Chick-chick-chick-chick-chicken

A big fat chicken dropped by yesterday. Just out-of-the-blue.
A chicken.

There I was pottering about trying to put together a new workshop in Outbuilding 1, when she just... appeared. One minute she wasn't there and the next minute she was at my feet staring up and clucking at me.

She's doesn't belong to the house down the track - they're not exactly the chicken type - and she didn't come from the closest other house way up the road or their couple of neighbours (Dawn asked), and the market gardener through the woods doesn't keep them either.

Other than that the nearest houses are in a more residential area a mile downhill on a 60-100mph road, and I doubt she made some kind of perilous journey through the woods over a period of weeks, somehow avoiding foxes and buzzards, so for now she is a Mystical Chicken of Unknown Origin.

Unfortunately Grumble sees her as more of a sumptuous meal (Sausage had a swipe then thought better of it) so although Dawn and I have discussed the logistics of keeping her around for omlettes and existential conversation she's going to have to be rehomed with our friends over at Renovating an Old Stone Cottage, where they already have a chook menagerie in a lovely big enclosure that they're allowed to wander in and out of during the day.

In the meantime we've called her Tallulah and fed her bits of seeded bread and courgette, and she's crapped all over our tumble dryer in Outbuilding 1, where she spent last night. She has also voluntarily been for rides around on our shoulders and backs - we can't get her off when she's up there - and keeps trying to get in the house through the cat flap, which would make Grumble's day, especially because he broke it in the first place trying to get at her.

No eggs this morning, however.
I think our new houseguest is broken.

One look at Tallulah and Grumble started running around like he was on E-numbers

Sausage was interested for a while but realised he'd be biting off more than he could chew

Are chickens normally this friendly?

New T-shirt required

When owls attack

Despite all of the nice things we've been saying about our owl population during the last year and regardless of all the food we've left out for them, it seems it hasn't been enough.

Last night they rebelled. At least I think it was the owls.

Having dragged myself out of bed at 4.30am to visit the Little Boy's Room Garden (I'm old) I heard some noises that I couldn't quite place. Kind of like sporadic knocking from somewhere nearby. It was nothing frantic and not loud enough for me to attribute it to human activity, so it was more puzzling than worrying.
Being half asleep and fully in the altogether I wasn't all that inclined to investigate either - and it was cold - so I returned to the shed, poked Dawn in the ribs and explained what was going on to the tuft of hair that was poking from the top of the quilt. Her barely-audible expletive gave the impression that I should forget about it... so I did.

Then, as Dawn was about to leave for work at 8am she found this.

Look closely at the pic, and other than the obvious mark on the front there are numerous ones on the upper left of the bonnet, the far right-hand-side of the bonnet, two-plus lots on the roof and on both wing mirrors.
The back end was just as bad, as were the sides.

It appears that at least one, if not a veritable squadron, of owls had taken a dislike to her shiny new indulgence and had spent some time flying straight in to it from all angles.

There were a dozen or more brown dusty thumps all along the sides, the bonnet, the boot, the windows and even on the roof where the attackers had been body-slamming as many surfaces as they could during the night. I'm no Chris Packham but I guess the early hour - I'm assuming that that's what I heard - rules out pigeons and blue tits.

Presumably stationary Audis are seen as a threat to (breeding?) owls, despite their inability to climb trees*. Maybe it was the shininess of the bodywork coupled with the full-ish moon that sent it/them in to a frenzy but we'll be keeping an eye open to see if it happens again, at which point we'll have to get either a cover or an eagle. That'll learn them.

EDIT: May 19

Courtesy of Google.
The ends of its wings are certainly of the correct design...

Dawn has been working away for two nights, but now she's back it has happened again. This time with poo and talons. Lots of poo and talons.
While we await an appointment with Mr T-Cut we're going to have to think of an actual solution - I'm thinking move it closer to the CCTV, cover it and possibly stick a fake hawk or something on the roof.
If it keeps happening after that, which it shouldn't, I'm seriously going to have to get the air rifle out and lay in wait if it turns out to be crows, magpies or pigeons. It's not ideal, but things are about to get expensive if the attacks escalate.
Meanwhile, a quick Google search suggests that peacocks can get a bit tetchy around shiny cars, but I'm not sure. We've only ever seen one peacock, which must have been around nine or 10 months ago, and if I remember correctly they're not shy in verbally announcing their presence.
More news as it comes in.

