Monday, June 23, 2014

King of Spain


The nice weather all week has kept me in the garden most of the week, apart from the days when I am just plain tired the whole day, like today.
 I started with good intentions, ran out of wood for the new borders and decided to investigate the shed...........bad move.
The shed is the only place where I actually feel cross at Duncan for leaving me with it, When we moved in the shed was split into 3 rooms, insulated, plasterboarded, and set up to use as a kind of summer house. For some reason Duncan set about ripping out the plasterboard, the partitions and the ceilings, none of the stuff he ripped out actually left the shed but was just piled and throw all over. Add to that the not sorted contents of his workshop and the fact that the floor is covered in large lumps of concrete and bricks and it makes a pretty lethal combination when you want to find something.
An entire car load of insulation to the tip and it doesnt look any emptier but my arms and legs are itching from all the fibres. Time for a skip.


The school prom was friday, good to see the class dressed up in their finest, they look like adults yet behave like children. After we dropped Jane off Al and I had to brave the hoardes at Avebury to get home, loads of people grubby from lack of access to hot water and soap, there was some fire batontwirling I could see from the road and heard the drumming, its the only time I can listen to drumming all night, its kind of hypnotic.

We arrived home and went to sort out the birds, I heard this peeping noise, shone the torch and there was a tiny face looking at me ! 2 out of the 6 eggs hatched and there were 2 tiny chicks.


  Vulture has been great, she is sitting with her wings up for them to hide under. Chicks dont need to eat for the first day so Al got chick crumb this afternoon, rather than have them drown in the water I made the chick crumb into porridge for them, stood them on it and very gently Vulture showed them how to peck at the food, she used a different ack ack ack noise to tell them to watch her pecking, The chicks got the hang of it after a couple of minutes, it was fascinating watching her teach them how to peck . 2 out of 6 hatched under a hen is the same rate as Carl got in an incubator, not a good year for breeding Sebrights.

Another meeting at school to sort out some of the details, mainly administrative, I am a bit worried still but I can always leave if it doesnt suit me, I have loads of new ideas and schemes of work I have been working on  when I still thought I was going to go back to my original job, but I will keep them in reserve for a rainy day .


Oh and this is Felipe, he and Catalina arrived with Sarah and Daisy last Thursday, he was going to be Antonio but as it was the day the new king of Spain was inaugurated we decided on Felipe. He's been fairly quiet mainly due to me popping him in a small coop to muffle him in the morning but he has treated me to the full "cock a doodle doo" a couple of times, I like it but I dont think next door are very happy, hopefully rehoming some of the larger girls will stop her complaining. She thinks I have 10 chickens, Luckily for me she cant count, when the 3 hybrids go there will be 10  left!

All these years I thought I was destined to be a crazy cat lady and it turns out it could be chickens instead..

Monday, June 16, 2014

On time performance

That's what has been worrying me the last couple of days, US airways seem incapable of arriving on time from anywhere, I have some pretty tight connections on the way back from Anchorage and I have the sinking feeling that I am not going to make some of them.

  •   Getting to Phoenix and missing a flight isnt a huge deal, BA fly to London from Phoenix, US fly to Philly from Phoenix, plenty of routes home. 
  • Getting to Philly and missing a flight is a bit more of a deal but still another possible 2 flights back to London that night if I can get on them. 
  • Getting to Brussels late will be a nightmare because the connecting flight is on a different ticket and neither US or BA are obliged to do anything to help me!.I booked a flight home with Airline miles just in case it goes "bits up" but not until 9 in the evening. Ho Hum 


Long Days
 Days are still getting longer until 21st June, Midsummers day, the Summer Solstice. To most people the romantic notion of watching the sun rise on the longest day is something to look forward to, for us its a bit of mixed feelings, we only live a few miles from Avebury henge and the few days before the Solstice mean one thing ... Traffic, a procession of battered vans make their way through the town, breaking down as they limp to the henge for the celebrations, I dont think many of them are actually Wiccans or Pagans but the travellers like to meet at the henge for the solstice nonetheless. 
Over the years the Police control of the area has become more of a straightjacket, parking is limited, camping is limited, drinking is limited, roads have traffic cones placed on them for a week or so before the event and everyone has to be gone fairly early in the morning. This doesnt seem to stop the stragglers leaping out into the road like lemmings when I am trying to drive to work in the morning but it does limit the possible damage to the car !


I like Avebury, we held Duncan's wake in the Red Lion, the henge and fields gave people somewhere to go for walks and it wasnt a bad day. I think Dunc would have liked it particularly as I ordered some miniatures of his favourite malt whisky Jura to give to his friends to drink later. 

