January 30th

The elderly and somewhat senile Grommart actually managed to catch a rabbit today!

Zeus told me about it as he’d been there at the time and witnessed the whole event.

He said it was the most unique method of catching rabbits he’d ever come across.

"As you know," he said, "Grommart is quite simply the World's Most Boring Cat".

I nodded, mainly to encourage him to go on.

"Well," he said, "She struck up a conversation with said rabbit and actually managed to bore him to death".

According to Zeus, the conversation went like this...

RABBIT (after popping his head up out of the burrow that Grommart happened to be snoozing next to) : "Yikes, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to disturb you, I was just about to go out for a, er, stroll"

GROMMART: "Oh I do like to stroll"

RABBIT: "Do you?"

GROMMART: "I do, yes, do you?"

RABBIT: "Well, I’m not really much of a stroller".

GROMMART: "Oh I am, I stroll all over the place".

RABBIT (who is starting to look decidedly uncomfortable): "Really?"

GROMMART: " Sometimes I stroll over there, sometimes I stroll way over there, you never know who you are going to meet on a stroll do you".

RABBIT: "Well I don’t really..."

GROMMART: "Sometimes when I stroll, I like to stop, for a snooze...."

And on and on and on she went until eventually the rabbit (according to Zeus) just keeled over.

Grommarts’ Weapon of Soporific Destruction clearly made an impression on the House God.

"I tried it later, " he said, "But I’m just not boring enough" he sighed wistfully.

January 27th
We moved the sheep into a new paddock and there is a huge amount of grass in it.
They ate themselves stupid for the first half of the day and then stood around looking dazed and confused.

“So, what do we do now?” asked Moulamb when I went out to check on them.
“What do you mean what do you do now?”
“Well, we came, we saw, we ate - now what?”

January 26th
I’m finally feeling ‘human’ again.
This meant I could at last tackle the paddock the horses had been in and clean it up.
The horses had done a magnificent job of grazing it down apart from a weird strip that runs down the length of the paddock. This strip stands out like a mohawk and is in the exact place where an electric cable runs a metre below ground.
I just had to ask the horses about it.

Nibbler took on a faraway look as he tried to remember back a couple of weeks since they’d last been in that paddock.
“Ah yes,” he said at last, “Grass Goblins”.
“Grass Goblins?”
He nodded and rubbed his nose vigorously on my shirt.
“They threatened to blow us up if we touched the Graza Strip, and you know what that means”.
I didn’t.
“Clydesdales” he whispered, glancing behind him as he said it,
“we’d all turn into Clydesdales”.

Persil spun a long yarn about a Swaggerman resting beside the Billabong until I reminded him that the fact he is an Australian Stock Horse, did not give him the rights to exploit a legend that makes no sense in this country so finally I asked the Phantom.

“Oh that,” he said, “the grass tastes like crap along there”.

January 25th
The Horse Boys are getting their toenails trimmed tomorrow and I can’t be there.

This means they will be caught by the farrier (they will be in a small yard paddock) and will have to stand quietly without me glaring at them.

I gave them all a stern lecture about behaving themselves and made each of them promise on pain of death that they would be on their very best behaviour.

Persil nodded solemnly and Nibbler gave me a big hairy nosed kiss but I’m pretty sure I saw the Phantom cross his hooves as he made his promise.

 

January 24th
Flossom caught something other than a cold last night and she made sure everybody knew about it.
“Hey hey hey” she chirped, outside the bedroom window, causing Zeus to fly off the bed and out of the window at supernatural speed.He ran over to Flossom making her drop the mouse which he then deftly caught, and gave a quick scan before turning to the enraged mouse catcher.

“Nice work Agent Possovitz,” he said, “This is definitely Mousekonova Rodentovski, one of the five most wanted mice on the 5 most wanted mice list”.
And without waiting for a reply, he dragged Rodentovski off into the forest for further questioning.

“Did you hear that?” said Flossom, who was now positively beaming from ear to ear, “I single pawedly caught a very dangerous mouse”.
Only Zeus could think up a way to snatch a mouse off Flossom and make her feel good about it.

January 23rd

I’m feeling pretty pissed off right now.

The reaction of everyone who finds out I’ve had Giardia is always this...

"Well, the good thing is, you’ll lose lots of weight".

I think that has to be one of those big fat Internet rumours.

Either that or I obviously have the lesser known ‘Expansion’ Giardia.

It’s very annoying, I feel I deserve the massive weight loss that should accompany the feeling of imminent death or at least a sudden conversion to curly hair.

Zeus thinks so too.

January 21st
There was another earthquake this morning at 6.05am. About three seconds later, The House God burst in to the bedroom, jumped up onto the bed and sat on top of me peering intently into my eyes until he was quite sure I was awake.
“What is it Zeus?”
“Booster,” he said, “Zeus Booster,” and he held out a paw for me to shake.
I rolled my eyes, Zeus fancies himself as a double agent. I played my part.
“Ahhh Agent Booster, I’ve been waiting for you - what can I do for you?”
“A Triple Earthquake” he said, “I was shaken, you, obviously, did not stir”.

January 20th

Flossom has had her annual Fur Cut.

It was a bit late this year so we left her fur a little longer and as a result, it has gone curly.

She sashayed around the house, showing off her new look of which she is inordinately pleased, and leaving a trail of lavender scent (used to calm her) drifting behind her.

Zeus, fast asleep on the couch, woke suddenly as she passed him, trailing her tail in his face.

"YIKES!" he yelped, blinking his eyes furiously at the waft of lavender while he tried to focus,
"Have the sheep pruned her too?"

January 19th

I have Giardia.

I looked it up on Google and discovered that Giardia is not an NZQA qualification or type of hair style despite the name. It is in fact a flagellated protozoan parasite, which as far as I can tell is type of worm that has been religiously beaten since childhood. In other words a worm with a major personality disorder. And I have it.

Flagellums look like this. ...

Until you take serious antibiotics which cause them to look like this...

Which is exactly what I’ve been looking like for the past couple of months.

January 9th

I seem to exist in some sort of Time warp.

Xmas came and went along with my Mother, My Aunt and a hair cut and now, here I am, multiple kilo heavier, slopping about in platform shoes especially designed for me by the Orthopaedics department of XChurch Hospital.

I had become quite excited when the surgeon told me to pick out the shoes I wear most often so they could modify them and they laughed hysterically at me when I brought in my gumboots.

I had imagined gliding around the paddock gracefully picking up dung in 6 inch platform gumboots that would magically make my legs look divine and give me an elegant cool look previously unavailable to the likes of me.

Instead, they handed me back my other shoes with insignificant wedges glued to the soles.

I feel like I am tottering downhill and I have to keep my arms whirling about me just keep my balance but most appallingly of all, there will be NO riding for me for a very long time. Surgeons orders.

"Not even if I....." he gave me a stern glare.

"What about if I..." the raised eyebrow followed by the tapping pen,

"But surely..."

"My Dear, it is the three RRR’s for you, " he said, "Rest, Rest and Rest".

Fortunately he said that before I could remember the three R’s that haunted my childhood education or I undoubtedly would have been too traumatised to cope with the rest of the day.

Nibbler was very sweet about it when I informed him of his early retirement for the year.

"Listen" he said, looking round to make sure the other horses couldn’t hear him,

"Do you think you could get me an Ab King Pro".

I raised an eyebrow and waited for him to continue.

"You only need to do 5 minutes a day on one of those", he looked over the fence at a couple of mares who were grazing next door, "and", he whispered, " My belly is not what it used to be".

 

 

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