* Well, they can get up there but they can never get back down again, much like cartoon cats.

...one year later

Today marks exactly 8,760 hours since we moved to The Lodge and started trying to knock the place in to shape.

Other than the fact that living in a shed for a year isn't as bad as you might think (for the most part), we've learnt a lot of things on the way that we thought we would share to mark our anniversary, so we’ve put our thinking caps on and concocted a list each, which I’ve mixed together below. If you're considering setting sail on a project of your own, take heed because I guarantee that almost all of these will prove to be relevant one day.

We also thought we'd share a few random photographs that haven't made it into the blog before, mainly because I had no idea what to say about them. Nevertheless, many still tell tiny stories all on their ownsome.

So, our one-year anniversary. Some of you may be wondering how we’re going to celebrate this landmark occasion.
Well tonight we’re going to cook pies, peas and chips and eat tea in our camping chairs in front of the wood-burning stove which has been lit just once in the last 10 weeks. We’re going to sing Kumbaya, spend a fruitless hour looking for the Scrabble board then talk about light fittings.
(Disclaimer: some of this is not true but the pies, peas and chips in front of the fire bit is).

Dawn and Muz

putting the why? in to DIY since April 17, 2015

---

Yesterday
Dawn decided to go scrambling around on the roof to look at a missing tile.
She does that kind of thing whereas I don't. Ever. She found three in all, knocked
a fourth one off herself then came back down having waved at passing cars.
I've told her she's not going up again. We're getting A Man in to sort it out.

• Your 'best' T-shirt is the one you've done least angle grinding in and/or has fewest holes
• Tradespeople are utterly hit-and-miss. If you find a good one, keep hold of them
• Hooting and screeching owls are wonderful at 10pm but an air rifle target at 4am
• Small talk gets easier - although not easy - with practice
• Glamping is fun. A big shed with your own bed is way better than a poky old caravan and much more versatile when you move out
• Glamping is less fun after a year of getting fully dressed and traipsing to an entirely different building every time you need a wee [EDIT: not every time though, eh? Dawn? Eh?]
• Consider putting a Portapotty thing in your shed

June 2015
After the bee swarm emergency in the front garden a small colony stayed behind
to set up shop in a pile of patio slabs for a few weeks. By the time we returned
from holiday they had left for warmer climes.

• Tradesmen don't always know what they're waffling on about but will still try to talk you in to doing it their way. If you know you want it a different way, don’t cave in
• Friends are excellent providers of food, shelter and gin
• If you stand in the shower long enough your eyes will actually prune
• The things you need most will be: tape measure; Stanley knife; gaffa tape; pencil; bumper box of screws; cordless driver
• The things you will lose most often will be: tape measure; Stanley knife; gaffa tape; pencil; bumper box of screws; cordless driver; patience

August 2015
Bedroom 2 has been a no-go zone since the beginning when we decided to use
it for storage. One day Dawn went missing. I found her trapped under an avalanche
of boxes, where she had been for 20 minutes. She was less than impressed
that I then made it 21 minutes by taking a photo or two. Or three.

• Time is fluid. If a tradesman tells you he'll be there at 9.30am today, expect him a week on Tuesday when you're getting in the shower at 7pm. If he tells you he'll see you tomorrow... don't bank on it
• Randomly turning up on people’s doorsteps in similar situations to yourself can end up in unexpected friendship, sometimes with added coffee cake*
• Oil-filled radiators take all of your electricity, chew it up, spit it out and demand more NOW!
• Mentioning 'Blue Tits' (the bird) continues to be amusing even when you’re surrounded by them day in, day out
• You'll know it's time to change your jeans when you forget which month it was when you first put them on

* Not a guarantee!

October 2015
British Telecom has the worst customer service in the history of the universe.
After problems, complaints, compensation and more problems relating to half a dozen unconnected things (sometimes literally) we eventually got hooked up to BT Infinity Broadband. Or did we?
Here I decided to set Dawn a fun text quiz to work out this week's excuse for why the engineer, who was at the door, couldn't make our broadband run any faster after we'd been paying for it for six weeks.

