General Chat

William ,I bet the cat will return wearing a bomb proof jacket and camouflage lol

It's getting a bit parky out there now.I think they say -8 tonight here :-S.I just emailed Chris to tell him to be careful on the drive when he gets home ....sheet ice !!!!.James is just going to chuck down the last of the deicer salt.
I know it is good and works but I don't like Chester walking on it as it can irritate his feet.

Now I am going to try and remember how to make a sauce to go with our Pork Steaks.I know it is a bit of Chicken stock,Dijon Mustard,Creme Fraiche and cider.But I'm not sure how much of each ingredient I need :-S.It could be a total disaster :-|

Jane, as long as it doesn't return wearing reading glasses, I'd say good riddance!

Hope your meal goes according to plan. Believe me, you wouldn't want to know what we eat in our house. My wife has eating problems and as they say, neccesity is the mother of invention - even in the kitchen!

Ah, but C & A (coats 'n 'ats!!) didn't go out of business William..... they just stopped trading in this country. I bought a woolly hat from their store in Geneva several years after they stopped trading here.

David, mention of C & A always reminds OH of that joke too!!

A cat next door to me at my previous house would lie on my bird table snoozing in the sun.....no doubt waiting for lunch to fly in!!! :-0 :-0 I might have a pic somewhere.

Jane it is annoying when the mice spoil things like that......I bet this cold snap has brought them inside. Still, at least the poo lets you know they have been scampering over things!! I have my boxes from the loft in the conservatory now, but I think I shall wipe them with disinfectant before I open them.

Kim, I would have hated that spider!! Don't think I would have slept till it was out of the house!!

All I have done today is meet a friend for a coffee and go to buy some beads....oh and for a carvery at a local pub as we had a £5 off voucher.

Will send you an EM Maureen.

It's that time again on Tuesday. "HOLBY"

David. Still no luck, I have tried all manor of things. A lot of wirling noises and lights, but no paper going through the printer. Have started from scratch on 4 occassions, followed all the instructions but still nothing.

William, My next door but one neighbour has three cats, that use our garden for their toilet. All over the front boarder. I have put down a whole pot of cayenne pepper. but over the course of weeks the rain has disspursed it. I do have a very large WATER PISTOL that belongs to my G'Son. I am sometimes lucky to blast one or other of them, but most times they see me ,and I shout at them and they dissapear. My wife has on occassions put the poo in a shovel, and put it on her garden/lawn. She how she likes clearing it up. I can honestly say my old cat went to the same patch of garden, to do his business. Even my imediate neighbours said they never saw him in their gardens. Good luck in your endevours to get rid of them.

I had a load of liver over this evening, so took it to a neighbour 3 doors down, who has an old Labrador. For a treat for him. The snow that is still around, has such a crunch to it. A real deep freeze tonight, I see some parts of the country will be 15 degrees below. 10 below round here.

Anybody seen any nice big spiders latley ????

Have been trying all evening to get on the site for the Jubill Concert. NO SUCH LUCK. can't get a connection, over loaded. Will have to get up early morning, if I can't sleep and see if I can get on then.www,bbc.co.ukdiamondjubilee. if anyone interested.

Going to get my COKE (liquid type) then watch a bit of telly.

Frank I think the Jubilee Concert will be AMAZING.I would love to be there but don't think I could cope with the crowd.So i will be watching it on TV.

My sauce was yummy (thank goodness) and dinner was enjoyed by us all.Got a bit of pork stuck in my tooth right now,so off to look for a tooth pick.
I must go now as Chris thinks I might have problems with my Hard Drive,so he is going to back it up (or something).
Tatty Bye for now.

Yes Frank as a matter of fact I went out the back door and walked into a web last night with the spider in the middle chewing on a dead dragon fly :-P :-P

Hello everyone, warmer here today, humid with sun behind the cloud. Sadly, the body of the young fellow, Keon was found last night. My daughter had met him a few times and I believe there will be a memorial service for his friends to pay their last respects tomorrow night.

Talking about poo and wee, we had neighbours in Victoria who let their dogs out every morning to run over to my lawn to do their business and then back inside their house. I kept telling him about it and asked him to stop, to no avail. Eventually I just bagged it up and put it in his letterbox until he got the message. We now have a young tom from across the road who sprays our front door. I have walked in it a few times before noticing it was there. I have witnessed him doing it, so I have the right culprit. My girls use their own litter trays and stay around home - well trained.