Daylight, thats what I was talking about, it has always struck me that Lisa was rather short changed on the daylight in the summer, infact most of the US seems to have drawn the shorter straw- its the latitude that does it 

 Take a look , Philadelphia is actually the same latitude as Valencia where we all know it gets dark earlier, not so strange when you think about it, 
London is the same latitude as Calgary and Alberta so they are getting the same daylight hours as we are 
Then we come to Alaska, if you look at the map, half of Alaska is in the Arctic circle, 24h daylight during the summer, even as far south as Anchorage you are still talking level with the middle of Norway, Finland, Sweden. and by the time I arrive 2 weeks after the longest day there will still be 19-20 odd hours of daylight a day.
I am glad the chickens dont get that much daylight, they can detect the dawn an hour before we can and sometimes I get up in the night look out through the conservatory and see a chicken looking back at me !

Vulture is still doing a sterling job sitting on the eggs, only a couple more days to go, she is the only one allowed breakfast in bed and I sneak her treats like a strawberry during the day. Every so often one of the others pushes her out of the way and lays an egg in with her clutch, a bit like "hatch this as well, while you are there love" even Conchita laid one in there for her.


Planning for the trip going well, all flights sorted, all hotels sorted, just the things to do during the day to sort now, one of the departure points for a wildlife half day cruise is so remote that the tunnel is only one lane wide and cars have to queue up to go through. Going to Whittier on the hour, coming from Whittier on the half hour, I dont think there is much there apart from a port and an abandoned US army building.



Not a very big tunnel is it?

Luckily the planning is taking my mind off the impending meeting with the Head next week, sometimes I feel sick thinking about  it and I have another meeting with my line manager afterwards, I just know he is going to be awkward and ask questions like "how do you feel about returning to work?" I have the answer ready for him "humiliated, despondent, set up for failure"  but I will probably just tell him that I dont feel anything.
Kwells purchased, the pharmacy asked if I suffered from travel sickness, "never " I replied when questioned further I had to tell them that you dont plan a glacier spotting trip across where the Gulf of Alaska joins near the Bering sea and not take tablets. Think Deadliest catch ..........

Monday, June 9, 2014

Just one more, it's only wafer thin





Actually its just one more trip because prices are stupid low this summer and its another once in a lifetime, bucket list type of trip. Alaska.

I have told a few people and I seem to be getting the same reaction as when we flew from Toronto to Pittsburg ie WHY?

Well, firstly we flew from Toronto to Pittsburgh to visit the Andy Warhol museum on the way to Philly in 2005, it didnt seem like a bad detour at the time until we discovered we were flying on a Dash 8-   think school minibus and you will be pretty close, 5 seats along the back of the bus and you could hear the luggage banging as it was being loaded behind the plywood panel, one stewardess and oh yes, its a prop. Alistair reminded me the other day looking at the size difference between the Brahmas and Conchita the bantam, he said "do you remember that time at Toronto airport, thats what the bantam looks like next to Blossom" 



Looks cute doesnt it? thats if you arent on it, I have the feeling that Dunc was a good deal more nervous than he let on !




The Warhol museum was actually worth the detour to see the pictures for real and close up.
We saw some brilliant images from Warhols earlier works which I prefer to the screen printed ones.
Blotted line printing is just drawing what you want to print onto a shiny surface and rubbing a piece of paper over it, thats how he made the copies of his work in the early days.
The pink Sam the cat that I own was done by this method and all his friends used to sit filling in the paint whilst partying at the Factory.

I have no doubts that the print I have is genuine, because of the type of paper, the other images of the sort and the fact that I have never seen another pink one like it mean it could have been a mistake colouring it and thats how it ended up as a single sheet. However I have no provenance with it and I dont want to submit it to the foundation because they destroy the ones they dont approve.

Oh yes, I forgot...Alaska....what does anyone know about Alaska?



This obviously 

And this one
















Her..........















These of course
















And plenty more which I will no doubt see during the trip

This trip is all on US airways,  I will still get all my miles and points, it doesnt have the best reputation and I dont have the best experience of it but how bad can it be?
The routing is BRU-PHL-PHX-ANC    ANC-PHX-PHL-BRU  Obviously starting from Brussels to get the cheaper fare (saving about 2 grand) and this time flying direct to Philadelphia instead of a connection in Heathrow. I have done a couple of trips where I have "bailed out" at Heathrow on the way back and this is going to get me in trouble with the airline if I do it much more (Ie they will charge me the fare to London instead) so a direct flight to Brussels means I cant skip the last leg because I am hit with apathy in London. I lose points but better to lose a "few" points than have the airline after me for a "few"grand!



Yet again I have a trip that is hard to pack for, the last time I was in Phoenix the temperature was 114F that's 46 C do you think it will be that temperature in Alaska? I think not