• Parish newsletters (available by wandering randomly into your village church and posting 50p into a slot), are a handy source of local tradesfolk
• Productivity decreases dramatically as the weather deteriorates and picks up again when the sun comes out
• Using your own two totally unskilled hands to make something out of wood - which doesn't then fall apart and/or over - is incredibly satisfying
• Community Facebook page recommendations for tradespeople are often just nods to their useless pals rather than actual useful tradespeople. Don't learn this lesson the hard way. Ask your neighbours instead
• Shaving is for office workers
• Even if you aren’t full-time ‘on-site’, you will find yourself living in a uniform of walking boots, thermals and waterproofs most of the time

June 2015
This is on our doorstep. Literally almost literally literally on our doorstep.
It's easy to forget how gorgeous it is come winter when the rain drips through the Living Room window and you can still see your breath in the shower.

• Flytippers, who are much more common that you'd care to think, need to see the business end of a shotgun
• The most important question to learn during a renovation project is: "Do you have a cash price?" but because circumventing VAT-based legal stuff is generally frowned upon by the Government, make sure the words don't leave your mouth unless you're in a soundproofed room by yourself
• When you don't watch UK television for a year (apart from the Moto GP) you realise how mind-numbingly banal most of the shows were anyway, but...
• ...an Amazon Prime subscription is a sanity-saver

October 2015
At £400+ a pallet of 120mm Kingspan (seconds from eBay) isn't cheap - and Dawn needed some persuading - but it made the winter more than bearable in the shed, it made it pleasant.
We only covered about a third of the inside in all, concentrating on the bed end, and the rest of the packs are still cluttering up the Dining Room where they are likely to stay for some time yet. When the shed eventually becomes our workshop we'll get the rest in then.

• Deep in the countryside, wing mirrors are sacrificial
• Your best 'casual footwear' will be walking boots that you have to run under the outside tap to get the plaster dust off
• Neighbours whose houses you can’t even see are often exceptionally friendly
• If you want to meet said neighbours, owning a dog - or them having a dog - greatly increases those chances. If neither apply, take cake

February 2016
Back when we had some form of heating in The Lodge

• Blue Tits

March 2016
Dawn's IKEA bag full of soggy washing can't save her from a trip to the iPhone repair shop courtesy of an untied pair of bootlaces. Again.

• Kevin McCloud is right - every job you do will cost 3.6 times as much and take 73 times longer than you think it will
• You won't be in by Christmas
• Cats are lovely when they're all curled up asleep at 10pm but when they're scratching to be out at 4am only to want back in at 4.05am you'll consider lining them up next to the owls

March 2016
Having looked at old maps as part of our research, we found an old quarry (1700s-1800s) within the estate boundary which was just a half-hour walk away through the woods.
It took us nearly a year to make the journey but we found a gorgeous 60ft steep-sided horseshoe-shaped scar in the sandstone, beneath which were deep pools inside low caves that we couldn't see the end of.
The best thing about the place isn't that it's almost untouched by latter-day humans (other than a tiny bit of fly-tipping) it's that the sandstone is pinky-red which is exactly the same as that used back home on the outside of the house.
We're now thinking of this quarry as The Lodge's birthplace, which is ace.

• Don't assume that getting hooked up to gas will cost an arm and a leg - check with the National Grid before you buy a million litres of fuel oil for a smelly old boiler that heats neither water nor radiators. It might be much cheaper than you think
• An electric blanket will take the immediate sting out of winter, but…
• …when your other half suggests spending good money on good insulation for the shed that you were only planning on spending the summer in, just agree. You won’t regret it
• Surrounding farmland throws up all manner of new and overwhelmingly-nauseating smells but sometimes, just sometimes, it's you

• This is the final bullet point. On to the photos:

April 2016
This, I think, is a female Smooth Newt.
I found her on the driveway at the back a week ago, hidden in some damp leaves under a bag of rubbish.
She was very dry and nowhere near a water source so I took her to the front garden where there used to be a koi pond in the 80s. Underneath a bush there's a small murky pool-thing which used to be a water feature of some kind to feed the pond. It's permanently full of rain water and leaves and yummy newt stuff so after spending 10 minutes on a leaf making her mind up, in she plopped never to be seen again.
No calls, no emails, no chocolates, no nuffin'...

