Facebook memories

 

Facebook memories

The picture that popped up today was of Frankie when he was little. Frankie is my seventh grandchild, and he will be thirteen on December 1^st. My, how time flies!

He and his mother lived with us for five and a half years. It was just intended to be for a couple of months, while his mother sorted herself out, but she needed that time to rebuild her confidence. We were happy to have them, and it was a joy to watch the little boy grow up and develop.

Like many small boys, he was obsessed with cars. In this photograph he was sitting in his high chair, about to have his tea.

I couldn’t resist captioning the photograph with ‘Jam for tea??’

I advise all parents and grandparents to cherish such moments because the future is uncertain. It’s good to have sweet memories. Photographs are excellent for capturing them.

To brighten the day

 

To brighten the day

Off to the dentist again today. I seem to have spent a good deal of time there this year, The porcelain crown was fitted a few weeks ago– almost hammered into place, I felt – but today’s appointments were for the dentist and the hygienist.

I leave the dentist feeling somewhat chastened – my mouth is not as sparkling as it should be, would be if I paid more attention to the tooth-scrubbing ritual. Vishal is far too polite to say that, of course, but the criticism is implicit as he tells his dental nurse what to type into my record.

On the other hand, Emily, the hygienist, is positively complimentary as she sets to. She’s young and patient and charming, which is just as well as I now have to see her every four months instead of six, to increase the dental servicing.

It was bitterly cold this morning, a heavy frost battling with extremely bright sunshine in an azure sky. Outside the dental practice is a magnificent display of geraniums (actually pelargoniums) which must be very sheltered as they are still flaunting a dazzling spectacle.

The photographs, taken hastily with my iPhone, do not do them justice. They provide a wonderful welcome and a tender farewell to all who visit.

 

Bring back the bell!

 

Bring back the bell!

 Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Today I read about a horrifying event in Thailand this year. A bedridden lady of sixty-five was presumed dead and placed in a coffin and driven three hundred miles from her home to a Buddhist temple for cremation. As the priest and the relatives were talking before the ceremony, they heard a knocking from the coffin. On opening it, they discovered that the lady, though weak, was still alive. She was taken to hospital for treatment.

Although unusual, such an event is not without precedent. Indeed, one of the commenters on this article disclosed that his great-great-grandmother had sat up in her coffin partway through her funeral service. The custom at the time was to leave the coffin open until the conclusion of the service. The lady, obviously made of stern stuff, stored the coffin under her bed, and lived for a further fifteen years.

In 1999, a teacher, aged thirty-two, collapsed while swimming in Egypt. Having been certified dead, his body was being stored in a hospital refrigerator, when he woke up. Too cold to speak, he grabbed the hand of one of the mortuary staff who was trying to shut the door. Naturally, they were extremely shocked, as were his family members when he ‘phoned them to tell them the good news.

Another reported case was that of an eighty-year-old woman in Los Angeles, in 2010. She had a heart attack and was declared dead. She was put into cold storage in the hospital morgue, but regained consciousness and attempted to escape. The escape was unsuccessful. One can only imagine the fear and panic of her situation.

In 2012, in China, a lady aged ninety-five was found not moving and thought to be dead. In keeping with tradition, her body was laid in a coffin in her home. Six days later, just before her funeral, the coffin was found empty, its occupant sitting in her kitchen, preparing food.

In 2023, in New York, a nursing home declared one of its residents dead and removed the body to a funeral home (why are they called ‘homes’?) The funeral staff discovered that she was very much alive when they began to remove her from the body bag and found that she was still breathing.

It would appear that it is time to reinstate the ancient custom of the wake. ‘Wake’ comes from Old English ‘waec’ which means watch or vigil. If the coffin is to be kept in the house, family and friends can visit at any time, to pay their respects to the dead person, and to commiserate with the living and exchange memories and anecdotes. It also means that any sign of life will be noticed.