Frank the reason I didn't kill it (apart from the fact that it ran at me and reared up) was that it was very late and I would have woken the rest of the family. I thought it was a funnelweb and you are supposed to capture them and take to the Reptile Park as they milk the venom to make the anti-venene. I just wanted to CONTAIN it until OH could assess the situation and take action, lol.

Cuppa time for me. BBL Hope everyone is sleeping soundly. 4.00 pm DST

Evening Kim...Morning all,

Another chilly one here..Not as cold as we expected...but I hear we have more snow on way thursday or friday...Half term here next week ..snow may be here then..
Mocha seams a little better today ..It seams he coughs more when he has been a sleep. Still keeping my eye on my fish....

Will catch you later.

Years ago Ellen had a big ginger tom cat that was well fed but a natural predator.Used to catch rabbits among other things.

I was once in the kitchen and saw him creep over the neighbours fence and into the tree other side.

He crept slowly on his belly along a branch like Sylvester from the cartoons toward a bird.

Adjacent to our rear garden was a row of flats at right angles to the garden.The flats were flat roofed.

On the corner of the flat roof was a large crow watching Ginger's progress.
It spread its wing and swooped toward the tree.

Ginger saw out of the corner of his eye.He sprang from the tree into our garden and nearly knocked himself out comming through the cat flap at 20 mph

You do tell things well..made me :-)

Morning All,

How is everyone toda??

It is soooooooo frosty here still but the sun is out and there's a very cold wind.

I have'nt got myself together yet!

Poor Ginger David. He must have thought a war had started with that crow bombing him like that.

Evening Kim, Morning Pat , David, Mel and everyone,

Well i don't know where the frost is !! not a trace on the cars ,the windows are all clear , but there's still a little snow laying about ,haven't got to go any where today as i did my shopping yesterday.

Have been a busy bee this morning , i've cleaned the shelves from the oven at last !! and when hubby comes home he said he would clean the bottom of the oven for me to save my back :-) we need to pull the oven out ,it's a free standing one ,i bet there will be some gunge behind it !!! :-S

Kim, that's really sad about the young lad , at least the family have him back now ,the wondering if he would be found must have been terrible for them .
These spiders sound scary, don't think i would like one rearing up and going for me !!! :-S :-S

David the poor cat !! i wonder how long it was before he ventured into the tree again !!

Right better get on the oven door is calling for me to clean it next :-S

May be i'll have a coffee first !!

Gosh it is really cold out there!! Sun is shining still but the wind is cutting :-S

Got a big pot of soup on and deep pan pizza for lunch in the oven. Oh came in to warm his feet up a while ago and is still in so it must be cold out there.

Think I may make some more cakes this afternoon after a bit of ironing.

Just popped in quickly to say hello while I'm waiting for daughter to arrive with Harry.

Still very cold but hopefully no more snow..

One of my cats saw a magpie land up high in the walnut tree once and went scampering up after it, as soon as it got anywhere close the magpie flew off leaving puss stuck up the tree, took him ages to get down.

You can just about make out Oscar in this photo, lying in the bird bath that used to look over the fish pond, he surely didn't think if he just laid there very still a bird would fly in ......... :-D

Well you never know,chance would be a fine thing ;-)

Afternoon Everyone,

Who's a clever boy then !!! I sat reading this morning, and thought I would have one more atempt at the ptinter. (I hate to be beaten) I had loaded the manual onto the computer, so when into that. Tried to locate why the printer wouldn't print. Followed some simple instructions, and "WHAM BANG THANKYOU MAM" I clicked on print, it whirled around inside, then suddenly the paper went down the shute and came out the bottom all printed on. :-D :-D :-D :-D No more than I expected. !!!!

Still very cold outside, only been to the garage, but thats far enough today. ;-) ;-) ;-)

Kim, What can one say about that local lad. Not even got to start his life really, How well did you know the family, have they got more children ????

My old cat "STAMP" was a venturer, when we live at Gayton, fields back and front. One morning we openen the bedroom curtains and there was the cat with a small rabbit in it's mouth, trying to jump over the front gates. He kept falling backwards. The rabbit was as big as him. Ros went down and opened the gate, and he wandered down the drive, with a look enough to say about time.!!!!

