Do you wash...

[Chantal]

Could I respectfully point out here that the mention of chops hasn't come from me, it's Tigger who threatened you with a meat cleaver. So you leave Ermintrude out of it you swine.

Maybe time for another swift change.

[Tigger]

You dso realise that when some of us sad souls read back over the previous postings, they don't make sense because some masters of disguises keep changing their image. Clever - what?

[Chantal]

I've just turned a cow into a field!!!!!!!

[Tigger]

I see the Don is back.

[Chantal]

Do you mean that pork sausage in sunglasses and pearls? You have to be joking!

[Tigger]

That's the one - you recognise him too!

[Chantal]

Sadly yes, I'm bored in this field, I need something new.

I don't worry about people losing the thread with the avatar changes, the items are all just natter anyway, not anything important like damped off tomatoes etc.

[Tigger]

Oh - is that the point of this then? Silly me.

[Chantal]

Sorry, just amended that last post, it was total rubbish! I've not even had a drink!

[Tigger]

Perhaps you should have a large one.

[Chantal]

I'm chicken sitting so have to keep my wits about me. My little Pekin Cuckoo tried to lay an enormous egg this morning (double usual size at least) and suffered a prolapse. She's been stuck back together but is sleeping in the front room in Rosie's cat basket. I'm on alert should she need anything. Hopefully she won't lay another egg for at least a week and give her time to recover, todays was only her third, ever. The last was 8 days ago so there's hope. I feel a bit like I'm baby sitting though and have to stay sober. I tell you, you couldn't make this stuff up.

[Tigger]

We used to keep Polish bantams, so I know what you're talking about. One winter, my favourite got a cold so we kept her in one of those cages that wrap around a glass carboyle (spelling?) in the house, for weeks, giving her menthol inhalations through the neck of the cage. She survived and fully recovered - only to meet her maker when we repatriated her with the rest of the flock and they attacked her as they no longer recognised her as part of the flock. The smell of Olbas Oil might have had something to do with it.

Happy days.

[Chantal]

It's all part of life's rich pattern isn't it. I was brought up living with wild life in the house. I lived at a sailing club beside a reservoir and it was insane, we rescued everything.

We had a black headed gull that lived with us for weeks and when recovered followed me everywhere. Never flew, just walked around the place. We kept chucking it up in the air with a following wind until it got the hang if it.

A pigeon who exercised by running around the wheel of my upside down bike.

Six mallard ducklings living in the bedroom (orphans) until the night they all escaped and crapped on the bedroom floor. It was years before I could eat pureed spinich. We could whistle them to meet us from the school bus and they'd all fly down the road and walk home with us. Those ducks were spoilt though, they'd go and shower in the ladies changing rooms and have a cracking time.

Our dog (Ross) brought home a baby hare that we bottle fed every 2 hours then fed liquidized dandelion leaves, milk and glucose from a bottle. The dog turned vegetarian, the hare (Douglas)throught Ross was mummy and they both slept with our cat. It took a long time to repatriate Douglas but we did it.

We had a homing pigeon fly through the window and land in the frying pan on one summer day. Five minutes earlier and it would have been with the bacon.

I brought a lame Herring Gull back from Southport on the back seat of the car once. It lived in our kitchen for a week until my mother said it was her or the gull. He flew off heading north.

Why am I worried about baby sitting a chicken? My childhood was a lot like living in a Gerald Durrell novel.

[Johnboy]

Bypassing all the wonderful frippery I do not actually wash pots but immerse them in a solution of Jeyes Fluid solution for 24 hours and them simply let them drain down. I have a 65 gallon tank of it and then use the fluid in the tunnels to disinfect the benches.The tank actually holds about 2000x7cm square pots so nowadays it seems that it will become a biennial event.

[Chantal]

My mind is boggling at 65 gallons of Jeyes Fluid, I can't compute that at this time of the morning.

JB, have you not been to bed since yesterday?