Urine Trouble Mr Fox

When you have a captive audience, sometimes it’s hard for not to put on a bit of a show. Standing in the middle of the garden, a warm wet smattering of liquid splashed across the top of my bare foot. My wife reluctantly watches with morbid curiosity from behind the protection of the double French doors as I put a white disposable cup to my lips.
 
Quickly she turns away, suppressing the urge to gag, shivering silently repulsed. Daughter, with her own matching plastic cup mimics daddies mime to mummy’s distain. Unable to resist, I slowly lick my lips just to lower the tone that little bit more. Down turning my mouth I nod with a mimed approval at the taste.

Mmm ‘Salty’.
 
Without further-a-do, I go and pour the rest of the cups steaming contents in a strategic line along the border of the garden. Through the double glazed doors I hear my daughter call- 'Me help too daddy!!'
 
I do the same with the second and third cup, left over cutlery from last week’s BBQ which never got used. Too small for adults to use, they were a handy receptacle for my wife to hastily pass to me while I filled them in the down stairs loo. Like a two person yellow water bucket chain ‘we’ filled each cup in quick succession, pleasantly pleased I still have the ability to stop mid flow- much to my wife’s surprise.
 
It's the councils fault really, they were the ones who suggest it, and almost immediately the fox got the message once the garden started to smell of my pee. Or at least for the first three days, it seems he’s been successful gaining access to a hutch before, having been chased off on more than one occasion having been seen ‘digging’ at the hutch latches. Simply chasing him away isn’t working, ultrasonic deterrents or repellents may upset the rabbits as well- we are quickly running out of options. At the moment we’re looking at spike strips, which also work on humans, the trouble is that it means getting permission from all three of our neighbours (if either one says no, the spikes will be useless), not to mention its £11 per five meters and considering we have a 15m long garden, it’s going to be a complicated and expensive exercise.

Watch this space.

Persistent Mr Fox

Flying out the conservatory double doors barefoot, dressing gown bellowing in the wind, with a wild crazy look in my eye as I grab a suitably long stick, I precede to shout and yell at a shabby looking mange riddled animal as it plays peek-a-boo round either side of my dilapidated shed. With a scratch and a scuttle it eventually vaults over the rotten back garden fence and disappears into a neighbour’s garden.

Breathless I stand for a moment, ankle deep in thistles and stinging nettles still stuck to the flesh on my legs. Dejected I turn to leave, he’ll be back- he always comes back. Looking up, I noticing my 65yo Irish/ Catholic neighbour watching me somewhat perturbed and perplexed from her bedroom window. It’s then that I realise the belt to my dressing gown has unwound and in my haste to chase the fox out of our garden for the third time in as many days, and that I neglected to put any underwear on this morning. Inside the Rabbit hutch further up the garden, Dawn thumps the floor of her wooden cage mockingly, thanks, I think. Remind me not to try and save from the fox again.

Don’t misconstrue my maniacal moment of madness for a beastly being beater. No, I for one have always been fervent a supporter of animal welfare. For most of my childhood and teens I’ve been fortunate enough to live where local wild life, including Foxes, are regularly seen. My mother would leave peanuts and out-of-date dog food for badgers and foxes in the evenings, and the pair of us would stretch out on loungers under thick tattered tartan blankets and wait for them to come into the garden so we could watch them. While some may say this is unfair to the animals, making them used to human contact and therefore making them too tame, not to mention artificially propping up an unsustainable fox population. I would like to add a lot of the food we put out was also laced with mange treatment.

The last few weeks have been something of a problem for us, living in a more sub-urban area there just isn’t the space of local wild life to safely co-exist with humans. We have two Rabbits, Dawn and Dusk, my daughter loves them, and there is nothing I would hate more, then for my daughter to race down to the living room, open the curtains, and find her beloved ‘rawbits’ strewn in pieces all over the garden. We used to leave them in their run, a sort of low metal circular fence; they ate the grass dug holes, and played all day in the sun and what not. But since having out regular guest, sometimes three times a day, they’ve been confined to their hutch, now a veritable Rabbit Alcatraz:

