May Madness

Firstly, I will do the serious bit because Nick Miners is my friend and he did such sterling work stepping in and writing my blog with absolutely no notice at all, while I was rushed away to hospital.

He is running a promotion on his website throughout May.

You should already be familiar with his fabulous photography and work so please take some time out of your day to go and have a look.

He has blogged about it at nickminers.com/may-madness and the Facebook announcement is at https://www.facebook.com/NickMinersPhotography/posts/10151581755338766 

Nick has taught me a great deal and I consider him to be one of my mentors.  His “photographic eye” is one I envy (or is it two?).

☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞

And Now for My Madness…..

As usual the post arrived but today I received this envelope. Note, the name is spelled properly and using the correct French acute accent too.  We are already impressed.

On the reverse was the Royal Seal, which made me laugh.

The actual card was delightful.  Two puppies who were obviously drugged or stuffed.

There was a mysterious message inside…..

…… as well as an awesome (yes, I have used “that” word) gift that will be useful as well as impressive.

Well, we (the Royal We) are delighted with such a magnificent garment.  There was a label attached too so this confirms it is brand new.

I have my suspicions as to who sent this most exquisite piece of décollage or neck wear –  I am not sure if Her Maj wore it the right way round.  Is it mean to be like a bib? I don’t know.

But, who cares?  She looked, of course, as beautiful as ever.

If the company want better modelling pictures, I can do these once I am allowed to use my big camera.  Just say.

Please notice that I did brush BeAnne slightly but I didn’t want her natural beauty to detract from the lovely bandana.

And look, too, she even managed to talk to the “common people”.

I think this look is not dissimilar to Grace Kelly.  They could be twins. It is uncanny.

So, thank you, whoever you are, K!  Wonderful, simply wonderful. xx

I am bare nekkid.  Well, my back is.  No more dressings or stitches.  All gone. I bet that title got you going!

My OH drove me to our local Health Centre where I had previously made an appointment to see the Practice Nurse.  The post-op instructions were to have everything removed after 14 days.

This is the view from the waiting room.  Pretty impressive, isn’t it?  Very calming and relaxing while you are nervously waiting.

It was lovely to get out and about. I haven’t traveled anywhere since getting back from hospital because I still go downhill quickly. I have no energy.  I am scared I will get somewhere and be too exhausted to get back. I also can’t drive yet.

This is the Walls harbour with the pier (crane) in the background.

These are just random photos that I took while I was driven in the car.  There is the old school bus – though I am not sure whether it is still works.  My kids used to go to school in that bus.

Some arty-farty photies of Walls.

For many Shetland crofters, this is the beginning of lambing season.  My best description is that if you say “we’re lambing”, everything is forgiven as everyone knows you are permanently exhausted from staying awake all day and all night.  If you are lucky, you can take it in turns to watch and get a smidgen of sleep occasionally  Some still go to work, some take time off but everyone looks exhausted, dazed and tempers can be frayed. Everything stops for lambing.

On our way, I saw a ewe that had just lambed but now had a prolapsed uterus.  I immediately delved into my handbag, found my phone and rang my neighbour.  Although it was not his ewe, I knew he would’ve sorted it quickly on behalf of the owner.  Everyone helps each other and lambing has priority over everything else. I am so glad we don’t have sheep.

The newborn lambs are delightful, though.  These twins had just arrived, I think, this morning.

So now I am back home and back to resting completely exhausted from my brief excursion.

The horses are fine.  Jo will come over later to check and feed Taktur.

Now we have had some rain, the grass should start growing and we will move them into another field shortly.  At Thordale, we never rotated the fields before and I think it works well. I shall have permanent fences put in to replace the temporary electric ones.  The ground has stood up much better this winter.

And guess who was waiting at the gate?  Well, I was missing from my bed therefore she was missing from “her” bed too!

Many dogs of all kinds came with their owners to visit and look at my indoor school with a view to using it for a dog club.  I can’t remember what they were.  I think we had a border terrier (who was delicious), a labbidog, a Shih Tzu, a Shih Tzu cross, a billion GSD’s and wire-haired pointers but I could be wrong!

