The Great Pumpkin is coming.....

I'm not into Halloween as such, as we don't tend to celebrate it here in Australia, but I do love to sit down to this Peanuts classic every 31st of October. My one and only contribution to the whole Halloween thing.

Wherever you are in the world, if you celebrate Halloween, enjoy it. If you don't, enjoy whatever you might be doing instead.

Greyhounds and the joy of....

In amongst Dad's kennel, I have three greyhounds that are mine. Two (a brother & sister from a litter born last year) are up and coming dogs. They are learning the ropes, and have yet to be marked up (where their tags and microchips are checked against their puppy papers, to make sure the dog you present at races is the dog that you have nominated, and not a ring-in).

The other dog is the son of one of Dad's best greys. He's a lovely little boy, but no one told him that while he is a dog, he's also a greyhound! We took him and one of the other pups to the local track last night for trials, so that my dog could show the pup the ropes, having trialled (and raced) at this track before.

The pup was terrribly eager. It was all new to him. He got to smell other greys bums (their way of saying hello), he got patted and adored by various Catchers and Handlers (called Attendants, these days), and Trainers. He got marked up. And he got put into the kennel block with a bunch of greys making a great deal of noise. 

Then, when the time was right, he and my boy were taken out of their kennels, and brought around to the catching pen to be slipped from there (this is where, instead of putting the dogs in the starting boxes, you hold onto them, and when the lure goes past, you let go of their collars, and they chase the lure from there). That way they go around the track and back into the catching pen, from where they started.

 The pup loved every single second of it. He was alert and keen and absolutely bouncing. 

My boy? His night was somewhat different.

When we got the dogs from our kennels to put them in the car for the ride to the track, my boy was bouncing and keen as mustard, very happy to go in the car, because the car means a ride to the local trial track (not where we went last night).

When we got to the race track, I took him out of the car, and walked him around the emptying out yard. I then had to go back to the car to get the papers for the pup, and my boy tried to climb back into the car to go home.

Then we walked them into the kennel block. Put him in his kennel, with many promises of "it won't be for long, mate".

Soon, I had to go get him to take him to his slip. He hates this track. Finds it very terrifying. His one and only race was at this track, and he just doesn't like it. The other local track that we have, he has no issue with. It's a big open track in the city and he's quite happy to go around it, say hello to the other dogs, go into the wash pen afterwards. But our local track? Nope. He shakes at the sheer sight of it.

That said, he's more than happy to race after the lure either by himself or with another dog he knows. He likes that side of being a grey. He can chase things and not get into trouble for it, because that's what he's bred to do. But put a racing coat on him, stick him in a starting box with seven other dogs, and he will trail as far behind them as he can, so that he doesn't have go to near them, because they are dogs he doesn't know.

Not good if you are supposed to be a racing dog!

At the slip last night, the pup came bounding into the catching pen after the race, keen as anything just to have another go. My dog.....spotted me, came running up, skidded to a halt next to me, and then nudged me to have his lead put back on him so he could go home.

Poor little bugger. :-)

I guess he really is just a pet these days, though happy to take the pups through their paces at the local trial track, not so happy to set paw on a proper track.

My dog has a place for life though, as he is the son of Dad's favourite racer (who is 10 years old, and still with us in the kennels, still lording it over everyone else!), and because he is my favourite, and the reason I go into the kennels every single day.

He loves his life, really. And if I didn't have my spotty dog, he'd be the one taking up residence in the dog bed in my lounge!

I Made This....

I made this last night, and it was very, very delicious. Two thirds of it is now in my freezer, in four meal containers, for future use.

I am in the process of emptying my freezer in preparation for the oncoming wet season here in Queensland. Given that the last few years have seen loss of power for days on end, which results in every single last thing in the freezer having to go in the bin, or to the neighbouring pigs (actual oinks, not greedy people), I've decided to make sure that I have only the bare basics in my freezer this summer.

So why did I do cooking last night? For a few reasons. Firstly, I am also trying to use up things in my pantry that are probably at their use-by dates or past them, or very near to them, and secondly, I felt like a home cooked meal last night.

