Pompadour

Saturday 25 June 2011

Tess had her stitches out this morning and all seems well. After a couple of days feeling sorry for herself and a bit sore she was back to her normal self, keen to help round up the menagerie and sort out the horses. We haven't had the bill yet - Neil asked them to invoice us (preferably after payday!) so I await that landing with a thud in the postbox outside.

This computer is driving me to distraction and has become increasingly unstable of late. Having watched a bit of Glastonbury last night I decided to download an album from a group I hadn't heard of before. Just to download the mp3 files it seemed I needed a ton of software which has probably added to the unstability of the laptop, but oh, how lovely to sit and listen to some new music.

Our housesitter Jason kindly left us some speakers for our ipod (and anything else it will plug into) which are absolutely fantastic and probably giving the barking chasse dogs up the road a run for their money.

The workshop now has a new window and door. Neil had carefully planned the window size according to the catalogue at a (not very) local DIY store so that it would be easily available. When he was ready to order it he decided to check the website, which turned out to be completely useless - you could find and put items in a 'basket' but then there was no facility to check if it was in store, order or indeed pay for it.

So with a feeling of inevitability he drove to the store (about an hour from us) only to find that although it was in the catalogue, that you had to order it specially (obviously no mention was made of this in the catalogue).

I wasn't with Neil to see the steam coming out of his ears, but I have no doubt a full hissy fit accompanied by toys being thrown out of his pram followed this statement. We have given up telephoning the store to check on availability as we don't think most staff can actually be bothered put themselves out to check their stock and so the answer you get is unreliable also.

Neil ended up having to buy a window too large for his especially made hole just so that he could get on with fitting it, so a whole day was spent making the window space larger and fitting the window.

The door was less of a problem, having been donated to us by an ambulance colleague of ours Kate. Far too nice to put in a workshop really (I actually ducked as I typed that!) but it will do the job and is good and solid.

I went and got six geese last weekend, and they are settling in well and are lovely creatures (although they are still at fluffy stage) they are curious and chatty if that makes sense - far more sociable than our ducklings. The plan is that hopefully there will be a nice pair amongst them to keep to provide us with geese for the table each year. As it is pretty impossible to sex young geese we will just have to wait and see!

2 comments:

  1. Ooops I know about buying things the size that you plan - it seldom works!!
    My mother had geese and they drove her mad. They always wanted to come into the house and the verandah was constantly being washed down!!! What a mess. I don't remember what happened to them but they did disappear eventually and I don't remember eating goose!! Diane

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  2. In the UK we are so used to the popularity and easy availability of DIY stores that I think it comes as a bit of a shock in other countries. DIY stores drive us nuts here for the reasons you menion, and their websites never have any prices on so you can't do online comparisons like you can in the UK. In our village the population don't seem to do much DIY, they just get a man in, although whether that's a cause or effect of the attitude to DIY I don't know!

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