Grandmother’s Footsteps

Posted on 3 April, 2011 by Val

When I was a child, with all the time in the world and an empty road to play in with my friends, one of our favourite street games was “Peep Behind the Curtain” (aka Grandmother’s Footsteps; Red Light, Green Light). For those of you too young to have been allowed to play in the street, or too miserably antisocial to have played such pointless, gregarious games, here is a link which explains how it is played.

I am telling you this because, lately, I have been feeling as if Life has been playing this game with me. When my Grandmotherly footsteps took me off to Derby a couple of weeks ago to visit my Lovely Offspring, I turned my metaphorical back for just a few days, and when I turned back round again, all sorts of Life’s children had crept up on me.

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Posted in Environment, Life, Llamas | 2 Comments

How do you tell if a llama is pregnant?

Posted on 27 March, 2011 by Simon

This may not be a question that has ever concerned you, but bear with me.

On March 24 last year, in the wake of the traumatic biting episode, Lenny was introduced to the females he I had suffered so much to get him to meet. The moment he met them, his long forgotten sex drive kicked in, and away he went.

Over the next few weeks, llama sex was a regular event in the field behind our house. Duc and Valentine watched in amazement as Lenny had one female after another, while each time the neglected two gathered round preening themselves and demanding to be next.

Of course, it couldn’t last, and Lenny discovered – like so many men before him – that all good things must end.

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Posted in Cria, Llamas | 5 Comments

Goodbye Pork Pie

Posted on 19 March, 2011 by Val

Well that’s it. The pigs have gone. We are sans porcs.

On Wednesday we took our Three Little Piggies to their new home at Camping Moulin de la Geneste in the Corrèze, where they have found new employment as Entertainers of Happy Campers and Small Children. They have moved into their new (and excitingly vegetated) living quarters, next door to Isaac the Diminutive and his coterie of exceedingly pretty chickens, where they are no doubt busily absorbed in the all-consuming piggy purpose of removing every last possible speck of living greenery from their allotted area, as I write.

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Posted in Llamas, Pigs | Leave a comment

Neighbour from Hell

Posted on 17 March, 2011 by Simon

Imagine you are a peace-loving llama, living with a friend on a farm in the Allier. You have a pleasant field to graze, and a comfortable stable in which you chew hay and pass the time in good company.

Next door to you live three female llamas, with whom you happily chat over the fence. They also have a stable in which they spend much time during the winter.

Capucine, Elif and Lilas (left to right)Into this idyllic life is introduced a new llama, to share the females’ field.

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Posted in Llamas | 1 Comment

No Time – Like The Present

Posted on 9 March, 2011 by Val

There is no doubt about it. The older you get, the quicker time passes. And the quicker time passes, the less of it there is in which to get stuff done. This is my latest philosophical excuse for the huge gap between this post and the last one.

Ah! A thought… Maybe the link between age, and the apparent passing of time, and the ever bigger gaps between blog posts is actually some form of quantum entanglement. And maybe that means that if I write more blog posts closer together, time will slow down and I will get younger. Or at least get old slower. Or something. Of course the biggest problem with this hypothesis is that it is doomed never to be tested, because of the underlying quality of laziness that pervades my everyday existence. Ho hum. Guess I’ll just have to settle for being old and lazy.

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Posted in Environment, Life | 3 Comments

Carping the Diem

Posted on 10 February, 2011 by Val

We are expecting visitors on Saturday. They are coming to see our Three Little Piggies (with a view to taking them to a new life as pets on their small camp site), and to judge us, (and conclude that we are shockingly awful people). I may have made that last bit up. But, as always, when someone is due to visit our humble abode, I find myself looking at it with new eyes, and worrying about ‘whatever will they think?’

I like my old eyes better. For some magical reason, they never really notice the cobwebs, and the thick layers of winter wood-burner dust that adorns every surface. They don’t perceive the muddy cat pawprints up all the windows, and the tangled mess of dead vegetation and mud strewn over the area outside our front door, which is supposed to be a sort of raised flower-bed. They just don’t register the fact that, frankly, we live in a bit of a hovel.

But my pretend-I-am-a-visitor eyes see all, and they are horrified.

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Posted in Environment, Life, Pigs | 2 Comments