Hanging

Woke with no tea and no missing animals this morning (although that didn’t remain the case sadly). Our plan had been to visit Caz and Bid at their new home (on a farm) this afternoon but an email from them with a change to their plans for the day meant we were able to go over earlier.

I went out to feed the birds (as in our birds, not birds generally) some leftovers from dinner last night and found the hen with the bad leg looking rather dead. Infact I thought she was dead so went to feed the others before coming back to deal with her. I realised she was still hanging on but was close to dying but she didn’t seem in any pain so I left her to it. I’m not remotely emotionally attached to any of the birds, except perhaps the cockerel but I’ve never really viewed them as pets.

Back inside we watched some Horrible Histories and then Scarlett went out to the birds and came in with the hen to say she was looking really bad now. I agreed she was close to death and said that if Scarlett wanted to she could bring her in the house for the end so she did. She took her in her bedroom and sat with her. Suddenly all of the other birds; chickens and ducks went a bit mad, in a slightly freaky premonition way and Scarlett announced she was dead. I went out to check on the other birds and Scarlett appeared with the hen who wasn’t quite dead after all but doing that gasping for last breathe thing. She finally did die and we put her into the cat carrier she’s been staying in to bury later.

Back inside Scarlett had a little cry and we talked about lifetimes, losing animals and whether it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. We decided loving people and animals is worth the risk of getting hurt and talked a bit about Candle and Malice and how we still miss them but now remember the happy times rather than the sad ends. That had all of us crying a bit.

We galvanised ourselves to action at that point and headed off to see Caz and Bid, stopping at a shop to grab some food to bring. They are in their first week settling in at a land / living space sharing type venture on an organic farm which has plenty of work to do and a long way to go before it’s ideal but is very exciting and has stacks of potential. The kids went off to explore with A & E and declare it ‘amazing’ and ‘awesome’ while I went off to drink tea and chat with Caz and Bid and exchange ‘where we’re at in changing life’ stories. Fully up to date with all each others news I got the grand tour and was able to visualise all the potential ideas – very exciting stuff :).

I then rather lazily sat and chatted to Caz while she planted up tons of seeds ready for the first crop of winter greens. Another friend and her two boys arrived so the boys joined the other children while O joined us (and shamed me by joining in with seed planting rather than sitting like I had done :oops:). We needed to leave as I had to be back for Reading Group.

Thankfully the traffic was kind to us and we’d already rung ahead to get Ady to run a bath for the children, who were so filthy they ended up having a bath to soak the grime off and a shower to wash the dirty bathwater off. I left them in the bath to go to Reading Group. We had an interesting discussion about the book which had very mixed reviews from the group with some really liking it, some really hating it and some inbetween including a couple who had not finished it. I really enjoyed it and would recommend it for a ‘different’ type of read (Scarlett Thomas, The end of Mr Y).

Back home I caught up with Ady, saw now clean and fed children who were in bed but not asleep and then Ady and I had dinner while watching Heston do disgusting macabre things with food. And now to bed.