Pigsty inside and out

Hoorrrayyyyy!! (Don't panic, I'll moan in a couple of paragraphs) More baby piglets!
My lovely Pepper Pig has had thirteen piglets.
Poor thing, she gave birth to them over 7 hours while the boy pig, Ham (short for Hamilton) sat outside the pen, puffing and panting in sympathy.

We have also had an overnight guest, my daughter's best friend. He and she have been in each others' company since she was six weeks old and he was born. They've been to restaurants and barbecues, parties, camping and they are even in the same class at school. It's lovely, they are very close and think the world of each other even though the whole class thinks they are in love..bless! They are only 9!

He and she are very alike, they bring out the creativeness in each other like I have never seen. Within minutes of being home from school yesterday our living room was dismantled and transformed into a world of blankets and giant lawn mower boxes. The den 'fell down' (with the aid of my 4 year old daughter) at least three million times and there was whining of the screechiest quality to be heard for over five hours. The den became a large bed of a strange design, so basically they slept in a box and we had a momentary panic that only two children could be found, the third was found fast asleep snuggled (wedged) between the sofa and a cupboard.

This morning the den had taken on an organic form and life-force of it's own. I fear I will never reach my huge feather sofa again and I've no idea where the TV is.
The lawn mower box has collapsed and there is growing criticism between the friends that each is pretty duff at building dens. The tension is building faster than the den, it's a true test of friendship, and a true test of my nerves...I need a drink but I don't suppose being sloshed at a school summer fair might be terribly good for my company image.

The milkman's' Labradors have been here for a week now. They are city dogs and have thoroughly enjoyed a farm holiday. They collect sticks and pile them up outside the back door like a pair of beavers. Fruitcake is quite friendly towards them, but Jess, the long-wheel-base sheep dog climbs onto the windowsill and shakes with fear.
The cats have taken to the darkest corners of the barn.
At night we put them in a nice straw lined horsebox outside the house, where they bark every four seconds, in turn, with two second intervals, until we let them out in the morning.
These clean sleek city dogs are muddy and have been eating and rolling in things their owners would probably scoop into a bag and throw in a special bin. I hope and pray we will not be blacklisted for it, otherwise we'll never get milk delivered again!

But good news, Shirl left a message on the answerphone saying she'll be visiting tomorrow....
All I need is for her to bring some bloody red wine!
I'm a Frog on the edge!!!!!

I've been ill and v.grumpy lately, so I'll continue the theme with some home truths,

Shirl could easily be confused with Short Term Memory Barbie.

I do not like the cheap red wine my mother (Shirl) brings me.

Phoning me at the exact time I leave the house, every day to take children to school is not the best time to phone me and declare you had something to ask me, but can't remember what it was...while eating something loudly.

Farmers do not (all) get up at the crack of dawn.
Dairy farmers do, of course, have to get up at unearthly hours to do the milking, but it’s not the case for so many others any more. When my father in law was a young man, he had to get up early to feed the horses. The horses would then have some time to digest their food a bit and then go to work. That’s where (I think) this modern myth comes from. Tractors don’t need a rest after filling up, and they can also see in the dark, which the horses couldn’t, and so the farmers work later rather than earlier.

There’s no such thing as a mistletoe tree. Mistletoe is a parasitic dieasey plant type thing.

I do not like the cheap red wine my mother brings me.

Putting your child into private education does not mean you have bucket loads of money, it means you have no money because you are paying for private education.

No does not mean: ‘yes, of course you can, especially as you have moaned and whinged about it for an hour, I really like it when you do that’.

Vauxhall Vectra’s and Mercedes sports can be easily mistaken for one another.
I do not like cheap red wine.

Just because we have stone walls and old beams in our home does not mean we haven’t got round to plastering and painting our beams black, this is how we like it.

Not all members of the WI (Wild Indians) wear false teeth (I have heard of a youthful group in London), but around here, I think we can take it as red..

Farmers do not have hairy calf muscles….wellies make their legs smooth and completely hair free.

The smell of diesel is not attractive.

I do not like the cheap red wine Shirl brings me.

Sheep are not cute fluffy, woolly things that gambol about in the hills. They smell and are extremely stupid. They like getting tangled up in briars, so much so, that if you release them from such a constraint they will endeavour to do the same thing again, immediately if not sooner.

Shirl is not actually related to Sindy.

Why is it that when tidying the house (shudder!) you pick up three million pens, and put them by the phone, yet, two minutes later, when you need a pen there isn’t one there?

Not wearing a hearing aid when you need one is quite frankly, irritating.

If washing something delicate, placed inside a securely tied pillowcase in the washing machine, the knot will always come undone and the items will have come out….yet…if washing items separately, the pillowcase will always have the entire wash stuffed inside it when the load has finished.

I do not like the cheap red wine my mother brings me.

Telling me how well you can hear when you wear your hearing aid is, quite frankly, irritating.