I am doing a Lasagne fot tonight. It will make a change from all my Roasts.

I see I have started the ball rolling, with the cooker cleaning,going on !!!

Have sorted through all my Veg seeds that I bought for half price a few weeks ago. I don't think there is anything I will be needing. Not sure I will have enough space to plant them all as it is. I will have to put shallow rooting things over my" friends" grave. that is in the middle of the plot. Will mark it out, so as not to disturbe.

See you later

Cookers all lovely and clean , i don't think i will use it any more :-D :-D

Now got the fridge out and you should see all the fluff behind it :-S :-S :-S mixed in with a few dogs hairs :-S :-S :-S
All this cleaning !! i'll never last the day :-S :-S

Glad you've got your printer sorted out at last Frank, it niggles me if i carn't get some thing to work !!

Maureen that's a nice photo of your cat , i can just make him out .

Afternoon all
it is getting colder and colder here now.All the snow has just turned to ice now.Last night when I let Chester out for his last wee,I couldn't see him but I could hear where he was going because of the 'CRUNCH CRUNCH' sound lol.
He is having trouble walking on it now and his feet sometimes go all over the place.He nearly looked like Bambi ,and now it could be more snow later tomorrow :-S

I am waiting for these logs to arrive.They better do as I have just lit the fire.

I love all these cat tales.They are funny creatures aren't they.I love cats .
Fitz's cat Podge and his Mothers cat Bella are huge hunters.The birds and animals they catch and drag into the house is just so sad.Fitz is always describing some dreadful scene that he has discovered.I don't want to hear that,and usually manage to stop him before he gets too graphic :-S

Frank the boy who drowned near Kim had a twin Brother :-( :-(

Just realise I had better move my car so the truck with the logs can back in the drive and dump them as near to the wood shed as poss.

Hi folks,

Been making up for lost time for not going out (shopping) since Friday, Been out twice in one day. Had to take OH to doctors and then we did our errands finishing up in Iceland (not a joke!!!) and realising we were still minus a lot of what we wanted. It was what I would describe as 'thin' - or b****y cold, in other words. So we went home for our lunch, then back in the car and down to Morris**ns a couple of miles in the opposite direction. Only saying this because we are now stocked if it snows, frosts, monsoons, floods, tropical storms etc etc. However, I didn't take my coat off for a while as it's left to me to load up our freezer in the utility room, which is a little above freezing anyway.
Black moggy was in the garden again this morning looking up to no good but he soon scooted when he saw the defences on the birdy table. The sight of the 20mm cannon pointed in his direction might have been something to do with it.
Just to prove I'm definitely not an anti-cat person, I'll tell you a little tale about my walk yesterday. I was to deliver some magazines to our friend round the corner. She is 88 and somewhat deaf, to be polite. When I got to the back gate, the whole edge by the latch was missing so I guessed the gate had stuck in the weather and someone over zealous had put too much muscle power on it. I certaily couldn't open what was left of it because the bottom horizontal support was firmly wedge. After a couple of attemps, I looked through the gap to see if I could get our friends attention and was met with her cat, (another Oscar) staring back at me and wondering why I wasn't going to go him and give my usual fuss. I banged on her side window but guessed she was having her usual after lunch nap without her hearing aid in. I walked off leaving the mags on her door handle and rang her later.
So about Oscar, he is my favouritist cat, he hasn't a harmful hair on him and I've never met any cat so soft. He's not really a 'other people' cat so I'm honoured he gives me special treatment. If I go round to visit our friend (who's Austrian) she always likes you to sit in her other easy chair. The only thing is, it's usually occupied by a sleeping Oscar. She'll say "shift him off there", but I just scoop him up with palms up hands, bit like a fork lift, lift him up, turn round and place him back on my lap and he's still in the same position, the only difference being he's now purring.
If I sit at the table, (which is usually covered in allsorts) he'll rub round my legs for a while, then with the aim of a fighter pilot, he'll launch himself onto the table in front of me, onto a spot the size of a postage stamp, and nuzzle me for the fuss that he knows I'll give him. I guess you've got the idea now that I absolutley love Oscar to bits.

Frank, congrats on becoming the owner of a fully working printer. Doesn't it make you think that sometimes the machines are fighting back?

Anyway, maybe back for a chat later. Take care, stay warm . . . .