 Another form is the public viewing, when mourners can go to the funeral director’s premises to see the body in the coffin. This is a source of great comfort to many people.

 In the 19^th century, when it was difficult to be confident that life was extinct, coffins were sometimes supplied with a bell and cord. The cord might be attached to any part of the body. Should the unthinkable occur, the cord would be pulled, the bell would tinkle, and the body would receive appropriate attention, hopefully before interment.

It is rare, indeed, that people are mistakenly declared dead, but it has happened.

George Washington had taphophobia, a dread of being buried alive. He told his secretary, Tobias Lear, ‘Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the Vault in less than three days after I am dead.’ His coffin also had a number of holes bored in it, so that he should be able to breathe if he were to come back to life.

He also requested that his funeral be a simple, private affair, without pomp or ceremony, but that wish was not honoured. The nation mourned.

New to me

 

New to me

Immiserate: impoverish, make miserable

This verb appeared around 1956, but the noun, immiseration, came into use in the 1940s.

 According to ‘The Times, ‘the chancellor immiserated business by overstressing her point about the catastrophic economic legacy left by the Tories. After that, she impoverished business, using her first budget to raise employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) by 1.2 per cent, damaging the retail sector in particular.’

I suspect many of us are ‘immiserated’ on a daily basis, but at least we can commiserate with each other.

Behave!

 

Behave!

How often in your life have you been instructed to ‘behave?’

Do you behave?

Can you behave?

I’m not sure what ‘have’ means. Is it good, or quiet, or polite, or kind, or invisible?

When I’m told to behave, my answer is usually, ‘I’m being have.’ 

More silly answers

 

More silly answers

Prepare to groan!

1.    Tom and Ella emerged from playing in the cellar. Tom’s face was clean, but Ella had a dirty smear on hers. Why was it only Tom who went to wash his face?

They looked at each other. Tom saw Ella’s dirty face, so thought his must be dirty, too. Ella saw Tom’s clean face and didn’t know hers was dirty.

2.   A man looked out of a window. He was desperate to open it, but knew that doing so would kill him. Why?

He was in a submarine and suffering from claustrophobia.

3.   Why are 1984 bottles of whisky more valuable than 1977 bottles?

There are seven more of them.

4.   Use three identical digits to make a simple addition for which the answer is 12. You cannot use the digit 4. What is the answer?

11+1=12

5.   The fire alarm sounded in a ten-storey building. Chris, working in the building, did not make for the stairs, but jumped out of the window. How did he survive?

It was a ground floor window.

6.   Kate loved the colour yellow. All the walls in her bungalow were  primrose yellow. The doors and skirting boards were a darker yellow. The carpets and soft furnishings were daffodil yellow. Her plates and mugs were lemon yellow. Even her bath towels and kitchen towels were golden yellow. What colour were her stairs?

Bungalows don’t have stairs

.7.   You enter a deserted house late at night. Inside you find an oil lamp, a gas fire and a stove full of wood. You only have one match. Which should you light first?

The match.

 

More silly questions

 

More silly questions (answers tomorrow)

Out of time again, so I’ve resorted to someone else’s work – that well-known person called A Non.

T 

1.     1.  Tom and Ella emerged from playing in the cellar. Tom’s face was clean, but Ella had a dirty smear on hers. Why was it only Tom who went to wash his face?

2.   2.  A man looked out of a window. He was desperate to open it, but knew that doing so would kill him. Why?

3.   3.Why are 1984 bottles of whisky more valuable than 1977 bottles?

4.   4. U.se three identical digits to make a simple addition for which the answer is 12. You cannot use the digit 4. What is the answer?

5.   5. The fire alarm sounded in a ten-storey building. Chris was working in the building, but did not make for the stairs. He jumped out of the window. How did he survive?

6.   6. Kate loved the colour yellow. All the walls in her bungalow were  primrose yellow. The doors and skirting boards were a darker yellow. The carpets and soft furnishings were daffodil yellow. Her plates and mugs were lemon yellow. Even her bath towels and kitchen towels were golden yellow. What colour were her stairs?

