Tuesday 29 March 2011

Barristers don't shake hands...

...Good job says I, seeing as mine are like sand paper, what with all the furniture mending.

Bit strange goings on at Barmaid Towers. This morning, Barman was doing the mucking out (stable not home:-)) and you'll never guess what he came across (those of a squeamish nature look away now). A headless chicken, in the small amount of muck that I've got at the side of the stable!

And you'll never guess what again! It must have been the noisy cockerel that I was telling you about, as all afternoon it's been gloriously peaceful.

Told my neighbour about it and she thinks it must have been a fox. Obviously the head was too much to resist, but it left the body for later. Or maybe Bar-Os isn't quite the sweet and innocent vegetarian I thought he was:-)

ttfn


Monday 21 March 2011

Update on not bagging a pupillage

It's been a while since I posted, the reason being that there's not much to tell really. So far, for 2011, I've done 4 applications for pupillage, swiftly followed by 4 straight rejections. Well, when I say straight, there was the usual Chambers balls-up letter, telling me that I had not succeeded past the first interview stage. Not surprising thought I, seeing as I wasn't invited to interview. Perhaps I should have requested interview feedback just to see what Chambers had to say about my absentee interview techniques:-)

My life is very busy at the minute as I've stumbled into (if any lovely Chambers are reading this, please replace 'stumbled' with 'painstakingly researched, planned and embarked upon') a new business venture. I have bought some posh furniture; furniture that's been sent out to customers and has gotten damaged in transit. I'm busy learning how to repair chips in wood and generally having a ball throwing myself into something new. The down side is that some of the pieces are very heavy and make me ache when I have to move them around. Yesterday I sold a really nice oak dresser that came to me with a couple of chips in the shelves. The buyer was a joiner and was impressed by my repair work and colour matching techniques. I didn't tell him that, exasperated by not being able to match the wood, I resorted to using black coffee and my kohl eye-liner pencil to get the desired graining match:-) I'm eagerly awaiting a delivery of shellac based waxes (I know what an anorak) and have a solder wand at hand to learn how to do more advanced repair work (large swear box is on order too and by Easter I should have enough pound coins amassed to afford a new Merc.).

Bar-Os has reached a bit of a plateau in his recovery from Cauda Equina Syndrome. His tail has a little movement (usually when pissed off with moi), his bum is firing on all cylinders, but his bladder is very weak and I have to wash off his pee soaked legs each evening when he comes into the stable. A few days ago, he'd managed to pee up his turnout rug, and I'm still trying to fathom out just how the heck he managed to do so, and can only assume that he got down to roll and the sprinkler system kicked in?

So, that's about the gist of it all really. Olpas opens in a short time and I shall try to make a decent job of the applications, but I've done so many that I now look at them with jaded eyes and think everything I write is either contrived or just plain crap.

On a brighter note, there's been no shooting near my paddock this year and the wild life is slowly starting to replenish. I have a woodpecker in the back garden, a beautiful, graceful barn owl and a fox in the paddock and have recently spotted a small herd of muntjac deer knocking about the fields near my paddock - they are tiny and incredibly cute.