Getting the hump: updated

Beloved has gone right over the top this time. Granny is besides herself.

She had noticed over the far side of the land another structure going up. She has been too busy with guests etc, with planning the next chapter of her book etc, to take that much notice. And it's been so windy lately she hasn't had much inclination to walk over and take a closer look. When she questioned Beloved he just muttered about another feed store. Of course the maize is growing now and Mr Handsome has been going back and forth with great loads of hay. It seemed reasonable that there had to be somewhere else to put it all. She was just a bit puzzled that the building was so large; and so very tall.

On Friday Mr Handsome from Blackburn came in and said "I've finished it. It's ready.' He obviously thought he was talking to Beloved, but Beloved had gone out a moment or two earlier, so all he got was Granny. 'Finished what?' she asked. Mr Handsome looked taken aback. 'Um ah. The foodstore,' he said. 'I hope you're going to stain it,' Granny said. 'All that yellow wood. It's an eyesore at the moment.' 'It'll get stained alright,' Mr Handsome replied. 'The sooner the better then,' said Granny.

That was Friday. On Saturday she was surprised to see Mr Handsome appear again; he doesn't usually come to work on Saturdays. 'Oh there are just some jobs we need to finish before next week,' said Beloved when Granny asked him. In retrospect he was looking shifty - as he might well have done, he OUGHT to have done. But again she didn't have to time to reflect on it; Saturday is her day for going north, to the organic market, she was late already, so off she went. Though she did think while she drove that this huge foodstore, so-called, was a very odd business and she would question Beloved more closely when she got back home.

As usual she arrived back with her car full of produce. Though Mr Handsome's van stood in the drive, Beloved's truck was not to be seen. She assumed they must have gone out somewhere to buy materials. She humped the shopping in and dumped it on the table. Only then then did she look out of the window, across the land and see that the truck wasn't absent after all; it was parked on the far side next to the hideous new 'food-store'. And that Beloved and Mr Handsome were there too, one on either side of a large something, not far off the colour of the new building, pushing and pulling at it. An alive large something; an animal large something. A donkey? Much too big for a donkey....'A camel,' she shrieked.

Wind or no wind, she was out there immediately. The camel still had not been coaxed into the putative food-store; Beloved and Mr Handsome were still pushing and pulling. Beautiful Wimp was barking and barking from his kennel, Tiresome Terrier, yelping furiously, was taking little nips at the camel's enormous feet and taking no notice whatever of Beloved yelling at her. From the shed next door all three goats were bleating; Damien-Daphne, the cockerel was crowing lustily somewhere out of sight. As Granny approached, the camel had had enough. It raised its head and kicked, hard; Tiresome Terrier went flying; not that Granny minded much about that, given her views on the Tiresome Terrier. But she did mind about the camel.

'What the hell are you up to?' She yelled. (Actually she was ruder than that - much ruder - but she won't sully your eyes with what she actually did say.)

Beloved, still holding onto the camel turned round and said, with the small but guilty smirk he acquires on such occasions. 'What about the maize? You know we've got to grind it. You said there was no way you'd do it, even if I got you a millstone.'

Granny glared at him. 'Why should I want a millstone?' she asked. 'I've got one millstone already.'

'What am I supposed to do then? Camels are what they used to use here, for threshing and grinding. So I bought a camel.'

Mr Handsome was grinning and grinning away behind him; trying at the same time to keep a safe distance from the camel's feet. Tiresome Terrier's wounded yelps were dying away. The camel looking down its nose, the way camels do, sneering especially - she felt - at the furious Granny, proceeded to urinate, copiously.

'By the way,' added Beloved, dodging the stream. 'You always like our animals to have names. I thought you'd be pleased that this one comes with a name, already. It's called Abdul.'

******
UPDATE

Possibly, just possibly, the date heading on this post might have alerted you...

Even her much loved Beloved wouldn't dare go this far.....but Granny had fun imagining how he might have done. She will now get ready to DUCK in case of any missiles hurled - virtually - by maddened blogger readers...

April 2nd has arrived, luckily. From now it will be, as far as she or anyone is able, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Cheers, possums.

Skittishness

Well - did Granny say Beloved got it wrong? Because, well, he did. No phantom pregnancy, after all - unless the little black and white animal, born first thing Sunday and now skittering about is a phantom. Maybe it is. Otherwise it's a matter of : WE HAVE GIVEN BIRTH. Or rather Isobel has, the smaller goat, the Virgin Milker (bet you didn't know this was the correct term for young, female goats, did you? Suppose it would be blasphemous to suggest same term could have been applied to the Mother of God. Never mind.)
















