Submitting, at last.

I’ve finally submitted my story to Writers of the Future, though not the one I wrote through the workshop. That will go next month, unless I find somewhere else to submit it to.

I’ve got two stories out doing the rounds now, the most I’ve written and submitted in years.

In the meanwhile I’m on with another and still world building for a novel.

I’d like to sit and write out on the decking, but the chooks seem to have other ideas. Can you spot all five?

 

(Incidentally, that messy mesh at the bottom is to stop them destroying those young plants I’ve just planted out)

Finished novel and short, writer’s workshop, fences and brassicas

I’ve just heard from work that I’ll be furloughed for the whole of June so I should have plenty of time for writing. So much so that I’m having to plan things out a bit more than usual.

I finished off that novel I’ve being talking about. I’ll let it sit and stew for a bit while I work on the next big thing, though I’m still world building and doing character studies for that.

I’ve just finished another short that I think is just right for Writers of the Future, and that is now going to sit and stew too.

Once I think they’ve both stewed enough I’ll start editing them. In the case of the short that’ll be a few days, the novel will be a few months, maybe not until I have a first draft of the next one.

I have also signed up for a free writer’s workshop that WotF are doing online, so that should last me the month out. Hopefully by then I’ll have my world built and will have started writing the thing at last.

I’ve also been pretty busy in the garden and on the allotment. My neighbours put up a new fence so I took down my old panel thing. The panels, much to my surprise, were still in good condition, so I sliced and diced things and made a compost and pot store out of them as well as repairing the old fence at the bottom of the garden. It all looks quite tidy now.

On the allotment, just about everything is in and growing reasonably well, though a bit of rain would help (anyone know any chants?).

I put up the brassica cage, which is huge this year (about 24ft by 12ft) and filled it with all sorts of brassicas. The beans and squashes are also in, the onions and garlic are all doing well and the carrots have mostly germinated.

An overnight frost managed to nip the potatoes and a few brassicas but the potatoes will recover and I have a tray of spare brassicas to fill in the gaps. I’m not fussy about everything in a row being the same thing, so I’ll end up with a hotchpotch of cabbages, kale, broccoli, cauliflowers and sprouts.

Wordcount, lockdown and clean fridges

Well, we’re in our ninth week of lockdown I think, though I keep losing track of time, so I might be wrong. I hardly know what day of the week it is sometimes, but it is doing wonders for my writing, my garden and allotment, and the state of my fridge.

I’ve been averaging a couple of thousand words a day, plus doing a bit of world building and plotting for the next masterpiece.

The allotment is clean as a whistle with hardly a weed in sight, as is the garden. My fridge has never been cleaner.

But it’s the writing that I’m most pleased with. After quite a long hiatus and a stressful few years, I seem to be finally getting back into the swing of it.

I just need to stop playing Elder Scrolls, then I might double my word count.

Back Again.

It’s been a while, I know, but I’m back again. I vanished for a while after the WW1 Project finished. I found myself wandering, inside my head anyway (anyone who knows me will know why this happens now and then), stuck on the genealogy and thoroughly blocked in the writing department. On the gardening side, well, I live in England and it’s rained almost solid for close to half a year now, so there’s not been much tell.

And, well, now this horrible Covid 19 thing has come along to muck things up, I find I have an awful lot of time on my hands. Though not for long, I hope.

Anyway, while I’m furloughed, I’ve caught up with the gardening, parked the genealogy (I really have hit so many walls that I think I’ve done as much as I can), and decided to try to get the writing back on track. I’m going to try to get two things going at once, perhaps three. I have two ongoing novels, both of which have stalled, and a plot and a lot of world building in progress. I’ll need to decide which one to put the effort into, and I’ll do that while I’m trying to put together an entry for Writers of The Future.

Along with that I intend to write up what I found in my genealogical exploits. I actually made a start on that a while ago but, like a lot of other things, it’s been sat bubbling away on the back burner.

So, in the coming days, expect some posts about gardening, writing and perhaps the odd, stir-crazy rant along with whatever practical notions I come up with whilst cooped up like one of my own chickens (at least they get to run around outside all day).

