Well that's the excesses over with for another year, what a relief not to have to sit infront of the telly all day in between eating a lot. The boys were terribly civilised and woke up at 8 when we had stocking's in bed - Finlay surmised that I couldn't have been "very good" as Santa only brought me some highlighter pens....I then nearly caused mass fall out by insisting I go to church - they were all a bit caught out - as I wasn't insisting they come with me! -so with much nashing of teeth I ended up with a car -ful and a hearty hour of lusty carol singing amazingly DIDNT kill anyone. I got the turkey lurkey in and everything went completely smoothly, I over cooked the sprouts and forgot about the parsnips as they were taking forever to raost - so we had a third course of beautifully goose fat roasty toasty roots - which left everyone farting throughout Dr Who. No one was fit for pudding for about 6 hours, and in between times we left my brother in law snoring and embarked on a bit of fresh air -with all shapes and sizes, hats, coats, scarves, Christmas antlers, 7 dogs, 5 kids and a pony striding along the main road up the forest we met 3 cars and they were forced to pull over to let us pass -We looked like a protest march. We made our way down by the river and into the big field where the pony took one look at the wide open space and following a way too enthusiastic "YeeHaa" from Hedge,did a fantastic rodeo turn and took off, dumping Archie in the process.
To get bucked off on Christmas day - in front of a large crowd - (thanks to his father!) -did nothing for good relations all round -Archie, stood up wailing that he couldn't breathe then stomped off in an uber tante (Oh how I saw myself in him again!) Fergus and Rory who were being all cool teenagers were momentarily transported back to awe struck small boys with wide eyes and open mouths and Hannah - the only girl amongst the throng bravely clambered back onto Chesters back and walked sedately home.
Yesterday I photographed 5 families -2 of whom have not been together for 2 years due to grown up children travelling and working abroad, it was lovely and exciting to be able to talk about the project with at least it's financial future mapped out. We have meetings booked this week and next to try and chart some progress.

The Farm Shop have just phoned to say Fergus is supposed to be working at 12 noon (he's in Banchory and I dont have a phone number for him) so -he's definitely "back in the bad books", he's supposed to be washing dishes there, and seems to turn up when he feels like it - or as long as it doesn't interfere with his social diary, little monkey then leaves me in the lurch to do the explaining to his boss who's busy saying it doesn't matter a bit, when infact we both know dam well it does!!
Its only Archie and I at home today and I had better go and spend some time with him. I need to get him back on board that pony before he finds anymore excuses -Kung Fu Panda being one of them....

my christmas wish.....

We were all sitting round the table a couple of weeks ago (a rare occurrence -must have been between sport and the Simpson's and probably the internet connection was down....) however we were discussing our christmas wishes. Fergus wanted a lap top, a mobile phone, a router for his bedroom, a hoodie and a t-shirt amongst other numerous small gifts -mainly sweeties and hair gel I think, although now he hasn't had a haircut for 4 months he says he has "moshing hair" -that apparently means it moves (which is good) when he vigorously moshes,(the 2000 version of pogoing/headbanging) which he practises every day infront of the bathroom mirror -when he is not forensically examining his "tash and skin for any suitable squeezable eruptions.
Archie is not very good with words. So his sentences always start with "you know that.....and include "like" in unlikely places" which invariably I dont or have forgotten. As in you know that advert, you know that time we were in that like shop, you know you that said like I could have that like thing.....it's all deeply incomprehensible I do the dreadful mother thing and totally zone out, I say I cant remember so automatically, because mostly it's true and I need an interpreter for him, as he takes so long to say the nub of what he wan't to say.....I cant think where he might get that from!!And as for Fin, he'd "quite like" a great number of things - from "Id quite like my own quad bike" - to "I'd quite like some lego" and incase he has your full attention proceeds every advert on the telly with "I'd quite like that too" -ever the optimist. Hedge wants a dirty weekend in February. I said knowing the weather in February he could get dirty every day, which obviously wasnt what he meant.But having sworn I wasnt going back to London with him after last years high maintenance fiasco when iw as exhausted before we left - Im not sure that lying in the bath for four days might clean up his ideas a bit, and we still have an option on a really isolated house on the west coast of scotland which is a four hour drive away from civilisation -but seems tempting at this time. For me, I only want peace and quiet, and this morning I have it as they have all gone to Aberdeen to do their own brand of shopping. i rather depressingly didnt want to remind my husband that Ive crept up another knicker size this year, and when he asked if I wanted anything in particular I managed to avoid the vague "oh anything will do darling" as I remembered the hideous A line red skirt he presented with a flourish one year - here - he said I bought you something you would never buy yourself......well for very good reason - I think he imagined I would look buttoned up slutty - but I resembled a pillarbox crossed with the back end of a bus. He also didnt do well with size 10 pants -even though they were white, or the year he gave me 3 diarys, forgetting that I had already dug out my London filofax and reverted to that. So peace on earth would be fine, or at least on my little patch on Woodend. Rather like peace on earth I suspect that might be like asking for the moon.

