Wyandotte? Why Not?

The des res for the chickens is ready and we have transported it to it's location which means out of the barn, across the front of the house, 400 yards across the garden to its site.  It has been a source of dissension for the Doublavays.  We are both quite self reliant people and do not wish to ask for help but do I look like I can lift the equivalent of 4 pallets in bijou form even if we take the nest boxes off. So the local builder's wife...she of total adoration of P's building skills  has offered her husband's fork lift for the job...along with her husband. P is adamant we don't need to if I can just help him load it onto the trailer.  I don't think I have to offer him in return. I lost and this was our modus operandii

I can't imagine what the neighbours thought.

And there we were all set to go 

but it turns out according to our builder's wife friend who is helping us source the chickens, the one of the P adoration, that the lady from whom we were to get our chickens has had a very bad case of the disease that camels carry. I kid you not and did ask her to repeat the statement in which all the words desastre, dromaderie, chamel, mort and maladie occurred. Consequently no chickens. I think we are a bit early but we cannot source the ones we want from anywhere. Mrs Builder's wife has offered to have babies for us...Bantam Pekin as they are what she rears but we will have to wait until June.  That's fine as we did want some of these too but our other desire was the Wyandotte. We can't even get them on the internet and I did fancy the experience of receiving live chickens in the post. We will keep you erm...posted.

Dooblavay domestic strife has been a bit of theme as it has also occurred whilst painting. St P “Martyr of Our church of the Streak Free Wall” gets anxious when his mere follower of a wife offers to help, the badgers run for cover at the replacement hairs they will have to provide for those that have just fallen out of his brush which noticeably shakes as I take the screwdriver to the paint tin lid.

A feature wall of raspberry pink using the Crown Period Colour Tudor Rose and remaining walls to be cream which the lady in Monsieur Uno’s assured us was cream actually gave us a room akin to a packet of Dolly Mixtures, being closer to a deep red and a pale yellow.

Yellow is our bogey colour…I have a lovely pale yellow hall and landing with white wainscoting which took a number of attempts to achieve. The first tin we used which we thought was the same as the other two (it’s a big space) and why wouldn’t you because it was in the same column on the same shelf on the same row down the same aisle with the same price WAS NOT THE SAME and made you feel like you had walked inside a bottle of Sunny D. On entering our house visitors would have had to read the safety card “If you treasure your retinas do not look directly at the walls else keep your fake Ray Bans primed.

Back in our pink room, France is the only country to offer paint mixing and volume estimation on the school curriculum, so by the time they are adults les Francais can take a tub of white and add colour from a tube and Voila……….When in France,  I head for my laboratory which doubles as a scullery, determined to please. I take the red first and give a hint of white – no just using teaspoon measures in an old ice-cream tub TA DA …flamingo pink. And now for the yellow…it’s nearly Easter if Jesus can turn water into wine I’m sure I can turn yellow into cream.  A hint of white to yellow and lo there was …………..LEMON.

Hang on the previous incumbents of the property left some tins of posh Craig and Rose gold paint. I can do this for the cream at least. Stir the paint first before taking a sample. That’s strange I am not stirring vigorously, none has poured over the top on to the work surface, what’s going on. Lifting the tin reveals a running drip, onto the work surface, I clamp the tin back down and lift it again…you know how you do to double check that the disaster you thought was unfolding in front of your eyes IS unfolding in front of your eyes, across the work surface, over the edge across and into the white fronted drawers, onto the floor. Bang goes the tin back down and I dash for a.. a.. a.. a.. a.. a.. a.. a.. dinner plate. Yes a dinner plate and and.. and.. and.. and.. and..more ice cream tubs.  I wasn’t in the brownies for 6 months for nothing you know. And so I spend the next half an hour scooping, spooning, ladling and then pouring paint into pistachio flavour, raspberry ripple and Madagascan vanilla tubs. The return to my experiment – gold with a leetol beet of white makes ……………  MUSTARD.

When I return upstairs P has continued with the yellow anyway and I relate the disaster to him at which point he asks why I didn’t call for help, meanwhile the second coat of paint we are compromising and calling pinkyred which, he applied an hour ago is drying streaky. We both fume quietly and privately and we are living with it for now.

A very kind friend has suggested that with the right soft furnishings it will look good and we have been brave in our thinking outside the tin with those colours. With that in mind and some of you will know this, on account of my technological error sending a message meant for one person to half the universe, I have dug out an article from Ideal Home, November 2003 edition, don’t mock I knew it would come in useful sometime, which shows just the type of curtains I think will be sympatico.   The web site has a “contractors heading” so I have e-mailed them to ask whether they have a special service for the individual, colour illiterate customer.  I note however that they are based in Bourton on the Water which means the material will probably be the same price as one of the peasant hovels on the nearby Highrove Estate which is rented out to one of the erm…peasants called Jacintha or Algernon for a future King’s ransom. The rent agreement probably comes with a sub clause about having to consume four jars of quince jelly every month.

And on a final ranting note ...if you decide to follow a tip on using a quilt to make a soft window seat cushion just be mindful of the fact that you cannot I repeat CANNOT siphon 1 million feathers from a 1 cm slot into a bag and you will spend 2 days hoovering and 3 days washing the wool jumper you were wearing at the time.  I can only put my madcap flight of fancy down to the truly spectacular fall  as I attempted to plant myself head first in front of the lunchtime audience and ski lift operators after a successful completion of a black run...just because I was obeying the rule to slow down and couldn't.

Bonne Paques