Stripper 1. Kay 0.

Before you get all excited, I'm talking about paint stripper not a sordid bar fight I lost.

I rashly decided to strip the paint off an old table of my mum's - just the top - baby steps and all that. After making a complete tit of myself at the hardware store, I started what I thought would be a quick, easy project. It's a flat table top after all. 

It started badly with me getting the stripper on my fingers as the outer seal was leaking. After some cursing and some hurried wiping I then proceeded to slosh the stripper on the table with gay abandon and painted away. I set the timer and, ten minutes later, I went at the bubbling paint with the scraper.

It soon became obvious that, unlike encounters with other strippers, this wasn't going to be a quick, or easy, affair. In true McBride form, there were so many layers of paint I was convinced that, at one point, I was down the the Plascon version of the Paleozoic era.  

Now I understand why people give this kind of thing over to professionals, but I read somewhere that you should try something at least once. And this will be once I can tell you.

Anyway, I'm sure that the burns on my leg will feel better tomorrow when I apply the second coat in a vain hope to reach the Mesosoic era. And some wood.

On anger

Anger is so wasteful. In the big scheme of things it is so small. Consider the universe in its infinity. Now imagine a slight or a wrong against that scale. 

It's so small. 

Is anger worth the pain of retribution and hurt that will surely follow? Probably not. Anger is unworthy of your effort because there are other ways. Focus on the meaning and purpose of your life rather. Focus on your aspirations and dreams. You have better things to do with your energy than fight or retaliate - because that's a spiral that will suck you in and no-one ever wins.

 Put that energy into something that creates rather than destroys.

The Mr Fawlty of the Bird World

My next feathered friend is Basil - a woolly necked stork. With their posh black and white plumage, storks of this variety have been likened to lawyers and he and Sybil could, very well, have been called Sue'em and Screw'em. However, I felt that their long legs and rather ungainly mannerisms were more Basil-ly, than lawyer-y, hence their names. 

(not my pic - from Wikipedia okay - mine were terrible)

I first met Basil and Sybil as they perched together on a telephone wire awaiting their next customers i.e. humans to feed them, and I guess I was it. Since then, I have only ever seen one at a time and, despite some long, hard looks in the general direction - and much referring to bird books - I can't work out who is who. I have decided that my daily visitor is probably Basil and, perhaps rather sexistly, have placed Sybil on a nest somewhere hatching the next generation. While I can't be sure ornithologically, all I do know is that one of them comes onto my verandah every day for a snack and a drink. 

Some things you may not know about storks:

1. They should be called Woolly-necked and Fluffy chested storks.
2. They love cheese and Basil has become quite adept at catching pieces in his long (and savage) beak.
3. Their necks are not made of wool.
4. Their collective terms is a 'muster'.
5. They eat meat.
6. They have outsourced baby delivering.
7. They are inquisitive little bleeders poking their long (and savage) beaks into what ain't theirs - mostly frogs' hearts.
8. They didn't place in the Graceful Birds World Champs.
9. Baby storks are not called storklings or storklets.
10. You can't keep a good stork down.

1. First sighting

Cheese...!

Action shots - bucket poking and drinking.

Monsieur Claude - the poster boy of cockerels

Claude is a very beautiful, Gallic-looking cockerel - hence the name. I'm not sure what kind of chicken he is – chicken sounds so bourgeois for someone as classy as Claude I feel, mais who am I to dispute his classification? 

He was the first of the animals I met when he decided to walk in through the front door, and it wasn't long afterwards that I met Madame Claude, or Eugenie, and their four children. However, before I was able to name them, two were taken by a some murderous creature in the night, and now only Jacques and Jacqueline remain.

In true French style, it wasn’t long before I was introduced to 'the other hen', Blanche who had obviously been hiding in her apartement in Saint Poulet with a couple of bad eggs. Eugenie appears to tolerate Blanche – although I have noticed she does sharpen her beak in a threatening way on the concrete. I suspect it may be her way of reminding Blanche about the pecking order.

