Travels with my camera

Chippy


I am quite proud of myself today. I did it. I actually bloody did it! Yes folks, I cleaned out the aviary. It's only taken the best part of two weeks to actually do it after it badly needed it. Every day, I have fully intended to do so, and then always found an excuse not to. Too hot, my back hurts, I've got to go somewhere, too windy, it's raining (well that was yesterday) I don't want to disturb the birds when it's this hot...... Well today, despite waking up with a terrible headache (thank god for sumatripton pills I say) I just went ahead and did it. Once I get in there I don't know what all the fuss is about. It only took me about 30 minutes today, I must admit I didn't do it that thoroughly. I needed to be quick. That's because Splash and Purdey are expecting the patter of tiny claws. They are sitting on three eggs on the floor in the corner of the shed. I don't expect any of them to hatch, as they started sitting on them for a few nights, and then abandoned them for a couple of days, but then famous last words - that's how I ended up with Twizzle after a similar event with her parents. We shall see. I'm not bothered one way or another. If they hatch, well fine, despite me saying I don't want anymore birds, maybe I will sell them, but knowing me I won't. I can't remember now when they started sitting either, must be getting on for two weeks now. They take 18-21 days to hatch, so by this time next week I should know.

I cleaned the chickens out after, and then the guinea pigs, once I decided to put them outside. Yesterday they were so disappointed, everytime I came into the room they were hanging on the side of the cage as if to say are we going out now? The weather just was so awful, grey and raining for around 6 hours, although not continuously. It hasn't been that much better for much of today either, we have had some horrendously heavy showers, and it's very windy, but I've put an umbrella up over the cage part of their run, to protect their little igloos! It's actually turned out quite hot now, I went out with Emma wearing a sweatshirt, but had to take it off. Hotter at 4 oclock than it has been all day.

Last night I watched Speedway again on Sky Sports. I shall definitely consider lobbing out for that package when my cheap offer one runs out. I am really back into Speedway again. I only wish I could see it live somewhere too. I have just run off a video of it and posted it off to Barry again, he enjoyed last weeks World Cup final one, this was a Grand Prix round, the next one is in September. The British bloke did really well, he came second. I actually just managed to stay awake for the final, and then went straight to bed, I was so tired, I only had 5 hours sleep again Friday night, and fell asleep on the sofa in the afternoon for half an hour. That's so unlike me, I never normally dose off. It's the second time this week, I had to actually go to bed one afternoon, but that's because of my headache too.

I still need to clean Chippy out (my budgie) and the place is filthy, but hey, you can't do everything can you!

Took some pictures of the sunset last night, the sky was amazing again, I love it when there's all that blue with pinks and reds of the clouds.

Just been playing with my MP3 player too (I put loads of stuff on it yesterday morning, have 34 tracks on now, it's so easy to do) Have got the hang of it pretty quick for an old codger! It's great just hang it up in the car dangling from the rear view mirror, next to a couple of my dangly doggies, and then one click and you can change the track. Miles easier than even if you were using a fitted radio/cd player, you don't have to take your eyes off the road at all. They should be the law!

I've got dentist tomorrow, looking forward to that like a hole in the head. I had a tiny filling in my front tooth last month, was so brave, didn't have a injection, but since then, it's not settled at all, and it is agony if I bite with it, or even touch it on the gumline. It's disturbed the nerve I think. I don't know if she can do anything with it though, but still.

I just got bitten by a housefly! It looks like a normal fly, and I felt something on my ankle, really painful, and it was a fly, and it's drawn blood! Ouch, sodding thing. Since when did houseflies bite people???????

Current mood: Hurting

Splash is the Lutino (yellow) bird. The others are Toby and Boy. Purdey the grey bird here.

