ilultham

 This posts contains pictures of dead animals, if you don't like that then please don't click to read more of the article.  Despite the bad weather this weekend just gone we needed to prepare the chickens for the avian flu lockdown. This meant lots of shuffling of chickens to different pens and the processing of 6 cockerels. The girls, as ever, were keen to help. We've got it down to an art now, so long as the water is at temperature we can do six birds in about an hour - which was a good thing as it was pretty cold on Sunday!  If you read this blog then you'll know that having the children help is nothing new, in fact I've got to the point where I won't do it without them if I can help it. They work hard, are good company and make the time fly.  I haven't weighed the birds yet but I'm so pleased with the size of them. Full breasts and great legs, one of these birds will be our lunch on Christmas day. I love that they didn't have much fat inside them...

This weekend just gone I fitted an oak floor with my brother. It's for mum and dad in their dining room, they've lived in this house for nearly 40 years now!  I prefer to glue these floors down rather let them float as it feels more solid. Mum wanted to bead round the skirting but when she left the room we took it off anyway - a much better job! It'll still need beading round the fireplace.  We laid the floor in a day. It has been a while since I've done one and I forgot how much it hurts my knees!  Fairly straight forward but really pleased with the result - it really changes the room! 

Not sure what has happened but it seems like time has been sped up at the moment!  I think I might be neglecting the blog a bit at the moment - I will try harder! I like to find some time to write nearly every day and I'm still managing to do that, but I've been doing more magazine articles (which is great as it does mean some income) and I've been doing a creative writing course via zoom once a week, rather than blogging I guess.  This course is for fiction writing, although I'm sure it will improve my non fiction writing as well, and I've been really enjoying writing some, to the point where it's all I want to be doing at the moment! I've written a few short stories and had some really good feedback so far, really makes me want to carry on and try my hand at some longer stories. It's nice to branch my hobby of writing into something fun and creative like this. I've always wanted to do it but somehow never got very far with anything.  I'm tempte...