a face for radio...........

It's an odd thing listening to oneself rabbiting on about something as inconsequential but essential as light. But yesterday morning very early, but obviously not so early that I had 2 emails by 8am from folk to say they had "woken up in bed with me"! -and once again on the programme replay this morning when the majority of the residents of Finzean were in church - well, it's advent innit. Not the game keepers wife. Oh no, she was on a mission to another hairy gamekeepers hoary larder to pick up supplies so her own hairy husband can fulfill his christmas orders like some tweedy santa. We (the underkeeper and me) were dispatched to Glen Dye with specific instructions for 12 hens and a fat duck- at least it wasn't the elusive partridge and a tree of fruit,I digress (a lot!). I always find other estate outdoor buildings really exciting - with their well keptness, and tidy gravel, even hanging baskets of winter pansies that go to show either a green fingered gamie of more likely a wife with moire time for pleasing aesthetics than me! I especially love the ones with old fashioned railings and proper stone kennels, since childhood those buildings have always given me a little frisson of excitement. In contrast I spent most of yesterday afternoon outside our own establishment picking up chewed cat food tins, broken toys, bits of bikes, compost that formed a 20ft trail from the backdoor to the heap -(never ask a recalcitrant 7 yr old to empty the kitchen bucket) There were buckets of unmentionables, buckets of ash,broken buckets, dog leads, dog collars and dogs doo-dahs, gloves -3, a pheasant catcher, and what looked like an elephant trap the boys had constructed from a ladder, two chairs and some rope. The abandoned sledges and snowman's outfit including one of my silk scarves plus a carrot signalled the large snowfall from last week, and 2 wheelbarrows worth of pony poop in the kitchen garden, since it's the only place to hold the pony if he breaks out of his electric fence. Hedge is not altogether wrong to say the pony has an irrational fear of the electric fence, as he can mostly be held in by a single strand - switched off 99% of the time -however when driven to seek pony nuts he has been known to scale the dyke, or "step over" the "fence" that got blown over. 6" is not that much of a stretch even for a small pony. So - my radio debut -which surprised even me in sounding relatively co-herant -luckily they edited out me saying "shitfuck bollocks" as I immediately got my knickers in a twist worrying too much in advance of what I might be saying would sound numpty. But it was a nice experience and much better than being filmed!! Finlay keeps quoting me as I started with an over enthusiastic "JOE-seph Farqhahrson" -which irritatingly he now has off pat. Fergus mooched past the radio and said "who's that, sounds a bit like you mum....." -actually amazing his own i-pod was out of his lugs long enough to hear anything, £318 quids worth is a lot of listening, he says I should "let it go".....I find that hard! Now I need to go and make some broth.......or more likely open a tin of Heinz tomato -as it has no bits in -and they are poison

Game keeper with man flu -3pm.

It's a LOT -TERY!

