seasons greetings

Hello there blog. it's been a while. no apologies, i've had stuff to do isn't it. stuff like work shenanigans, having fun with brilliant people, minding warring chickens, visiting family and more work shenanigans. i've also lost my camera just too late to request a new one for xmas, so apologies if the quality of photos takes a wee dive.

i've had quite a good xmas, got a real tree with my housemates which we decorated with my favourite mistletoe lights and homemade gingerbread baubles and this year's new decoration, a ceramic snowman acquired in cornwall where we went for my friend's 30th birthday. i buy a new decoration every year, preferably from a visit somewhere.

it is not officially xmas in the nay household however, without this fellow:

it has belonged to my dad since he was a child, and i believe it belonged to someone else before him, making it probably about 70 years old. i obtained it when i left home at 18. it lives in a glenfiddich bottle case. once, i lost it for a few years and i genuinely felt a bit wrong when it was missing from the xmas decorations.

here is how arnie looked this year:

smashing, as you can see.

i've had many lovely evenings in in front of the fire, which is one of my most favourite things about my house, even though i'm always a little nervous when it's first lit. i'm just a wuss really.

cosy!

for actual xmas, i went home to wolves. nearly didn't make it though because of the mega snow, which induced my housemates to build new friends in the garden, such as monsieur table here:

this was before we had a few more dousings of the white stuff. my brilliant sister named monsieur table. she's good like that. chickens aren't really keen on snow. they don't really realise that the ground is still underneath it, although after a few days they got bored of of being cooped up and so tentatively braved it:

there is plenty of chicken news; a visitor, a moult, a war, i shall go into this another time. right now i'm busy planning tomorrow night's entertainment, a 70's dinner party with my housemates as a sort-of xmas present to each other. i've been given a load of 70's cookery books from my mum, including one which previously belonged to my great aunt which still has her handwritten and typed additions. it's absolutely lovely. we have devised a full 70's menu, including retro drinks and we will all be in costume too. off charity shopping tomorrow for some 70's crockery!

will post pics and a review!

28

tomorrow, saturday, 2nd October I shall be turning 29 (or, starting my 30th year)
So here are some things that I did when I was 28. It will be followed by a list of things I would like to do when I am 29.

•    Went on my first long haul flight, on my first ever visit to the US of A. Chicago, to be precise. A few years ago I’d have backed out because of claustrophobia, so I was quite proud of myself. Plus, Chicago is absolutely amazing (and is where I found veggie-burger nirvana)

•    Visited Italy for the first time. Verona, Venice and Vicenza. All three places are staggeringly beautiful and absolutely unique
•    Went completely car-less for the first time since I was 17 (though most of that time I have shared a car, and sometimes not even lived in the same city as my car!) so far, this has been great apart from feeling weird about being unable to offer lifts, and feeling squished when cycling home with a bag of chicken feed in my rucksack.
•    lived on my own, took on custody of the menagerie due to the co-mortgagee moving out (this is ultimately a good thing. No sympathy required)
•    invented the term co-mortgagee
•    “broke” four vehicles and one bike and had another bike stolen. (no crashes, just vehicles falling apart)
•    Became a guarantor for somebody’s tenancy (grown up)
•    Became a sort- of landlady- though the phrase still makes me feel very uncomfortable and does not reflect reality!
•    Met some amazing new people which makes me smile
•    Did a blog
•    Got myself on a proper album
•    Made treacle tart for the first time, and apparently was successful, perhaps this will be how I make my fortune.

What I would like to do as a 29 year old:

•    Learn to use my (hand-me down, film) SLR
•    Pay off at least one of the loans I took when northern rock went wrong and I had to move house
•    Visit another country I have not visited before
•    Sort out at least 5 things which make me not-proud-of myself by my thirtieth
•    Start drawing things again
•    Reinstate roof salad (on the basis that growing veg in the garden is futile because of the chickens, but roof salad works very well)
•    Build something of my own design (probably a logstore)

... that’s it really, not particularly ambitious, and i’m sure i’ve left loads of stuff out.

Never mind. Here are some pictures of a fort, because otherwise this entry is a bit light on pics.

the plan for tomorrow is a (civilised) pub crawl throughsome of  my favourite parts of cardiff. I have an ill however, and am beginning to wonder if i shall even last until teatime.

