Hello and Welcome Fellow Ramblers: Christmas is coming...!

Christmas is coming…

Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat… (or just a little scared!) and don’t we know it! The prospect of Christmas has been threatening us for weeks! Cards and wrapping paper have peered out at us from every shop imaginable and the TV has been overloaded with adverts of all shapes and sizes, with anything from over enthusiastic chefs and famous cricketers to a family of blue aliens all telling us where the best places to shop for seasonal goodies are to be found!! And I still haven’t a clue what they are all on about! No wonder food is going up in price with all these celebrities to pay!! And if you’re a blue alien reading this I apologise! Nothing personal, some of my best friends are blue aliens!

Weather and Wheelie-bins!

At the moment we are experiencing gales. The last few days have seen the autumn foliage leaving the trees at a great rate, blustering, and filling every nook and cranny with dried, brown leaves. Another load for the ‘green’ bin! And that’s another thing, we are no longer allowed to put cardboard into the ‘green’ wheelie bin! I wish they’d make up their minds! Something to do with the printing ink coming off the card and spoiling the compost which is supposedly made from the contents of ‘green’ bins. Yeh, right, pull the other one! I have my own theory, I reckon that after all my meticulous sorting and making sure each recycling box and bin is filled with the correct ‘rubbish’ it’s all carted away and tipped altogether in ‘landfill’ anyway!! Wonder what blue aliens do with their rubbish!

Shortest Day! Whooppee!!

Not long now to the shortest day of the year! December 21^st! It always surprises me how quickly the nights start to ‘draw out’ after Christmas! Can’t wait!! Daffodil time is my favourite time of the year, it promises spring and summer! Autumn is very pretty with all its changing colours, but it signifies cold, dark evenings and mornings, and Christmas!! And another birthday! Aghh!!

Birdlife!

My contingent of sparrows seems to increase by the day, and I spied a male bullfinch in the tree a couple of days ago! Beautiful! The nuthatch makes his regular visits to the bird platform, vigorously tapping sunflower seeds into every space he can find! I’ve heard a tawny owl ‘too wit too wooing’ late into the night and a ‘little’ owl screeching in the early morning! And still the wind howls in the chimney!

Thanks for your time!

The Bumpkin Rambler xx

Hello and Welcome Fellow Ramblers: Fawkes, Fires and Old Rope!

Autumn and British Summertime

The countryside has definitely taken on its autumn coat! Or maybe I should say it’s taken off its summer one! The once green leaves have either taken on a variety of colours or fallen, brown and crispy onto the dry ground! Last weekend British Summertime ended, treating us to an extra hour in bed. A phenomenon, which we Brits either love or hate. (That’s the putting the clocks backwards or forwards, not the extra hour in bed!) Is it better to have an extra hour of light in the morning and one less in the evening (or vice versa?), I suppose it depends on what you do with your day! Last Sunday seemed a long one!

Halloween, Bonfire Night and Guido Fawkes

Halloween, with its Jack o Lanterns and 'trick and treating' has passed and Bonfire Night looms, although fireworks have been spied in the ever darkening sky for a week or so! Good old Guy (also known as Guido) Fawkes! He hadn’t a clue what he and his fellow pyromaniacs were starting when they tried to render the Houses of Parliament useless (not much has changed there over the centuries!) in 1605 with his Gunpowder Plot! Since then his effigy has been burnt every year accompanied by an array of colourful sparks being propelled willy-nilly into the night sky. Safely one hopes!

Hang Him High

Guy Fawkes was sentenced to hang on the 31^st January 1606 after being caught guarding the stash of gunpowder with a view to blowing up King James 1^st as he opened parliament! There appear to be conflicting views as to how Guido (a far more charismatic name than Guy!) actually met his end! Some say he evaded being ‘hung, drawn and quartered’ (the thought really makes your eyes water, and his as well I shouldn’t wonder!) by jumping from the scaffold where he was about to be hung and breaking his neck, and others maintain that he did endure the end to which he had been sentenced!! The former being a far better option I would think! But a bit of a disappointment to the hangman, drawers and quarterers! Wages would be definitely be ‘down’!

Warts an’ All

One of the hangman’s perks was to sell the hanging rope by the ‘inch’, hence the expression ‘money for old rope’! And a rather grotesque treatment for warts was to rub the afflicted part against the body’s hand as it still dangled after it’s ‘dance of death’! (Quite a feat, depending of course, on where the wart was situated!)

Believe It If You Will!

And, I’ll leave you with an old saying, ‘A woman is always truthful, except when the holly is green’!!

Thanks for your time!

The Bumpkin Rambler xx