MEET CHARLIE MY ADORABLE RAM

A while back in England , Alex and I ran a holiday Caravan Park set in a beautifuL rolling Valley in North Devon, near Barnstaple. There were 12 luscious acres of parkland, and , at that time we had no animals , except a Pekingnese - a lot different from the Dobermans we were to have later- and a cat! Feeling broody one day with all our daughters growing up and moving away ( college, marriage ) I approached the local farmer with a view to adopting a baby lamb! He was very sweet and presented me with two, who I immediately called Charlie and Shambles.


Shambles is the lamb lying down, bless the poor little one, he had damage to his back legs and couldn't stand, but the farmer had said there might be a chance for him if we massaged his legs and tried to encourage him to stand and walk. This we did every day to no avail. He fed well each day from his bottle of milk, as did Charlie , but his legs didn't get any better and not long after , the vet informed me that he had brain damage from the birth which was his main problem. I took him back to the farmer, and cried all the way home.


Charlie, however, went from strngth to strength and grew into a beautiful ram.....

All the holidaymakers thought he was adorable, he would frolic around the chalets and caravans and they would feed him scraps--- then he became too cheeky, I remember hearing a rumpus one day, and went running to see what the fuss was. Charlie whizzed past me with someones' large chocolate cake in his smiling mouth, hotly persued by campers shaking their fists!! After that Alex insisted we had to fence him off an area of his own.

When it was our turn for us to go on holiday , Charlie went off to stay at the farm, and one year he fell in love with Lucie.....

I was unable to persuade te farmer to part with Lucie, so he made fleeting visits from time to time. AAH!

This was a long time ago and Charlie is now that big fluffy cloud which you see so often in the sky that looks just like him!! I shall always remember him.

DUCK DIAGNOSIS

The white Duck which featured in my post a few days ago, is still with us! She ( I think she must be a she) now has a name-- Phoebe. Phoebe just hasn't flown at all she has taken up residence in the little house on the little island.....







I have looked her up on Google and am convinced she is a Muscovy Duck. Although it is difficult to see from this picture she has the unique lumpy crest around the eyes and above the beak which is a feature of the Muscovy. They are said to have the nicest character of all the breeds of duck, with a pronounced sense of humour, being intelligent and the females are very loving mothers . More Muscovy information with pictures .

IN A BAR SOMEWHERE

WHAT LOOKS LIKE A MAN.

A bar somewhere.

Crowds of cigarettes shouting and laughing,

and booze burning brdges, building some others

or just licking the lips of an empty shoreline.

He, an uncanny Messiah, solitary,

sits in a glass on the edge of life;

listening to the sweet stench of voices

and the record that slips on the turntable

and the loud money waving goodbye

and the world playing for time

and the silence of his mind,

and the silence, where it crawls, in between the noise.

So he relaxes, deeper, protected

by the glass walls in his hand,

watching the sound of the evening

in its delirium pass by.

Through the glass, through the smoke,

through the talking air on its nightly rounds,

there, close to the fire, stands a man

smiling: The father, dead from yesterday,

grey teeth reflecting the flames' murmurs, appearing to speak.

The son hears nothing from behind his walls,

only sees the smiling man walk away

in the passage of flames - the moment fades.

A river takes to the roads where an age of ice

marked out the channels he knows too well:

at other times they are dry reaches

that his face calls maturity, creating

what looks like a man.

written by my late husband Alex circa 1978

THE WHITE DUCK

First thing this morning I looked out of the bedroom window and the white duck was still there preening herself by the little lake.....



Err... if you have a magnifying glass you might just see her!!


So I quickly got dressed and armed with a sheer determination to impress the blogging world with my duck photos I rushed out and started snapping with my little old digi camera and this is the result!!!





and that's about it I'm afraid! She would not let me get any closer, ah well. Some days you win- some you lose. I hope she stays, I think she is quite old and lonely!

Back with unwanted baggage!

Well-- it was actually a great break! But we returned with an unexpected present, ah the picture says it all.

The common cold!

However , it was worth it. We caught up with family and friends in Swizterland then mosied on down in our motorhome to the Var, in the south of France. We didn't go out of France this time but did manage to find the sunshine.