There must have been about 15 dogs in the shed. My OH stood on the top of the loo not because he was scared but because he was looking for some wooden poles for equipment.

This is the Committee, I think I am right in saying, of Ultima Canis, Shetland’s newest dog club.

I can hear the barking from my bedroom and that is a good way away!

Anyway, for 15 dogs most of whom have never met each other before, they all behaved beautifully.  Not a fight, not an argument or exchange of views.  They just raced around sniffing and getting to know each other.

That is fairly impressive in my opinion.

This dog club’s aims are to, I think, teach dog handling, dog agility, ringcraft and other stuff you can do with dogs that I don’t know about.

Today, I think they were just getting to know each other, see the shed and look at its potential.

I hope they like it. I want my indoor school to be used. It sits empty far too much and if folk want to use it for things like this, then all to the good. I offer its use to anyone, mostly those with horses, but no one is ever interested.

All the dogs were very excited so lots of poo-picking and I hope they enjoyed themselves.  BeAnne will not be joining the “pack”. I think it is too much for her and, after she was thoroughly beaten up by a very badly behaved GSD as a puppy, she has a horror of them and would find this far too much (she is sitting on my bed, though, with ears pricked listening).

I didn’t stay long.  My back is not up to even opening the shed door, so I took a few photos, totally ignored a friend of mine because I didn’t recognise him (my bad and I do apologise, Gary!) and back to my bed again.  The weather on one side looks like this.

And on the other, like this.  I bet the Club are glad they are all indoors when that starts falling out of the sky!  So good luck to Ultima Canis and enjoy the space.

A small part of me wonders what they would do about this new member!

A few years back I heard of a friend who waited, in the early hours of the morning, outside the Co-Op, for it to open.  She desperately needed to buy a pint of goat’s milk for her newborn foal that was dehydrated due to the mother not producing any milk.  It was then I asked myself, as a pony breeder too, were we fully prepared for the what-if scenario?

I immediately decided that we would be prepared and this situation would never happen to anyone on Shetland ever again.  We would help anyone if they needed us 24/7.

I phoned Joanne Vardon at The National Foaling Bank and so started the Shetland branch of this service.

Now Shetland horse breeders (they don’t have to be Shetland pony specific) have available 24/7 the Emergency KIt.  This kit contains all that is needed to get a foal back on its feet if, for whatever reason, the mare has no milk.  Included in the kit, is a rubber foal teat, sterilising tablets and mare’s milk replacer milk powder along with full emergency feeding instructions.  There is enough in the pack to cover for a few days and details are supplied of where to buy more.  This is supplied to me by The National Foaling Bank and costs a nominal £10 to anyone.

I also decided to have a supply of silver foil-type space blankets available to buy.

I bought a pile off Ebay and have used one myself on Celt, my ancient lurcher, who came back from a dog walk in the freezing rain in a terrible state. I can fully guarantee that they work quickly and effectively too.  Like a badly behaved map, though, they are not very helpful about being refolded after use into their original tiny packet but do participate enough to live in a small bag. They cost just £1 each and are well worth the investment.

Some foals need a quick boost of energy to get them up and going.  Every year, I buy in Foal Stim from MedicAnimal.com,  This wonderful internet company does not charge postage to the Highlands and Islands unlike other firms whose charges ranged from £6 to £10 to post one small tube – extortion by any other name.

FOAL-STIM is a unique nutritional supplement of colostrum, enhanced with Prebiotics (Non-digestible carbohydrate) sources of Fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) and polyfructosans.  Presented as an apple flavoured oral paste, presented in a ready-to-administer single use 20ml oral syringe.  For newborn foals that are weak, underweight, failing to suckle or initially thrive.

Basically, it is Red Bull for foals and it works.  Again, easy to give, quick and fast acting and can get a foal on its feet.  Although not cheap, it is always worth trying and has saved many a foal’s life.  It costs £16.00 a tube.