7.   7. You enter a deserted house late at night. Inside you find an oil lamp, a gas fire and a stove full of wood. You only have one match. Which should you light first?

Isms

 

Isms

Pinched from elsewhere:

Socialism: You have two cows. Give one cow to your neighbour.

Communism: You have two cows. Give both cows to the government and they may give you some milk.

Fascism: You have two cows. The government shoots you and takes both cows.

Anarchism: You have two cows. Keep both cows, shoot the government and steal another cow.

Capitalism: You have two cows. Sell one. Buy a bull.

The North Wind

 

The North Wind

The North Wind doth blow
And we shall have snow,
And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?
He’ll sit in the barn
To keep himself warm
And hide his head under his wing, poor thing!

This little rhyme originated in 16^th century Britain and was first published two centuries later in collections of nursery rhymes. It has three additional verses, not regularly taught, which build on feelings of sympathy and compassion for those less fortunate.

The second verse is about the swallow.

The North Wind doth blow
And we shall have snow,
And what will the swallow do then, poor thing?
Oh, do you not know
That he’s off long ago
To a country where he will find spring, poor thing?

Swallows migrate to warmer countries for the winter. Any that attempt to remain usually do not survive. This is made clear in Oscar Wilde’s heartbreaking tale of the Happy Prince, a story I can never read aloud to children.

In the third verse, the children learn about the tiny dormouse.

The North Wind doth blow
And we shall have snow,
And what will the dormouse to then, poor thing?
Rolled up like a ball
In his nest snug and small,
He'll sleep till warm weather comes in, poor thing!

Verse four tells of the honey bee.

The North Wind doth blow
And we shall have snow,
And what will the honey bee do then, poor thing?
In his hive he will stay
Till the cold is away
And then he’ll come out in the spring, poor thing!

Referred to as ‘he’ in the rhyme, it is only the females, who are the Queen and the worker bees, who survive the winter. The workers cluster round the Queen to keep her warm and alive. The drones are only of use for mating and as there is no mating in the cold months they are pushed out of the hive and either starve or freeze to death.

A fifth verse was added later.

The North Wind doth blow
And we shall have snow,
And what will the children do then, poor things?
When lessons are done
They’ll jump, skip, and run,
And that’s how they’ll keep themselves warm, poor things.

We woke up to snow this morning, which settled briefly on the roofs and trees. At present, we have a north wind blowing. The forecast tonight is -3˚Celsius (26.6˚ Fahrenheit)

Good night, Vienna

 

Good night, Vienna

JayCee used this phrase in a comment she left recently on a blog post. It reminded me instantly of the ITV television series, ‘Rising Damp,’ about the lives of a penny-pinching landlord, Rigsby, and his tenants. It was broadcast from 1974 until 1978.

Rigsby, had a cat called Vienna, which was variously treated affectionately or despised, depending on the way Rigsby’s life was unfolding. When he put the cat out at night, he would say, ‘Good night, Vienna,’ suggesting that if Vienna met difficulties, it would all be over for him.

The phrase came from a radio operetta of 1932, called ‘Goodnight, Vienna.’ The operetta was later made into a film. Originally, the expression indicated a romantic farewell, but it gradually changed to mean, ‘It’s all over,’ ‘It’s finished,’ ‘That’s it,’ and became a part of British slang.

It was also the title of Ringo Starr’s 1974 album, ‘Goodnight Vienna,’ for which John Lennon wrote the words.

It’s similar in meaning to ‘Goodnight, Irene,’ the song written by Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter) in the 1930s. A one-time friend of ours was called Irene, and she hated it when anyone sang it to her. She took it as a personal insult.