*

March 2015
The INCUBATOR MORE sign takes a sinister turn

*

March 2015
Technically-speaking we started work before we officially got the keys. We can probably legally admit this now that a year has passed but telling you how we got in will likely get us jailed. I must brush up on my property law.
One of the very first things we did was to set my folks (let's call them Viv and Ken for legal reasons) to work stripping wallpaper in the Living Room so we could begin to work out what we were dealing with beneath. This pic is shot through a window looking in to the Pantry from the Courtyard, in case you get confused.
Important note: we're outside, not inside. Outside of the building. Completely.

*

March 2016
Beyond the woods are thousands of acres of farmers' fields followed by more woodland. Living among that lot are muntjac deer which are no bigger than old, fat labrador dogs but more delicious to eat with a little rosemary and ground black pepper.
This one couldn't have given a stuff that I was there and came to within about 30ft before meandering off, chewing the crops with little more than a sniff in my direction.

*

April 2015
Just lined up in jars, looking all squidgy and that.

*

March 20, 2015
Total eclipse of the sun over The Lodge.
You can only really tell because of the lens flare towards the bottom right, though.

*

May 2015
A few miles away is The Old Post Office, which is in a different village altogether.
Identical in almost every way to The Lodge and also a former Crown Estates property, it had just been bought by John and Jess (who we later made friends with) and was about to be gutted. We reappropriated much of the skipped timber, some of which was used to build the woodshed.

*

July 2015
Just two samples of the wallpaper which once tastefully adorned every vertical surface in the Living Room.

*

June 2015
An early version of our NatureCam CCTV caught a tawny owl landing on a patio chair which had previously been used to dry washing in the front garden.
Despite NatureCam moving elsewhere every now and then we've never seen another one on the cameras.

*

October 2015
After a brief stint as 'OUR BACON REMIT' this is how the garage door
sign has remained ever since.

*

NOW
Dawn is giving the front garden its first mow of the year while I sort this blog out.
In fact I've just heard the mower go CRUNCH!
When I set this post live I'll pretend I'm still doing it so I don't have to help because I'm mean like that. Besides, I've pulled my neck, etc...

EDIT: Monday, April 18

By coincidence, after my thoughts about flytippers not 24 hours ago, I drove past this today. It's about a mile-and-a-half from here on a beautiful country lane, right in the gateway to a field and around the entrance to a peaceful footpath/bridleway.

Seriously. There's just no need. I can normally at least understand how other people think about certain things even if I don't agree with them (see my fox hunting posts) but this... I just don't get it. I mean, that's a perfectly decent bucket.

Fox hunting again - lines are crossed

Before I begin: Pest control is perfectly legal, and that's fine. Foxes are regarded as pests and can therefore be killed, and that's fine too. I am not against the killing of foxes in a quick, humane manner. It has to be done, so just shoot 'em. Full stop.

What I am against is the jolly old British tradition of hunting foxes with packs of hounds, which is quite rightly against the law of this land.
I think it's a cruel, torturous way for a terrified fox to die as it is chased relentlessly through the undergrowth then literally torn limb from limb the moment it makes a mistake. I don't care what the Countryside Alliance thinks and I don't care about what legalisation would do for rural economies, hunting foxes with hounds is wrong.

Deadly serious: me and Dawn yesterday

That said, I uphold another British tradition by protesting quietly under my breath and not actually doing anything about it. I don't lay false trails, I don't protest at meets with a crackly loudhailer turned up to 11 and misspelled placard and I don't drag bugling horsemen off their trusty steeds and beat seven shades out of them, using their blood as warpaint in front of the world's media and gaggles of baton-wielding police officers.
I pretty much just keep it to myself.

I'm telling you this so you don't go thinking that I'm a sandal-wearing, yoghurt-weaving type of tree-hugging, handcuffed-to-railings nutjob - I'm just a regular bloke who can't see any justification whatsoever for hunting foxes with hounds.