Anyway - I made this potato bake last night, using a tin of Braised Steak & Onions from ALDI, two of my four remaining potatoes, some grated cheese for topping, some frozen veg, the remains of a bag of spiral pasta, two small cloves of garlic, some garam masala, some curry powder, a dash or Worcestershire Sauce, another dash of HP Brown Sauce (good British stuff that it is), and a good dollop of Sweet Chilli Sauce.

I still have some meat in my freezer that needs using up, so I will need to be creative in the coming weeks, I think.

While I like cooking, living alone often results in the "it's too much hassle just to cook for one" scenario, so I tend to only cook about once a fortnight (sometimes once a week).

One thing I do hate though, is being stuck in the kitchen for too long, especially when I have my spotty little helper shadowing me at every step, waiting for me to drop some tasty little morsel onto the ground for him to gobble up!

Ben Bowyang Cartoon

Back in the day, the Ben Bowyang cartoon strip was quite popular in Australia. 

Having been quite surprised to find out that in Britain, most cars or number plates have GB written on them somewhere to show they are registered in Britain (feel free to correct me if I am wrong about this), I thought I would include the little strip above.

To us, here in Australia, this is quite odd. Though, if we thought about it, it wouldn't be. Afterall, do we not each declare what state we come from? All cars registered in Queensland will have Queensland on their number plate somewhere, just as the other states do. We may not declare our country of origin, but we sing from the rooftops the state we come from!

Either way, enjoy!

When blogging feels so very.... 'yesterday'

I spent the morning reading a blog today. Not all of it, but a very great deal of it. It's a blog that you begin, totally enthralled, hanging on every word, laughing, crying, as the mood takes you.

Then you start to skim - skim for the funny bits, skim for the sad - just skim. Not because the blog has become boring, or too long, or because you are starting to wonder "will this never end???". No, but because you want to read the whole blog, though can't decide whether to go back to the first entry and read forward, or continue from the last entry and work backwards, or just to dive right into the middle and spot-read, here and there, dipping into moments, shuffling along, just to see where it leads.

Blogs aren't like books, although in a way they can seem to be. A blog about someone's life, in which references are left to previous entries about other parts of their lives, are really blogs that need to be started from the beginning, and followed. 

But a blog that encompasses various things that happen in a life - not disjointed, but neither is it necessary to know what happened in previous entries in order to make sense of this entry - is a blog that can be delved into at any time.

Ceramix' blog is like that. It follows his life, without giving too many personal details. It's a blog you can drop in and out of without feeling as though you have missed too much to be able to keep up. It's a blog I like to keep track of.

A blog that makes me feel guilty as hell, though is Mr London Street's blog. Another Reading lad, he makes me aware that I have long abandoned my writing, and my need to express myself in words.

My life has become a tad dull and lack-luster. Or at least, it would appear that way to anyone who has noticed that I rarely blog these days.

The truth is much more sinister than that. I've become complacent. Where once my life involved regular trips in to Brisbane, watching the world pass me by, people-watching on public transport, and the general joys and tribulations of pet ownership, I've become someone whose life can be jotted down in a 'week-to-a-page' diary, in which nothing much different happens. 

Since I moved down to the southern outskirts of Brisbane, my life has become somewhat mundane to the outside world, and on the surface, most people would find it boring. Monday is a visit to the Produce to get food for the sheep, horse and dogs. Tuesday is the meat run, for the greyhounds. Wednesday is shopping day. Thursday is for doing the shopping that is forgotten on Wednesday. Friday we have off. Saturday is Dad's day to visit Mum in Brisbane, while for me it is a day to myself (if you can be alone with 15 sheep, a horse, 17 dogs, numerous chooks, ducks, guinea fowl, and various other wildlife), and Sunday is Sunday.

An exciting day for me involves going to greyhound trials at the local trial track, or, very occasionally, up to one of the big city tracks for open trials. Once a month I get to go and stay with Mum in Brisbane, wherein I run myself ragged, buying all the things I know would be frowned upon by parents who care or who just don't understand my love of Branston Pickle and Marmite.

I shouldn't complain. Every year there is new life down here on the farm. We have spring lambs at the moment. Joyful little buggers that they are. Jumping all over the place, yelling at you about how happy they are, how wonderful it is to be alive, how clever they are. Even the wild ducks are getting in on the act, with seven little ducklings born a month ago in our dam. I see the parental ducks parading their children up and down my fence line now, just inches away from a very inquisitive dalmatian who looks longingly from these tender little morsels, to me, and then back again, with a somewhat sad expression on his face, knowing I will never let him have them.

