Walter and pug

walter and pug are my two bikes. i am by no means a serious cyclist however i really do enjoy pottering around on them and ride to work most days. when i have had bikes stolen in the past (too many times) i have felt utterly lost. i'm a nervous soul and often find walking alone intimidating, but on my bike i feel great.

stolen bikes are:

vix: my purple raleigh vixen which i had for years, bought for my 20th birthday by my family and my only mode of transport for nearly four years, before my sister got a car and the one we had shared came with me to cardiff. stolen on the same night i had to be rescued from the side of the M50 when the wheel fell off my car and i missed adam green at barfly. i learned to ride no-handed on vix.

fruity bike: my sister's old bike, actually a kid's bike which my dad restored for me when vix was stolen. my old bike, a shocking orange raleigh racer was deemed too knackered. i could JUST get away with it as a stop-gap because i am 5'1". fruity bike is named after the game i invented with her help.

giant:

a lovely blue giant mountain bike, 24th birthday pressie from my parents and grandad. survived two theft attempts before finally being nicked from outside buffalo on a night i was already pretty miserable. police found footage of the theft but couldn't identify anyone from it. giant was lovely, even if she did make my little fingers numb.

(unnamed):

i didn't have my next bike long enough to give it a proper name, other than pinkbike. it was an apollo zodiac, loud late 90's design at its best. shocking pink, purchased from ebay for the princely sum of £30 to replace giant. the loudest bike in cardiff- visually and literally; the brakes did not stop the bike but emitted a good warning squeal when applied, i purchased bright orange floral pannier bags. if you're going to be seen, you may as well do it properly. it had two working gears, 20 and 21, and once, forgetting that it did not have suspension, i fell off it in humiliating fashion (ie people could see) when trying to hop up onto a kerb. nicked from outside the romilly pub when i was doing a quiz there.

intermission:  the poshbike. i acquired a dutch style town bike, free of charge, from my friend. it was too big for me really, and taught me that even though i think dutch bikes look cool, they do not suit my riding style (fast, erratic, standy-uppy). scrapped after the pedal fell off and i couldn't be arsed to fix it.

so, then i got walter (raleigh) for my 29th birthday. walter is ok, but a bit heavy and cumbersome. great for my short ride to work over the potholes etc but a bit frustrating on long rides. and so with this in mind, and also that it is likely to get stolen at some point, i decided to buy a spare. so i got pug from ebay. pug is  a 1993 peugeot racer, fulfilling my needs for a spare bike and a faster one. i have  a peugeot car from 1993 with nearly 200k on the clock and going strong, so i reasoned this to be a good  sign. pug need new tyres but after i have sorted that i am massively looking forward to being able to choose a bike every morning based on weather and where i have to go.

here are pug and walter getting a good scrub:

and just pug:
(i like her black and whiteness)

so getting pug is either the beginning of a collection of bikes, or of 1993 peugeots. i genuinely don't know which.

Old timey me and chickens in a hole

so i've been a right old lady recently and have been doing all sorts of pottering around the house and garden, stuff that i never thought i would have enjoyed in my youth but really have. oh well, people change. anyway, what i did always know was that miserable settings make me miserable. and returning to my house and having to look at the front garden would often make me so as it was a drab, grey, broken, dirty hinterland of nothingness and frogs (so many frogs. evil splatty things. wallworms too- those ones that emerge from walls in straight lines when it rains). it was mainly occupied by a triffid, frogs, crisp packets (not mine) 2 wheelie bins and loads of recycling bags. i'm ashamed at the quantity of recycling produced by this household.

after slaying the triffid (and hurting my arm in the process), it looked like this:

yuk yuk yuk.

so i spent way too long researching pebbles on the internet (went for a mix of plum & green slate in the end, if anyone's wondering) and way too much money in a well known home and garden store, and me and my housemate then made it look like this:

it has a hidey place for the recycling and pretty pots and plants! i did unearth one frog during the works. noticing that i had jumped onto the garden wall and had started barking "frog frog frog frog frog frog frog frog frog!!", housemate valiantly picked the little blighter up and deposited him at the foot of a tree down the road.

these three plants are cuttings from my grandad's garden. my lovely grandad died in january and his house has been sold, so last time i went home i got these. they are forget-me-nots (my favourites), and purple and white heathers. wish them luck!

in other news, i want these things:

a duckling. well, several.

a water pump. there was one of these at my great aunt's house in kent. she died when i was very little and we only visited a couple of times a year, but i do have a memory of grandad showing me how to use the water pump in the garden- it was a huge novelty as the house and garden seemed to be from another time. it was a lovely place.

the chickens have kept themselves busy lately by digging an enormous hole in their run, and in turn i have been busy trying to capture a photo of one of them in it.  so here it is- and a treat too i hope you agree!

 tata!