So, now I've told you that, go and read my post from November about the first time our local hunt barreled through unannounced and my reaction to it...

...welcome back. The quick update is that we had our suspicions confirmed that there was nothing we could really do about the hunt coming through, so we decided to let them get on with it. Nobody said we couldn't try though either - it was more a case of shrugged shoulders and vaguery.
As promised, the Hunt Master dropped by a few days before the next hunt was due just to give us fair warning, and we (Dawn, too) had a chat and a bit of polite laughter while making it clear that while we don't condone the activity we're prepared to be civil for the sake of peace. This has happened three or four times over the last few months and sometimes we hear or see the hunt running past the end of the front garden or don't catch them at all. They haven't entered the estate through our gates again.

In retrospect - and I was kind of aware I was doing this at the time while deliberately not dwelling on it - I had somehow convinced myself that the hunt was just following pre-laid scent trails and the dogs were getting a good run out. A bit of fresh air. In the back of my mind I knew differently, of course, but it was the only way I could stay calm about it all.

Yesterday's hunt turned everything on its head, though, and for perhaps the first time in my life I have consciously decided to stick up for my principles instead of rolling over and pretending they're not there because it's less hassle. Such was the significance of the occasion that I forgot to get any proper photos, so CCTV screenies will have to do. Sorry about that.

It all started normally, with the Hunt Master forewarning us a few days ago that they might be around on Saturday.
Yesterday afternoon came about, somewhere around half four, and we were both outside when we heard bugling from the woods so we stood at the top of the trail leading away from The Lodge to watch. I have to admit that the sight of a full hunt powering through is one to behold if you put aside any moral objections.

The hunt was pretty scattered, which is seemingly normal, and one huntsman appeared at the bottom of the track and plodded his horse up to stand with us while the rest of his group sorted themselves out.

The arrival of the cavalry
We're stood in the top right corner - you can just see a pair of feet

We did the polite chatter thing again, then a few minutes later two quad bikes came along another track and joined us. Four people were aboard the quads, two older blokes, one younger bloke and an older woman. Every one of them a pig-squealing redneck.
When they motored off down the track and in to the trees, we asked the huntsman what part they played on the hunt. His answer was vague at best and he didn't really commit. Maybe something to do with dogs... maybe not... nice day, isn't it?

Right then a fox came running like hell through the undergrowth, crossing the track right in front of us and crashing off in to the trees.

Caught on our front garden cheapo NatureCam CCTV, this is what a petrified fox looks like when it's running for its life.
It crossed the track in front of us a few seconds later, followed 30 seconds after that by a hound.

And I'm not sorry to say this, but I lost the plot.
There was no time for me to consider my reaction, no time to think about what to say - I lost it in an instant.

All of a sudden I effing hated the man on the horse beside us and I hated everything he represented. Never in my life have I experienced such a sudden surge of... what? Revulsion? I literally started to feel sick and developed a pain right across my stomach. All of a sudden my passive compliance was out the window. In fact I was so angry that I was close to tears - do you get that? You're not sad or scared but you're suddenly so furious that your unconscious reaction is to blub? That's me. I hate it. I'd be a terrible professional boxer.

As always with sudden adrenaline rushes, I don't really remember what I said shouted in his general direction but I strode off down the track at the same time ready to take on every hound with my bare hands before it got past me. Fortunately the main pack was crossing the track further down, but one hound was right on the fox's scent and followed in its wake 30 seconds later only to be faced by a mental version of me, screaming and waving my arms at it. It ran off in a different direction.

I continued shouting and gesticulating wildly at the huntsman while fending off a confrontation-hating Dawn as she tried to calm me down and he quickly left the scene without another word, presumably before I could locate a weapon. I managed to inform his firmly-turned back that I'd had enough of being polite and I'd be closing and locking the gates whenever I know they're out from now on.

Then, in something of a surprise move, Dawn left too.
She wandered straight ahead in to the trees without saying a thing and vanished for 20 minutes. She didn't even look back. It was like a preamble to a bad psychological thriller.

