This is a picture taken last night when the hurricane Gonzalo decided to visit Ireland and Blighty. He just slept through it all. Domino the smallholding ratting cat is really a big softie and even has his own blanket and teddy bear.
Time for a song. Here's Teddy Bear by Elvis Presley. He lived on a smallholding, you know!
Time for a song. Here's Teddy Bear by Elvis Presley. He lived on a smallholding, you know!
Albert hasn't got off the bed either....they know when weather is bleeding awful don't they?
ReplyDeleteDon't they just, John. They are certainly characters. I often wonder if they have been here before. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteEven vermin controllers have a soft side.
ReplyDeleteI came home tonight and found two cats in the duvet upstairs and two on the windowsill. They haven't moved all night. It is not that windy but they obviously prefer to stay indoors, and maybe they know something I don't know!
ReplyDeleteHi Cumbrian. Th king of roll sang: "I don't wanna be a tiger. Cause tigers play too rough. I don't wanna be a lion, 'Cause lions ain't the kind you love enough.'
ReplyDeleteThe king of rock n roll was born on a smallholding.
Pitch black here until 7.45 this morning. Think clocks change this weekend. Why do we still use a time system that was invented for ammunition workers in 1914? Better still. Should there be street (lane) lighting in all rural areas? I think so.
Cats and dogs aren't daft, Rachel. I think somebody once said a dog sleeps seventeen hours a day. Crikey!
ReplyDeleteHi Dave, he is a pretty cat. Is there cat nip in the teddy?
ReplyDeleteHi Sol. No there isn't any cat nip in the teddy bear. They go mad for it, don't they? Rats are supposed to go mad for Valerian. Think the Pied Piper of Hamelin used it to catch them. Thanks for your comment, Sol!
ReplyDeleteTwo of our cats stamp their feet metaphorically speaking if it's raining or even worse very windy, they blame us if it's bad weather, they like to spend their days outside mainly hunting. The rest are quite happy to do what cats do best, sleep, preferably in a basket or box bathed in sunshine, not too much hope of that today.
ReplyDeleteI would not like street lights around us, it ruins the night sky, is a waste of power, and also highlights the fact that there are outlying properties. Just outside our second property in Spain street lighting installed, gone was the night sky and we had to have curtains to shut out the light.
Hi Anne. The cats and dogs earn their keep on a smallholding. They also like their sleep.
ReplyDeleteI think every place we live in is probably unique with its own problems. I know where we live its four miles to the nearest street lights and a pavement to walk on. Yet cars allowed are to drive at 80K on unlit country roads. We have no public transport and it costs between 10 and 15 Euro to get a taxi each way to town. Unless you drive and then you can't have a drink. I know people who live in rural towns and villages near us and they go a walk on the pavements under street light at night. People like us are confined to stay in from 4 in the afternoon until 8 the next morning. I often wonder what we pay for the household charge when we get no services at all. I even have to pay somebody to cut the hedges of my fields on the roads because the council don't do it. Thanks!
I would love to know what the household charge is for, sorry i should say household tax. Like yourself we are 6k from pavements or street lights although there is a church and a school in the townland there is no lighting there either. Our local roads are more potholes than roads but some side lanes get made up, I guess it depends who lives in the lane and how close a relation you have that works for the council!
ReplyDeleteOur nearest emergency dept. is over an hours drive away. I wonder if we could send our council hedge trimming men down to you, that's one thing they do even if you don't want them to, they do not understand the words 'leave the height just breast the hedge!' We thought they had got it but on their return trip down our lane ( it's a no through lane) they had chopped the donkey field hedge down to three feet! Not impressed, so if you want them come and get them.
I would like to know why towns and cities have street lighting and a lot of rural areas don't. Also why did the Irish government spend 10 million on signs for the Atlantic Way but they can't provide public transport along the route. I wonder how many pedestrians get knocked down on our roads because there are no pavements or road lights or public transport.
ReplyDeleteI have heard it said before it depends where influential people live, what state of roads you have. We don't even have a public phone box, can bank or even get visited by the council rural library bus.
If you are about to have a baby. You have to travel sixty miles to Cork.
It costs me around 150 Euros to have the fuchsia/blackthorn hedges cut. I could leave them like other farmers do and pedestrians would be walking further into the road than they do now. I use to cut one of the hedges with my petrol hedge-trimmer. But it's too dangerous with cars going passed at 80 km per hour.
Thanks!
I think you should contact your local council about your hedges Dave, jump on your local councillor as well, you might not get results but on the other hand you might. I don't think we even have a mobile library in this area, and I'm not even sure if the local town, pop 3000 still has a phone box I will look next time we are in town.
ReplyDeletePublic transport in rural Ireland is a total joke, we can get to Dublin or Galway OK but the last transport back is around nine at night so that cancels out going to any concerts.
Years ago I had to go to an conference twenty miles the other side of Limerick, about 100 miles from where we lived, it was impossible to do the trip at any time of day in one day, the buses did not link up with the train times, it would have meant an overnight stay in Limerick so I had to drive.
All resources are concentrated into the large city's or towns, us country dwellers are a nuisance to the government, they would far rather we all lived in suburbia where they can control us.
The councils say that the hedges belong to the landowner and they are responsible for their maintenance outside the bird nesting season. So you have between the 31st of August to March to cut them. Theoretically the council could take the landowner to court if they don't have their hedges cut. Yet they allow Ragwort to flower and seed on their verges and not to salt the rural roads unless they want to.
ReplyDeleteYour public transport sounds like ours. It's connected between the towns and cities and is expensive and return far too early. So it means booking an hotel or staying at home instead. Rural pubs are closing every week in Ireland.
I think smallholders and country dwellers get very little in return from central government. A lot of the small farms become holiday homes because they can't make a living farming.
One thing about suburbia is good public transport. Thanks Anne!
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