The title of my blog says it all really. The only two things of note that have happened in the last couple of days. Other than that, went to the Llanybydder Horse Mart on Thursday, which is held on the last Thursday of every month. Not that I'm interested much in horses, but they have lots of market stalls to look at (normally) I arranged to meet my friend Irene there, and she came with her two grandsons who are staying with her for the week. What a waste of time though, there was only about 25% of the normal stalls there, and took all of five minutes to look at them! We then realised that most of them would be at The Royal Welsh show this week, and also being summer now, a lot would be doing summer markets too. So went back to hers for lunch and a chat, took Emma round a couple of her fields, sadly no river this time, the sheep had been moved to that side of the road, so she had to make do with sheep's poo and a run round the grass, oh and playing avoid the football!

Yesterday had major excitement in the garden, I have posted all about that on biggonline (link on sidebar here) entitled Wow a Hawk in the Garden Birds section for anyone interested, so I won't repeat here, because most of you that read this blog probably read that too! I will just post the pictures I took because it was an amazing experience, what a beautiful bird, so tiny too, I couldn't believe it was a sparrowhawk, the others that have been here were four times bigger. Hope his leg will be okay, it was certainly working all right when I released him, maybe it had gone numb with being trapped, and the circulation came back after his short time in the box.

So having met with Irene's two grandchildren, (ages 8 and 13) I learned all about MP3 players and their capabilities! I had a thought, instead of carrying my entire cd collection around in the car, and messing about trying to change them, fiddling around with the personal cd player etc, a cheapie MP3 would save all that hassle, and I could just choose the tracks I wanted to play on a regular basis. Long story short, I bought one from Currys yesterday. It took me all sodding night to work out how to work the thing, which was most annoying because I tried it out in the car when I first got it, it has 10 pre-recording tracks on there as a demo and it worked fine. But do you think I could repeat the experience. Oh no, that would be too simple. I could see the track playing, and read all about it, but couldn't bloody hear it. Then it tells you in the manual how to record. Talk about complicated, do this, do that, and all badly translated from Chinese. Why the hell do these companies (Currys own brand - Matsui)let a non-English speaking person write the instruction manuals for these things???? It's ridiculous. Anyhow, they can stuff Windows Media Player, it just makes life hard, I did it in seconds using Real One player, I have found this to be the case with other things too, far easier. It downloaded a couple of my tracks which are on the pc in about 5 seconds, which was fantastic. So now I have the great fun of putting others on here, will take me ages to do. Also, once they are saved into My Music or Music Download folder etc, you just have to right click and Copy to, no need to even open the media players. Easy peasy when you know how! All this for £17.99, and the thing is about 3 inches long. Who'd have believed you could do such a thing even 10 years ago? Bloody amazing technology. The sound quality is fantastic too. I wonder what can be so much better with the ones that cost upwards of fifty quid? And it will hold 80 mp3s or up to 160 WMAs which is what most of my tracks will be that I download off my cds. Looks like I shall be spending time doing that today, it doesn't look too good outside, very black and windy, rain due anytime by the looks of things.







Current mood: Chuffed

Today my friends, I write this blog with a heavy heart, and very red eyes from crying. I feel sick and distraught beyond belief. I found my Twizzle dead in the aviary when I got back from shopping today.

I went to the bird table which is located near my aviary to top up the seeds about 3 pm after I'd eaten my lunch, and saw to my horror that Twizzle, my lovely little hen cockatiel was laying on the floor of the flight. I quickly went in and she was dead, and had been for some time. I am beside myself with grief because the death is not only so sudden and she was still so young (not yet 7) the shock of finding her being bad enough, upon examination, all her toe nails and some of the ends of her toes are missing. If I had been here, I would surely have heard her crying out in pain. My only hope is that for some strange reason, these have been nibbled off by the other birds after her death, but it has never happened before, why should they do it this time? I can see no blood anywhere in the aviary, no blood on any of the other birds, and there is no blood where she lay dead. My aviary is double wired too, so nothing could have got her from the outside, I know that for a fact, I have been keeping birds for too long to not know how to protect them from attacks from hawks and cats, and nothing has got inside either (like rats for instance - absolutely not) so I will never know what happened. I can only hope she died of a heart attack. I have had this happen once or twice before with my cockatiels, one minute they are fine, and within hours they are dead. She was fine at 10 oclock this morning, when I played splashes with her and Jo Jo, another little hen who was the last one I rescued from a pet shop last year, and who had become her best friend. They loved to sit in the big dish of water I have in the aviary and have me flick water over them.