Granny and Beloved at play? Sorry to disappoint you, yet again. Nor is it a picture of the baby (called Vinegar - according to Mr Handsome from Blackburn, who was very miffed indeed at not being called to the birth the moment it was discovered; fortunately, Blackburn Rovers being in the semi-final of you know what, this did not last long. He does, on the other hand, remain miffed by Granny's insistence that the kid's name is 'Rachel' - after delightful and now departed female guest. Vinegar indeed! Alongside two other goats called Ruby and Isobel? Never! Granny suspects, though, this goat will have two names for its whole life. Neither Mr Handsome nor she are easily diverted. She herself would at a pinch settle for 'Rachel Vinegar'. Mr H is not shifting in any way whatever. )

These more elderly skitterers are revellers from a Citizens of the Third Age display at Carnival on Saturday, up Granny and Beloved's way. The procession here was much truncated compared to the one in the large resort. The collection of walking yogurt pots complete with spoons sticking out did not appear, for instance. (Strawberry flavour anyone? Or Toffee Banana? Very inventive they are on this island; the names of the yogurts were even written in Spanish). Nor did the large functioning, plaster fire-engine, complete with fire crew which won the first prize for floats. Nor the blokes in drag with fairy wings on their back or the collection of well-feathered Red Indians. The blacked-up cannibals in grass skirts, plus blazing fire, cooking pot and simmering missionary - sporting large - fake - bare - tits - did feature, on the other hand. Political Correctness and Carnival are strangers to each other on this island; to put it appropriately crudo they do not share a bed. Many others do not go to bed either, with or without each other. The sounds of revelry went on all night and at 11am a small group, wings, sequins, clown wigs, you name it, were still leaning drunkenly outside the local bar still waving beer cans.

Granny knows what they feel like. After a heavy week of entertaining she feels pretty much like that herself. It is raining. Good good good. Today, after signing off from this, she proposes doing absolutely NOTHING. No skittering for her today. So here's some other aged skittering to be going on with.

















Update. It's up! Here.

Sound and fury

Granny did go to the carnival on Saturday and got lots of pictures. She won't lumber you with those until after the local version is over, in 10 days time. But she can tell you she has discovered the origins of carnival - thanks Wikipedia ; a mediaeval Italian pre-Lent festival, 'Carne-vale', meaning, literally, goodbye meat. Well, that bit's obvious, isn't it; almost banal. How couldn't she/you guess?

Meantime, just to keep you happy she'll put up this picture of .. Granny and Beloved, suitably attired?..

Well no, actually... But it gives you the general idea.










She is going to blather on now about something entirely different.

Years ago when she was involved in these things she read a book by a very famous English anthropologist, Mary Douglas. Called Purity And Danger it was about taboos, not just around food, Kosher, Halal rules, etc, etc but various other kinds - spatial, object related, relationships, etc etc. Famous anthropologist came up with the view - this is stating it VERY VERY roughly, famous anthropologist didn't/doesn't do simple -that on a structural level it all related to human need to order their lives within the chaos, uncertainty around them. If you define what it acceptable to you - generally or individually - you feel safe enough to carry on your existance in an orderly way: meaning you know, literally, who and where you are. Whereas anything outside, offending this, this makes you feel uneasy. As someone not herself fond of rules of any kind, as someone far from orderly in her own domestic arrangements, the anthropologist claimed to reach such an understanding when asked to have a bath in a room half of which was taken up with gardening tools and related clutter; a combination that offended all her sense of what a room in which you wash yourself should be like.

Granny has recently recognised such outrage in herself. Largely it relates to the distinction between human and animal towards which her Beloved is a little, shall we say, insouciant. It cannot just be that as a professional biologist he considers that humans are animals; sharing well over 90% of their DNA with goats say - or with chickens come to that. It's more complicated than that. It's about what he considers acceptable; and she definitely does not.