The other day my neighbour, the same one who saw me in the garden rang the doorbell, turns out the fox has been harassing other people down our street, even leaping into a child’s buggy. In these sort of situations, where a Fox can get too tame, like eighteen months ago on the news, a fox crept though a dog flap and mauled a six month old baby, the RSPCA has to step in. In many ways I sympathise with the fox, its scrawny and gaunt, tail almost completely bald, and obviously starving and desperate. Being trapped by the RSPCA would probably be a death sentence as such an animal would probably be too unhealthy to be rehomed, still, with an average life span of two years, perhaps this is the more humane solution…

BBQ

It’s been something of an eventful few days. I’ve been contacted by an old friend who I never thought I’d ever hear from again. And played host to some other old friend’s on the weekend, and there in the process, discovered a somewhat penchant for food of a savoury-sweet nature.
My daughter while initally shy, eventually warmned to the new guests, with amusing results...

So without further a-do here is my recipe for the puur-fect homemade burger, be it plain or spicy:

You will need to make 6 x burgers:

1 kg of minced beef

1 x tbs of mustard

1 x tbs salt

2 x tbs of black pepper – 1 ground 1 whole

1 x eggs

2 x slices of bread (crumbled by hand)

1 x diced onion- of your personal preference

1x finely diced red pepper

(½ jar x Jalapenos if you wanna add a little spice)

Mix by hand in bowl, pat and shape into six burgers and cook.

For awesome if somewhat cheating smoked ribs-

1x BBQ source of your choosing (the cheating bit)

1 x ts of cinnamon

1 x pack of ribs

1 x ts salt

1x 50g brown sugar

1x 200 ml honey

Mix all and baste with additional layers of honey and brown sugar on ribs. Then store in foil sealed tray overnight chilled.

Whilst cooking in smoker/BBQ grill, baste and layer with sugar and honey, turning every five minutes for 30 minutes. Ensure ribs remain in tray keeping ribs submerged in source.

I use charcoal and then add cooking wood kindling which is soaked overnight in cheap whisky to add a bit of a punch to the smokey flavour...

Enjoy:

Warning: the following may occur should these steps be followed…

Tiredness from over indulgence:

Bloated-ness and trapped w…. daughter?!:

Lesbianism in Rabbits… (Of Course)

Confusion as to which specie you belong to- human or Rabbit?!

And finally sleep….

Failure to do so may also result in…

Tantrums:

Princess Pollys Potty

Princess Polly’s Potty (Andrea Pinnington 2009) is one of my daughter’s favourite books. She’s only two and a half but she’s already really into her stories. Yes, she is a Papa Pig fiend, and we have several short story books, but PPP is a current bedtime firm favourite.

Originally we got it to introduce her to the idea of using a potty. Daughter on the other hand was initially resistant to using a potty, instead choosing to skip the potty all together and move straight to using the toilet- with booster seat.

There were a lot of things I really liked about the book. The illustrations encouraged parent/child to explore each page, picking out little details. Daughter is pretty good with her paying attention and focus, just like her dad, but some books have very bland images which can be looked at only once without the need for closer attention. Good detail is vital to the replay factor of a book. Bedtime stories can be a little repetitive for parents; especially the early years when all the kids wanna do is look at the images. With a good illustration, you can read the same page, like if you watch a good film, and notice something you haven’t done before.

The noise button (HoooRaaay!) can be a little bit of a pain; perhaps if they’d made one that used more than one sound effect it wouldn’t be as bad. But provided you don’t let your child press it whenever they want, i.e. except when the book prompts you to, it can really encourage them to interact and articulate better. Daughter can already distinguish between what potty/ pants PP would like and what she would like, usually very different. The story itself is both informative and fun, with good tips for girls- wipe front to back etc and ade the book a fun interactive experience for me and her. and encourages hand washing. There were quite a few pages where you had to ask and get a response or opinion on a choice PP made, which I thought really m

I think the book really helped assure daughter about potty training, showing that everyone uses the toilet, wears pants etc. Even if she has accidents, the book assures her that this is ok and that she is still clever and its part of her learning process. PP also has a baby sister- me smells the hint of a sequel … ;)? The book also comes in a boy version, which we will probably get when the 'wee' wee man gets big enough…

Gardening

You positively couldn’t imagine a more stereotypical Sunday in the garden today. Having done 87% of the house renovations, I turned my keen (yare right!) eye to our shabby, yet potentially reasonably sized garden. Apart from the strange Swedish style cabin/ shed thing that hogs all the space, the garden has your typical mundane ‘old’ man low maintenance shrub affair stuff, with some non-descript non-producing tree plant thingy’s.

