summer fun and games

dear readers, i must yet again apologise for the dearth of musings. the peeps have been distracted by a number of things so i have been without a scribe. the distractions have taken the form of a horse, a party and my boy.

the horse is one that herself has been riding. he lives in a yard in the country near here and herself has arranged with the man who looks after him and his fellow horses that she helps out a bit in the stables and in return gets to ride round the countryside. unfortunately young dave and i are not allowed to go riding with her so i have only seen photos of the horse. here you can see his nose.


he is by all accounts a large brown and white horse with shaggy feet and a friendly nature. the man who looks after him is someone who does raking at the place where herself had her raking treatment. he also does raking on the horses which seems to make for a calm and friendly crowd, in spite of several of them being rather important in the horse world.

as well as horsing around, herself has been partying. herself reached the grand age of 50 in april, 6 weeks after her maamship had achieved the same. they decided to have a party, as between them they had accumulated a century. the party was in a field behind a pub and many of the guests camped. a collection of cooking appliances were gathered together and himself and mr snake charmer were placed at strategic points among them with instructions to feed the guests. her maamship and my boy concocted some delicious looking kebabs (i cannot vouch for how they tasted as, in spite of several attempts, i was unable to liberate one). wonderful music was provided by a young and very talented clarinetist and some older but equally talented guitarists, one of whom was a member of the judiciary. a harmonica also made an appearance later in the evening.

the highlight of the evening from herself's point of view was a performance of her very own song. this song was written by the young snake charmer and has been developed over some months. the song was accompanied by a puppet performance on a stage which the young snake charmer made. the characters were some rather brilliant drawings of herself, himself, my boy, young dave and me, all cut out and made into puppets. the snake charmers made a film of the song which, if herself has got the technology right, should appear below. but in case my readers are unable to make it work, here are some pictures of the main characters:



yours truly - aka man in a dog suit




young dave - complete with air of puzzlement




many of the references in the film will escape those who are not familiar with the day to day detail of the peeps' lives. the chives are some plants in our garden which my boy has decided calm him down when munched. this is known as 'getting chived up'. my boy gets chived up before stressful events such as his smiths lesson with mr snake charmer.

the reference to 'teabagging' is to a rather clever deterrent which herself invented to stop my boy coming out with some of his more outrageous sexist comments. it involves the placing of a cold wet teabag down the back of the neck. should the sexism continue, a sound pat on the back is delivered, bursting the teabag and leaving cold wet tea inside the sexist's tea-shirt. needless to say this has only had to be done once; the mere mention of teabagging now has my boy turning from an unreconstructed caveman into a fluffy liberal feminist.

herself and her maamship had foreseen that the partygoers might find the evening chilly as night fell, in spite of it being midsummer. some while before the party they decided that what was needed was a firepit. many hours were spent scouring ebay for a firepit but all were exhorbitantly expensive. so herself decided to manufacture one from a dustbin lid. now you would think that this would be an easy item to find. but no. you can only buy dustbin lids if you buy a whole dustbin. and no one round here has a metal dustbin any more due to the advent of wheely bins.

luckily herself works for the local authority. she got on the blower to the man in charge of rubbish collection. he said that they only had wheely bins but that herself was in luck as some local flytippers had been dumping rubbish in dustbins which were going to be picked up that very day. herself shares her office with a lady called miss shell. when she related the saga of the dustbins, miss shell very sensibly advised her to take a photograph or two before drilling holes in them in case they became exhibits in a court case. the following day herself shot off to the depot to collect them, but it turned out that they were still at the scene of the crime. in the end some other bin lids were found which avoided the problem of evidence being destroyed by a member of the legal department.

the firepit was a great success as you can see here:


the partying went on until 3am. there were some rather sore heads the following day.

you may recall at the beginning of this long and rambling missive that i said there were 3 things that had been occupying the peeps, the third being my boy. i will tell you about my boy in my next missive, otherwise this will turn into a novel...