Missing home

A whole week in the UK, and although the visit here has been constructive I am missing out on major events in France.
The first is that Tam caught his first mouse. Now I know what it must be like for a parent to miss the first step or the first tooth poking through. Ok, so maybe it's not quite as exciting as that would be for a parent, but it just brings home how much I miss being in france with Neil.
The second is that apparently our ducks have started laying eggs. Neil said there was complete panic in the chicken run this morning as one of the ducks tried to go against the flow of chicken traffic descending the chicken house ramp so that she could go in and lay her egg. He said it was like rush hour on a tube station platform. I've never had a duck egg before and I look forward to trying one produced at home.
I have been working at a conference in London on Afghanistan. The security for the event was something else, and we all had to be checked prior to working there. I thought I might get in trouble with secret services for giving a British address and get found out, but I think they had bigger things on their mind. We were told that London is on high alert at the moment for imminent threat, which I found a bit disconcerting until it occured to me that as I was working at an event where literally no stone was being unturned, it would probably be easier to attack something elsewhere.
Still, it gave me a chance to coo over the sniffer dogs and then following the rulebook for every trained paramedic I found the canteen and coffee facilities and glued myself to them for the duration of my working day with heat magazine and a good book.
Some bright spark had given me radio number 666, which again I thought may bode badly but luckily none of the attending heads of state decided to 'pull a sicky' and we were left to our own devices with nothing to do other than hand a couple of plasters. Result!
I go home on Wednesday (forcast snow allowing) and I can't wait.

Roast Duck

Neil has just gone off to stand in a field fitting a door onto a hangar he has built for someone and the heavens have opened. The velux above my head is being battered with rain and I am sure he has forgotten to take his coat. It will be yet another example of forces beyond his control conspiring to make his life as difficult as possible and I can almost guarantee that in the middle of the field not far from here there will be a great deal of muttering and swearing going on.
This will be all the worse because he has a bit of a sore head after partaking of several glasses of wine that helped the roast duck go down. The meat was slightly on the tough side (we ate the legs) which could be due to the fact they were always waddling around the garden or maybe just because we need to learn how to cook duck properly.
We were treated to a meal in a French restaurant near Toulouse once that specialised in duck, and it was served in almost a raw state (apparently you can't get salmanella with duck) so maybe we just cooked it too much.
If anyone has any handy duck recipes please let me know as there is still rather a lot to cook!!

Goodbye Crispy and Bombay

Tonight our eldest ducks Crispy and Bombay are going off to the big duck pond in the sky and then coming back in an edible, oven ready format. They have had all summer quacking, swimming and a large percentage of time bullying the hens and so we have decided to let them go. Neil is positively drooling at the thought of roast duck and I have accepted that it's got to be done. This is helped considerably by the fact that we are not the grim reapers and that someone locally is doing the deed. We are also taking our Christmas goose, which has been residing at the home of a good friend growing in time for the festivities.
We have decided that we will take it back to blighty in frozen form, and although Neil is concerned about the bird flu regulations I have assured him that in frozen format it is unlikely to sneeze and give us away. As our family are all looking forward to a Christmas goose I feel it is a risk worth taking.
Our place has grown into something of a smallholding. We started off with a cat at our little house, but mostly (in fact totally) down to me this has now grown to two cats, a dog and twenty chickens and ducks. I must put a stop to my endless desire for little fluffy squeeky things that turn into lumbering great animals with endless appetites. Well, until Spring comes anyway!