I hand reared Twizzle from a tiny 3 day old baby when she hatched on the floor of the shed, despite my feeling that no eggs were going to hatch, and indeed, not wanting any to hatch, I don't breed my birds. The parents then left her to die, not wanting to be bothered with just one chick I suppose, and I brought her in and did my best, and against the odds, she survived, and indeed became a right little madam. She had such attitude, and everthing I said to her or did, was greeted with a weeeeeeee and a bow of the head in a semi menacing way, but she would never bite me. I was still her mum, even though she found herself a nice boyfriend in the aviary. I will never forget her, I am starting to fill up again now just doing this. I now have the lovely task of trying to dig a hole to bury her in this rock hard soil we have at present. And I can still hear Chico screaming for her now, cockatiels pair for life, and he will call and call for several days now.

There is a link to the side of this blog - The Story of Twizzle - it has been on my blog from the start. You can view it as a slideshow. She is one of the best pets I've ever had the privilege of owning. Why oh why do I put myself through this? All my cockatiels out there bar one are ones that nobody else had wanted and I gave a home to, each time one dies it breaks my heart, but this is the worst yet apart from maybe my Ghosty, who died a few years ago now, and I guess the pain of that has lessened. God help me when my Emma's time comes.

Haven't really done a lot this past couple of days, except mess around, its been too hot to stay out in the garden for more than about 20 minutes at a time. Yesterday, I was so bored, I took a few photos of the garden again, and the chickens posed nicely for me a few times too. I have a budlea down the bottom end and there's a wild flower (well weed probably) grown up intertwined with it, and I think it looks really good. Down the rough end of the garden, there's an assortment of wild plants, like foxglove, comfrey, and some other things I don't know what they're called, plus I've got a bamboo which is going well, the two lilac bushes, and I chucked down on the end bit, (which is laughingly called my compost heap, which in fact is just a dumping ground for anything I don't know what to do with) my dead teasels last year, when they were all brown and withered and they've seeded! I have teasel coming up everywhere again lol, they definitely like it here. The ones in my border are going well again and are up to about 6 feet high again, same as last year!

Today I went to Pat's after lunch, and we took the dogs down to the river (The Dingles) again. Last time I went over there with her, we couldn't get very far because a huge tree had come down in that storm we had, and was completely blocking the path. Since then, they have managed to find out who owns the wood, it is owned by an American guy apparently, who is happy that people can walk their dogs there (lucky bloke, wish I owned a wood like that) Anyway, they have been in and cut the tree up, and widened all the paths and strimmed it all down, and it's now fantastic down there. We can actually walk along side by side and hold a conversation, instead of in single file lol!

Couple of things I just have to had a moan about. Below you will see a couple of photographs of the scenery on the way to Pats. It is some of the most breathtaking I have seen in this part of Wales, I never tire of it. The journey is some 18 miles and takes about half an hour, mainly because about a third of it is single track roads with passing spaces. The views across to the other side of the valleys in fantastic, all the fields laid out with the hedges and trees, all varying shades of greens and browns. So with a view like this, how can some moronic bastard just dump a pile of their shit at the side of the road! It makes me so bloody mad I can tell you. I would like to get them and stuff it up their bloody disgusting arses. There is no need for it whatsoever. The council take all of the items that were dumped free of charge. The only thing that makes me madder than littering the countryside is cruelty to animals.

