The weather has improved and some local flying around East Fortune was had – over the SeaCliff harbour and Tantallon Castle. Then back to land on the runway – overhead join at 1500 feet and descend – well foot off throttle but it ain’t descending – stuck throttle – I am destined to be at the height of the Empire State Building until I either turn the engine off or the fuel runs out.
Radioed in to let them know I might be some time and started to kick parts of the throttle and jiggle the hand throttle just in case – unbelieveably something cleared and I managed to land expecting at least someone to come out and meet me glad that I had landed – but no my moment of triumph and adventure had been overshadowed…
One of the club members took off from St Boswells Green veered over the A68, took out a floodlight and crashed into the side of the Buccleuch Arms Hotel (now to be known as the Buccleuch Fractured Arms and Broken Ribs Hotel). With the A68 partially covered by broken bits of microlight and the wing, the emergency services rushed in along with reporters and photographers (it made the Scottish Sun). The news spread quickly and everyone I know assumed it was me…
We spent Sunday wandering around a radar station near Tantallon Castle where Oly was going to take Stuart around the Motor Cross track. Well that was the plan which went aft agly – as someone had driven the car into a kerb bending one of the wheels – quick pit stop and then someone else drove the car into a kerb and bent the other wheel – having run out of wheels we gave up and explored SeaCliff Harbour and the beach.
Second lamb of this year enters this world to be rejected by its mother, during the process of trying to catch the mother we managed to injure the next door neighbour as he fell over a pile of logs trying to grab it, and then one of the other ewes ran into a fence and ran off with blood streaming from its face (through binoculars, which was the closest we could could near it, it looked like something from a wildlife programme – its face covered with blood on one side and dripping from its mouth). It was difficult to tell whether it was Malcolm’s blood or the ewes blood that was lying around the field.
I was caught cuddling the lamb at any opportunity and gave it a tour of the office. By the time the vet arrived to check out the bleeding sheep (it was fine and still uncatchable) we were bottle feeding the black lamb with lambs milk from the vet. It required feeding every two hours so the night shift was being allocated when the kids arrived home – so we had the chance to catch the ewe.
So with injured neighbour still keen to help, Kim (who jogs 5K), Ali (who cycles and played rugby) in his school uniform and Stuart dressed as a pirate (it was his last day at school) I strode into the field rocking and rolling in my MBTs – a man with a mission – to catch the ewe, if only we could remember which one it was. None of this was easy – we ran the flock around the field several times, Ali doing some splendid rugby tackles and Stuart waving his cutlass with one sheep leaping into his arms at one point, and finally Malcolm caught the correct ewe by standing in our septic tank soakaway swamp and trapping it as it struggled to escape through a barbed wire fence.
We dragged the ewe by her horns (handly things those) and got abandoned lamb and ewe together in a pen – Ali had previous experience in this with the local farm – so he upended the ewe exposing her teats and started to get some milk for the lamb to drink. This was all going splendidly until things took a turn for the worse.
We were watching to make sure that the ewe wasn’t going to turn against the lamb when the lamb suddenly started to fit uncontrollably – it then stopped. Ali was the first one in the pen and lifted it up and its head fell to the side and Kim started to do a resuscitation technique (she does watch ER) but to no avail. The poor thing was dead (possibly gunged up with milk which was coming out in a coagulated stream from a nostril or it was all too much for it over the day). A shallow grave was the sad end to the day. Whether the ewe had rejected the lamb because it wasn’t right (she hadn’t eaten the placenta) or because she was too young and just didn’t know what it was is difficult to say – if only we could talk to the animals…
And now fresh twins – to the only ewe with no horns – one black and one soay sheep coloured – both looking well and the ewe is attending to them. One of the ewes was playing nursemaid to the twins and then produced one of her own – the black lamb liked her as nursemaid so much that he seems to have switched alliegance and is suckling off her.
The archaeological walk around Hownam rings was led by a bird watcher from the council museum department as the council archaeologist had perhaps found some more Anthrax whilst digging in the Borders (last time it was at Soutra Aisle). The walk was marked as strenuous and they weren’t kidding as we galloped up the hills to The Street (not the Coronation one) and Hownam rings iron age fort. A lunch in blackbrough hill fort high over the cheviot valleys and a steep descent, avoiding the trail bikers dismantling gates wired shut to possibly discourage trail bikers, past HeatherHope reservoir and the long trudge back to Hownam. Every so often we would stop whilst everyone listened carefully to a bird and one person rustled, clattered and clicked his camera obscuring the bird song – yes it was the lesser spotted Mike.
This site is now running on a 4 processor (16 core) 8G RAM Sun Niagara server running under Solaris 10 and Drupal 4.7 with a MySQL backend and a 100M feed in our racks near Edinburgh Airport. Overkill, moi?
Berwick Sex Slaves shock horror! All based on books about the quasi-medieval planet of Gor with 25,000 followers – you can’t make this stuff up.
As a fitting end to relent (no alcohol for 40 days for no good reason whatsoever) there is an article about how beer every day is good for you and I have joined the Scotch Malt Whisky Society
On the week that Curious George, an animation about a chimpanzee and the man in the yellow hat, opens in cinemas, Nature publishes a paper about Man regularly having sex with chimpanzees 5.4 million years ago.
May Story – Experiment
May Song – Pulp “My Body May Die”
May Poem
She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep
Robert Graves
She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half words whispered low;
As earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.
