Mr McGregor

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Much of what I do here is mundane.  Some of it is very mundane indeed (I could mention mucking out the goose house).  But sometimes something happens that makes up for the long hours of feeding and cleaning, which don’t always get the slavish gratitude from the recipients you might expect.

Mr McGregor, my new cockerel, arrived in a box.  When I put him in a run for the first time he crouched on the ground, terrified.  From what I can gather from his body language he must have lived indoors for his whole short life.  He didn’t know about the sky and trees.  And the first bird (a very small wren) that flew past frightened him into fits.  He knew people and hated what he saw.  Again, reading between the lines I think he’s been living in a crowd of cockerels, and every now and then one was hauled out kicking and screaming to be the focal point of Sunday lunch.

I left him alone with food, water and a house to get used to himself, then introduced a couple of hardened old biddies from the flock into his run.  I wasn’t sure whether he would have company manners, and didn’t want him to attack some of my young pretties.  I needn’t have worried.  Twinkle and Curly strolled in, took one look at Mr McGregor and swooned with joy.  “Twinkle!  Get a load of that stripy tail!  And that bright red comb!  No, on second thoughts hands off – he’s mine!!”

And Mr McGregor was perfect.  He probably hadn’t seen the female of the species before, but he drew himself up to his full height, had a quick crow and then courteously invited the girls to have a snack of his corn.  After a couple of days I’ve give him a flock of 6 hens, and they all think he is wonderful.  They jostle each other to stand next to him, and egg production has rocketed.

He has stopped being frightened of outdoors, and doesn’t flinch when birds fly past.  He has begun to accept my presence in the run without screaming with fright.  He looks magnificent (I must get Mikey to put a photo on the blog).  When I see him pacing around the pen with his devoted admirers trailing behind him, and think what his life must have been this time last week, it really touches me.  And I get back to the muddy, mucky stuff and the freezing cold fingers with new enthusiasm.

Indie’s busy morning.

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I’m doing quite a bit of writing at the moment, the sort that needs concentration.  And what I really, really could do without just as I’m searching for the perfect simile is the distant sound of rummaging followed by a shocked ‘wuff’ from Darcy (a good dog) followed by a dull thud followed by some regular sploshing noises.

But that’s what I got this morning, and the perpetrator was of course Indie.  Or the Black Moth, as he’d rather be known as when he’s in that sort of mood.  No longer the mild-mannered young whippet, he’d hoisted the Jolly Roger and swaggered off for some swashbuckling pirate stuff, as I discovered when I had wrenched myself away from the computer screen and gone to investigate.

First of all he’d done the Andrex puppy thing with the downstairs loo roll – grabbed it and run, and the hall was full of loo paper.  There was tissue paper everywhere – round the legs of the hall chair, a short way up the stairs and all along the passageway.  It had been a new-ish roll and it went on for miles.  The Black Moth must have got it hooked around his legs and then had a merry frolic once it was securely attached.  It took quite a long time to roll it up again and now the roll looks bulging and eccentric, and not the sort of thing you can leave in a place frequently visited by guests.  So I had to go and fetch a new one and install it.

Secondly the Black Moth had visited the sitting room and targeted a wooden decoy snipe that had been sitting there quietly minding its own business.  A real bird would have been more fun, but in the absence of actual feathers the wooden snipe would have to do.  Indie had neatly removed its beak then hurled the body around the sitting room (hence the muffled thud) because I retrieved it from underneath the sofa.  Darcy, who is a good dog, had done his school prefect bit at that stage and alerted me to the outrages taking place.

A pirate who has tied the place together with loo roll and de-beaked a snipe is a thirsty pirate, so Indie had finished off a golden half hour by drinking out of the loo.  I know this now, because he was doing it again when I went to find him.  He’s far too small to reach right in without effort, his back paws were on the floor but the rest of him was half way down it when I discovered and apprehended him.

By now I was completely diverted from my writing, and all the dogs were up and active.  So I took them on a walk, which is what Indie had been after from the start.  And it was lovely – it’s not raining at the moment and there is an indefinable sense of Spring in the air.  There’s probably a moral in here somewhere – ‘a pirate in the hand is worth a loo roll in the downstairs loo’ or something.  But I’m glad we went out, and the snipe can be glued.

An impulse!

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I was standing in the queue at the village Post Office yesterday when an old lady (also in the queue) said without any warning at all “anybody want a nice little cockerel?”  She was one of those old ladies wearing as many layers as an onion, with a strange bobble hat sitting on top of her head.  We get a lot of them around here.

Without thinking I asked what her nice little cockerel was like, and then I was doomed.  She marked me down instantly as a mug and within seconds had established that he was free to a good home, lovely little chap (much emphasis on ‘little’) just right for my bantams (how did she know I had bantams?) and I’d be hearing from her.  Short of instant emigration, there was no way I could back out of it now.

Long term readers of this blog will know that I am not short of cockerels, the reverse.   We already have Boris (King Henry VIII in bantam form), Wenceslas (laid-back party animal) and Moomin (small, fat and slightly strange).  That’s enough, it really is.  But of course I’d done it now.

