The House Husband

We had about 2″ of snow last night. I know because I took a metal ruler out to the path this morning and measured it. Of course, the poodles went mad and Carmen spent far too long rolling in it. With no more snow forecast, it’s now going to turn to slush very quickly so we went for an early walk. Well, early for a Sunday, anyway.

Lots of families with kids on sleds, wearing bright colours so as to be easily found in the snow. Here’s one wandering off home. Her mother said she has a strong independent streak and had had enough of the snow.

Screw you guys, I'm going home

I realised my mistake in wearing wellies far too late to change them. Rubber is not a very good insulator ensuring that my toes were frozen by the time we returned home. Then, like the good neighbour I am, I took the shovel outside and cleared our drive and the path outside our house.

Actually, it was because I almost slipped over a few times and I remember last time how treacherous the ice was after the snow started freezing. Each time I started slipping, I felt a twinge in my right wrist. Fortunately I remained standing.

After shovelling out the front, I cleared the path out the back as this, too, was starting to get a bit slippy. What a joy! The last time I tried to clear snow resulted in, what looked like, a luge channel. The path makes it so much easier. How could anyone not love our path?

Being a Sunday means, of course, it’s a day of rest, so I spent a lot of it doing family history research. I haven’t touched it for ages which means a bit of a refresh first…just to see what I was up to last time. I am stuck on the Cornish policeman who went to France in the mid 1800s. Very annoying.

Also, I need to apologise…sort of. A slide guitar isn’t a type of guitar but, rather, a style of playing a guitar. There’s a wiki article on it here, which I’m sure Mirinda will be interested in.

After our walk

So, here’s a question for you: What have Tallulah Bankhead, Carol Channing, Minnie Driver and Justin Timberlake all have in common? Apart from being in films I mean. I’ll tell you later.

Today was a great day! I went to the fracture clinic at Frimley Park and was discharged! They don’t want to see me again. I was told, if I needed to see them, that I knew where they were but, basically, I just have to keep up the physio (forever, I assume). I think I’m their wonder patient. They are very happy with my progress and healing abilities. I told them it was the vodka.

I asked if I could have a copy of my x-rays and they let me photograph them but, stupidly, I didn’t take the one with the break! I blame the guy controlling the screen because he missed it. Anyway, this is what it looked like when the plaster came off.

Take my hand, it no longer comes off

Meanwhile at home…it was bitterly cold up the park this morning. Actually, it was bitterly cold everywhere. we even had small flurries of snow when I was at the hospital. But, in the aprk, the icy chill from Moscow was making itself felt. not that it stopped the girls running around like lunatics. Or, maybe that was the idea.

Running back to me in their winter coats...and coats

At one stage, this dog spotted them and sneaked up on Carmen. Scared the living daylights out of her, making her scream and run around my legs. Day-z, leaping to the defence of her big, cowardly sister, then chased the poor thing across the park and back to its owner.

The rare Bat Eared Corgi wants to play with the bashful poodle

Cold or not, it was still beautiful and the girls loved it.

I also had fun with mum, when I rang this morning. Using a wonderful little web-tool called join.me, I was able to control her PC across the Internet. Sadly I wasn’t able to fix her Skype problem but we’re investigating other possibilities. We were able to play with the PC because poor dad was once more in hospital. Hopefully he’ll be out in a few hours.

And, finally, what do Carol Channing, Minnie Driver and Justin Timberlake have in common? Well, they all had a birthday today. Tallulah would have been 110 (had she not died in 1968), Carol was 91, Minnie 42 and baby Justin a very young 31.

It’s not exactly what you’d describe as the most evenly matched battle but then it wasn’t a match suggested by the swans. I’m pretty sure it was all Carmen’s idea and even Day-z was along for the ride.

Carmen telling the swan how she intends to eat it

Clearly smarter than a poodle, the swan stayed in deeper water and just laughed. Actually it hissed and lifted up out of the water, menacingly.

Be off with you, silly black fluffy things

We yelled at the dogs to get out of the water but they just wanted to eat the swan. And then a second one turned up looking even tougher than the first. The poodles decided that retreat was the safer option.

In fact there was quite a lot of bird activity on Frensham Little Pond this afternoon. A huge flock of seagulls, two big swans, some moor hens (as opposed to some more hens) and a crow…which I managed to capture taking off, albeit away from me.

I'm out of here, buddy

There was also a lot of people there. Always the way – nice weather, Sunday, hordes of out-of-towners enjoying our ponds. To be fair, most of them were friendly (not the usual surly London brigade) and there weren’t any when we left the immediate environs surrounding the pond. In fact, Mirinda commented on how that’s one of the reasons she wants a house in the ‘country’ to come home to weekends – because we can go for a walk and not see another person for large sections of it.