Golden

 

Golden

Gazania (Treasure flower)

Monday was a bright, golden day. There had been a slight frost overnight and the air felt crisp and fresh. The forecast for cooler temperatures, particularly overnight, galvanised us into action. It was time for the house plants to bid a fond adieu to the garden and come indoors again, to relish the warmth and shelter, and dream of next year’s summer holiday. Suddenly, the conservatory was full once more, although it wasn’t noticeably empty before this exercise.

The months spent outdoors have strengthened the plants and encouraged them to grow. There is much pruning and splitting and repotting to be done, tasks for the days ahead.

 Doubtless, some little creatures have made their way inside and will have to be relocated. Tiny arachnids and molluscs will be much happier in the airy outside, their natural habitat.

Ivy-leaved toadflax is an indomitable squatter and springs up everywhere, quite as much as herb Robert. Both of them are much loved and admired in their right positions – outside! – but their determination to dominate the world is not acceptable indoors.

Ivy-leaved toadflax, Kenilworth ivy, Oxford ivy, Pennywort and many more

Herb robert, Storksbill, Crow's foot, Fox geranium and more

Some plants are looking a little ragged, having provided succulent feasts for untold beasties, but they will recover and throw out new leaves.

Poor avocado!  The comment from my app was, 'This plant looks okay, but can be better!'

I'm sure the avocado will survive and thrive. However, the one below, the Pachira, or Money tree, elicited the comment, 'This plant looks sick!.' 

I must agree and am not overly optimistic, but time will tell.

Echeveria, with Pink moonstone succulent to right

The clivias are taking over! This one is past its best, but has a cluster of new buds. There are now six or seven that require splitting and repotting. I think some may be finding new homes among the family. They are all descendants of the one plant I gave my mother more than thirty years ago.

Meanwhile, the plants that normally live outside continue to thrive.

Lobelia

Nasturtium

Antirrhinum

 Some of the annuals, like the nasturtiums, are still flowering, while at the same time, the first of the Mahonia japonica has thrust out magnificent, perfumed spears of yellow flowers, a feast for late-flying bees.

Mahonia japonica (the netting is part of the cat enclosure)

Happy days!

What’s new?

 

What’s new?

Pinched from somewhere else:

 

I met a friend. She asked me what sort of day I’d had. I said, ‘It was very good, apart from newpussycat.

She said, ‘What’s newpussycat?’

I said, ‘Woah, woah, woah.’

Synaesthesia

 

Synaesthesia

                             Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Professor Jim Al-Khalili is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Surrey. He hosts a programme on BBC called The Life Scientific, in which scientists are invited to talk about their life and work.

The broadcasts are interesting because the scientific experts speak clearly and articulately about their fields in a way that is readily understood.

A recent podcast featured Julia Simner, a Professor of Psychology. She has led research to understand how brains process the sensory world.  The main part of the programme was about synaesthesia, which is the merging or cross-over of senses. For example, when one sense is stimulated, like hearing, another sense is involuntarily engaged. One in twenty-three people has synaesthesia – roughly 4% of the population.

One of the most common forms is grapheme-colour synaesthesia, when letters or numbers, sometimes both, are associated with specific colours. It has been suggested that this arises because of early exposure to coloured alphabets or number charts or toys in infancy, but this is not proved.

Another type of synaesthesia is chromaesthesia, in which people see colours when listening to music. Van Gogh is believed to have experienced this, to the extent that he had to abandon piano lessons. 

In one of his letters, he gave evidence of another way in which synaesthesia affected him, when he said, ‘some artists have a nervous hand at drawing, which gives their technique something of the sound peculiar to a violin.’

Some people have lexical-gustatory synaesthesia. For them, hearing a word may deliver a taste sensation, not necessarily associated with food per se. For instance, the word ‘plum’ may initially evoke a mouth-watering response, but over time, just the ‘um’ sound or phoneme may produce the same result in words like, hum, bumble bee, umbrella, sum, crumb. In this form of synaesthesia, the phoneme (sound) may induce an unpleasant taste, depending on the association. Julia Simner prefers to be called Jules (Jools) but one person she knows is unable to call her that because of the disagreeable association with the ’oo’ phoneme.

