Feeding the chooks

The day started properly with a useful meeting of the four members of the interim steering group in the Black Books cafe at 11am. I still feel in holiday mode and had to push myself to be on the ball. After a further brief meeting at the office, I got a call from Helena to say that our plans were going to change. Her cousin Fiona wanted us to pick up Zina, her daughter and Jezreel, another young cousin. I had anticipated this and actually was rather pleased that they would be coming to stay for a couple of days so didn't mind in the least.

Fiona hurt her back recently and has only just moved home so would welcome the break. Jezreel had come to stay last weekend when her mother Kate (one of Helena's three sisters) brought her down for the family reunion with their brother Ben, who is visiting from their home in Crete. Kate is coming back, from Preston in Lancashire, to stay with us tomorrow night and will also bring her fifteen year old son Natty for the weekend, so it will be very lively.

After picking up the two cousins this afternoon from near Fairford, I drove us all back to Bisley, where I needed to buy some fresh vegetable supplies from the farm shop which we frequent there. We also bought some of the sunflower heads which they grow in their fields, that I blipped about a week ago. The kindly woman who served us spotted the excitement of the two girls and gave us some containers of bird food to take out into the yard and feed some to the rare breed chickens which they keep in their free range cage.

I then tried to catch the scene but it was quite dark and there wasn't much room. I must admit that it was also hard to get the girls to do anything other than what they wanted! So this is the best of a poor bunch of pictures but I hope it shows a bit of their excitement and I will have got a blip of Jezreel and Zina on the day they came to stay with Auntie Nena.