Sorry It's a Big One!

I have to accept Emily has gone to that great dinner plate in the sky.

Saturday morning I had another look at where her feathers were scattered, between the herb garden and the runner beans. I spotted something I hadn’t seen the day before, on closer investigation it was a long thin strip of flesh. I knew it was the last trace of Emily.

Somehow it was comforting to know that she was dead and that it must have been a quick death. My biggest fear was that she was horribly injured and lying somewhere, where I couldn’t see her. I have to put this behind me now and no matter how silly it seems, I loved that bird and if you have never kept chickens you won’t understand how you can build up a relationship with a bird but trust me, you can.

I got into a bit of a row this week on a website I am a regular user of. We have a member who is not well educated, and has various problems but she likes to make comments about local issues and speaks as she finds.

In the past people have berated her for her inability to spell and lack of knowledge in English grammar, which I think is disgraceful.

This week she put up a post about the influx of Polish bus drivers and the difficulties she’d had with them not being able to answer questions about the route their bus was taking and then actually getting lost on the journey.

A new member then really had a go, saying she should not refer to the people’s country of origin as that was racist.

This, to me is at the heart of the problems in this country. Apparently if a bus driver can’t speak English and doesn’t know where he is going, it’s alright to tell the tale but don’t actually say that he is from another country. What a load of &*!!*(&$.

So I expressed my point of view and got a load of verbals back from this 18 year old. I detest the Political Correct Brigade, I think they do more harm to racial harmony that any member of the BNP.

It’s about time we remembered whose country this is. I am not a religious person but if people want to celebrate Christmas and show religious symbols, that’s fine. If I went to Saudi Arabia I would not expect the people there to adopt Western dress and hide all symbols of their faith just to please me. So why, when the boot is on the other foot, are we supposed to hide all our traditions and suddenly not notice that people are from another country.

I have Polish family, by marriage and I am quite certain they were happy to be Polish and if you’d called Bolek English, I’m sure he would have been very offended.

After I’d bravely put in my post everyone else joined in agreeing with me. If you think about it, how arrogant is that to assume that referring to a Polish person as Polish is insulting. This part of the world is becoming a very sad place. You can see this annoyed me!

Mike got called in to do three days sick cover at Gloucester, they seem to be a sickly lot . So I spent most of my free time on my own, as usual.

I put a post on the Blog message board about the fact I get a hundred or more readers a week but only ten or so comments. Do I bore them off to sleep?

As a result I had a reply from a fairly new Blogger and I’ve been reading his Journal and exchanging emails . I have to thank him as he was the only person that got me smiling on Saturday after Emily’s premature demise. Mike was working, so this meant I was being miserable on my own.

Have a look at his Journal, he has some wonderful photography and tell him I sent you. I had to laugh because I’d seen a photo on there of someone in a rugby shirt sitting on a tree branch and I asked if he was the sporty person in the photo. How sad  to reach the stage when wearing a sports shirt makes someone sporty but  then putting on a sweatshirt is probably the nearest I get to being in any sport nowadays. On The Move

Mike and I went out for lunch Saturday to a small country pub, which is now a restaurant more than a pub. Mike had done a ‘phone in’ programme that morning and I don’t think he’d quite switched off. When his soup was bought the waiter put it down and said is everything ok. Mike said ‘Yes, thank you, byeeee! ’ Which amused the waiter, he kept walking by and saying ‘Hello!’, I think Mike was still in ‘phone in’ mode.

Terry’s latest Memoirs from her mother reminded me of a very unsavoury incident in my late teens. I wonder now if I should have reported it because I found out later it had also happened to a close friend of mine.If you’ve read Terry’s entry you’ll know what I’m talking about and if you haven’t, you should, her link is here Bowl of Cherries

It's obviously a male thing and some don't grow out of it. A friend I had known for years was talking about an old car he was renovating, I always hung around with the boys in our crowd as I loved helping them tinkering with their cars. So it didn't seem odd that he invited me round to come and have a look at his car. Which we did.

Then we went in the house, there had been no hanky panky, flirting, or anything of that nature. I was offered a coffee and sat on the sofa, as instructed. The coffee arrived but he obviously felt he had more to show me than his car!!!!! I jumped up and said I needed the toilet and hung around in the bathroom, in the hope that things would have calmed down, so to speak. When I returned everything was returned to it’s rightful place. Nothing was said about it and I drank my coffee as quickly as possible and left. I haven’t thought about this for years, it’s funny the memories other people’s Journals can spark off.

In Maths I have a group of children, who are special needs and need a lot of support, I have to set them easier forms of work of than what the rest of the group are doing. Behaviour was a problem so they had cards with seven targets on them and at the end of the lesson I would award stickers for those they had managed to achieve. If they get twenty five in a week, they have a certificate. The twins are Travellers, they are the most entertaining children to work with. Anyway they got their certificates and we had to be photographed. It’s a bit fuzzy, as it is a scan and had been laminated but a couple of people have asked for a recent photo, so here it is.

 

    

You can always print it off and throw darts at it, or use it to scare away Double Glazing Salesmen.

While I’ve been writing this I have seen a Buzzard come in very low over the garden near the Willow tree, which is close to the Ark. In 14 years I’ve never seen one that low. It’s a huge bird and I’m fairly certain now that it’s the culprit. A fox wouldn’t leave a long thin strip of flesh but a sharp beak would.

I’m off to talk to Abigail for a while now.