With the idea of maximising re-saleability, as we still have aspirations of turning a pretty penny in lieu of property development. Small or non-existent flower/ growing border beds are good because they give a potential buyer a veritable vegetation-able-ly clean slate from which that can image their imagine-in-edibles (yes I did just type that!) can go. (Exhale)

 

My daughter was kind enough to want to help and/or hinder-now two and a half, potty training is something of a bit hit and piss. (ha-ha, see what I did there) Having peed three times out of her nappy on the wood floor I laid myself not six months score ago. She also did a lovely big poo in the downstairs lav(oh yes, the joys of parenting!). So pluses and minuses, she just about broke even.

The Rabbits also did their part digging up the plant beds, though I somewhat suspect they were actually trying to re-enact the great escape, tunnelling up under the rabbit run I erected for them.

Four hours later, and a lot of false wee-wee alarms, half the garden is now done and no-heat stroke. And to top off my manly graft, there’s nothing like a manicure and hand massage from my beautiful and brilliant wife.

Pass me an ice filled glass of Swedish Kiwi and Blackcurrant Cider, and my day is done!

Ok, Fine! I’ll return my man-card tomorrow… L

StraightNecked-Feck is Dead! Long live Ccwc

It has been brought to my attention that SNF gets flaged on peoples email accounts and gets forwarded to their junk. this is cr*p and Ccwc is back. Yay!

Its time I did something a little different, I’ve changed my blog name and address for many reasons.

Firstly, I have changed, but back to that. Confessions of a care work contractor somewhat limited my horizons as to what I could blog; I wanted to write more about fatherhood, writing, marriage, health and other things which interest me in my life right now. I guess this is a substitute for an actual social life, or a social life where I can talk candidly about my interest and views with people who have either the time, studies to fully understand.

Gone are the days I had the time to discuss into the early hours of the morning the folly of the American dream illustrated in films such as Blue Velvet (1986), or the subtle nuances and gritty rawness of Pi (π) (1998). I guess some eight years on, I realize how much I took for granted those years at college and university where I was in an environment I could study at leisure film, media, and literature.

A hunger I’ve never truly sated. Do not misinterpret my sentiments, I wouldn’t trade my circumstances for anything, being married, being a parent; it’s the single most important thing I have ever done.

Who is straightnecked-Feck?!

SNF(sounds like some form of American Sports Association) it sort of my new Alias. I’ve been blogging on and off for the better part of a year now, and for the life of me I’ve never been clear what I wanted this to be about. For the most part I originally wanted to share my experiences about the industry I work, the good, and sometimes the very bad. Hence the need for Anonymity, but life has carried on, I now have a baby boy, and my little girl isn’t so little anymore. So I’ve ditched my old screen name and Blog address, CCWC (Confessions of a care work contractor just didn’t fit anymore.

I am also more aware than ever that my children may one day read this, and perhaps this might give them a snap shot into the muddled world of their old mans mind.

The name comes from a minor malady I’ve been recently been diagnosed with. I have a straight neck- ‘isn’t that normal?!’ you ask. Apparently not, normal necks have a curvature in the sine, mine does not. How this was caused I cannot say, I have been involved in five, yes 5 x car crashes all involving some form of whiplash. But the fact that I suspect that my snoring, which is linked to my sleep apnoea that I’ve had my entire life, somewhat makes me believe I have a congenital disposition.



Fortunately I’ve been getting treatment, as per my previous blog- Cracking. But I think the name fits quite well, its descriptive and self-deprecating, which comfortably suits my borderline manic-obsessive-depressive tendencies, a slightly neurotic writer, how original!

 


(Mine)                                    (Normal)