I Have posted some photos on my other blog http://mylifefromacaravantoachateau.blogspot.com and it also includes a link to an interesting article about the old adage " feed a cold and starve a fever" which I always took to be a fact and now find that it really is. So lots of hot dinners and hot drinks for the rest of this week for me.

We arrived home to find a lovely white , but tired looking , duck in our front garden. She ( I'm sure it's a she) is very tame and we had great trouble trying to persuade her to go into the rear gardens as we were about to collect the dogs from the kennels. As they would regard her as a good dinner it was imperative that she leave their area. Eventually she flew to a high wall in the grounds and there she remained all night. Today she is down by our little lake, so tomorrow I will take the camera out for a few shots. I hope she stays, we do have other ducks who come and go, and have even had batches of babies-- but she is unlike any other duck I have seen, she is large ,pure white except for some red around her beak. Also she seems to be quite old. Perhaps I will look her up.

SHORT LEAVE OF ABSENCE

I have my sad face on today because I must take a short leave of absence from my blog!

We will be taking a planned holiday in our motorhome ( yes-I KNOW-I'm back to a caravan again) for about a week and a half.

Normally this is a pleasurable thing we do at this time of the year to find some sunshine, but it will be a wrench not being able to easily connect to the internet as we shall be touring around. However I will have a camera at the ready for some picture stories on my return.

Take care in the meantime, and happy blogging! See you soon!

NAUGHTY ANTICS AT THE BBC!

I am back to my late husband again and would like to share an amusing tale with you , to show that even though his poetry is quite serious, the man himself was an extremely charasmatic and funny person.

Back in the 60/70's Alex worked for BBC television at their White City studios in London - where they still operate from . He was a back-stage technician and worked many of the shows, and had a lot of fun. Because of the nature of his job he worked long hours, with often nothing to do in between shoots. He loved clowning around and one day he decided, along with one of his mates, to ask the make-up girls (who also had long periods with nothing to do) to make them up as women. The girls agreed and ' went the whole hog' with not only the make-up but the hair-do as well! The result on Alex was so good that he really did look like a woman and the girls took a head and shoulder photo of him. At that particular time the ' Ariel' magazine which was the BBC's staff magazine was running the annual " Miss BBC Competition"! I bet you can guess what I am about to write --YES Alex sent his photo up with a psuedenym -- and then forgot about it.

So here is the photo.....
Can you guess which one is him?
It is the top left hand picture.

That night he came home and showed me the picture, saying that it was a girl who had just joined their team. I thought she was quite good looking and was feeling a bit jealous that he had bothered to take a picture of her, when he told me it was himself! I HADN'T EVEN RECOGNISED MY OWN HUSBAND? I too thought it was a hoot that he had entered it into the BBC contest.

The outcome actually was almost disastrous. They picked the finalists by photo selection only and I might add here that there were more entrants than those I have shown above. Alex ( can you believe) was chosen as one of the finalists, which meant that he had to go before a panel in a swimsuit parade ( haha). Of course it was at this moment that he decided to ' come clean' and confess that he was really a guy! And a normal one - with four children. There was a huge fuss and he was almost offered the door! Thank goodness they didn't. The daily Mirror gave Alex a two page coverage with photos titled ' Father of four in the Miss BBC contest final"! Ah well! That was my man!

Mum and Dad 1930's

So this is a picture of Celia and Frank, my Mum and Dad. I think it was taken in the 1930' s, they might have still been courting or perhaps newly married. I don't think that Dad was much of a ' looker' , bless him, but he was such a great, kind, loyal man who Mum adored. She told me that when she met him she was attracted to his fine head of black hair and beautiful teeth .

They belonged to a motor-bike club and had a big bike and sidecar and would go away for weekends with the club. Not long after they married though, they were involved in a bad accident on Blackfriars bridge; there were no traffic lights in those days and a car crossed and hit them. Apparently, Dad swerved to avoid the car crashing into the sidecar ( where Mum was) and took the full force of the impact on his leg. The outcome was 18 months in and out of hospital where surgeons battled to save his crushed leg. This they finally did achieve, so that was the really good news for them both, but the bad news for Mum was that the shock of it all caused Dads lovely black hair to fall out, so he was bald before he was thirty, and not only that he lost ALL of his teeth as well!! Good job Mum really loved him ( smile).