I am also getting upset over another matter too at the moment, but something I can do little about, apart from stay at home - mass murder of butterflies. There are so many around flitting across from one side of the road to the other seeking out the wild flowers at present. I have swerved and braked many a time, but I have still killed dozens. It makes me so sad. They have such a short life as it is, and they don't stand a bloody chance against a car, however slow you go. I look back in the rear view mirror and see them floundering in the road, and I get every bit as upset as if it had been a bird. Wish I didn't. :(

And another moan whilst I'm at it. Why in the name of god do people have to light bonfires when it's hot weather, when they know that everyone will have their windows open trying to get some fresh air? Someone's doing it again now down the valley, this is the third sodding time in about 10 days that my place is stunk out with smoke. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr inconsiderate arseholes.

That's it for today then. I am well ahead of myself tonight, already done the washing up, hogs food, watering. Just the birds to shut in a bit, and bring in the guinea piggies from outside.

Well, I've been trying on and off to post my photos on here for about an hour now, and have not had any luck. They have just put an error message up saying an engineer has been informed. Great. Are blogger the same firm as Yahoo I wonder? Seems to be major problems this week. Oh well, will maybe leave it till the morning then to do them. You will all just have to wait with baited breath .....

I thought Pete's blog yesterday with all the old pics was a great idea, so I have done some of mine. Unfortunately, the quality of the pics won't be as good as his because I don't have a scanner,so I've just photographed my old photos as it were with my digi camera, they haven't come out too bad though (apart from the subject of course... ) Another reason the quality won't be so good is that they are a bit older than Pete's! (Not a lot mind, but still... )

Okay, enough waffle. I should be cleaning out my aviary, not sodding about on here at this time of day, but hey, the sun is shining, and that's one of the great joys for me of having a laptop with wireless broadband, I can be sunbathing and doing something like this. It doesn't happen too often in this country, so sod it, I'm making the most of it. I really must do my aviary tomorrow though.....

I'm going to attempt to put these in rough date order, although it's difficult to tell exactly with some of them, and of course they come up arse about face when you post them on here too which doesn't help. Here goes.

Me on my Christening day, sometime in 1954!



















1955/6?


















1955/6 again I would think


















1958 ish


















and again


















Look a right little madam don't I? I think this may have been the day that my cousin stabbed me with a dart though!















Chessington Zoo I think















This I know - 1961, I was 7, in my bridesmaid's dress for my cousin Hazel's wedding.



















1968 Look about 14 I think.




















1972, on holiday in Lloret de Mar


















About 1978















About 1983, doing a darts Marathon for charity

















Me circa 1986, in my living room with my dog Amy

Had a crappish day yesterday, weather overcast for much of it, bored out of my brains, in the end decided to go to Lidls for some bottled water and then took Emma to Ferryside. Not a roaring success, as usual the wind was howling up the estuary, the tide was about 6 miles out and she couldn't get anywhere near the water, and it was too hot for her really. Added to which, just literally 10 seconds after we crossed the railway line and were still at the gate, a train came roaring round the bend from Carmarthen direction and put the shits up both of us! Stop Look and Listen signs are all very well, but that moved from being out of sight and out of earshot to right next to us within about 20 seconds. Imagine if you'd tripped???? Doesn't bear thinking about. I don't think I'll be going there again Pauline!

Last night, had an unbelievable time trying to get on Yahoo messenger. Nothing I did would work, it just kept on coming up with the sign in box. I removed it from my system, and re-installed, I re-booted, I upgraded, I created an new id, and it would have none of it. So I spent the night watching my webcam on my own, interspersed with watching the Speedway on Sky Sports 1, was fantastic on both counts. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the World Cup final between Denmark, Sweden, Australia and GB. There are still two riders from when I used to go to Speedway, they were just kids then, now they are old men, lol! Sorry Mark Loram and Chris Louie! I'm going to contact Barry and see if he wants me to do him a copy of the whole night, I copied it onto my Sky+. For those of you who are remotely interested, my ex Barry was a pro speedway rider for 20 years, thats how I met him. He still likes to watch I think, but sadly here in Wales there isn't much doing, so it has to be tv, and he hasn't got Sky. There was a team at Carmarthen a couple of years back, but they have folded now I think, and it just wasn't the same somehow, I went a couple of times.

