The rain is still pouring down, our field has large puddles and the muddy patch is now in danger of swallowing a small herd. Talking of animals, and perhaps the rain is to blame, Flora the highland cow is in love with Roo the racehorse and moo’s endlessly when Roo leaves to go for a ride or a bit of showjumping, otherwise she lies at Roo’s feet gazing lovingly up at him. Roo showed that he should be better named Buck-a-roo as he bucks and kicks when his food arrives, probably in a preventative manner to stop the sheep having any. The sheep don’t seem to be in love with anyone but themselves, although our dog and cat are in love and greet each other with a passionate embrace each morning.
The rain meant no flying so we stopped in all day Saturday to watch the entire first season of Dexter as I did a worldwide hunt for fresh Samphire to go with our fish – apart from frozen and pickled samphire I wasn’t having much luck. Even the obvious samphireshop.co.uk only sold sausages online (I guess sausageshop.co.uk had already gone). There was a superb radio programme on first thing about the hijacking of an airliner on the ground at Karachi from a survivor. The pilots bailed out forcing the plane to remain on the ground and the British chap figured the Americans would be the first to be shot but hadn’t counted on the bravery of a stewardess who discarded white american passports as she knew they would be executed. Unfortunately this left the Brit in the front of the execution queue and he was forced to the front of the plane and had to kneel down with a gun at his head for 6 hours of questioning and general terrorism. If he had been fatter and not covered with a beard he reckoned he would have been shot – so before I step on another plane it looks like weight loss is going to have to take place or beard growing at least.
Sunday morning opens with that dream period of listening to BBC Scotland’s church service with a hymn that was the bastard child of The Brady Bunch and something from Disney’s Beauty and The Beast – we reckoned the teapot was singing, the candelabra was conducting and the piano was playing itself. The best part of the early morning church service is the sermon – this time it was the all time favourite The Parable of the Talents (no this isn’t a middle eastern version of Britain’s Got Talent), but sounded somewhat like Conservative party rhetoric as the tale is told of a master giving (or lending) his servants talents (about a thousand dollars apparently). The first trades his 5 and gets a 100% return, the second trades his 2 and gets a 100% return whereas the third buries his single talent. The master returns to reward those who had traded up and took the single and I assume mud covered talent from the third and gave it to the richest servant, throwing the talentless one out to gnash his teeth.
After the Sunday swim we were press-ganged into volunteering at the Kelso Triathalon, Kim and I spend Sunday afternoon in the rain with a stopwatch and sodden paper attempting to work out as runners passed the almost invisible finish line breathless and grimacing or scowling, which was their tattoo and which was their race number written in pen on a random body part. We took shelter under the Herbalife tent (the logo looked like cannabis so I can understand why their products were so popular) with the chap who services the fire extinguishers from our airfield and a thin Aberdeenshire chappie who munched the Herbalife chocolate bars continually and knows one of our microlighting chums – what a small world it is sheltering under a tent waiting for another scowl from a tri-athelete. There were a couple of accidents to liven up the event, one in which two cyclists were too busy getting on and off their pedals that they collided and the girl had to be taken by ambulance to the local hospital which, in this new improved NHS, simply suggests they go to the main hospital. We thawed out with any remaining gutbusters and polished off various Chinese foodstuffs and cider and wine (not in the same glass but it wouldn’t have made any difference).
My animals are now working together – Flora uses her horn to unclip the electric fence and the sheep throw themselves at it to knock it down then they all (cow, horse and sheep) eat the grass that has grown around it before making escape up the wall to rape locust like any foliage around. It took a good hour with our log man to unravel the electric fence with Flora listening patiently to our plans to reerect it and with Roo following me around and rubbing his head on my shoulder to slow down fence erection.
Stuart and Steph returned from an action packed trip to Sicily, crashing the hired car and romping up to a crater of Mount Etna, mud bathing on Vulcano and a night in the Yotel at Gatwick. Sicily sounds a fabulous place to visit with great wine and pleasant towns and Greek temples.
