La Vida Es Un Haya

See it on a T-shirt near you.
Life is a Beech!

Chefs' Comma

The National Trust are giving away a free hectare with every bowl.
Only joking!

Shortsighted?

Los secretos pequenos de mi pueblo 1

Little secrets of my village.
It seems remiss that I should be about to complete my 6th decade and have not yet read Don Quixote. Suffolk Libraries have provided a copy of Edith Grossman's translation so I will tuck into that after finishing off those fabulous banking boys, the Medicis.
I was known, affectionately, as Don Quixote by some friends in Spain. I think I would have quite liked the association with such a figure in a strange way. However, the joke was on me as El de La Mancha did not refer to a kindred spirit of the chivalrous hidalgo but to the original meaning of mancha - stain.
I am a very messy eater!

We have a windmill in our village. (And much else which I hope to reveal in due course.) It is "en obras". The sails are still in (re)construction but I believe there is a motor to supply power for milling from time to time. I wonder what the Don would have made of it.

I also wonder what he would have made of the huge cylindrical bales of hay scattered about the fields, or the bales which are covered in black plastic. I guess he would have seen them as armies of cristianos y moros fighting it out on the meseta of Mid Suffolk.
As deluded as the folk up the road at Mildenhall.

OK I lied I'm not vegetarian

An image captured in March in the garden just below the bird table. The attack was swift, deadly and of course this was the only shot I was able to take through the window before the batteries on the camera gave out. By the time I had changed them the bird was off to the trees to feed its young or partner.

A has fed the birds for years. One of the inevitable consequences of this has been the increase in birds on the table and in the surrounding vegetation. As a vegie she would be mortified by the thought that this only increases the opportunities for top level predators.

I don't have any problem with this.

It also encourages rats.

But that is a story for another time.

The sun also rises

A had not been well for over a week; visits to the doctor and tests gave no definite answer.
We wait in the lower circle of hell, A&E, for several hours before being dispatched to the purgatory of the assessment unit for several hours.
We watched the changeover of the shifts move about the ward like a caravan traveling in camel like fashion. Eventually it appears at the bed next to us. The elderly woman in the bed is confused, weary and probably just wishes to lay her head, finally, in a place where she will be looked after.
The outgoing, ehem, nurse explains that it is not possible to move the woman to a ward until there is a bed free and there will only be a free bed when a patient goes home or goes to..... Wisdom and sensitivity intervene and the nurse moves on to more pressing matters.
I look at A feverish exhausted and at the end of her tether and can't resist whispering that I am glad the nurse left that sentence unfinished. I receive a weak dig in the ribs and we both 'corpse' into fits of giggles. The matronical caravan passes with a collective look of confusion on its face!

After several days, in what A describes as Bedlam, pneumonia is diagnosed and she returns home with enough antibiotics to bring down avian flu at 50 paces!