WHENEVER it’s time to buy my granddaughters a present, I always march into the nearest toy shop and ask for the noisiest thing they have.
My daughter and her husband pretend to be cross with me about this but secretly, I know they love being kept awake all night by the new karaoke machine, and the bear that sings an American nursery rhyme when you squeeze it.
GettyLast week, a drone was spotted scouting my house and farmyard (stock picture)[/caption]
GettyThe police say it looks like the Clarksons are being recced by wrong ’uns[/caption]
Anyway, at Christmas they paid me back. In spades. By giving me a dozen guinea fowl.
Back then, they were fluffy chicks which made adorable little squeaky noises.
But they’re all grown up now. And my God, they are loud.
I saw The Who back in the days when their speaker stack was a mile high, and I’ve been present when Nasa tested one of its 37million horsepower Space Shuttle engines.
So I know what loud is. And it’s nothing compared with a dozen guinea fowl having a chat. Sleep? I’ve forgotten what that is.
There are other issues too. For two months they lived in a barn which now smells so terrible, you need to wear a full hazmat suit before you can go inside.
I’m told the area will be uninhabitable for 1,000 years.
This week though, it was time to release them into the real world where there are foxes, who see guinea fowl as nothing more than a tasty mid-morning snack.
I’d been assured that this wouldn’t be a problem because guinea fowl can rupture a fox’s eardrums if it gets within two miles, and that they can always hop into a tree if the attacker is persistent.
But to be safe, I selected as their new home a small wood that I’d planted about ten years ago.
Fence posts were bought and hammered into place. Two layers of stock fencing were buried into the mantle of the earth itself.
And for added security, three strands of electric fencing were installed as well.
You know Colditz? Well this was way more secure than that.
However, I’d forgotten something important. Birds can fly. A point they proved about seven minutes after I’d released them.
I knew they’d got out and on to my front lawn because the noise caused all the glass in my kitchen windows to shatter.
Wearing sound-cancelling headphones, and a scarf soaked in my girlfriend’s scent to minimise the smell, I herded them back into their fenced-off area and turned in for the night.
Nice supper
The next morning, one was dead. And another mortally wounded.
It turned out that the wood had been home to a family of foxes and I’d simply fenced them in and provided what they saw as a nice supper.
And when the surviving birds had flown away from the danger, I’d simply ushered them back into it again.
I felt a complete idiot.
Police say we should ensure our security systems are up to scratch
As I write, they’re on my lawn again, making such an enormous racket that both my dogs are in their room, shivering with fright, with their paws over their ears.
It’s strange though. Just recently, I decided that we had too many animals on the farm.
There are two dogs, 30 geese, more than 100 sheep, 55 pigs, 17 cows, 70 hens, 29 goats and, because Lisa recently decided to go into the skincare business, 8,000 snails.
I felt that this was too many and we needed to cut back. The guinea fowl would be an obvious place to start.
However. Two weeks ago, five men in a van came into the farmyard.
They checked out the security cameras and asked Kaleb how many dogs were on the site.
I reported this to the police who said the plates on the van had been cloned.
More worryingly, on two separate nights in the last week, a drone has been spotted, scouting the house and the farmyard.
The police say it does look like we are being recced by wrong ’uns and that we should ensure our security systems are up to scratch.
Oh trust me on this. They are.
Anyone who tries to burgle us is going to have their eardrums turned into a blood-speckled gooey mush.
WHY I’M MUD FOR CRUFTS
Jeremy reckons the Crufts audience would like to see a competition for the muddiest dogs, or the most flatulent, or the most badly behaved
IT would be easy to dismiss Crufts as a show for mad people and their annoying blow-dried dogs.
But I love it.
Mainly because I love all dogs.
Literally, all of them.
In my entire life I’ve never met a dog I didn’t like.
My favourite, of course, are my fox red Labradors but I also have a soft spot for Portuguese water dogs, West Highland terriers and Scottie dogs, which are fast becoming an endangered species.
I’m also told the Korean Jindo dog is brilliant, unless it’s being served to you on a bed of garlic mash.
I do think however Crufts is missing a trick.
They are always on the lookout for the best-trained or the most-agile dogs.
Whereas I think the audience would also like to see a competition for the world’s muddiest dogs, or the most flatulent, or the most badly behaved.
It’s a dead cert that my two, Sansa and Arya, would win gold in that one.
FIX MEG? CALL AA
NetflixMeghan Markle in her new Netflix show With Love, Meghan[/caption]
OBVIOUSLY I’m not going to comment on Meghan Markle’s new television show.
Save to say that I wish, as never before, that AA Gill was still alive.
If you know, you know.
And I suspect that even The Sun’s brilliant TV reviewer Ally Ross would agree with me on that.
IT’S ALL RATHER FOGGY
GettyWeather forecasts especially matter when you are trying to grow crops[/caption]
EVER since I started farming I have paid meticulous attention to weather forecasts.
Because when you are trying to grow crops, they really matter.
And what I’ve learned is that it’s almost impossible to find two that are in alignment.
The Met Office says one thing, the BBC says another, and all the others have wildly different predictions as well.
But one thing is constant.
I don’t mean to be disloyal but The Sun’s forecast is always the gloomiest.
This weekend, for instance, it says it will be cloudy, and then on Monday, it will be cloudy again.
Oscar hits are a slog but this is Anora story
AlamyNot so bad Anora won five Oscars this year, above Mark Eydelshteyn and Mikey Madison[/caption]
HandoutMeanwhile, brilliant Thor: Ragnarok won none[/caption]
EVERY year the Oscars provide normal people with a handy guide about what films should be avoided.
If something wins anything in that festival of wokeness and orange, it’s almost always boring, worthy and terrible.
12 Years A Slave. Three Oscars. Crap.
Thor: Ragnarok. No Oscars. Brilliant.
Ordinarily then, I’d avoid Anora, which won five Oscars this year. Five is a sign of gigantic terribleness.
But I watched it accidentally this week and it’s not bad.
It’s a long way from A Bridge Too Far or Titanic or anything on nodding terms with epic.
But it’s a fairly inoffensive way of passing the time.
And I even laughed once.
A CRIME I’D FESS UP TO
GettyKing Charles compiled a list of his favourite tracks, and one is from Raye[/caption]
WHEN people in the public eye are asked to name their favourite band, they always make a fool of themselves.
Gordon Brown once said he liked Arctic Monkeys, and as we were all thinking: “I bet he bloody doesn’t”, he proved the point by failing to name a single one of their songs.
This week it was King Charles’s turn.
He’s compiled a list of his favourite tracks, and one is from a young lady called Raye, who penned the immortal chorus: “High, losing it, losing it, high, losing it In the hotbox”, which doesn’t sound very Charlesish at all.
If anyone ever asks me to name my favourite music, I’ll do what everyone else seems incapable of doing and be honest.
It’s Supertramp.
Crime Of The Century.
All of it.
If anyone asks me to name my favourite music, I’ll say it’s Supertramp… Crime Of The Century Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