Another very common type of synaesthesia is day-colour, in which people connect colours with the days of the week. Tuesday may be orange and Sunday blue, and so forth.

One remarkably interesting form is mirror-touch synaesthesia, when someone sees something happening to another person and feels it physically, too.

Synaesthesia is inherited, though the form it takes may differ between family members.

I have known one or two people who admitted to a form of grapheme-colour synaesthesia. They seemed to think it was linked to early reading experiences.

Do you have any experience of synaesthesia? Have you ever thought a particular letter or number had a specific colour?

                            Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Watching again . . .

 

Watching again . . .

Magpie Murders, an adaptation of the murder mystery by Anthony Horowitz. Clever writer, excellent cast.

One for sorrow, 
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret
Never to be told.

Doing the wrong thing

 

Doing the wrong thing

Doing the wrong thing for the right reason is as bad as doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Either way, we upset people without intending to, so it’s probably better to do nothing at all, unless we’re absolutely sure we’ve got everyone’s best interests at heart.

This, too, shall pass.

Christmas crackers

 

Christmas crackers

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

In my usual galumphing way, I didn’t appreciate that for some people ‘crackers’ would summon visions of small biscuits to be eaten with cheese. It’s yet another example of my rather parochial view of the world. I do remember at lunch many years ago my middle daughter asked if we had any crackers, and I was about to go upstairs to retrieve some, when I realised she was talking about biscuits for cheese.

So, what is a Christmas cracker, and why? Traditionally, it decorates the table on Christmas Day, when the company sits down to eat mounds of food for lunch – turkey, pigs in blankets, sprouts, bread sauce, roast potatoes, with ‘all the trimmings.’

A Christmas cracker is a cardboard tube covered in brightly decorated paper, twisted at each end to stop the contents falling out. Contained within are a paper crown, a motto or joke, a small gift, like a thimble or a tiny notebook, and a cracker or banger. The banger is made from two narrow strips of paper, attached with a slight overlap. The overlap is coated with gunpowder or a thin layer of a friction-sensitive chemical, like silver fulminate. When the cracker is pulled, to break it open, the friction causes a tiny explosion, a snapping bang, which the cardboard tube amplifies.

Each place setting has a Christmas cracker, and the tradition is to pull your cracker with your neighbour or someone opposite. At the same time, your opposite number is supposed to hold out his or her cracker and you both pull together. The person with the largest section of cracker wins the contents.

Hats are donned, jokes are read out and scoffed at, and little gifts are exclaimed over. The hat is worn until the meal is completed, and that can be quite a long time if there is a starter, a main course, pudding, and cheese and biscuits – or crackers!

Some people make their own crackers. As a tradition, it originates in Victorian times, as do so many British practices.

Tom Smith was a London confectioner who sold sugared almonds wrapped in twists of paper. Around 1845 he started including mottos with the almonds.They were frequently bought by young men for young ladies, so the mottos often took the form of love poems. Later, the paper twists became tubes to which Tom Smith added the ‘bang’ to make them more exciting, and almonds were replaced with small gifts. Tissue paper crowns were added by his sons in the early twentieth century, and the love poems were replaced with jokes or riddles.

   In Great Britain, under the provision of the Pyrotechnic Articles (Safety) Regulations 2015 people under the age of eighteen are not allowed to buy fireworks. An exception is made for Christmas crackers, which are classed as fireworks, but it is still illegal to sell them to children under the age of twelve.

Aviation authorities have different rules about Christmas crackers. Some countries, like the USA, ban them outright, while others allow them under certain stringent conditions. Homemade crackers are banned by all airlines.

At the Eleventh Hour

 

At the Eleventh Hour

Often this expression is used to indicate action at the last possible moment, usually before disaster strikes. It’s dramatic, perhaps over-used, but what is its origin?