Reginald Iolanthe Chicken

so, being as this blog is supposedly about chickens and suchlike, i thought i shall start to profile my chickens. yes, this is happening.

i'll start with reg, as she is the first acquired of the three current members of the flock.

here she is:

reg is a black rock. here's some information about black rocks:


http://www.theblackrock.co.uk/

she was indeed acquired from a free range farm in the rhondda valley, as an 18-month old retired girl. we bought her to replace eric, one of the three ex- battery hens who formed the original chickeny lineup. she has lovely iridescent beetle black and deep gold feathers, bright red comb & wattles, and she weighs a ton.

as she was being retired, she cost £2. this was three and a half years ago, meaning she's quite an old girl now, but she's still going strong and lays very pretty pale pink eggs. she was retired as she'd had her first moult, meaning egg production slows very slightly and the shell quality isn't quite as good. fine for little old me though. if she were a battery hen she would have most likely become dog food at this point. as she came from a lovely small scale farm, instead she was sold for a tiny sum when prospective new owners presented themselves.

her first few weeks left me feeing absolutely awful though. coming from an idyllic mountainside farm full of her own kind and very little human interference, she was suddenly right at the bottom of the pecking order in a tiny garden which she also had to share with people. she was terrified, and was picked on mercilessly at first as the two old hens made sure she knew her place in the pecking order. these fights can be quite nasty and are horrible to watch, but they always sort things out and are just part of chickens' natural behaviour. still, i felt unbelievably guilty. there was an old bathroom mirror in the garden, and she kept staring into it, almost as if she just wanted to see another chicken that looked like one of her old flock (she was quite strikingly different to the other two orange hens and had only ever seen other black rocks before)

despite now very much being the senior party, she is second of three in the pecking order (though once the order is established, they get on very peacefully). she's lovely. she has the most adorable, quiet voice which wakes me up every morning as she paces up and down the run politely asking to be let out. she's also quite a bit cleverer than the other two, and is adept at stealing food from myself and my housemates. she's very accurate when jumping to get food from people's fingers, tables, plates... sneaky little thing.

(she's the one on the right)

not so long ago she had a very nasty injury when she pulled a nail off jumping from the top of the run.  she was quickly first-aided by me and whisked off to the saturday vet (upside down, to stem the bleeding) where she was cleaned up and kitted out with an enormous green and pink dressing which made her look like she was wearing a clown shoe. sad, but adorable. she had to be kept indoors, in the upstairs bathroom for a week while it healed. as chickens don't like being alone, the guinea pigs were recruited to keep her company.

she's grand now, and appears to be bombproof. further chicken profiles will follow, as will some better updates about my general life and thoughts, if only to break up the chicken rambles. (as for other things in nay's world, plenty going on but no "events" as such to report, but things are very lovely at the moment and on the whole i'm a happy lass.)

Home time and fruit

last weekend, i took advantage of the last of my time off and took a trip home to wolverhampton.

i went the pretty way on the train, via shrewsbury, just because it's nicer. it did prompt me to question why shropshire let the volume housebuilders in, but apart from the odd legoland blight, it's an extremely pretty route.

see?

the main aims of the visit were to visit my poorly aunt (hopefully mending), my very old grandad;

also to watch my sister's band play at the 02 academy (!)

here she is. she's a clever soul. she sings & plays sax in this band. she writes a lot of music too. i'm especially looking forward to her electro musical, or electrical.

the final purpose of my visit was to attend the opening of the new scorebox at my dad's cricket club, a place that has very fond memories for me. i'm a proper townie, i grew up in the city and have always lived in one, however this place is a few miles from my parents' house and is where i did all of my outdoor stuff on summer weekends when i was little. it's also where my fondness for cricket originates, even though it didn't really kick in until i moved away. here's the pavillion: 

as you can see it's rather idyllic. i remember when the row of trees on the right were planted. dad still occasionally plays, though he's 64 now so he's more of a reserve. in fact, he's known as emergency bob. he's club captain now, so he's very involved in the running of the club, admin, coaching, team selection etc. it takes most of his time, a good thing since he's unemployed. gives him something to do, like. mom is also unemployed and gets involved too, usually doing teas. she's known affectionately as matron. my sister and i are the bullets.

unfortunately, my grandad was taken ill the night before the opening so this did upend the plans a bit, it was a much briefer visit than planned. fingers crossed he's on the mend.

back in cardiff i did one of my favourite things: scrounging for free food aka bramble picking by the river. then i made this:

my housemates inform me that it is good.