Ten things I have learned about chickens: 

1. They spend all day scritching and scratching around the garden – I should think more farmers should use them as pest control agents. You know… "Poulet, Claude Poulet, leasance to eat."
2. They do come home to roost.
3. They can climb trees. Who knew? At night, Claude leads his family up the tree outside my house - the two little ones either climbing or flutter-flying up the branches till they’re safe under mum’s wings. 
4. They eat popcorn – but only if I have chopped it up.
5. They keep snakes away, which puts them firmly in my Top 10 list of animals. 
6. Their mating style is more of the ‘wham when, thank you hen’ than the “Ah mademoiselle, ah fahnd yere tail fezzurs very alluringge” variety.
7. They have a “Ah. Bien. Ze human ave poot out ze fuud, come and eet ma famille” cackle, which brings the wives and kids running.
8. They take sand baths. The other day I came across Claude lying on the lawn and thought a patrolling eagle had got him. Mais non, he was merely taking a break from rolling around in the sand patch as part of his weekly toilette. 
9. They are bossy AF.
10. They wake up early. Very early.

First meeting

 The whole family

Claude and Eugenie

Animal Farm - v2.0 Hilton Diaries

Just as I was about to embark on an adventure to go and teach English in China, the universe changed the curriculum and I was unwittingly signed up to 'How to reinvent yourself' with mandatory classes in 'How not lose your shit' and '12 subjects to talk to yourself about'.

After doing the gypsy bit between my sister, brother and sister-in-law, and daughter, Arthur and I got the opportunity to move into my first own space in 10 months - a beautiful cottage on the edge of the Umgeni Valley. 

As someone who has lived in a town for her whole life, I'm so enjoying the peace, the animals, ever-changing weather and having a view. Together with the chickens on farm 12, I think I have one of the best views. Ever.

As I don't have a car - I've been confined to the farm ('you say that like it's a bad thing') and I've begun to name the animals around me, so that when I talk to them I don't feel 100% crazy.

So, let's start with the view...

Told ya...

Ag, pleez Gogo - Pebbles' Corona Song

Ag, please Gogo, won't you take me out of lockdown
I'm tired of sleeping on your leopard-print gown
I wanna have a lark about 

with all the other canines
And when the walk is over, you can have a glass of wine.

Chorus:

Poodles, terriers, Yorkies with their derrieres
How I long to see the big blue sky
Ag Gogo how I miss 

Hadedas an' sniffing pups

Muddy puddles, balls to catch, 
And bikes that fly.

Ag, please Gogo, won't you take me up to Fuzzy

I wanna play ball in the swimming pool

I'll nudge it till it drops right in

And Dan will curse and moan but grin

While Conor lies in undies looking super cool. 

Chorus

Ag, pleez Gogo won't you take me to the parlour

I wanna look like something that is not a yak

Please shave my ugly furry legs

And don't forget the tail, I beg

Then when I'm home all shiny, don't forget my snack.

Chorus

With sincere and unreserved apologies to Jeremy Taylor's Ag, Pleez Deddy.

D'ja think?

To an ordinary human being, opening a sliding shower door is easy. A simple swish and swash and, lo, it opens - or closes. 

However, if you are a teenager you must make it difficult just to add drama to your life. 

How to open a shower door by a teenager:

1. Reach up and hold the door by the top thereby placing excess pressure on the top part of the door. 
2. Slide backwards with a vengeance.
3. If you are lucky, you'll get all the sliding doors to lock together at a 45° angle.
4. Shout: OMG does nothing work in this house?
5. Manage to squeeze into the cubicle.
6. Turn around, put your hand in the middle of the door and try to yank it back closed, but succeed only in jamming the panels even tighter.
7. Shout: OMG does nothing work in this house?
8. Repeat action unsuccessfully.
9. At no point try and straighten the doors.
10. Get out of shower onto now-sodden bathmat.
11. Exit. 

Next morning repeat process once a more intelligent life form has, with minimal effort, returned the three panels to their rightful order.