It comes from the parable of the vineyard workers, as related in the gospel of St Matthew (chapter 20, vv1-6)

It was the custom of landowners to hire workers throughout the day to strip the grape vines. Men could be engaged at the beginning of the working day, but their numbers might be supplemented as the day wore on, even at the end, or eleventh hour, of the day. Regardless of how many hours they worked, all the labourers were paid the same amount. This led to some resentment, naturally.

It led me to ponder, not for the first time, why the eleventh hour was chosen to announce the Armistice in the First World War - it was actually signed at 5:45 a.m. in the Forest of Compiègne. Logistically, hours were needed to allow the news to filter through to the commanders and the troops. Indeed, fighting continued until the last moments.

“The fighting continued until the last possible moment. As a result, there were 10,944 casualties, including 2,738 deaths, on the war’s last day. Most occurred within a period of three hours. The last soldier to be killed in World War I was Henry Gunther, an American of German descent, who was killed just sixty seconds before the guns fell silent.”

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month has a resounding poetic timbre, unforgettable, echoing.

I watched all the hundreds of people marching past the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday - heads up, shoulders back, pride in every step, a diminishing number every year, some of their places taken by younger relatives.

I watched and thought of them as young, strong men and women, 'doing their bit.'

I watched and saw the older, sadder men and women they had become, maybe diminished, disabled, disillusioned, but still with a spark of defiance and grit, a belief in their cause and their country, a fellowship with their comrades across the generations and the nations.

How long will this tribute continue? How many decades, centuries, must pass before the memories are consigned to history? We don’t as a country commemorate Boudicca’s revolt against the Romans in the first century, the Anglo/Saxon invasion of fifth century Britain, the conquest of the English by the Norman-French army at the Battle of Hastings in the eleventh century. Yet these were important and bloody and life-changing for hundreds, thousands.

Of course, we must never forget the horror of wars and the misery they inflict on all affected by them, but when and how do we move on from the last terrible conflict? Is it a natural process?

It seems inconceivable that the awfulness of both World Wars and subsequent skirmishes across the world should not be marked in a meaningful way, like the Remembrance Day ceremonies. It is essential to try and prevent such atrocities occurring again, to stop young lives being ended or scarred irreparably.

History is vital and must be taught meaningfully. We must remember, lest we forget.

Free gift

 

Free gift

In my groceries today I found a packet of Percy Pig sweets. ‘Made with real fruit juice’ is the claim on the front of the packet. They are vegan, and have ‘no artificial ingredients or flavourings’ (I quote from the Marks and Spencer website.)     

All well and good. Free gifts are often to be welcomed.

I tried a couple. They had a pleasant enough texture, but no discernible, easily identifiable flavour.

They are definitely not something I would ever buy. ‘Something of nothing’ is my verdict. Perhaps others relish them and cannot have enough of them.

I wonder why they are being sent out as free gifts. Overstocked, maybe? I’ll never know.

Free gift? Aren’t all gifts free?

Crackers!

 

Crackers!

I decided to check up on the Christmas cracker situation today. I thought we had drawers full of them, but they’ve all vanished. Maybe they grew legs and pranced away.

I’d better check the Christmas cards!

Silly answers

 

Silly answers

1: An average hen’s egg is two inches long and weighs five ounces.
 An average peacock’s egg is exactly twice the length and two and a half times the weight.
Which has the greater circumference?

Peacocks do not lay eggs. Peahens do.

2: What is impossible to hold for half an hour yet weighs almost nothing?

Your breath.

3: Eight crows were on a wall. After a farmer shot one, how many crows were left?

One. The dead one. The rest flew away.

4:  What is the next letter in the sequence O T T F F S?

S. They are the initial letters of the numbers one, two, three, four, five, six. The next is seven.

5: What is full of holes but holds water?

A sponge.

6: I’m halfway up inside a building that has no windows or balconies, but I have a wonderful view of the city around me. What sort of building am I in?

A multi-storey car park.