Mare’s Milk can be hard to source sometimes.  So I try to keep in a 5kg bag of Multimilk available so, if they have decided to continue bottle or bucket feeding the foal, it can be purchased for, I think, about £19.00.

So that is the Shetland Foal Milk Service. I fund this service myself out of my own pocket.  Everything is sold at cost price.  This is not a charity (too much paperwork involved) and sometimes, if things are past their sell-by date, then they are not sold on and that is the way it goes.  But I don’t care. It is only money.  Even if no one uses the Service then good, it means their foals are healthy and surviving without intervention.  That is my theory.  And, if folk need us, we are there and available 24/7 to answer the phone, be by the door even in the wee small hours to hand out the Emergency Kit or whatever is needed.  We don’t ever intend to replace the vet but to work along side or offer a quick solution when time is essential.

There is a mixed reception, I know, to this Service.  Some don’t think it is worth it (a bullet is cheaper) but those that do use us and have had success, ie a live healthy foal, are grateful and appreciative.

I just don’t want to sit outside The Co-Op waiting for it to open to get a pint of goat’s milk for a foal.  Not ever and I don’t want anyone else to either.

I was about to write my blog this afternoon, when this incredible wave of tiredness came over me and I found myself, a few hours later, snuggled up in a blanket, asleep on my bed.  Ooops.  So apologies for te lateness of my blog.  Also BeAnne is not well. She has an upper respiratory tract infection which is scaring me witless.  I Googled her symptoms to find she had a probable brain tumour.  Luckily Jack, our other Patterdale terrier, also has the same symptoms (sneezing and saying chuff all the time) so I have discounted my brain tumour theory.  The vet has prescribed antibiotics so hopefully they will be on the mend now. Phew!

Anywho, before I went to sleep, I dragged my sorry arse down to the roadside make-my-millions egg shop and back with the dogs, which is about as far as I can walk these days.

I have done this walk once or twice a day for 14 years and my surroundings are historically very interesting but little heard of.

I live next to RAF Watness camp.

RAF Watness was one of the Chain Home Low (CHL) radar stations built in 1942, I believe. This was the name of a British radar early warning system, detecting enemy aircraft movement at lower altitidues than and summarily used with the fixed Chain Home system which was operated by the RAF during WW2. – Wikipedia 

Nothing much remains now. It was demolished after the war but we are left with the foundations and the odd indication of building location and size.  Apparently everyone local was made to sign the Official Secrets Act and, when the site was up for demolition, many of the buildings “vanished” the day before.  I think we have one in our garden!  It is the odd shaped rusty old Nissan hut.

I found this on the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historical Monuments of Shetland – This Chain Home Low radar station is situated on the summit of Virtag, W of the road from Mid Walls to Netherdale. The radar station consists of a series of brick and concrete buildings including an engine house and light anti-aircraft positions.

The site was demolished badly and left in a dangerous state in my opinion.  Neighbours have tried to fill the potential death-traps and I once saw The World’s Fattest Orange Cat pop his head up from a tunnel entrance.  He looked like Sooty.  Haakon nearly sat down in fear and I nearly pee’ed myself laughing!   I remember we were coming home from a long trek and it was the last thing we were expecting.

Half of me wishes this site had been documented properly (apparently there was even a cinema and tunnels, ooooh tunnels!) and the other half of me wishes they had demolished it properly as it really is an accident waiting to happen.

I would like to find out more about the buildings that were on site and around my house, even map them out properly but I cannot find any information.  Apparently,  the RAF brought with them thousands of rats. There are very few rats in Shetland and they rarely come this far away from the main ports.  When the RAF left, so did the rats.  BeAnne would’ve loved a rat!

My horses and I have lived with this “rubble” for many years. We share it with the sheep. We have found two grenades to date.  One was exploded here (the Bomb Disposal Unit hurried up from the mainland on the boat to explode it in Clothie) and I can’t remember what we did with the other one!  It all sounds a bit Captain Mainwaring and Dad’s Army now.

It would seem odd if this rubble was all taken away properly but I think it is wasted in its current state.   RAF Watsness played its part in Shetland’s war history and there is little, if no, evidence to show this.