It turned out that whereas my lovely wife was in full agreement with the sentiment of my message, the range of words I chose to use from my otherwise pretty extensive vocabulary was somewhat limited and, often, too 'specialist'. And loud. The delivery was perhaps a little off too. She wasn't terribly pleased with me for that, but that wasn't why she wandered off - she wanted to give me time to settle down while she looked for fox remains in order to justify blasting a blunderbuss at the hunt next time it passed through.
She didn't find any, but she did hear suspicious human noises coming from the undergrowth a short distance away... so we went to investigate.

The noises were at the end of the quad bike tracks in the grass, off the path in a secluded part of the woods behind thick rows of rhododendron. Voices, chopping, snapping branches... manual labour sounds. But there was no way to find out what was going on without being totally obvious about it and putting ourselves at potential risk. Anecdotal accounts that I've heard over the years from people who actually know these things suggest that hunt participants can be just as... er... defensive and unpredictable as their saboteur counterparts.
Then, as luck would have it, we heard the quad bike engines start up so we did what any fully-grown adults would do and ran away to hide in the trees with our hoods up as they drove on by.

Pictured from inside the enclosure looking out, the
only pathway to and from the den was crudely hidden
from view with pulled-over foliage

The area of rhododendron they had been in was kind of horseshoe-shaped, with one way in and one way out, which the people had tried to hide by pulling foliage across the entrance. Beyond the 'barrier' (being careful not to step in any traps) we found five large entrances to what appeared to be a reasonably-sized earth. Four of the fox holes had been dug out but there was no blood, no bodies and no signs of anything violent having taken place.
So we took some photographs then went back home.

Now here's the thing: Which, if any, laws have been broken?

Organised hunts like this aren't allowed to specifically target foxes with hounds, but by digging out an earth while hunting with hounds is going on in the immediate area thanks to a group you're clearly with, isn't the Hunt Master blatantly ignoring the law?

But here's the other thing: I know what they were up to and Dawn knows what they were up to, but everything can be easily explained away by the hunt if it came down to it. They were just out for a run with the hounds. Maybe the quads weren't part of it. Maybe the quad people had guns to shoot anything they found - it's not illegal. Maybe they thought they'd do a little ad-hoc pest control while they were out... all of that easy, indisputable bullshit which hunts no doubt rely on up and down the country all year round as they deliberately circumvent the Fox Hunting Ban.

I don't exactly know the purpose of digging out fox holes
without doing anything else. My thought was that they'd be
back later with terriers. Either way, doing it as part of an
organised hound hunt has to raise some questions, right?

I know that there are bigger things to fret about than what effectively amounts to simple pest control, but they've pushed my buttons and I want to do everything I can to disrupt them now. I want to get the police involved, lay false trails, dig a pit for the quads to fall in to, shoot stuff... but I'm not going to, no matter how angry it has made me.

Nevertheless I'll still unleash my tiny anarchic side next time they pass through - I'll not only be closing the gate but I'll lock it this time, too. Even if the horses don't always come through that way, it'll still mess things up for the quads and other hangers-on.

EDIT (March 19) - The word 'Terriermen' has been mentioned to me. Not being a country boy I had never heard of them. Terriermen. Apparently it's a real word.
That's what they were.

Oh, rats! (part II)

WARNING

There is a reasonably grim photograph of an expired rat at the end of this post.

If that kind of thing makes you cry, look away now. Think about pandas and butterflies and kittens in cardboard boxes and stuff. Not all three at once. You'd never get a panda in a box, not with a cat chasing a butterfly around in there already.

If, like us, you're a bit morbid and that kind of thing doesn't really bother you, feel free to skip all of the following words and go right to it. It's near the bottom.

I guarantee you'll wince and say: "oooo, right through the head".

A few years ago the Water People decided to renew a load of underground pipework right outside our old house and across the whole estate.

It was weeks and weeks of carnage - diggers, mud and chain-smoking monobrowed neanderthals everywhere from 9.01am until 4.59pm exactly, with about seven hours off for lunch.

Presumably unrelated, at the same time we spotted a new squirrel in the garden.

A couple of times a day we'd see him running across the fence at the back, often carrying acorns or bread from a nearby bird table, and once or twice we saw him burying his nuts in one of Dawn's long-dead pot plants. He was a grey, yeah, but we quite liked him.