Sure enough, this morning there was an unexplained box in the porch when I opened the door.  Loosely tied with bailer twine and containing something very boisterous.  Forewarned is forearmed – I took the box to an empty pen and cautiously opened it.  A multicoloured typhoon exploded out and started doing laps of the pen, hysterically yelling as he ran.  I waited until the cockerel (for indeed it was he) had paused, exhausted, and took stock of him.  He isn’t little.  He’s big.  He’s a breed known as Scots Grey and nothing like a bantam.  His feathers are mottled black, white and grey and he has a huge bright red comb and a flag-like stripy black/white tail.  He doesn’t like people one bit.

And yet, and yet (this is the strange thing) I think he’s fab!  He’s a glorious cuckoo colour.  He’s a really interesting breed and (this is really important) the hens are all making like true Beliebers at a Justin Bieber concert.  They are lined up against the wire of his little pen simply aching for him.  In a while, when things have settled down, I’ll choose about six of the biggest and feistiest bantams and take the whole thing on a stage.

I’ll keep you informed.  I really, really didn’t need him but hey!  what is life if you can’t sometimes be impulsive in the Post Office queue?

Early Signs of Spring (smallholder version)

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I recently read a lovely little bit of prose about ‘Early Signs of Spring’.  There was a lot of stuff about shy tendrils of green and early dew-kissed violets.  We do have those here of course, except that they get eaten by the sheep as soon as they emerge, especially the dew-kissed violets.  I can’t think why the latter keep coming back year after year, when they only last a nanosecond once flowering.  It’s a triumph of optimism over experience in the plant world, but I’m so glad they do it because they are divinely pretty before Foxy spots them and liquidates them.

I’ve got a few Early Signs of Spring of my own and here they are:  every one of them is infallible.

1.  Tulip gathers all the clean straw in the goose shed into a vast pyramid and lays a huge white egg in the epicentre.  This is shortly joined by others, equally precious.

2.  Porous realises he’s going to be a Dad again and clears all other lifeforms out of the orchard so he can pamper Tulip in peace.  I’m allowed in because I feed them, as long as I don’t linger or look at the Eggs.

3.  All the dogs decide that the only place they want to be is the orchard, having ignored it all winter.  The days suddenly fill with the slapping sound of Porous’ orange rubber feet and his furious honking as he chases dogs, and the dogs wild cries of joy as they zoom out of the bottom gate and reappear at the top one and repeat the process.  Indie is particularly adept at this particular Early Sign of Spring, such a quick learner for a whippet puppy.  He appears in the orchard, ambles casually up to Tulip and the Eggs, and when Porous charges up in a froth of fury, goaded on to madness by Tulip’s wild screams of indignation, Indie slams into fifth gear and effortlessly accelerates away.  Then he does it again.

4.  The bantams, who haven’t laid anything since October, simultaneously come into lay.  Suddenly their (capacious and appealing) nest box fills up with small white and pink eggs, and then they make a group decision that Tulip’s nest looks nicer and they all want to lay their eggs there.

5.  Tulip discovers bantams sitting on her throne of honour, flips, and drives screaming bantams out of the goose house with rude shoutings and gestures.  Many feathers are shed.

6.  Scarab the cat (why? why?) chooses a moment when Tulip and Porous are outdoors grazing, goes into the goose house to admire the Eggs and gets trapped when Tulip returns.  Tulip freaks, tells Porous that there is a Mountain Lion looking at their babies, and everybody concerned rushes around the orchard yelling and gesticulating.

It all happens every year.  It’s all happening now.  At least I know that Spring is just around the corner.

Indie. A pirate.

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Apart from Flat Whippets, I haven’t written about Indie for a while and this is an oversight because he is quite something.  For a whippet he is most unusual, as he is afraid of nothing and he is never cold.  But then there is his alter ego – the Black Moth, a pirate.  And for a pirate he is completely typical, swashbuckling around the place looking for treasure to pillage.  Yesterday’s booty, for example, was the whistle out of the Aga kettle:  he seized it from the kitchen worktop and sailed off into the garden with it where he presumably made it walk the plank, because it was never seen again.  Now the kettle has no whistle, and keeps boiling dry.

He is growing into a very beautiful whippet, shining black with white extremities.  The overall effect is of a dog wearing immaculate evening dress, including white gloves all round.  Training goes in leaps and bounds:  he is intelligent and knows what is wanted, but the question is whether he will bend his proud spirit to do what is required.  Pirates are like that – they don’t do mindless obedience.

We’re coming to an agreement that hens and sheep are off limits when it comes to piratical activity.  Geese, on the other hand, he sees as fair game.  When the Black Moth sees geese heaving over the horizon, he puts his vessel on war footing, loads his cannons and he’s away.  You can practically see the cutlass between his teeth and his gold earring glinting as he prepares to board the enemy.  The geese are well up for it, every one of them a scurvy varmint.  Then we have the grand naval battle, with Porous (gander) firing all cannons at the Black Moth, who leaps, laughing, out of the way and then swings in out of the sun on the rigging, his cutlass dripping with the blood of the unwashed.  Anyway, it’s very noisy and usually ends with the Black Moth insolently chewing up a cast-off feather just out of reach of the hysterical geese.