Outrage started simmering, just a bit, when she found two of the saucepans she had been looking for, both the size for what she was planning to cook, exactly where in her view they shouldn't be; one, lurking in the chicken run, the other in the goats' pen. And when, shortly after, she encountered the best and expensive cast-iron casserole full of a disgusting mixture designated as 'chicken food' and simmering on the kitchen stove, her own temperature began rising still higher; beyond simmering, towards boiling point. Not long after, she went to have a shower, digging out a clean towel and a clean t-shirt en route. At least she thought they were clean - certainly they'd been through the washing-machine; unfortunately they'd been through it alongside Beloved's cheese cloths. Bubble bubble bubble went her internal saucepan, boiling over totally when she found one of the straw bands her Beloved uses to enclose his cheeses and pattern -very prettily - their outsides nestling on the washing line, too close, much too close, actually touching one of her very best white duvet covers being prepared for next week's paying guest. Though the paying guest is coming to be instructed on local natural history, Granny does not think this should include forced exposure to the smell of the product from one of the local - not even wild - animals.

By this time the outrage to her sense of good order was clobbered, catapulted, hurtling way beyond her own particularly boundaries. She washed the duvet-cover; again. And there was a great deal of noise, not just a boiling noise, lots and lots of other noises, all of them loud. And every single one of them made by her.

There are now a new set of pots. And very definitely a new set of rules and taboos. None of the pristine pots nor any of the best pottery bowls will be used for animal foods or products. The animals will make do with the handleless ones, most with their non-stick qualities worn off by Beloved's tendency to put something on to cook and then forget about it, they will make do with the chipped or commonplace bowls. None of these evil mixtures before or after cooking will stay in the kitchen - the bloody flies are coming back and how those little black devils LOVE them. They will reside in the dairy-cum toolshed out the back, which has nice wire meshes protecting the developing cheeses from contamination. Oh and any kind of cloth relating to either cheese or animals will be washed SEPARATELY. Granny does not care to go around smelling of sour milk and nor she suspects do her guests.

There are warnings of high winds here this week. She is not so solipsistic as to assume for one moment that she has generated them- she does after all have to admit -in her nicer, not to say quieter, moments - that Beloved's home-made ricotta cheese is DELICIOUS. But still, you never know.

Old Goats. And young

The Thursday before Christmas, first thing, Beloved said: ‘Mr Handsome and I are just going down to the village in the truck. We won’t be long.’ Granny did not take much notice. Beloved and Mr H from Blackburn are always disappearing on errands of one kind and another. A little later she saw the truck on the land, but thought nothing of this, either: or nothing beyond ‘More bloody materials for the putative goat pen.’ And – ‘I wish they wouldn’t drive the truck onto the land. It degrades it.’ ‘When I’m ready,’ had been – yet again - Beloved’s response that very morning when she asked him when he was going to get his goats. After so much time, she’d begun to think – hope - the time would never arrive. Silly her.

Next time she looked out of the window at what had been originally the donkey house on the far side of the land, she saw something moving in the enclosure. Had Beautiful Wimp got himself locked in there? More wishful thinking; though a similar colour to parts of the BW, the animal she saw was not the Beautiful Wimp. It was…no, not a donkey, but.. ‘A bloody goat,’ shrieked Granny, at the very moment Mr Handsome arrived in the kitchen behind her. Mr Handsome looked between bashful, awkward and amused. ‘None of my doing,’ he said. ‘I know what you think. But I can’t get into this. I just do my job. You’ll have to talk to him.’ A classic excuse if ever there was one. And did he have to find it so funny at the same time? He was right on one thing: no use talking to him. But Beloved, alas, was not among those present. He’d already sneaked off to do his teaching on the other side of the island, having decided - probably rightly - that coming in to say goodbye might not be prudent. And that facing the music later might be easier too, because, in his absence, Granny was going to the airport to meet aged bachelor cousin – his – and that Granny’s response if not muted by time, would necessarily be muted by the presence of the aged bachelor cousin – his: damn it.

Altercation was indeed, much later, conducted in furious whispers, plus the occasional – shush – equally furious - from one or other of them. ‘But I didn’t know you didn’t want goats,’ claimed Beloved with a familiar kind of smirk, the kind men have when admitting to hanky panky with some new woman, halfway between guilty and smug; disgustingly smug. ‘You knew I was getting them. Why did you think I wanted that cheese? And you were asking me when I was getting them only this morning. Asking what I was going to feed them on?’

‘Only to point out the problems. And the expense. If you didn’t know I objected why were you so sneaky about it? Of course you knew!’