Ratatouille.
This is the cute non-disease-carrying face of the Rat PR Machine, as spearheaded by Disney-Pixar.
Don't believe the hype.

At the same time both of those things happened, we started hearing noises in the loft. To be totally accurate, we started hearing noises in the kitchen cupboards, up the cavity walls and in to the loft.

Being a semi-detached bungalow our neighbour (Chris) also started hearing things going bump in the night and was getting quite concerned. But that was okay because there was a new squirrel in our garden so it was obvious that it was him getting up there. He'll nod off for the winter and never bother us again. Nothing to see here. Move on.

A month later and driven to the point of nocturnal distraction by Colin, as we'd named him, I ended up freaking out and found myself sitting in the pitch black loft with my air rifle at the ready, presumably waiting for a house-trained glow-in-the-dark squirrel to come bounding by and pause helpfully while I lined up my shot.

The turning point came when I was midway through thumping the bedroom ceiling at 4am in an attempt to scare it to death while Dawn muttered extremely rude words at me in her sleep. My lovely wife is a somewhat determined sleeper and nothing much wakes her but she can still do most everyday things while totally zonked-out. Including driving to work. It's astonishing.

Anyway, it was at that moment it occurred to me... what am I doing?

Still convinced it was a squirrel we ended up calling A Man With A Trap who basically told us to stop deluding ourselves - we had rats which had probably moved in because of the water works outside.
Half a dozen generous doses of poison later, some in the loft and some under the kitchen cupboards, Colin the SquirrelRat's fate was sealed. We never heard from him again and there was no poisonous smell/fly combo either, which would have been a big problem in our little house. I often picture him on a beach in the Bahamas sucking on a pineapple chunk and preening his sun-bleached whiskers.

I'm telling you this tale to illustrate how much we've changed since then.
The recent cold snap here at The Lodge has brought with it kitchen ceiling invaders, scampering around over the woodwork and skittering over the lath and plaster.
Of course by 'scampering' and 'skittering' what I actually mean is 'partying' and 'caber-tossing'. I swear I even heard music at one stage.
Our reaction this time, rather than having a screaming fit and calling the Army, was to barely shrug our shoulders and carry on making tea. We've turned so... so... so Country.

At first, still clinging on to my squirrel-based naivety, I convinced myself we had mice and set a wee trap just inside the tiny ceiling hatch, baited with the only available lure in the house - lemon curd on a bit of bread.

Of course the bread vanished without the trap being sprung, so there was only one thing for it. No more Mr Nice Muz. Out came the rat trap for the second night..

Dawn liked his "pretty" fur
I liked how his eyeball didn't explode all over the place

Weirdly, although rats are gregarious mammals that hang around in herds, this fella appears to have been by himself. We've had no more noises in the ceiling, the new trap we have up there hasn't been sprung in a week and all of our remaining lemon curd is still in the fridge.

Finding how he got in will be a challenge for another day, but because the suspended ceiling is so small and packed with rockwool insulation it's going to be impossible to get up there.
The only reasonable point of rat access that I can see is the drainpipe running up the kitchen wall outside. I'll check it out when I get around to it because we don't want his mates launching search parties and moving themselves in too.

One was enough, thank you very much.

EDIT (just a few hours after this was first posted)
It has taken me a week to get this blog post written and uploaded, and as fate would have it I'm standing in the kitchen right now where I can hear movement in the ceiling. Terrific. This could well turn out to be a saga.

Taking a stand against fox hunting

I remember a conversation with Dawn at the beginning of the year in which we pondered our reaction in the hypothetical situation of a fox hunt storming past our house.

The conclusion was along the lines of 'there's nowt we can do so let them get on with it' but I discovered today that the reality is a little bit different.

When faced with 50+ baying, bloodthirsty hounds and about 20 hip-flask wearing lah-de-dahs on horseback in full regalia (and a bugler), it turns out that I get a bit shouty.