So it's official I have man flu. Actually it's going off a bit now, and I was right, no one who had it last week can remember how awful it is. But at least Ive stopped shivering and sweating and have my hearing back. Maybe not such a great thing as every one's arguing is now back in crystal clarity. SO, the Lottery!! I feel like I've won it, it might be so much less satisfying to leave it to luck and fill out a few lucky numbers. I will content myself that the hours, no really, THE HOURS spent trying to justify a little idea and get it down in writing and then re-write it because it sounds naff until it's been re-written to many times it no longer looks or feels like your original idea. But it also feels like an imposing responsibility to have to justify what we intend to spend the nation's hard earned cash on. It had better be good. I had a completely sleepless night again last night and felt like a light bulb went off again on another track, I can already here my working partner Guy "groaning" every time I say those four little words...I try to run them together to less effect "ivehadanidea" but to no effect. i think we need a community website - to bring together the four parishes - I will call it "parish-oot" and have a logo of a parachute with four little strings spelling out the village names of Birse, Ballogie, Finzean and Strachan - all attached in the middle to a big fat pink heart (the heart of the community) it will incorporate the Strachan e-zine, the Ballogie Bugle and the Finzean Rabbit - all community newspapers. But it can also give joined up news on the 2 schools, the 3 halls, the work of the community trust, a business directory - AND most importantly will keep everyone up to date on the Portrait of Our Time as it progresses. I'm really supposed to be wrapping christmas pressies before the boys come home from school - only 4 more days of freedom before the dreaded holidays begin.......and ive been asked to talk to a lady about light on a radio programme. How bizarre. There is hardly any at the moment -fleeting. She wanted me to speak about my affinity with the light and how we live in the same area that Joe Farquharson painted hhis extra-ordinary light in. Ive tried telling her I dont paint light then we went off on a tangent about how light has an effect on everything and she said can I come and record our chat with you for the radio and I said I might run of things to say on the subject, and she said "I suspect you won't"!!!

it really shouldn't.....

So here I am, sweating and achey having inherited four slightly different dilutions of man flu virus. Having answered the demands all week for hot ribena, cold ribena, warm orange, orange and honey, egg sandwiches, macaroni cheese, those little biscuity things, toast and marmite, toast and nutella (crusts off)white bread, muffins and that jam without the bits in, anything really, and can we have Chinese? Ive brought blankets, ice packs, my downie, his downie, more blankets, turned the telly round, turned the telly over, turned the telly up, turned the telly off, and then turned it back on again, tidied their bedrooms, tidied the bathroom, done eight loads of washing (including sicky sheets) played cards, monopoly, read stories (ok I lied about the monopoly) but it's felt like my children have had the total Monopoly of my time this week. Today I got the news that my Portrait of Our Time, heritage project has succeeded in securing 34k of Lottery funding -so has now become a serious reality -if I deliver, and my husband (my flu aside) now wants me to go lymph node hunting with him. What this means is, as he is sitting his deer stalker level 2 exam on Monday - that he has to be conversant with the lymphatic drainage system in a deer, which he is, more or less. But just in case, he shot one this morning and has asked that I accompany him to the freezing cold larder 4 miles away whist still dressed in my pj's (you can put a coat on) and then poke around inside a deer carcass and the disgusting pluck - hunting for something that he already knows is there......I feel like I would prefer at this point to go all diva is and go and buy a dress for the farmers ball tomorrow night, but I CBA. So will just have to look like an old frump with a red nose and a grumpy demeanor - as they make the announcement during the speeches that we have secured the dosh and prepare for a whole lot more bums to wipe.....

and another thing.....

on yesterday's continuation of clearing up...I suspect I am not long for submitting to this lurgy - Hedge says it is inevitable I will get it when everyone else is better and has forgotten how rotten it feels, but i have suspiciously sore bones today. Nothing to do with the tea time debacle that happened in the dark last night and is probably the first incident that relates to the title of my blog. It was one of those deals that started in the pub post shoot one day when one hairy chap said to another whiskery gentleman...."I'm looking for a dog....she's ready.."Now in Gamie parlance this does not mean that he has mis-placed his own, or wished to buy another, and has talked his wife round. Oh no, this simply means that his female dog is ready to accept a mate and he's on the hunt for some semen. It get's tackled in the pub because it means he's taken a fancy to your dog...or he has been recommended your dog as a suitable sire, or he's simply desperate and can't find a dog anywhere and recon's that your flea bitten moth eared hound will have to suffice. I don't know why men cant just say "can I use your dog as a stud". Oh No, it's always got to go round the long road. Anyway this was a recommendation so the new keeper (2.5 years in the job) of a neighbouring estate was on the phone with an air of urgency about him. It was a vaguely frustrating conversation carried out in man style with both men doing their ut-most to accommodate the other with the minimum of words and complete disregard to external circumstances. ie they were both very busy men, but shoe horning in a bit of canine sex was urgent, so at least one wife (me) would have to be around to help out. And so it happened - in the pouring rain, with a hard frost on top of the sheet ice that is our yard, in the nearing darkness that the pimp turned up with his bitch......All due credit to our lovely Baxter, he really couldn't be arsed! But needless to say after a few half hearted pathetic attempts of flirtation and with his new girlfriend positively gagging for it, they took off into the darkness, and left me to make polite conversation with a complete stranger..............it turns out that at least some big hairy intimidating looking men have a softer side as he admitted the reason he couldn't come the next day was because he was accompanying his 4yr old daughter to the panto. I managed to stop myself from roaring with laughter and calling him a big soft poofter, I didn't feel we knew each other well enough yet.......and my dog was still to "do the business". The comic possibilities are actually endless, i had been about to feed the pony and managed to lose a bucket of nuts and a haynet in the gloom. it was like a cut scene from dancing on ice as we skated round the yard, retiring to the shed where he clearly felt more at home amongst the snares and the quad bikes I found the time whilst making myself busy, in order to avoid eye contact with Baxter (it puts him off) to retrieve 2 sets of swimming kit, 3 socks and a jacket I forgot we owned - still no sign of Fin's brand new downie winter jacket -worn for a week and certainly out in the abyss somewhere - just no where I can lay my eyes on. My belief in the Universe is clearly not working properly - as your supposed to be able to visualise something and if you do it right, with enough intention - then it will come to you. This apparently works with things like making your fortune, and finding true love as well as the more mundane car keys and mobile phones, however it doesn't work with Gap anoraks worn for one week only. Useless.