For me, it just proves that city folk are scared of trees and the isolation a whole wood full can bring…ironically. For this reason, the tend to congregate around bodies of water with sand, both of which keep the nasty woody things back a bit.

City folk observing what real country people are like in the wild

Actually it wasn’t that bad today (though crowded) and, on the whole, people smiled, said hello and had dogs. That’s always a good sign. The dogs especially.

We left the house quite late so the light wasn’t all that good for most of our walk. I did manage to get this rather arty shot across the pond as the sun was sinking beyond the horizon. I haven’t manipulated the picture at all – this is exactly as it came out of the camera.

The sun sitting low in the sky over the reed beds at Frensham

And, basically, that was our Sunday. Glorious.

Firstly, let me say that I’m getting a lot closer with my photograph of a crow in flight. This is the best of today’s efforts. I’m almost happy with it. The poodles quite expertly chased it into the air after I had it well in my sights. I managed to snap off about 30 pics. I’m thinking of training them to go around the other side of the bird and scare it into the air directly at me.

So close...

While the poodles did a very good job with the crow, they weren’t as good later, both of them having the identical FSI. I do blame myself somewhat as I was busy taking photographs of a cheeky squirrel and by the time I spotted them it was all too late.

The daring young squirrel on the flying trapese

Given that Carmen no longer has the agility to leap into the bath, I have to pick her up. Given she managed a pretty all inclusive FSI, meant I was also covered in the foul smelling stuff. Obviously I followed them into the shower. Talk about gross. Cleaning it off them is one thing, off me? Not very nice!

Mind you, this is the first FSI since before I broke my wrist. I’ve only just been able to wash them so it’s only been awhile they’ve been let off the lead. But wash them I now can so there’s no excuse for them to be quite so rank as they prefer.

My wrist is actually getting a lot stronger. I went to the physio today and she, again, was very pleased with my progress. The side to side and forward movement is all good. I just need to work on the bending back and support of weight parts.

To this end, Sandra took me off the memory foam all together and introduced me to something I’ll call flubber. It’s a sort of very, very thick liquid that takes hours to flow. It’s excellent to squeeze because of it’s viscous nature. It is nice and hard but flows between your fingers…eventually. Mirinda suggested I do a time lapse of it flowing. I think I just might. Here’s a couple of single shots.

Before - just plonked on top of a hand cream bottle

After - about an hour later it's flowing down the sides

Truly bizarre stuff. And I LOVE it.

The other thing Sandra did (apart from rave about the excellent improvement in my wrist) was give me a strength test. I had to squeeze this silver metal thing which had a gauge in front for her to read off the numbers. Squeezing with my right hand produced an 80 (I have no idea what this measures but she told me it was good). I then switched to my left hand and squeezed with all my might. She had to stop me as she read out 40. She was stunned with delight. Generally, she told me, people have 75% strength in their non-dominant wrist. The fact that I had 50% was a great moment in healing.

So there you go. Sandra’s happy, Gary’s happy, Mirinda’s happy and the poodles were happy…until I gave them a bath).

A long time ago, way back near the end of 2009, I realised how wise it is to write down anything you are likely to want to say before saying it in the Talking Newspaper studio. While rather good at the old ad lib another life ago, the words refuse to come quite as seamlessly as I age. I know what I want to say but the words fall about in my head like a bag full of Scrabble tiles. My reasoning was borne out today though, fortunately, not by me.

I’ve probably mentioned June and John before. They’ve been reading at FATN for over 13 years and are by far the best readers (in my opinion). They have the amazing knack of making everything sound like they are just sitting chatting to you. I always love when I get to work with them, as I did today.

Everything was going along fine with John cracking me up every chance he had. Then June started reading a story about some sort of environmentally friendly village hall (or other). The story went fine and at the end she started describing the photograph. She struggled for quite some time before calling a halt to it all. We were all in fits (as was she). She said she just couldn’t think of the words she wanted because her brain went blank.

It was then highly relevant when someone read a piece about forgetting things as you get older.

The other reader today was a lady called Anne who I’ve not worked with before. She explained, afterwards, that she can’t be as clever as the rest of us and has to write everything down. I showed my copious notes and told her I write EVERYTHING down, leaving nothing to chance. (Actually, when I do go ‘off script’ I tend to “um” and “ah” a lot, so best I don’t.) Anne was very relieved.

Meanwhile I think John was quietly pleased he hadn’t slipped up (he never writes anything down…show off) and his wife had, because she’s usually very, very good.

