The usual performance when Andy goes away is that the magical clean-up-fairies arrive and sort out his house. It's a shame it never works like that for me - I go out and leave a mess and i know darn well that when I get back the mess will have increased - usually exponentially.
Things have been a bit odd, what with the plumber and all and by Tuesday night I had an interesting little list to give him when he phoned to see if everything was okay.
The ceiling was half down in one room ( plumber did it so he's fixing it too) both Dysons had expired and, during the afternoon, the house had been struck by lightning !
That was really interesting I can tell you - Flash, Bang and I saw sparks shoot out of the fuse box. There was a crash from upstairs like something heavy falling so I went running to check that the tiler was okay - he was, I still have no idea what went crash. I went running all round the house looking for damage or fire or something and found nothing except that the power had tripped out on the sockets. It went back on with no problem and apparently everything still works.
Simon got sent out to plough a big field and managed to upset a nest scattering the occupants. and brought 2 baby birds back to us - we had no idea what they were but Google helped and we thought probably lapwings. We didn't have a clue what to do with them so Asti took them to Uni with her the next morning to hand them into the specialists there - apparently this happens quite frequently. It turned out that they were lapwings and a protected species ( just as well she took them in) Uni called the RSPCA who then phoned Si for directions about where he'd found them then turned up at his boss's farm to reunite them with mother bird and the other babies. They were, apparently, quite snarky and snotty with him. Shame really - you'd think people in that sort of a job would have better "people" skills. Obviously upsetting nests etc is something that's going to happen fairly often when you are working a large farm and if it causes too much trouble - well you can see where I'm going with that. I did have a similar experience last year with a local cat rescue; we found some kittens while we were hacking and phoned people to arrange cat carrier and collection ( too far to bring them inside a jacket) and got them home. Ended up fostering them for a couple of weeks and finally ( when John was in hospital having heart surgery) getting a visit from a lady who'd come to collect them on behalf of the rescue. Yes she was very pleasant and practically accused me of thoughtlessly breeding cats then dumping them off on people - if it hadn't been for the situation with John and the fact that we already have 13 cats I would have told her to sod off and kept the kits. As it was I made a rather loud and public complaint to the charity and received a very sincere apology.
How charities can possibly expect to get people working with them when their front-line people have such nasty attitudes is beyond me; I suppose it is understandable that they will get jaded and sick of people but not all people are the baddies, treating everyone as such will just cause alienation.
Anyway, enough rant about that - there is also the strange matter of the clock.
It's an oak mantel clock which was brought up from his Mum's house after she died last year. It had not been wound for some years and apparently Gemma wound it when it was moved but it wouldn't start. The key was put away "safe". Well anyway about a week before Andy went away it started chiming, I commented on it to Andy thinking that he'd managed to start it - he said he hadn't touched it. When he went away he asked me to try to keep it wound - well you remember that the key was put safe ? it's a big house with a lot of places to put stuff. The clock stopped at 12.15 on Monday and it took me till Wednesday to find the key. I wound, started and then went to put the time right and it was a bit weird that I didn't have to - I'd found the key and done it all at the right time to start the clock. Strange but true.
Aside from all that the week has been rather dull, the weather was bad up until Friday, the ground was slippy and the horses have done practically nothing. I managed to take Fally out a couple of times but he was really spooky and silly both times. My brake parts have finally turned up so I should be able to book my car in for it's repairs next week.
It also looks like we will spend some time tomorrow ( May Day) in finally putting up the insulators and tape on the new fence posts. This had been delayed in order to make life easier for the weed-spraying guy to get around. Well he's not coming until he does the farmland next door and there's no sign of when that will be.
I'n on the very edge of turning the horses out 24/7 - they stayed out last night ( rugged) but are in tonight as it's dropped to 4 degrees again.
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