Boom (and kahn)

Ha! it's been a while hasn't it? I am rubbish at this. but a big long academic holiday looms, so i'll probably get my rant on soon.

Anyway, it's time i told you about Boom. or Boomhauer the chicken (no other names, although they give her my surname at the vet), named after the blond indecipherable ladies' man in king of the hill, to which i was a bit addicted at the time of her purchase.

here she is:

she is an old cotswold legbar. (old cotswold legbars) she was purchased, along with her original sidekick kahn (also from king of the hill) in summer 2008 after the passing of Elvis (just because) & CJ (reginald perrin) in worryingly quick succession. so worrying that CJ, another black rock bought to keep reg company who died very young, was post-mortemmed. poor thing had blood cancer. very sad, but luckily, nothing environmental, which had been the fear.

they were the most expensive chickens we bought- about £15 each if memory serves, and were chosen because they lay those beautiful blue and green eggs which cost a fortune from the supermarket but are really rather nice. they are spectacular looking things too, with huge, floppy red combs, a fluffy crest (hairdo) and prettily patterened feathers. they are not known for being friendly. quite the opposite- they are reputed to be skittish, loud and a bit of a bully and quite a fan of escaping.

here she is as a whippersnapper:

that's before her comb developed and when she still had pink & purple feathers. the run is a temporary one-
so they could get used to the surroundings & the sight of the 2 old chickens (reg & arn, at the time) gradually. kahn is in the backround. she had the best hairdo of all.

boom's first act upon arrival was to try to escape. she did this by scaling the 6ft fence. one prompt catch-and-wing-clip later (wing clipping sounds horrible but it's actually just the feathers that get clipped) and she made it quite abundantly clear that she didn't like people and was going to hide in the coal shed until it was dark, at which point she could be caught & put in her run. kahn was only slightly more brave, occasionally poking her head out of the coal shed but swiftly thinking better of it.

boom got brave with the other chickens quite quickly. she was still skittish around people for a long time, long after she was all moved in and grown up and laying. in the meantime, kahn had become quite attached to me, however had stopped growing and was still petrified of the other chickens. it was very sweet having a tiny pigeon sized chicken that was really soppy, but we suspected that it wasn't right, so called the breeder, who asked us to return her and exchange her for another. (they were under guarantee, bizarrely, and she was not fulfiling her terms) so, kahn got exchanged for bobby, more on her another time.

over time boom got braver and friendlier, and moved up the pecking order. she is now quite firmly at the top. and she does things like this:

(excuse dire pyjama face picture)

in both pictures she is pursuing food. she is a legend. she tries to get into the house via a closed window a little too often. she has also made her way onto a dinner plate, and oven and a barbecue.
she no longer tries to escape, but is very feisty. when reg recently moulted, she picked on her quite mercilessly until all of her feathers had grown back. but she does lovely things too. being boss, she always puts herself between the other two & any predators- usually cats which have no intention of doing anything, but more recently a ferret, which burrowed into their run at 5 in the morning and attacked them. i was woken up by boom's loud squawking and all i could see when i looked out of my window was her flapping about the run in a very panicked fashion. it was horrible. she actually managed to break out, so by the time we'd legged it downstairs to find out what was going on, all of the chickens had scattered, boom being last. (bob made it into the house somehow, reg was nowhere to be seen for about 10 minutes, horrible hecause i thought she might have been eaten or killed or stolen) the ferret was still after boom when i caught her & put her on top of the guinea hutch. she kind of collapsed then- so i was worried she'd been hurt, but luckily i think she was just stunned and exhausted. reg had been hiding behind the bin, we discovered when the ferret found her. ferrets are horrible creatures. really vicious. or at least they are when they've broken into a chicken run at first light.

anyway, i've realised i can gibber waaay too long about a chicken that not many people care about. so, one last picture or two, & i'll be off.

Boom!!

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.