How Cold?

This winter has been strange, one minute it is hot, the next wet, and then we plummet to sub zero temperatures, ok maybe not, however, it has been very cold. I hate the cold, and it hates me, one of the reasons I left the UK was to escape the cold, yet it appears to be following me!

I am a cold blooded, some would say I have a rock instead of a heart, oh well, still alive, but this winter it has been harsh. Although the temperatures are not minus anything, it has dropped to below 10c in areas which is unheard of here in GC. This has resulted in me becoming an onion, yes an onion, and ensuring that I have at least five layers on at any given time.

There have even been nights where I have crawled into bed in my jumpers, do not judge until you feel the cold! The onion process is good, I leave the house in the morning typically wearing five layers, byt the time I have driven down the mountain one comes off. Hitting the motorway causes another to be removed, and by the time I reach the south, there are clothes all over my car.

The process is repeated throughout the day, layers on, layers off....this is the way I have coped with the last few months, and it is effective. So next time you see me and you think I have put on weight, nope it is simply the layers! Roll on summer, when I can moan how hot it is here!

Free Ranging!

My unicorn is far from magical, and it tests my patience on a daily basis, he often ends up where he shouldn't and has no boundaries at all. The other day we went out, no where exciting, just away from the chaos, which is always a bad thing to do. Within an hour, my phone rang, Magic was in the chicken pen..... no if you know my property, you will know that the chicken pen is a 6ft chain link fence, cemented into the ground with poles.

So, of course my next question was how the hell he was in the chicken pen, to be told that he had simply walked through it, taking the fence, wall, poles, and cement with him. Before you ask, nope nothing scared him, he simply wanted the chicken feed. In his desire to get to the feeder, he has demolished a whole fence, and got stuck.

Eventually the small people managed to return Magic to where he should be, but the fence was no more. When I returned, I simply shook my head and kept walking, the fence could wait until morning. The next day the debate started, do we rebuild, make stronger, or design another fence. At this point I honestly thought what the hell, lets just take down the fence. Magic had done most of the work, and what is the worst that could happen having 50 chickens wandering around the property.

So, the fence came down, the chickens came out.......and they went no where, they were so used to being in the fence that they did not venture anywhere. Well for the first few days at least, we now have animals everywhere. When you walk in to our property, you will notice that the cats, goats, chickens, ducks, horses and even the rabbits are out and about.

Rotting Corpses!

The other night when the builder was here it occurred to me that we had not heard the neighbours for a while, she has such a distinctive voice, a bit like nails on a blackboard that there is no mistaking when she is around. A discussion then begun about what to do if they were dead, of course they could not be on holiday, they had to be dead.

I mentioned that if they were dead, and we found their rotting corpses, I would take my roof back that he stole, the builder took that one step further and commented, if there were rotting corpses take everything! By the time he had left I had wound myself up into a state believing that both pedro his annoying wife and all the animals were dead!

The next day we begun to plan "operation dead Pedro" now to be honest I didn't care if he had departed this earth, I was worried for the animals. Therefore, I stood on our wall looking in to the property, but as his is some distance of us this was never going to work. Throughout the day we listened for her voice, the car, the annoying yappy dogs, and nothing.

So, I had no choice but to leap over the wall, into his property to begin my rotting corpse search. Now to say he lives in a house would be a lie, in fact his shed is worse than my goat shed, so there wasn't much to explore. I decided to find a window to look in, and all I could think was have you never heard of glass cleaner!

There I am peering through a dirty window, when suddenly I felt someone was watching me, oh yes Pedro was stood behind me with a look of WTF are you doing. As I turned and smiled sweetly, I begun to walk backwards really quickly, muttering "sorry I thought you were dead.....and you should really clean your windows" Both statements he was not impressed with at all, yet again I seemed to have failed at how to make friends with the neighbours!