Green man and clouds

i have just returned from green man festival. this was my sixth year there and out of those six, ONE year had decent weather. so, unless shivering and hiding in a tent for four days is your cup of tea, you go prepared.

i have two modes of camping, and two tents. i have a small tent which goes with a roll mat and sleeping bag and fits in a rucksack and is no fuss. i am perfectly happy with this for short stays or when the weather forecast is not disastrous. then i have green man (or long stay) mode. this has airbed and lights and space for chairs and is very, very waterproof.

 it was more than worth the distress of carrying everything around, as it rained pretty much solidly for the first day and a half there, and fairly regularly thereafter.

serge gave us a scare on the way down by mimicking the noise of a van about to break in two, but is turns out that said noise was just the result of a minor bump causing the rear step and exhaust pipe to occasionally collide. after that she was great, more of that later. here she is at our last festival together (excuse rubbish mobile phone photo):

i love green man. i love the fact that people are nice to each other there. i love the music, the food, the atmosphere, and the fact that it looks like this:

personal highlights, in no particular order, were camping stove haloumi rolls (see below) sweet baboo's various performances, flaming lips, laverbread burger, beirut, losing at scrabble, spencer mcgarry season's orchestral spectacular, crumpets, tindersticks (especially lovely), amazing friends, efterklang, the sound of rain on a tent whilst buried in a duvet, my last trip in serge, and makeshift shelters

the drive home to cardiff from green man is fairly lovely, however, as serge vansbourg will be going up for sale about now and this was our last proper outing, i decided to take an even nicer route home. this had nothing to do with me missing a turn.

i drove though the brecon beacons, actually in a cloud which was fun if a little hairy:

sheep would occasionally run out in front of the van, bizarrely prompting me to question whether or not i would consider eating roadkill (i've been a vegetarian on moral & taste & health grounds for 10 years). i think i decided i didn't object to the thought, but considered it a little pointless and unneccessary- i don't miss or crave meat in any way.

after that i took one of my favourite drives through Brynmawr (i'm familiar with brynmawr through work and a project we run based on the reuse of the abandoned boiler house, which was part of the incredible dunlop semtex rubber factory, the main part of which has sadly been demolished. i might do a blog about this place soon. anyway here's a snap of me at the boiler house taken by one of my students:)

after that it was through the ebbw valley and cwmcarn, with all of its mining towns and beautiful hills and victorian factories. absolutely stunning.

after arriving home it was laundry, shower, baking (vanilla yogurt cakes), and then out for my last alcoholic drinks as a 28 year old. my annual sober six weeks starts today!

wish me luck!

Things what I made and things what I won

Housemate returned from a visit to the homeland with a job lot of rhubarb so I made some of it into chutney:

(5 big sticks of rhubarb, a couple of tomatoes, one large onion, about 1 inch fresh ginger, a sprinkle of coriander & mustard seeds, a chilli, enough muscovado sugar to just about cover the lot, about half a pint of malt vineger, boil until it looks like chutney, remember to sterilise the jars)

I have also been celebrating a couple of quiz wins. I'm not the best at quizzes but always seem to land a good team! my regular, sunday quiz team the less eminent victorians (named after a cartoon in the romilly pub, venue of said quiz) went out at the weekend to spend our accumulated winnings at an italian restaurant. despite going for three courses and not holding back on the wine, we didn't manage to spend the lot. we had a lovely time though and have a perfect excuse to do it again in the near future!

last night then saw victory in the most surreal, funny, creative quiz i've ever been to. (quiz quest @ gwdihw)
we won this wonderful cake:

it has been adorned with our team name. with a quiz theme of red, and a redhead team percentage of 85% (i'm counting myself as 5% due to my occasional redheadedness & the fact that my housemate insists that i am) it was meant to be.

