We’re edging towards the second half of June for the blog party, though I think the first weekend in July is also a possibility. I’ll put the likelihoods up on the header – if anyone has a date they would like to set or to avoid, just let me know.

I suspect the reason I don’t write here much at present is because LT and I talk over dinner. I used to blog, now I talk it through with him. I don’t tend to repeat myself – unless it’s an anecdote I’ve told many times before, of course, which people are too polite to tell me about. I really should write earlier in the day, though I suppose that would leave me without topics of conversation at dinnertime.

The one remaining chick is doing well, though I’m sorry for her and for her foster mother. Foster is desperate to be out with the other hens. She does look after the chick, but she paces up and down and digs a lot, usually scraping the earth into the drinker, so I have to take it out and swish it clean. I’m sure it would be a lot better if she were in the bigger run outside, but it’s far too cold. Just impossible at present. We’ve had wind and rain and chilliness for weeks and, a lot of the time, I’ve had to keep the chickens indoors because of it. They have plenty of room and they tend to just hunker down and, really, they wouldn’t do much else if the door were open. They’d hunker down in the Dutch barn and intimidate the cats instead.

Talking of cats – feral ones, that is – Betty Kitten has me just where she wants me. Both the mother and the friendly tabby have found new homes, I’m convinced. They were both streetwise and feisty; albeit gentle and affectionate and I don’t think they’re dead. But the three remaining ones – two black boys and a black girl with white chest and paws – are not open for adoption. They’re not at all unfriendly and I can stroke them briefly without frightening them, but that’s as far as it goes. I give them GoCat dry food and supermarket tinned cat food, but they much prefer Eloise cat’s pouches of wet food. They know about it because I give them her leftovers. Betty Kitten won’t touch the supermarket stuff and so I tend to give her most of Eloise’s expensive food. But, though she’s actually the bravest of the three, she is pushed aside by her brothers, so I make sure she gets her share. She’s twigged this and now she appears at my side, without them noticing, in the hope I have a spare pouch of food to give her…and well, she’s very sweet and her audacity appeals to me…

As I said, it’s been all about wind and rain and general depressing weather. We’ve moved the dustbins to the passageway outside the back door so we don’t have to lug everything out into the cold and wet. I mentioned to Rose that we’d done that, in case she thought the bins had blown away, and I see they’ve done the same thing. Further to lug them across the gravel, but it’s only once a fortnight.

I’ve been thinking about food of the sixties, Z’s parents style. I’m not sure if I’ve written about what I’m thinking of already, however, so I’m going to have to check back. In the meantime, back to the Sunday papers. Travel supplements are going straight in the bin at present, of course. Who’d risk being stuck in a hotel because there’s a Covid-19 case in the vicinity?