Indoors, he tends to put off his piracy (apart things like the kettle whistle, just to keep his hand in) and is a delightful chap to have around the place.  He is polite, clean in his habits and excellent company.  He confers style on a chair just by lounging on it.  The Labradors regard him with mixed emotions: they are very fond of mild mannered Indie, but when he hoists the skull and crossbones, they retreat to their baskets and don’t venture out until the Black Moth has hung up his cutlass for the day.

Flat Whippets

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We’ve got guests coming for the weekend, and (smug in the knowledge that I’d prepared their bedroom in good time) I pottered into the spareroom just now with a vase of flowers as the final welcoming touch.  Then I stopped aghast (there is no better word than aghast for how I felt, very onomatopoeic).

The room looked as if a troop of baboons had just turned it over.  Duvet on the floor, crumpled pillows, sidetable cleared of alarm clock and book (yes, I put out Book for guests to read: ‘Tales from a Stone Cottage’, a hilarious story of village life, according to the dust cover), a scatter of oddments over the floor (nailbrush, small pointless bag that I never know what to do with, miscellaneous sock).

After a startled pause I realised what had happened:  Indie had got in there and played a solo game of Flat Whippets.  Flat Whippets, for anybody unfamiliar with the concept, is a lively whippet’s top, top favourite game.  To play it properly the whippet needs to start on a bed, or sofa, or raised soft surface.  Whippet A bounces into a stylised bowing attitude – front arms flat on the bed, tail in the air (frantically wagging) and waits.  Whippet B (or Human B if no Whippet B available) does the same sort of thing.  On the count of 3, both leap in the air and come down in a different place but in the same position.  This happens several times, and then both A and B freeze, looking at each other with enormous eyes.

Then – this is the interesting bit, and the reason why the spareroom looks as though a twister has just passed leisurely through it – at a time decided by Whippet A, both parties (or just Whippet A if they’ve just got a boring old Human to play with) spontaneously spring off the bed with a scream of excitement and do a wall of death around the room.  Several laps are usually needed before Whippet A arrives back on the bed and starts at the beginning again.

I quite often play Flat Whippets with Indie, because he has a vast well of untapped energy, and a brisk few bouts of Flat Whippets leaves him flat on his side with a lolling tongue and heaving ribcage.  Nothing else I can offer him at this age has the same effect – one day I’ll be able to take him for long bike rides etc, but he’s still only 5 months.  So everybody in the house – cat, Labradors, humans, everybody – welcomes the after-effects of Flat Whippets.

But of course, Indie likes the game very much indeed, and if he can find nobody else to do it with, he’ll do it all by himself.  And that is what has happened to the spareroom.

Noises off.

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During our recent holiday camping in Tanzania, I had plenty of opportunity to study night noises, as there was only a thin layer of canvas between me and them.  There were small friendly noises: night birds, frogs, insects.  There were large hungry noises: our camp had nocturnal visitations from lions, hyenas, Cape buffalo, hippos and probably many others we weren’t formally introduced to.  But the most chilling noise of all, worse than the coughing growl of a lion, the whoop of a hyena and the gurgle of the truly enormous buffalo that decided to sleep next to us one night (presumably because we had camped on his own special patch of grass and hadn’t realised) was caused by something very different.

One night we camped beneath an enormous baobab tree.  Baobabs are the ones that look like oak trees, but double-portion king-sized and with a side-order of chips oak trees: very big and fat and wonderful.  About 4am we were woken up by a series of clicks, starting off quiet, getting rapidly louder, combining with a scream, then finally ending with a series of loud Hammer House of Horror ear-piercing shrieks.

Sleep was not an option, so I reviewed the possibilities.  It wasn’t any large predator that I could think of; it could possibly be some vast pterodactyl-like bird; I liked to think it wasn’t something from the Harry Potter stable, like a banshee.  And here I should add that we were wild camping, there was nobody else around for many miles and no facilities of any sort.  After a while, the clicks and screams repeated themselves, but as nobody slashed our tent open or did anything else untoward, we went back to sleep.

In the morning, I grabbed my library of reference books and started reading.  And I found what had woken us:  roll of drums, flourish of trumpets – it was a tree hyrax, otherwise known as a dassie.  A tree hyrax looks like a bit like a guinea-pig, with a sweet little face, big fat furry body and a forest of whiskers.  I had seen one the day before high in the baobab, peering suspiciously down at us.  There was a description of its territorial call that featured descriptions such as ‘unearthly shrieks’ and ‘ear piercing screams’ but really you had to be there, in the depths of the African bush with the stars burning bright above to get the full benefit of what a tree hyrax can do to your nervous system when it’s feeling emotional.

You may find this useful should you camp beneath a tree in Africa.  If you hear something worse than anything you’ve ever heard before, it’s a thing like a cute furry toy and you are safe to go right back to sleep.