1^st June

A very misty start to the day but the sun burnt through and it was scorchio for a while before the clouds covered the sun. My back has gone well and truly into spasm after some light gardening yesterday so I’ve had to ignore the garden and lay down on the sunbed on the decking with the Sunday papers hooray! Not much to report except that the hens are laying well and we are having about 13 eggs a day but still can’t find the secret stash in the barn which must be there somewhere. The dogs are funny in the field the grass is so long they have to bound and leap through it and Lucy gets fed up and flops so Ifor can’t find her, I had to keep the other side of the gate in case they knocked into me. Mum was weeding her flower patch and all I managed to do was feed the fish. The new pond pump has cleared the water beautifully and the fish are very visible lets hope a passing heron doesn’t spot them. Tony opposite is mowing and collecting silage from his 3 fields on the opposite side of the road to us and has been working most of the day so it wasn’t very peaceful! Jules is off to work in a minute and I’m going to go to bed as my strong painkillers are making me wobbly (well wobblier than normal!)

2^nd-  7^th

 June

To say this week has been a c—p week so far would be a bit of an understatement! How quickly things change in this rural paradise that is our home. Firstly Ifor got into the fish pond and trashed it, the water is no longer clear and the fish are terrified, all the rocks have been tipped into the water and all my bedding plants trampled and the soon to flower water lilies ruined so he’s not in my best books My back continued to get worse resulting in two days in bed then just as I was beginning to be mobile Mum who’s had her medication changed by the heart specialist began to get pains in her arms and weakness in her hands which was quite alarming for her (and us). At 5am on Wednesday morning the phone rang and it was Mum calling for help. We raced down there (well I hobbled) to find her on the floor on the door side of her bed having slipped off the bed whilst getting out, she found she had strength in her arms and couldn’t get up again and had awful pains, she took half an hour to crawl round to the other bedside table and the phone (mental note made to move the damn phone) and call for us. Luckily Jules was there on a rare one of two days off this week and he was able to get her up on her feet as her legs seemed fine. I arranged for the doctor to come out and as her own doctor is on holiday it was a doctor who was just going by her notes. He examined her and couldn’t find any one thing which may have been the cause although gout and arthritis were mentioned! Apparently the water tablets dry her out so making her breathlessness better but then affect her joints! He recommended cutting one of her many water tablets out and contacting the specialist heart nurse Becky which I did and she arranged to visit on Friday afternoon. Mum in the meantime is convinced she’s on her way out and we both realise that when my back is bad I can do bugger all for her so we were a bit down to say the least. Just to make things better at 3pm I went to the dentist and had my troublesome front tooth stump removed, I’m terrified of the dentist anyway as I have vivid memories of childhood visits with the old green machinery and the black rubber face mask and the smell of the gas, I used to be so hysterical that on one occasion I was physically held down by dental assistants whilst one tooth was extracted and another drilled and filled with no anaesthetic being administered, they never got me there again funnily enough and I still have nightmares about the pain. ANYWAY... I digress I was given two delightful numbing injections in the roof of my mouth (oh deep joy) and a 10 minute tussle ensued with me inverted backwards 45degrees in the chair and the dentist cutting, pushing, pulling, wrenching (and grinding)  the offending tooth root from my mouth leaving me in a bit of trauma with my back of all things! It didn’t hurt but the violence of it was quite alarming! It’s the first adult tooth I’ve had removed and to anyone undergoing the same thing I’d just like to say... I’m glad it’s not me. I was now the proud owner of a bleeding gaping hole in my upper front jaw. I had to resort to painkillers and very woozily took to my bed after checking on Mum who is more than a bit fed up and in some pain being unable to do most anything. Jules went off to work and just as I thought the day couldn’t get any worse it did. All hell broke loose in the chicken pen and when I ran outside (hobbled) I was confronted with mayhem, a fox was in the pen with one of the battery hens in it’s mouth that was screaming and squawking (as you would) the rest were running round the inside garden and the field having been scared into taking flight out of the pen. Ifor and Lucy were having great fun chasing the poor terrified creatures and seemed totally oblivious to the presence of the fox! I went into the pen and the fox had dropped the chicken and was desperately trying to get out of the pen having obviously forgotten where the hole was. I was close enough to grab it but then thought it would bite me so I picked up the nearest thing to beat it to death with which was a stick from a beach wind break, hardly the heaviest item, I managed one pathetic whack on it’s backside but couldn’t bring myself to beat to death a poor defenceless animal even if it is vermin and killing my girls, don’t get me wrong I could have shot it quite easily, even I couldn’t miss at that range but physically feeling the animal’s body under the stick was not nice. I had also just been watching Springwatch and thoughts of Bill Oddie and Kate whatserface shouting “ A live animal that’s not a bird!! Don’t kill it we can film it” lets face it they’ve managed to film bugger all this series haven’t they? Put it like this if they’d have had a webcam in our chicken pen everyone would have been outraged, fox lovers or haters alike!! Anyway the poor thing just stopped and looked at me so I thought of my two secret weapons ...yes Lucy and Ifor who were excitedly watching from the safety of the driveway. The conversation went like this ..

