pilchard's activity

The French make a marvelous job of "hosting" immigrants. They house & feed them at Sangatte until they can jump a train or truck across the channel. Now they have convinced the UK to help fund another.

Joy..You guessed correctly. It's an onion in a net bag....boring I know but just wanted to inject a bit of humour?  So, it's your turn...

No...keep going. Ten more guesses and I'll tell you. Then it's someone else's turn.

The subject of bird calls is to some a very serious & interesting one. It takes all kinds. However if you look in your bird book, we all have one don't we, & look at the huge variety of calls that are attributed to all the various birds, you might, like me, have an image of Bill Oddy describing them to you. Most interesting. Our Nightingale will be here soon with it's non stop, all night long, every damned night mellifluous call. Bet he don't have a work permit Bill. Anyway I'm reminded of how hunters lure migratory birds to their inevitable fate. They place a decoy on the ground in front of where they are hiding, scatter a few handfuls of feed on the ground & imitate the birds own call. It works every time. These birds have tiny brains & can do no other than their primitive instincts dictate. They land, they feed & the hunter has his fun. An irregular vagrant, the Nutcracker (Nucifraga Caryocatactes), member of the crow family has a loud grating call that goes griirr griirr, chek chek chek.    Can't find Peeking Duck in my Observer Book of Birds though.  Pilch-Pilch

It's "tweet-tweet" Valentina. Sicily has been a migratory stepping off point for millenia. Birds & humans alike. I don't suppose this process bothers the local bird populations much. Pilch

It's a shame these neutering schemes are just local incentives. Is there no nationwide organization here in Italy that helps with neutering costs? RSPCA, Cats Protection League? The Italian countryside is littered with skinny cats & the roads littered with flattened ones. You rarely see an old cat so the presumption is they seccumb at an early age to starvation, disease & cars. What a waste of the life of a sentient being. I'm not a cat softy & I can't stand going into people's homes that are covered in cat hair, ripped up furniture, their dear moggy or six cavorting all over the bed, kitchen worktops & dining table & a foetid tray full of cat turds & flies next to the fridge in the kitchen. Yet the Italian countryside way of keeping them starving & procreating so that the vermin population don't stand a chance is at the other end of the spectrum. There must be a middle way. Pilch

Last year I was idling by the back window of the cantina & I spotted just ouside the window a hitherto unseen scrawny, manky looking female cat leading her tiny brood of kittens. God what a pitiful sight. They were all so skinny & tiny. One of the four kittens in particular, the striped ginger one, was so emaciated that every single tiny rib was sticking through it's skin. It wobbled & staggered & shivered &, when I opened the back door to get a closer look, while mum & the others scampered off, this little thing hardly noticed me & kept on it's pitiful faltering journey. I knew that this kitten had just a few more days before it gave up the struggle. We had a couple of tins of catfood left over after the death, at 20 years of age, of our old moggy & although I knew these kittens were too young to be on solids, I put it down for mum. Feed her, I figured, & she can feed the kittens with her milk. Maybe the runt might get a nipple & might stand a chance. I looked a half hour later & the food had all gone. A couple of days later I started to suppliment the meat with milk & the odd bit of raw liver. I never saw mum eating it as she scarpered every time I opened the back door & the kittens remained always out of sight but, she knew she was onto a good thing. After a week or so I spotted them again but one of the kittens had disappeared & the ginger one had lost half it's tail. I assumed one of the local hunters dogs had found them. They got bigger & healthier over the weeks & started to lose their fear of us to some degree. They'd all come running as soon as they heard the door opening. The ginger one always held back &, when eventually hunger drove it out from under cover to get it's share of the food, it would come out snarling & hissing & take over the bowl, growling, hissing & snarling like a thing posessed warning me off & it's brothers. As it grew it got even worse. A real anti-social little bundle of venom. After the death of our old mog we decided we didn't want the responsibility of more pets so we thought we'd feed these till the found their feet & had started to hunt for themselves. Eventually though we started giving them names. Finally it was decided that the two boys were to be called Timmy & Jimmy & although at first Stumpy seemed an appropriate name for the ginger female with the stump for a tail, it's nasty snarling, spitting, hissing behavior had destined it to be called Anastasia. We were a little concerned in November to feed them up for winter as we were off to the UK for a month or more but in the end figured that we had done everything we could & they were now on their own. We arrived back after an extended stay of 2 months & there was no sign of any of them but, the following day, Timmy & Jimmy turned up looking grown & sleek & healthy. Couple of days later mum turned up: she must think by now that she must be called "Sod-Off" as that is all we say to her. She wasn't just looking very sleek & healthy, she was looking suspiciously plump. It's been a couple of weeks now & the Ginger nightmare with the appropriate name has not surfaced. Thank God. If she does turn up though, it wont be the shovel cos I'm not so cruel but it'll be down the vet's for the snip. Sod the expense. The Pilch part of Pilchard

How do you use yours? Spose reverse is fairly normal for the trouser wearers amongst us as the forward approach, with kecks round the ankles, might be difficult if not impossible with the floor mounted variety. Maybe that's why they invented the wall hung ones: yet, if that's the case, then why wall hung toilets. Spose it takes all kinds. Bidet taps is another quandry. There are the ones that just fill the bowl by seeping out from some holes in the porcelain. I don't like them; strike me as a bit mucky somehow. I havn't seen the variety that's like a water fountain & wets the bathroom ceiling for a very long while so, figure the clever folk have spotted this flaw. There's the mono tap that just points down; OK no probs there. I think maybe my favourite is the mono tap with the little twizzly water softner rotating tip. You have to keep reverse speed low though otherwise the coccyx suffers. Pilch

Did you exist on the old forum? Maybe under another name? (winky smiley)

it shows 9 personalities; The Reformer, the achiever, the artist, the giver, the observer,the questioner, the leader, the adventurer, & best of all the peace maker- the peacemaker has all the traits of the others.