labour weekend
Women’s business is afoot. Becky has gone to the maternity hospital to be present when her sister gives birth. Meanwhile our own little links in the great chain of being sleep on, not knowing of the drama across town. They’ll wake up tomorrow to some interesting news I think – it’s been labour day in truth for at least one person in our wider family today.
For me it’s all been a bit slack though. This weekend was to have been a gardening weekend. I wanted to get the spuds in; but as usual got diverted onto another project after partially digging over the waist-high weed patch that is our vege garden. It seems I’m not always terribly stickable on actual physical work.
So I decided to build a wooden plate for our giant rat feeder compost bin to sit on so that the rats could not burrow up into it. Which I did today, finally… but then in digging out the compost in the bin so I could then shift it, I put the shovel through the side, making a tidy rat-sized hole. Back to square one.
And the other minor tragedy is the starling stuck in the wall of our bedroom. Every time I walk into the room it starts up again, pathetically scratching and fluttering in a doomed attempt to escape. It’s been there for two days already and I wonder how long it will take to die. Not long, I hope.
Rank
26 October 2004, 22:52 #
And how long before it starts to smell????????? Time to get the hammer out and practice your gib stopping.
Alan
27 October 2004, 06:47 #
Practice? It's not worth me even trying - I'd make a hopeless mess. I'm hoping it'll mummify rather than rot. Sometimes they don't smell. Too bad.
Gryfon
29 October 2004, 17:54 #
It will haunt you for sure. One night you'll wake nervously, the moonlight streaming through the window revealing the starling's mummified corpse crawling spastically over the duvet towards you - dessicated feathers rasping against the bed-linen, sunken eyes gaping hungrily, and its small but exquisitely sharp beak aimed right at your jugular. I bet you wished you'd bought the Readers Digest Home Maintenance Almanac then!
llew
13 November 2004, 13:57 #
Might this not be attracting the rats you mention a little later? I think I'd have knocked a hole in the wall & rescued it. Although they don't tend to have a high survival rate following any human intervention. But there are all sorts of nifty products on the market now for patching things up. One electrician can make dozens of these holes in next to no time if not carefully watched.
Alan
13 November 2004, 14:28 #
Maybe so. But I am the world's worst handyman, and once a hole is made it would be unlikely to ever be patched by me. More trouble than it's worth, I suspect.
llew
17 November 2004, 08:15 #
Mate, patching holes is easy. You're not the world's worst handyman, that honour surely goes to me. Anything requiring precision is beyond me. But there is is miraculous stuff... bacon... OK, there is this slightly less miraculous stuff called rapid filla. It's a DIY kit in a punnet. Just gob it on the hole (sometimes you need to block the hole up with cardboard or something - glued onto the inside with PVA - you can buy kits nowadays even), come back in a few hours & sand it flat. Once it's painted you'll never notice. truly, it is worthy of worship. Speaking as one with a really old home recently visited by electricians. Trust me, once you try it out you'll be knocking your own holes in the walls & filling them just for fun.