Walking back afterwards, the sky quite pleasantly decided to turn blue (it was grey the rest of the day) and I thought the Jolly Sailor pub looked quite appealing. I had a swift pint before continuing on to Waitrose.

Everytime I see this sign, I think of grandad

Earlier in the day I spotted a squirrel eating an apple. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a squirrel eating an apple. Unfortunately I didn’t have my good camera with me so the photo below is not that great (the squirrel was hiding behind the branches and, in fact, when I moved around for a clearer shot, he darted up the tree away from my prying lens) but it was such an odd thing to see that I couldn’t help but include it.

No dentist for this fella

Much earlier in the day, I took the poodles for an early walk where we met Rex, a puppy who just wants to play. He was with his owner who had a second dog on a lead. She spent all the time I saw her yelling for Rex to come back…which is how I know his name.

Of course Rex just wanted to play with the poodles but they were having none of it. Carmen squealed, Day-z ran away and Rex just went and found a much friendlier piece of wood instead.

Stuff you two...look what I've found!

The birds were very noisy today. I topped up the feeders in the morning and think they may have been telling all their mates to ‘COME AND GET IT’! Whatever they were saying, it worked. Even though the day was mostly memorable for being miserable, grey and wet – the path is so wonderful in the rain – the birds were simply flooding in.

A bunch of starlings having a meeting about the weather

We were going to take the poodles for a walk somewhere nice but the weather was against us in a big way. After Mirinda finished working on her essay (her usual morning routine at the moment), the heavens simply drew a damp, grey cloud over everything. The poodles were not too pleased.

Carmen looking somewhat displeased

Before lunch, Mirinda had a great idea after a text exchange with Susanne and, as a result, we are off to the Isle of Wight tomorrow for a day trip. The weather is supposed to be much improved (which wouldn’t be hard). We are to drive over to Haslemere and take the train. Apparently Rafi has started riding a bike. Not sure if he jousts while riding but suspect he does.

But, that’s for tomorrow. Today was nothing but the birds, rain and catching up on Christmas telly. before I go, here’s a couple of pigeons who spent quite a bit of time arguing over the rich pickings on one of the obelisks.

The Obelisk Wars, eventually won by the white one

Today was, basically, about the poodles. We picked them up from the kennel. They went insane. We took them for a walk up to the castle. They went insane. I gave them a bath. They remain insane.

A selection of our Prague photographs can be seen here.

I have been busy giving myself physio therapy today and my wrist is sore! I must be doing it right then. At least I hope so.

Speaking of physio, Carmen went for a slightly longer walk today. I think the cold has been getting to her as well. Her limp was more pronounced this morning and particularly after the walk. We all managed to walk as far as the castle and back.

While we were up there I managed to get almost a great shot of a crow in flight. I say ‘almost’ because it would have been much better if it had been coming towards us rather than running away. And on a slightly better angle.

Taking home a claw full of mud

I also saw a crow chase off another bird. It was all too quick so I couldn’t identify the other one. It was slightly smaller than the crow but was happy to turn tail feathers and run when the crow saw fit to chase it.

We don’t just see birds in the park. The poodles much prefer chasing squirrels and, fortunately for them, we see lots. They’re always too quick for the dogs who always manage to go the wrong way. Here was one hiding in a hedge.

Those stupid poodles will never see me here

It was very cold up the park this afternoon. It felt like snow weather and, not surprisingly, snow has been forecast for tonight. Subsequently, we didn’t see many people (or dogs). We did see one chap with a dog called Lily who wanted to play with the poodles. Of course the poodles just ran around my legs, their lead getting increasingly shorter. They also squealed a bit.

It’s their noise that makes the birds fly away from the feeders in the garden. I’m trying to work out how I can get them to do it on cue so I can get better flight shots. However, poodles regardless, I managed to get a few. This blue tit was leaping between the fatballs and the feeder.

Leap of faith

While this Great tit appears to be perching in mid-air. He must have just closed his wings as the camera went off. It looks quite odd.

Walking in the air...

And this poor fellow looks like he’s been blown backwards from something! I know it’s a bit out of focus but I thought it was such an unusual shot, I thought I’d include it.

Caught in strong winds

Because of my new found love of bird photography, this blog is starting to take on all the charm of Nature Notes! So, for today’s observation, I’m going to report on the green finches.

I noticed today that the green finches chase off other birds (of all types) from the feeders when they consider they’ve had enough. It’s strange but they seem to wait a bit and then see them off. Unlike the collared doves who spend as much time as possible getting rid of any other collared dove that wants to feed as well. They are like spoilt children – never sharing. The green finches, on the other hand, are like bossy parents, apportioning out seed in a fair and even manner.