Nice to be back.

Chickens

I’ve been keeping chickens for a few years now. They used to get a regular mention on my old blog and, as I’m between research projects at the moment (I’ll be starting something new next week), they’re going to show their faces here too.

I’ve six at the moment. Three are about four years old and the other three have only been with me for a couple of weeks now are just at the point of laying and have, finally, settled in.

Settling In

Settling in new chickens can be a noisy and violent affair. Chickens are pretty nasty, vicious things at the end of the day, to each other anyway. It’s always best to add at least three to a flock, one on it’s own is going to get badly beaten as the pecking order is re-established. Always make sure you’re there to step in if things get too nasty and keep some anti-peck spray and gentian violet spray to hand. The first to stop any really bad pecking and the second to treat any wounds. I know it sounds a bit wild and cruel, but it’s in their nature and it’s what they do.

In this case all six chickens piled in for a fight that lasted mere seconds until only one of the old birds and one of the new ones were left battling it out. I kept an eye on them until one had run off in submission then left them too it. With the exception of the odd noisy reminder now and then, things calmed down almost immediately and they have now all settled in. The old bird who was in charge before still is.

One took a little longer than the others to realise that the big box with the perches was where she was supposed to sleep, not on the top of a gate in the main run. After a couple of nights of picking her off her preferred perch and putting her to bed properly, she finally got the idea. It’s normally best to introduce them at night to avoid this problem by putting them straight to bed but, by necessity, I had to put these new birds into the run first thing in the morning.
Infirmary

Chickens always get ill and mine are no exception. You can always tell when one is under the weather. They kind of hunch up and tuck their heads in. I call it assuming the position. If they are still enough and not eating it’s usually a sure sign they’re about to fall off the perch altogether (chickens have a habit of dying at the drop of a hat).

I noticed one of the new birds looking a bit slow and fed up, her breath a bit raspy. She was still eating and I had to put effort into catching her, so she wasn’t about to drop dead, but her breathing sounded awful, a kind of bubbling rasp, and her eyes were filled with foam. I’d never seen this before so looked up the symptoms. It turned out it could have been either Gape Worm or a simple respiratory problem (ie: a cold). Either way, a sick chook needs to be isolated from the rest of the flock. So into the polytunnel she went, in a makeshift cage (which wasn’t as spartan as it looks in the picture). I checked her throat for worms and she was clear, so I cleaned her eyes with antiseptic wipes and gave her food and water with chicken spice and poultry tonic and left her to it.

The next day she looked and sounded a lot better. The day after she laid an egg and tried to break out of the cage. Her raspy breath was back to normal and her eyes were clear. I just wish I could shake of a cold so easily. Anyway she went back in with the rest of the birds, all better, and then another came down with the same symptoms. This second bird was one of the older ones and shook off the cold overnight. In fact she did break out of the cage and I had to chase her around the polytunnel, though I forgot to close the door so she put herself back in with the rest of the flock. I guess she was feeling better.

Next post will probably be the last life I researched, or perhaps something Grow Your Own related, or maybe both.

Creative Upcycling

Just to show this blog is not all about history and research, indeed now that the nights are getting lighter and the weather warming up a bit, my life becomes much more gardening, or rather grow your own, orientated, with research being done in the gaps, so to speak.

Anyway, I got creative the other weekend. After decorating the kitchen I decided I needed a new noticeboard and quite fancied a wine rack on the wall as well.

I had just had a load of stuff for the garden delivered on a pallet and so, using a little of my allotment mentality and a bit of waste not want not, I broke it up and used the very good hardwood that it was made from.

The notice board is pretty much just a frame with the cork sheet from the old one stuck to it and the wine rack is, well a wine rack. The lettering was done with some little kid’s sponges and some paint left over from doing the bathroom the other week. The white blocky bits are my contribution to internet censorship.

It’s my first attempt at upcycling (if that’s what it even is), but I don’t think it went too bad. What do you think?

Next blog, assuming I don’t finish some research off or complete a novel first, will almost certainly involve chickens.