It was not much comfort to Granny to think afterwards that the adulterous smirk contemplated new adventures around the mammaries of females other than human; a rather different kind of faithless. But still, in her view, faithless. Especially in view of experience two weeks in; of Beloved’s twice daily disappearances – one of them early; even on Christmas day; even on New Year’s day. (No late mornings in bed these days -not that there ever were many; Beloved is not the kind of sybarite who likes to linger on the pillows with coffee and the Sunday papers and so forth; more a siesta man, him.) And one of them late. And there they stand, now, still, Granny’s two relentless, single-breasted (a bit like Granny that, she thinks) rivals, one between pale brown and cream-coloured, the other, smaller, prettier, a mixture of black and white. There they go spending their days in that impregnable Colditz of a run – Mr H and Beloved both promise it is impregnable - it had better be – on the far side of the land. Granny can see them now, from where she is sitting. But wishes she couldn’t. (And no, till Telefonica has been, she cannot offer any pictures.)

Let’s make it clear. She has nothing against goats as such. These are nice goats, as goats go. They are beginning to sniff her hand and accept offers of apple pieces. The thought of two kids – little black and white nanny goat is almost certainly pregnant – has its charms. She just doesn’t want them round – or at least so close to - her life; which she wants to be nice, uncomplicated, both her and her Beloved free to come and go, while they still can like normal retirees of their age, not lumbered with Beloved’s view of himself as farmer, in a small way. (When she explained this image of himself, why, up at the market, Beloved was buying the kinds of woven straw band people on this island use to contain their newly-made cheese, the comfortably rotund seller, sitting there in her local hat and skirt and scarf, rocked merrily, could not contain herself for laughing. Clearly such an Englishman had never come her way before. ‘Why should it be so funny? And I don’t see myself as a farmer anyway?’ said Beloved, a little offended. ‘Because it is funny; and you do a bit,’ said Granny. ‘IT IS FUNNY.’ Inasmuch as she is amused; now and then.) And by the way; the fresh cottage cheese for breakfast each day is nice, too. She has to admit it.

And this; the aged bachelor cousin – his – was a nice enough man; a sweet man even; but not entirely house-trained; the kind of bachelor who sits around like a baby bird waiting to be fed; by someone else. And without any obvious enthusiasm for anything, except the legal niceties by which he earns his living; (though he did appear to get fond of Granny's cat.) Granny might have been more patient with this if she hadn’t spent the week of his stay feeling mildly ill what with her lurking bugs and all. If she hadn’t she might have made use of the words of one of those bossy Christmas advice columns offering advice among other things on what to do with shy guests: ‘invite him to join in the preparations! Give him jobs' !! Etc etc. But things being as they were in her head, nose, belly, she didn’t feel strong enough to invite shy bachelor cousin to inspect her back kitchen; to put him to sorting out its by then fairly evil sink. Etc etc. He did - twice - sit in front of the fire selling peas bought in the local market, otherwise he remained, in the sitting-room, in the dining room, with his beak open. Taking anything that was offered, more or less.

And this too, she was thinking afterwards. Maddening as Beloved is he is a wonderful madman; an enthusiast; funny. She cannot see shy bachelor cousin – his - maddening her with goats or anything else. Beloved’s likes and dislikes may drive her nuts but she is glad he has them. Really. Some of the time.

She has a piece of fruit now– some pear- all ready. Maybe it’s time for her morning visit to the goats. Which have names now, by the way. They have been called – at their request, not Granny’s - by and after Beloved’s daughter’s Beloved’s daughters, if you can work that out: Cabra Ruby and Cabra Isabel, in other words. And no, she cannot be heard summoning them by name in her not so bell-like tones. Even though, for better or worse - a bit like marriage - there they are, till death - theirs, his or hers? - do them part, by the look of it. MEN.

Yellow eyes

A brief update. The (four letter word in triplicate +ing - or some politer alternative given her - decorous?- old age) goats have arrived. Two of them, both nannies -at least Granny is spared Billy Goat Gruff; one nanny is in kid; this is SUPPOSED to be an advantage.

Perhaps you out there would like to think of appropriate names? Bearing in mind her view of the newcomers. Which she doesn't have to spell out. Even if Komodo dragons do - according to yesterday's press - she doesn't think goats go in for Virgin Births. Just as well. Ritual Slaughter, then? Ah, now that's a thought. Only question is: of what? Or of whom?

She will be back, in a week or so, after the festival so-called. Happy Christmas everyone.