Me. ”Come on then get the foxy chase him off good boy ,good girl come on then!”

Lucy. “What’s a fox? What fox? Where? woof woof good game good game”

Me. “For God sake Lucy it’s there sitting on the bank in the pen can’t you see it!”

Lucy “Oh yes it’s that brown thing running for it’s life! Leave it with me Mum I’ll sort it”

Lucy: Exit left chasing terrified featherless chicken.

Me “ Ifor come and get the foxy, come on then boy, into the pen come on”

Ifor “For the second time Mum what’s a fox? and the last time I went into that pen you thwacked me on the bum with that stick you’ve got raised in your hand above your head so there’s no chance of me going in there again.”

Ifor: Exit left to help Lucy chase the injured chicken round the garden.

At this point I can say that it was borderline funny except that the other more badly injured chicken was running round with her tail end literally bitten off and hanging. I lunged at Reynard once again with the windbreak pole and he hopped over the fencing and ran off into the field, why didn’t he do that to start with?

All this happened about 8pm so it was far from dark and I now had 18 chickens scattered around the field and the garden to try and gather up whilst trying not to injure my back any more and keep my mouth closed so I didn’t get ‘a chill’ in my tooth hole (I never did work out how you could get a chill in your mouth’) I won’t go into detail but by 10pm they were all in the pen having been chased caught cajoled and carried by me. The worst injured one I put in the cat basket and on to the dining room table with a view to her being despatched by Julian in the morning. Several of the battery hens have lost large amounts of feathers which they’re used to anyway but even for them they’re a bit red and raw.