7: Mr Smith eats three eggs a day. He never buys eggs, he doesn’t keep chickens, and no-one gives him any eggs. Where does he get his eggs?

Mr Smith keeps ducks and eats duck eggs.

 

 

  

Silly questions

 

Silly questions (answers tomorrow)

1: An average hen’s egg is two inches long and weighs five ounces.
 An average peacock’s egg is exactly twice the length and two and a half times the weight.
Which has the greater circumference?

2: What is impossible to hold for half an hour yet weighs almost nothing?

3: Eight crows were on a wall. After a farmer shot one, how many crows were left?

4:  What is the next letter in the sequence O T T F F S?

5: What is full of holes but holds water?

6: I’m halfway up inside a building that has no windows or balconies, but I have a wonderful view of the city around me. What sort of building am I in?

7: Mr Smith eats three eggs a day. He never buys eggs, he doesn’t keep chickens, and no-one gives him any eggs. Where does he get his eggs?

 

 

  

Dog food

 

Dog food

Through the generations of dogs we’ve had the joy of living with, feeding them has been an ongoing topic for thought and discussion.

I realise this is a First World issue, and am only too aware that many people in this world have not enough to feed themselves and their families. That doesn’t mean that we, more fortunate, should not pay as much attention to what we feed our animals as we do to our own diet.

Our first dog was Whisky, our rehomed three-year-old Labrador. The first meal we gave her was lights. Lights are offal, mainly lungs, heart, stomach (tripe) and other bits and pieces that butchers can extract from a carcase and that might not otherwise be commercially viable. These days, for the nose-to-tail cooks, everything is on the table, or at least in the cooking pot.

She loved her meal, but we did not appreciate the digestive disturbances it caused, so after that she had tinned food, which she inhaled at great speed.

Through the years, we tried dried food, wet food, and raw food. At one time, for a few years, frozen raw chicken, turkey necks, raw bones, and tripe were delivered regularly, and we had a dedicated freezer for it, known as the dog freezer. They really enjoyed it and looked tremendous on it, but there was always something of a question mark over whether they were getting the right proportions of protein, vitamins, and so forth. Raw bones, too, though greatly enjoyed, could be a problem. They might splinter and could not be left in the garden for wildlife to infect with bacteria.

Eventually, the supplier could no longer supply in the quantities we wanted – he was selling to kennels, and our order was quite meagre by comparison. So ended the evenings bagging up frozen meat, to our secret relief. Then we went to dried food.

We didn’t want food that was full of fillers and additives – junk food for dogs - so consulted a site – https://allaboutdogfood.co.uk – a comprehensive and boggling site about many of the commercial dog foods available, and discovered one that seemed good.  We have just discovered that the company providing it, formerly Canadian, has been sold to China, and the ingredients have been tweaked. The dogs are not turning their noses up at it, but we are unhappy not knowing what ingredients are now being used. It’s increasingly difficult to escape the clutches of China, but at least we can still source our own food, and that of our animals.

We found a German company, www.gentledogfood.co.uk and were sent some free samples to try out, to see if the dogs liked them. They are Labradors! They like everything, so it was hardly a rigorous test. They are not at all discriminating in their tastes and wolfed down the samples, and looked around for more. We shall see how they fare on their new diet.

In common with doctors, vets are not given much teaching on the value of good nutrition. Medical students receive fewer than twenty-five hours, often significantly less during their years of training. Veterinary students have about twenty hours.

Thus, it is up to us to research, and refine our diets according to our health, taste, and purses. 

William Morris

 

William Morris 1834-1896

 A William Morris design I particularly like is Strawberry Thief.

The inspiration came from the thrushes he saw stealing fruit in his Kelmscott Manor house in Oxfordshire. It became one of his most popular designs and was printed on cotton fabric for use in curtains.

I have two cushions in different colourways    

a tablecloth. 

and an address book

There can never be too many Strawberry Thieves in my house. 

I am also working on a Strawberry Thief cross-stitch, which is driving me cross-eyed!