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for pest control and the protection of livestock and what have you, but I'm not a fan of ripping foxes to pieces with hounds. I think it's cruel, barbaric and totally abhorrent. Call me a townie all you want, but it's my blog so sod off.
Presumably hunting with hounds is still illegal (the last I heard it was, anyway, but politicians can be fickle and morally bankrupt so-and-sos) but I'm not naive enough to think it doesn't still go on out here in't country, even though they'll call it something deliberately ambiguous like 'running the trails'.
A pack of dogs accustomed to scoffing warm, twitching fox for lunch doesn't switch to dining on tofu overnight and the horse-straddling harbingers of doom, who feast on the still-beating hearts of their dogs' victims, won't just make do with an apple.

I'm exaggerating, of course.
They're quite partial to a Granny Smith from time to time.

"I say, Gertrude, can you smell commoners? Most unpleasant.
Tell that stupid dog to turn around."

I spotted one such horse rider hanging around by the gates for a few minutes this afternoon while I was working in the Living Room, which I thought was curious. Another joined her and about 10 minutes later I saw a whole flock of them heading down the public road in the direction of the house. I don't know how these things work, but they seemed to be accompanied by a smattering of people in 4x4s, so I nipped out to speak to the one who looked like he was in charge of the ground crew - presumably the Master of Foxhounds.

I made it very clear that the hunt wasn't welcome through our gates and I even closed them in front of him so he could get the point. In retrospect I wish I'd put both ground bolts in on my side, but I had forgotten about them.

Not fancying a confrontation I went back in the house only to see the gates swing open and a yowling tsunami of four-legged death sweep through, followed by at least a dozen Horsemen of the Apocalypse tally-ho-ing past the skip.

Yes, Your Honour. His left foot was definitely on our property for a considerable amount of time, so I shot him

Fast forward 30 seconds and I'm having somewhat spirited words with the fella I'd spoken to at the gates, who was telling me which areas of the property I owned and which ones I didn't. Me! A considerable amount of furious indignant gesticulation was taking place, it must be said.
Some of the whippers-in (I've been Googling my terminology) had gathered around and some were heading off down the track towards our neighbours' house alongside the Hunt Master - which is definitely private property, regardless of what Mr Gobshite was telling me. The dogs were off and howling in the woods somewhere, probably decapitating a squirrel and parading its head on a stick.

Things were beginning to get a little too loud (and eyes were at risk from angry finger-pointing) when the scarlet-clad Hunt Master towered over me astride his noble steed and apologised for the inconvenience. He said they were just "running the trails".

...uh-huh.

£6.75 from Sainsbury's
Yes, of course I checked!

It all calmed down after that and to cut what could end up being a long story short, they went back out through the gates and an old chap with very few teeth knocked at the door a couple of minutes later to offer me a bottle of port by way of an apology. One of the four-wheeled entourage must carry a case or two to appease the downtrodden underclass.
No Stilton, though. Disappointing.

A bit later they came yelping and bugling around the side of the front garden and disappeared in to the woods from there. Nothing I can do about that, I suppose.

Oh, and just as it was beginning to get dark someone came by in a 4x4, parked smack-bang in the middle of the track at the side of The Lodge and disappeared in to the gloomy trees blowing his bugle and, so it sounded, yodeling. That's not a euphemism - he'd lost a dog.

The thing is, I think the hunt was within its rights to come through, assuming those in charge had Crown permission.

They're correct in that they weren't on moy laaaand (although they were technically in our back garden at one point... despite the fact that it looks like the rest of the track), and they were right in that the access track itself - and the gates - is Crown Estate, at least until they get to the totally privately-owned part of our neighbours' property. They said they had permission to go through the land although nobody could provide any written proof and we'd had no forewarning (which isn't a requirement, I know, I'm just saying).

Nevertheless, we have one third of a three-way responsibility for maintaining that part of the track which surely means that we also have a say in who comes and goes?

I don't know. I'm thinking out loud. Maybe. Maybe not.

We've emailed the Crown to clarify the situation but I've got a feeling I know the answer already...

Introducing Stretch. Stretch is a fox who lives near our front garden and on our NatureWatch CCTV camera

EDIT (Wednesday 18th)

I spoke to someone today who regularly walks his dog past The Lodge and we got talking about the hunt, which he'd spotted heading towards the house (he saw me 'having words', too). Apparently shortly after they were here the hounds managed to get hold of a fox towards the bottom of the estate... and there was only one winner.
Well, 50-odd winners, technically.