....And a Happy New Year

The last day of any year is always a good time to get stuck in.....

and clean out some dross so that the New Year starts on a 'tidy' footing. Hence, I've plucked the last brace of partridge and pheasant for the year (and half-froze into the bargain! Dumb.. that!), thrown out half the clothes in my wardrobe .... mentally if not yet physically... and promised to set aside some time each week to tidy up the paperwork in the study. So far so good! And just one other New Year Resolution - to lead a cleaner, healthier life for the next twelve months.

And that's probably a non-starter from 01/10.... "healthier" may be possible, but "cleaner"??? Not a chance. Not with the combination of Rectory Reserve Residents and Acts of God (i.e. weather conditions).

Actually,That's probably being a little bit unfair: after all, Puddy Cat would take offence at ever being considered in the least bit dirty; and the spaniels are not too bad (apart from when TBDiatW has been working); and, actually, the horses are frequently quite clean and, whilst on the subject, the ducks take great pride in their daily ablutions (so much so that the big white lame duck had a special Christmas pressie of her own - a large tin bath into which she is carefully deposited for a while each morning...) and even the chickens mostly avoid anything mucky.

So what we are really talking about here are the thirty dirty pigs...... We have 32 on site at the moment. Thirty are diabolically dirty. They have developed mud pie making into the coarsest and most spectacular of art forms. Where Acts of God have turned their pens into deepest, gloopiest goo, they have rootled and burrowed and found the dry earth below: were you and I to take a shovel to remove the gloop, we would undoubtedly be overcome. They with their incredible snouts have simply shovelled the lot out of the way and found the place where the bugs and worms hold court: and have removed them! But it is not a pretty sight (or site for that matter).

Thus it is that, thinking to end the Old Year on a good note, I sign it off with a couple of pictures of our two pristine pigs: Whiskey and Brandy, in extended quarantine, indoors and, in Curly Coat splendour - indisputably, CLEAN. If cleanliness is next to Godliness, we have only a tiny foothold, but we'll hang on to it for all we're worth!!! (It'll probably last just about as long as my resolutions..... .. So? Yours last longer than a week???)

A Happy 2010 to you all.

P.S.

Many days after writing the above I realised I had mis-counted......... my 'stock-take' had omitted to include Delila and Clyde in the Woods..... we actually have 32 dirty pigs ........