On Thursday I reassessed the injured chicken and she has a horrid injury to her tail which is literally bitten through but the wound looks clean and she doesn’t seem bothered even being indignant at being caged. She is one of the rescued battery hens so I’ve decided to give her a chance. The injury and shock haven’t killed her straight away but infection probably would. I cleaned the wound stuck it together with plasters and taped it up holding it together and put her back with the others where she is happy as Larry wandering around I’ve nicknamed her Abigail no tail! I’ll leave her until Sunday then have another look and clean it up again. Mum’s knees and arms are painful today and she’s not able to grip anything so we had a bit of a fraught day to say the least but we managed to get her showered and comfortable and fed.  My back is getting better though and should be back to normal tomorrow I reckon. Friday morning the drains got blocked and backed up! A perfect end to a crap week!  I managed to help Mum and took her into Bude to have her regular blood test., then I got Jules up and we did her and our shopping, when we got back Jules rodded the drains I’ll spare you the details but I’m sure it was one of Debbies!! (Only joking) the cess needs emptying now as well. The heart nurse came and said that Mum has gout which to me conjures up pictures of sozzled old men with swollen toes but apparently it’s a build up of Uric acid crystals in the joints and is caused by the tablets that she has recently put Mum on to help her breathing. Poor Mum it seems that a balance has to be found between getting her breathlessness under control and the pain caused by these tablets but for the moment she has been taken off the drug for her breathing to stop the pain from the gout and will be reintroduced slowly to it and possibly given another drug to counteract the gout! The pain should ease quickly over the weekend but her breathing will suffer, Becky the heart nurse is coming again on Monday or Tuesday to check on her. Meanwhile I have got impossible jaw ache from my cavity and the possibility of an infection setting in despite swilling with very hot salt water every hour or so and sucking on soft food only. Keep taking the tablets!! On the good side my back is better and I managed to give the new turf its first mow and the back lawn as well as planting some of the plants that Mum wanted planted in her border. Talking of the garden we have had one lot of peas and now there is another lot ready as well as broad beans and courgettes as well as all the salad stuff. The sweet peas are climbing the arches and the runner beans have flowers on them, all the cottage flowers are blooming but the weather remains unsettled, having said that we have had only one downpour of rain here in about 2 weeks and are very bemused by the reports of flash floods up country and elsewhere, it seems that even Bude and Launceston have had their share but it seems to have missed us resulting in having to put the sprinkler on the new lawn and the veg patch a few times last week.

7^th-13^th

June

A slightly better week this week I’m pleased to report. As far as Mum is concerned she was still poorly over the weekend a combination of the very painful gout from one lot of tablets and the side effects from more tablets to stop the gout! By Tuesday she was looking and feeling better and by today Friday she is up and about again but quite pale and frail. I on the other hand had the weekend from hell with toothache and pain from where my tooth had been extracted. After hardly any sleep and a pile of painkillers I had to ring the dentist on Monday morning and get an emergency appointment. It would appear that I’ve got a bad infection in the wound, which because I’ve left it over the weekend has closed up over the infection. I had to have the wound opened again and drained and packed with medication which hurt like hell to say the least, every day I’ve had to go and have more stuff drained and more medication packed in. Finally by Thursday it was closed up and getting better but not an experience I want to repeat in a hurry, all the memories of childhood mouth abcesses and unrelenting toothache came back to me, no wonder we used to cry so much it damn well hurts! On a brighter note Jules is back on days and his normal shift pattern so he had Monday and Tuesday off and is getting along well with clearing the second half of the area to be turfed  although we have a huge pile of spoil and will need a skip to get rid of it. I have been allowed to have the top corner nearest the old gateway for a cottage border and for the moment  am going to fill it with cottage geraniums as it’s a huge area and will cost a bit to stock. I’ve put an order in with Mum the seedswoman for next Spring! I’m going to make it completely perennial so minimum maintenance I hope. To cut a long story short I have been watching some documentaries on Discovery about wrecks in the Bristol channel and three of the programmes were about  3 german submarines, a hospital ship and another ship in a convoy all of which have been discovered by divers from Padstow off the North Cornwall coast. The programmes are called Wreck detectives and they are fascinating to watch. One of the ships was a Canadian one escorting a convoy of British ships and it was torpedoed and sank. Three of the seamen’s bodies  were washed ashore on the Coast not far from here and were buried in Poundstock Churchyard and it showed a shot of the graves so being nosey I went to Poundstock on the way back from the dentist on Tuesday morning and found the church and the graves as well as a Giuldhouse built in the 1500’s and a gem of a hidden village so beautiful and secluded. I noticed a couple of footpath signs so in the afternoon we got a picnic and dog rucksack packed and walked one of the paths from the church to the coast at Milook it was breathtaking and only just over a mile or so and fairly easy going, when we got to the beach there was a group of people doing a very luvvie darling fashion photo shoot but disappointingly for Jules they were fully clothed. The walk back although along the same route was equally enchanting and will be repeated again, Carole and Mike would love it. The garden is full of baby birds learning to fly and Daisy has finally learned how to catch them and any mice that may be around having taken several into Mums’ and lost one under the kitchen unit (sound familiar Nick?) but we have bought some mouse traps but think that she caught it and killed it and laid it out on the lounge floor but of course we can’t be sure it’s the same one so the mouse traps will remain as a safeguard. The field has been cut and looks lovely and is so much easier to walk around with the dogs. We can see all the rabbits now! But I could also see the fox last night as he made his way round the hedges towards the chicken pen so Lucy and Ifor went for another impromptu walk to chase him off. Abigail no tails’ tail has healed surprisingly well and she’s happily laying again although her tail sticks up at a silly angle now! It’s wonderful what you can do with some germalene and some sticky tape! We’ve had broad beans and peas and a first few strawberries, I’ve fixed the pond and the cesspit has been emptied so all is well with the world at the moment. Mum is feeling so much better so I’m taking her for a lunch at the Bay View today as she hasn’t been out for a while. Lots of gossip in the village! the manageress of the Coombe Barton pub at Crackington has done a runner and the pub is shut so we’ll have to go up to the Wainhouse for refreshments now. Although we can’t see the sea at least we can ride there on the bikes and coast down the hill home.