Anyway, the long and the short of it that despite the hairy keeper saying his dog was definitely ready she is clearly not ready enough for my boy and is now lying at my feet gently farting, between singing sonnets to any of the house dogs who will listen, she has brought out the lesbian tendencies in our cairn who is busy humping her head at any opportunity - and looking out the window its now SNOWING!!!- how romantic.

And finally, to prove just HOW ill Hedge is he said at tea time last night whilst regaling us with the adventures of the day that his guests had been kind enough to take him to the farm shop for lunch. He had Lovely Pheasant broth, followed by 3 rounds of sandwiches, but -he said "do you know how poorly I am?" -"I was feeling that poorly I couldn't even manage a pudding or a beer" Terrible thing man flu - really shocking.

Things you should know when cleaning up.....

Yesterday I spent a weary but necessary day mucking out Finlay's bedroom. The things that the average seven year old keeps under their beds are probably best not thought about in any depth. The necessity was born out of a recent farm game that involved about a pound in weight of real pearl barley - well it could have been worse -at least he wasn't muck spreading.....anyway the barley had been scattered around -and for your future information, should you ever find yourself in a similar position takes about 1.2hours to hoover up off a spotty carpet. I also learnt not to open anything wrapped in paper - let's not even go there. Or to continue once the light has failed beyond the point where deciphering between solid and liquid is possible. I knew I shouldn't have let them buy the multi coloured gloop that came in a medicine bottle at the christmas fair. Despite what it says on the tin it does eventually soak into the carpet -never to be removed without a flame thrower, and it does penetrate material especially when you kneel on it. Under the bed I went to pick up what I thought was a solid disc of green felt - to find that it was a liquid mass of something very sticky - I think a totally disintegrated cough sweetie, but I cant be certain.It reminded me of the time (Fergus time) that The Early Learning Centre started making very realistic animals -and one of the boys was going through an amphibian stage and I went to pick up - what I thought was a large brown plastic toad..........to find that it was actually the real thing. There then followed one of those slow motion, backward falling movie clips of suspended animation as I toppled, yelled and thrust the very much alive large brown but real toad threw the air and down the back of the bed.....they are SO disgustingly COLD to the touch, and well named. It is so damp and dark under Ferg's bed he'd probably been living there quite happily for some time.No one could remember inviting him in. It still gives me the judders thinking about that to this day.

The other deeply disgusting, but quite hysterically funny thing that did happen today - now that I have recovered from cleaning it up! Involved the old cat who I saw nip into the larder for a mooch (honestly there's always something or someone mooching in there....) anyway the only thing she could find was peanut butter in the mouse trap....I heard the trap snap shut....and saw the cat skulk out a moment later -the funnyand disgusting part was that the scare made her poop her non existent pants -Ive had scares like that! lucky she didn't find the toad really.

