It’s been fairly hectic – as a family we’re quite close even if we rarely meet up much, so there’s plenty to catch up on when we do. Both my brothers are sailors – eldest has a 25-foot yacht in the Medway/Thames area, t’other has a whopping ocean cruiser currently in Antigua – and as my mother used to sail a small cabin cruiser and both my daughter and I have dinghy sailed as well as occasionally crewing on yachts on holiday, the chat over meals can get quite technical with chat about fractional rigs, how to dismount a mast to replace internal rigging and how embarrassing it would be to need to call a mayday in at your mooring buoy because you’ve discovered your boat might be sinking (it wasn’t, as it happened, but apparently it was ankle-deep in the cabin because there was a leak in the engine exhaust where seawater is sprayed in to reduce the exhaust gas temperature)!
I still haven’t got the extra paddocks done – though I did spend an hour untangling coiled electric fence so I’m ready to run the wire out tomorrow morning and get the horses onto fresh grass. The dogs had a bit of a gallop with George this morning when I took them down the field – they zipped under the fence and were playing in the long paddock down the back fence when the ginger giant spotted them, and he did his best display-of-magnificent-beast approach, neck arched and snorting as he cantered over to investigate – at which point the dogs realised they were trespassing and shot off…. in the wrong direction. When they realised I was the other side of George they split, sprinted either side of him and came straight under the fence again, cunningly leaving him snorting the other side (thankfully!)
The chickens have been enjoying my brother’s presence – he’s a vaper, so every now and again he goes and stands outside for a while, inhaling assorted vapours… and giving them the chance to stand around his ankles, talking to themselves while pecking his ankles non-stop. To think I was concerned they’d take time to become tame…the little horrors chased me up the mounting block pecking my ankles when I was trying to get the fence wire untangled and wound onto a drum, and they follow me all round the buildings, chatting away, when I’m trying to clean out ferrets or whatever! It’s very companionable, but occasionally irritating as I try not to fall over them.
The additional social stimulation seems to have done my mother a lot of good, so I need to find ways to keep that up after our guests leave tonight!
Cairnorchies Chronicles 