ups and downs

Got up early to go the market and had a cracking morning. So busy! Ended the market with a frigging parking ticket though - nightmare!

Got home, had a wee bit of lunch and was knackered. Made the mistake of going for a lie down. I just can't have a sleep in the afternoon though. It leaves me feeling worse than before! So, got up and decided to head down to the garden, but not without a swim in the river first to perk me up. It was absolutely bloody brilliant. Gorgeous spot with a couple of deep bits where you can swim a stoke or two and in lovely, cool water. Nothing better.

Did a couple of hours' work in the garden (mainly watering, as dad hadn't been well the past couple of days and we hadn't been down to hydrate the poor plants! Well, that's a lie. Mum and I had gone down yesterday, but the watering system is so bloody complicated that we could only use what was in the bath and blue bin we'd filled up the day before. The source seemed only to be giving us a dribble). Tonight, however, we took from the well and the pressure coming out of the hose was fantastic, so the garden got a total saturating!

Had gorgeous duck with spuds and green beans for tea. I was starving!

Dad, now that he was feeling a bit better, had been up to see the hens and realised the poorly one was really quite ill - she couldn't even get into the hen-house her back end was so low to the ground. He decided to put her out of her misery. I was a wreck! I've only been here a couple of weeks, but you do get attached to the chooks. I think if she'd been fine and we were doing it for the meat, I would be OK. There are 9-week old roosters that we're going to have to eat and I'm OK with that. It's the fact that she wasn't well and it was a sort of mercy neck-pulling, that's what made it worse for me. I dunno, whatever it was, it was bloody hard.

Got cheered up by a bit of craic on Twitter at the end of the day, so went to bed dreaming of nice stuff other than the poorly hen.