June 14^th-29th

I’ve been lazy about updating the diary just recently so I’m trying to remember what I’ve done in the last two weeks. The weather has been a bit erratic one day warm the next rainy and it has been very windy which has justified my decision to grow  shorter varieties of broad beans and peas as they have weathered quite well and are just becoming very productive. On Wednesday 17^th June we went to Cardiff for a couple of days, we had tickets for the twenty twenty cricket match against Gloucester but the weather was horrid we got completely soaked and very miserable in the rain. We did a tour of the castle which was mainly indoors thank goodness but because of the weather we walked to the cricket ground to check whether the match was on then we walked back into the city which isn’t that far but my back doesn’t like the wet weather so we had to have a taxi to the ground in the evening and the heavens opened and we got soaked and the match was called off. How cheesed off were we but every cloud has a silver lining and all that and as we walked past the Arms park the semi finals of the IRB under 19 rugby world cup was in progress so we paid on the gate and watched several matches before stumbling back home via a railway siding where we devoured a dodgy looking kebab in a howling gale, I had also forgot to mention that I had forgotten to put any boots in the car and so had one pair of open toed sandals for the entire trip so I had to put socks on in bed as my feet were wet and cold! On the Thursday we got a phone call from Helen to say that whilst walking in the field Ifor had run into her leg and knocked her over, her knee cap had dislocated and then popped back in so Mum had to take her to Bude to her Dad’s so she could go to hospital! She has damaged the ligaments in her knee and has got crutches to walk with for a while, Mum  said she was fine to look after them and do the chickens so we didn’t have to go home thank goodness. The weather was much better and we did an open topped bus tour of the city getting off in the bay and having a great lunch at an Italian restaurant overlooking the water. Later on we met up with Glenys and David and went to see Neil Diamond at the millennium stadium, the seats were about as far away as you could get but it was good fun to sing along with all his hits!! Afterwards we did a tour of dubious watering holes and I had a massive hangover the next morning. Can’t really remember anything else exciting happening, The garden is now giving us loads of raspberries as well as salad and veggies, Ifor hasn’t been in the pond recently so it’s still quite clear and the fox must have been scared away for the moment. The chickens are deviously laying somewhere out in the field but we can’t find out where and the eggs in the barn are being targeted by Magpies and finished off by the Owl who is still very much in residence. Mum’s cat daisy has honed her vole and mouse catching skills and daily presents live and dead animals to Mum who has just found two dead mice under her settee! That’s about it really we went to a lovely evening wedding do last night in a barn at Stratton but as usual i got plastered talked crap all evening and had to spend most of today back in bed with a hangover! Jill and Chris are down in Port Isaac this week so hopefully we are going to catch up with them tomorrow for a pub meal.