Foxy business!

Imagine a smell so pungent that it brings tears to your eyes, turn that into a solid form and call it fox s**t and then liberally coat your dog with it. Then you have an idea as to my problem. I must clean him up.

Mobility is not my strongest point, so the dog’s winning, but I have a cunning plan. At home we have a shower in a wet room so Murphy beware!

Picture this… me naked and the odiferous dog fighting with shampoo and shower hose. The dog now smells sweeter, so I think I won, however, the dog would not agree the point.

Chesterfield didn’t get the third happening last week, but the weather has improved to the extent that I’m writing this outside, I can hear a brook in the background, liquid tumbling sound, a hedge has been trimmed and there is a smell of crushed vegetation.

There is a hazel bush over my head and it’s covered with nuts. Filberts they call them on the market.

We are sat in the lee of a stone wall, on which are growing blackberries to be harvested soon. Is there anything on earth so nice as the first blackberry and apple pie? Short answer – NO! Also, growing on the wall, a plant called Biting Stone Crop. How can a plant bite? Something singing in the background and is not in the charts but it should be, melodious is the word I’m searching for. Blackbird probably.

Visiting the ponds this morning, I noticed that there was a cygnet missing. Pound to a penny that the fox gets the blame, we are down to three now. Also on the pond are some small diving birds, Little Grebes, I reckon they have newly hatched chicks which are fabulous divers. It has to be seen. They stay under for ages, I tried holding my breath when one dived, had to stop that, was getting dizzy…

Todays thought for you – why do young people, the baseball cap back to front brigade, male or female, have the music in their ears so loud you can feel it? I don’t think that it is a desire to share it with us, do you?

Who was it in the Bible who broke down the walls of Jericho with noise? Was it Joshua? I’m a bit hazy here, but if noise can break walls, what is it doing to their hearing? (End of rant)

Down by the ponds again, watching the baby Grebe, they have a call not unlike a mobile phone as they cruised the pond. It amused me to watch people checking their mobile phones, but to no avail, nobody wanted them after all!

Watched a man catch a big carp (well, big to me), he said it was over 10. I assumed that was pounds. It was a tremendous thing, a mouth like a jennel and so many beautiful colours on the scales on its body. It was a truly magnificent thing and he was so nonchalant about it. The next man on the pond was catching little things, but he was having just as much, if not more pleasure, than the carp hunter.

There is a moral here, but I’m not sure what!

Buggy Man