Anyway, onto the excitement of the evening, when I had a hoglet arrive on my feeder at the back. Pictures below. The dish he/she is sitting in is 6 inches in diameter, so it shows how small this little 'un was. I have decided to call it Teeny Weeny. Oh I'd best mention that the night before, I had both Itsy and another larger hog visit, and brought them into the back porch for a photographic session! Poor things, felt very mean after because they ran off without eating any more and didn't come back during the night either. I wanted to get the ticks from Itsy, it seemed like she only had one left anyway but curled up way too tightly for me to get to it. The large hog is called The Biggun for now, or maybe for good. Maybe Teeny Weeny is their baby. So if Snuffs returns (and I still hope so) I shall have four hoggies. Yay!

Today I went to the car boot at Beulah, havent been there for ages, and I wanted a cheap phone to replace the one in the bedroom which is crap. I ended up getting two. One was 50p and the other was £1! Both are perfect, near new condition, the one that was a quid is fab! I also bought a couple of books which are in mint condition, Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole Omnibus of The Growing Pains, and Wilderness Years, it hasn't been read, and "I Don't Believe It" Richard Wilson's book of Absurdities. I fancy reading something a bit humorous, I've almost finished reading Fluke by James Herbert, I've read this before ages ago, forgotten how good it was, and of course I long finished my book Baxter that I traced through the Book recycling website that I discovered. I thought maybe I would have a go at selling the books if I can keep them in nice condition after, they cost me a £ and 5p respectively, will be good if I can selll them for the £3 on the site.

I also bought a Flymo gardenvac for £23. The bloke wanted £30 for it, but I didn't have enough money on me. I went back as I was leaving at the end and made him an offer, he didn't want to take it, and was right miserable, but his wife nagged him (in Welsh) and he took it! I hate doing that though, I never knock people down at carboots, having done them myself as a living for about 6 years, I know what it's like, I am no good at bargaining. If I like something enough to want to buy it, then I either pay what they are asking or if its more than I can afford or think is fair, then I don't buy it, simple as that. I thought it would be handy for hoovering up the seed husks and crap in the garden, not to mention the three ton of leaves I get every autumn.

After that, I took Emma down to Aberporth beach. All the car parks were full, despite it being overcast, there were loads of people on the beach. This used to be a dog ban beach to one side of it too, but that's obviously not the case now, as there were loads of dogs there. I went to a different side of the town and found somewhere to park. The tide was out further than I've ever seen it there, the rocks were all exposed and I took some pictures of a few of the rock pools, it was lovely like looking into a tropical sea. Emma is absolutely shattered, what with walking round the carboot with me for about an hour and a half, and then the beach.

I mentioned that I bought a trance cd last week, its 4 cd box set, various artists. Well there is one track on the cd1 that I have been playing over and over, it's just so fantastic, I love it. So tonight I looked up who it is on the cover, and it's a group called Humate and the track is called Love Stimulation. I have been doing some research and find that the band is Finnish - must ask Karwin if he knows of them. The track is quite old, 1999, so maybe they arent around anymore, but I found some albums for sale on Amazon, and have ordered The Best of Humate, for £4.99 so hopefully the other tracks will be similar sort of stuff, knowing my luck though it will be shite! I've done that before, on the strength of one track, and the rest of them are nothing like it.

Time to post the pics and then go and do the washing up I suppose, and then set up the cam for tonight and hope the hoggies come back tonight. Nothing is touching the dish in the front porch during the night now (Snuffs old place) but the strange thing is, the meaty chunks have disappeared today. I wonder whether the magpies have worked out how to get under the cover, it's very low, and they would have to practically crawl under - I may leave the cam on during the day and look now and then to see what is happening I think.