To round off, here’s a typical sight on the path every day:

Royal Male

Mirinda returned to work today, having almost removed the foul illness from her system, and I escorted her to the station. We had a lovely (though frostily slippy) walk along the park path, the day being gorgeous and chilly. I bade her farewell and went shopping.

I had two more calendars to post so, after the usual at Starbucks, I popped into the extremely crowded post office. Amazingly, there was even a queue for the automatic machines. Unheard of! Of course, the people using the automatic machines were novices and took far longer than they are designed for. In fact, they had a post office employee next to them, showing people how to use them. I thought this deliciously ironic. When it came to my turn I let him know I would not be requiring his aid.

I managed to push my way through the crowds waiting for one of the humans and escape, having taken only ten minutes. As I walked through the doors, the queue was starting to move into the street. I heard on Breakfast this morning that today was the final day for Christmas posting, which explains a lot. There’ll probably be about three people there tomorrow morning.

I shopped and wandered home, enjoying the weather and the various hellos from everyone who walked by. How bucolic it all was.

Back at home, having been assaulted by the dogs, I set up the camera on the tripod and snapped away with my remote. (Day-z always thinks this is quite odd. I stand in the kitchen with the remote in my hand and she tends to stand in the doorway watching me, a quizzical look on her face. Carmen is usually asleep in the lounge)

The bird varieties were greater whenever the camera was pointed somewhere else but I managed a few nice shots of a blue tit. This one is giving me a rather sly look back, just before flying off.

Does my bum look big in these feathers?

Walking in the park with the poodles today, I spotted a woodpecker digging away at what I can only assume was a worm. I tried to get closer but the dogs spooked it a bit. I managed to get a few shots from distance (with the telephoto lens). This is a combination of two shots showing both sides.

Mirinda claims this is a green woodpecker

Having looked it up on the RSPB identifier website, it would appear it is a female green woodpecker – the male has red on the cheeks as well as the head. Also, the RSPB identifier website says they search the ground, feeding on ants.

The walk in the park (the second since her operation) proved a bit tiring for Carmen. When she walks around, her limp gradually gets more pronounced. Then, once home, she more or less collapses into a deep curative sleep. OK, she does the same when she’s healthy as well but then it’s from exhaustion due to squirrel chasing. Still, she’s getting better as each day progresses. Although she still can’t jump up onto the bed unaided.

¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
The weather which started so delightful, took a bad turn late in the day. At about 6pm, the wind lashed the windows and the rain started. I popped outside with Day-z at about 8pm and the trees in the park were making a hell of a noise. It was all quite scary. We both came back in quite quickly.

I received a reply from Agora Publishing – see my post from two days ago. It was, actually, a very informative reply. The interestingly named Novelette Walker, told me where they had received my information. I thanked her profusely and then wrote the offending company a scathing email, letting them know exactly what I thought of them. Which made me feel really good.

Something else that made me feel really good was the bird song this morning. I was stood, motionless, at the beginning of our magnificent path, watching the birds avoid my camera lens and the noise of their chattering was deafening. It reminded me of that awful woman who used to live next door us and hated the dawn chorus because it was too loud. But the memory did not linger long and I just soaked in the lovely sounds.

Wings Akimbo

And over the time I watched, I saw blue tits, great tits, coal tits, collared doves, sparrows, gold finches, green finches, a male chaffinch (that I thought was a female sparrow until Mirinda corrected me), robins, wood pigeons, a nuthatch or two (I can never tell if it’s the same one), and missed a woodpecker that Mirinda assured me she saw on the twisty tree while I was at the shops.

In fact, there was a huge mass of birdlife in the garden today and I think they’re getting used to the camera staring single eyed at them from beneath bushes. The one thing they can’t get used to…or should I say two?…is this pair.

Pesky poodles - the avian guards

Though, for all their running and barking, disturbing the birds, they do keep the cats away which would disturb the birds a LOT more.

And I had the pleasure of sharing all the life in the garden with Mirinda as she’s home sick. The conference made her sick. That’s what she’s saying. She’s full of cold and stuck in bed (except for occasional walks up the path). I am keeping my distance. I don’t want it without the benefit of going to a conference and driving a go-kart or mixing cocktails.

Because of Mirinda’s infirmity, I made a second trip into Farnham in order to buy her some restorative truffles. On the way back, the moon looked fantastic in the still blue sky. I almost rushed home in order to snap a photograph.

Moon over Farnham

I really needed my tripod to keep it steadier and if I’d have taken it a bit earlier, it wouldn’t be so yellow. Still, it’s my first moon so things can only get better.