Finlay is beginning to enjoy being ill with baby man flu - (always a sign they are ready to go back to school, my old mum used to say!!) and has taken to demanding "mother, pass me the this or that", its all very imperious, "mother, I need tea" "mother, can you reach my glass". Its very easy to see how this grows up into adult man flu. Now I believe that any man deserves some tlc when they are poorly. And I wouldn't like to be Hedge today as he's HAD to take a client (as it's the bosses brother) out shooting. He was feeling so ghastly and shivery yesterday he put himself to bed at 7pm with a "think need bed, can you bring me an asprin, have ver sore head, not be needing enythin else,.......this is worst than childbirth". I think not.......I told him it was lucky it was me and not him that had peritonitis and delivered 3 babies -How would he have coped....

I'd like to say its beautiful out there today - but it's Scotland at it's worst type weather......its grey and a reminder that there are still 2 weeks until the shortest day - but the sun wont come over our hill now for at least another 6 weeks. And so you can slip and slide around outside doing chores and feeding the pony who is skating around the garden - as being a welsh mountain pony defied gravity and climbed up the dyke and out of the field.......so he has spent the last week blowing steam in the kitchen window warming his hooves and cocking his head at the drains and freaking Fergus out when he goes out to bring in the coal.....anyone with a bucket is fair game to a pony! The dogs are less than impressed with the brevity of their daily amble - its a route march to get the blood flowing again as far as I'm concerned -but a family of long tailed tits have been ambushing the bird table and defying me to photograph them - zoom lens not zoomy enough. I slid 15ft (in the car) sideyways yesterday as I met the snow plough on the narrowest part of our road. We came to a halt with about 10 feet between us, Archie said afterwards - "did you see his face mum" it had a sort of inevitability about it. Typing this is becoming impossible due to the largest fattest cat chirruping, rolling and dribbling all over me and the key board. Chester (the pony) has discovered that he can get in the back door so Id better feed him before he discovers how to access the fridge......any one for cheval burger....

by Mel
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Fergus hiding from the Visa bill and his mother......

Other woman

Last nights a friend arranged a girly get together. I should have known better, she has a beautiful warm house and does everything with such style and femininity. Arriving in jeans and heavy soled boots was not a good move. It was a freezing cold night and the roads were like a bottle, it would have been so much easier just to stay put!!! But I had totally forgotten how fantastic spending an evening in the company of other woman could be. A gallery owner, an environmentalist, a potter, a counsellor, 2 teachers, a yoga instructor, a yummy mummy, a soprano. a designer and me. Intelligent, beautiful, warm, funny, sarcastic and interesting, haven't had so much fun in ages. All suitably horrified at the my eldest child's £318 i-tunes downloading habit, the downloaded pornography that no one in our house will 'fess up for, the empty biscuit tins, the trails of wet/muddy/smelly clothes ( and that was just from the tallest child who apparently accepted a bet to skate the length of the school rugby pitch in his socks at lunchtime) He said he did it to make some money to pay me back - his trousers came out of the washing machine dryer than they went in.........Anyway a dose of sisterhood was liberating even if no-one else complains about their kids as much as me -either they are more loyal to their off spring or mine are the worst culprits!! either way I don't feel so laden down by them today.

Is this therapy?

It's tempting, now Ive lost my mother, to have a good old whine on line.

Why are boys SO impossible. And by "Boys" I mean mine. My children, the fruit of my loins. Three certainly dont count as mistakes. They were all very deliberate and slow to arrive with the exception of the first born who was nearly conceived on honeymoon, but not quite, 15 years ago. But so much more trouble than I would ever have imagined. I had this rosy glow of Country Living Interiors, Boden mummy, polished apple cheeks and dry noses, scruffydogs and stripey t-shirts. I imagined they would run around wildly which they do - but I certainly never imagined they would fight. Continually. On top of me. When they have 7000 acres on their door-step. Quite literally. I had not anticipated that with that amount of freedom right outside the front door - they would rather sit at a computer and play smash-em up killing games. What ever happened to sticks and bows and arras? Too sharp? - too many "put it downs you'll have his eye out" "be careful", all those trees to climb, a pony, a fast flowing burn, (for god's sake dont go near it- you'll definitely drown) certainly no shortage of Bugger off's - but its boreing the country side. Not enough colour, or manga, or feedback. Too much waiting around (seeds to grow - puppies to be born -seasons to start, or stop)

Just too much testosterone, and no where to go!

Well it's a start. Certainly cheaper than therapy. Will anyone care? do I?