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