Hols

I am now not due in to work until september.

this means i shall mainly spend my (non-festival) days pottering, hanging around with the chickens, preserving things and preparing to say goodbye to serge vansbourg, my beautiful ford transit minibus, who i will be selling soon. here we are in happier times:

Hoppy Joe

last night, whilst winding down in front of the TV with my housemates, out of the corner of my eye i felt the gaze of an onlooker and heard myself mutter the words "frog. there's a bloody frog in the house" quite calmly, before being overcome by some kind of teenage flappy panic. housemates also did a little bit of a flappy panic, before calming down and endeavouring to catch the little fellow. he had a good old hop around, under the sofa, behind the tv, before they eventually caught him in a tupperware box and returned him to the bottom of the garden.

here he is. is suspect that he just wandered in when the back door was open. but in the colourful corner of my imagination, he was there to avenge the death of hoppy joe, whom i lawnmowered quite accidentally a few weeks back. (excuse the photo, it's through tupperware)

I remained stood on my chair like some kind of idiot until he was out of the door. i did not realise until then that i have inherited my mother's fear of frogs.

Woodsticks and bikes

Hello there. sorry I've been away a while. I'm beginning to suspect that this blog will be a lunchtime hobby, and i've been away from work.

I'll start with a quick update on the near death cycling experiences. I have two to report.
the first was mild as these things go. it occurred yesterday, when I was with friends in Thompson park. we'd decided to use my bike to do some time trials around the perimeter of the top field. as it was my go, I asked what the route was and was told just to follow the path. so i did. what i should have been told was follow the path for a while and then turn left. anyway, my route took me off downhill and round some nasty corners and very nearly sidelong into a tree. the stories of my friends sprinting over to save me the moment i "disappeared" did bring me some pleasure.
The second one was much more annoying. it was this morning as i was cycling along the dual carriageway. i was being overtaken by a car in the outside lane which suddenly decided to take a sharp left across both lanes and very very nearly took me with it. i had to slam on my brakes (good job i have a fully functioning bike now) and managed a feeble "hey!!". they didn't even notice. oh well.

what i really want to talk about is woodstick, which happened on saturday afternoon.

woodstick is a lovely little free, unofficial festival organised by some friends of mine.
they invite bands to play (this year: ivan moult, teflon monkey, hail! the planes, joy of sex, threatmantics, the loves and calvin johnson), then put them on a "stage" made of a gazebo on a grassy bank in the park where they play acoustic sets to an audience made of friends, acquaintances and passers by. the whole site is adorned with bunting and these little fellows:

i'm no reviewer of music so i won't even try, all i can say is that i thoroughly enjoyed everything about the entire day. sitting in a park at a homemade festival with friends is an experience i'd recommend to anybody.
this year the fesival had expanded by a gazebo and an extra table, and i was the coordinator of the cakes. here they are:

(photo by david roberts)
as you can see my crack team of bakers did me proud. there was also a lucky dip, with prizes donated by lots of local music types.

this was woodstick 3.0, and every year any money made (cake donations, lucky dip moneys etc) goes to charity, and therefore i must mention that this year money was raised for CRY, the charity for raising awareness of cardiac risk in the young. here they are: http://www.c-r-y.org.uk/

i really do love it when this kind of event happens and goes well. so well done to nicola and harri for making it happen, for spending months organising and making everything, and for being brave enough to try. well done to cardiff for not being needlessly authoritarian and letting us get on with it. well done to everyone who helped and who turned up and made it such a great event. i really do hope this happens again next year!

Arnie

i should have introduced you yesterday to arnie. one of the three original, ex battery hens we adopted. here she is, around about christmas time:

arnie, as you can see, is now taxidermy. the reason for this being that she was the most amazing looking thing, and moreover, an absolute gem.

here she is back in the day:

the whistling expression is due to beak clipping (i'll try not to use this blog to air my politics too much- but this is a practice totally unneccessary when welfare standards are high) and i've no idea why she only had one wattle, but as i said she was a complete gem, a real character and hilarious to watch. she was also in charge until the day she had to be put to sleep.

(feat. eric & elvis in the background)

I (and them)

hello there. welcome to my first blog. have been cajoled into this... sort of, but I won't knock it 'til i've tried it.

i will probably mostly blog about chickens, cooking, how often i nearly get killed riding my bike, and power tools.

I'll try and give you lots of nice pretty pictures too, like this one:

l-r we have boomhauer, bobby and reginald iolanthe chicken, or reg as she's more commonly known.
forgive their muddy beaks.

so that's the chickens from blog #1 done. (much, much, much more to follow)
cooking- making saag paneer later, will let you know if it is/ was edible.
near bike deaths- two this morning (roadworks & buses), will be taking a nice long detour home so plenty more opportunities to get squished.
power tools- none today due to hand injury caused indirectly by a toolbox. took it as a sign.

i may abandon this format very soon.
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