I wonder at the joy I once felt just to be alive, when I was young and lamb-like. When I could get up at 4am, in the dark, to do my homework, go to school for eight hours, come home, write like there was no tomorrow, stay up late working on some project or other, and then do it all again the next day. Now I find that I just feel old most of the time. I'm not, of course. But I'm not exactly 30-something anymore, either.

Rarely do I feel full of boundless energy, as I once did. Rarer still, do I notice that the world is just as lovely as it always was. I often ignore the butterfly with the beautiful wings who lands, ever so briefly, on my window sil, or the blue wren who dances delicately along my washing line, as though to say "look at me! Aren't I just the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?". I take for granted the noise of the kookaburras, when they call out in joyous laughter, the approach of oncoming rain. I listen only for the sounds of a to-do among the greys, over in their kennel, that signals the need to slip on wellies and pelt across the paddock to shut them up before they get overly excited and someone gets hurt. Even with muzzles on, someone always end up at the bottom of the pile, squealing like a banshee. It's enough to make your blood run cold, though when you get over there, breathless, panting and hot, they look at you with innocent little faces, all calm and cool, ready for a pat, cuddle, kiss, and kind words.

I listen also for the sounds of sheep in distress. Mostly it's because a mother has taken a chance to do a midnight flit (in the middle of the day, I might add), while her baby is asleep, and then the baby wakes up to find itself alone in a very large paddock with no sign of any life anywhere to be seen. During lambing season, and the month or so that follows, I spent a very great deal of my day reuniting frantic mothers with even more frantic offspring. Or protecting offspring from the likes of a horse who get jealous of all the love and attention you are giving newborns, when you should be spending all your time feeding him carrots and apples and telling him how beautiful he is, taking his photo, and opening and shutting gates for him.

My life is very dull, as you can see. By most people's standards, I would say that it probably is. But the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that where I once used to go to Brisbane to 'people-watch', I now go outside to 'animal-watch', and truthfully, there isn't a whole lot of difference between the two demographics. Animals interact with each other in much the same way as people do. 

When I am in charge of the kennels (one of my favourite times of the week), each of the dogs greets me in their own special way. No two dogs are alike in personality, though they are all related. Each of them loves a cuddle and a kiss and special 'human mum' time with me, just as they love their time with Dad. Each dog is happy to see me - some more than others - and each is sad to see me go. This is where animals differ to people. People often pretend that they are happy to see you, sad to see you go, that they enjoy your company, wish they could see more of you, etc. Animals actually mean these things. 

We have a lamb that is hand reared, and when he spots you, even if he is at the far reaches of the paddock, he will come pelting across the paddock to you, calling out at the top of his lungs all the way, until he literally lands at your feet, puffing and panting, so incredibly happy just to spend time with you. 

I can't say I know too many humans like that.

I used to write a great deal about a very many different things. Reading Mr London Street's blog reminded me how much I loved words, and the fact that for as long as I can remember, I have used words as my weapon of choice. I have hidden behind words, I have used words in my defence, looked up to words, frowned down upon people whose use of words is no better than a pre-schooler just learning their ABC's, and found solice in words.

Once upon a time I had a dream of being a writer. A proper published author. I was good with words, so why not, I thought? In the end, life got in the way, and my hopes slid away, as did my youth and my other dreams of travel and a life as free as a bird. 

But I cannot complain. I have a wonderful boyfriend, though I don't see him anywhere near as much as I want to. I have animals who truly do appreciate me for me. I have a small and select group of friends who I cherish for being more like my animal friends than the human friends I have had in the past who were too full of their own lives to notice when others were in distress and needed a shoulder to cry on, and who really didn't mean it when they said "oh it's so good to see you again!". I have family who love me, even if they don't always understand me, and I have a blog where I can express myself in words, however rarely I might choose to blog.

Thank you to Ceramix and Mr London Street for reminding me that blogs are good places to be, and words are useful, and also for filling each day with laughter, tears, warmth, and joy.