30/07/2014

We were up early as usual, which was just as well because at 06h45 the aged FIL pushed his alarm button. The control centre telephoned us, and reported that he had fallen. When we got there we found that this was not the case; he was still in bed. But he had pushed his button because nobody had arrived to give him breakfast. LSS retorted that it was not even seven o’clock yet, and the helper was only due at eight!

The aged FIL is becoming more and more confused regarding the time of day (which is not surprising as he sleeps most of the time). Although he has a bedside clock and a wristwatch, he last had an eye-test around twenty years ago, and we suspect his current spectacles are not up to the job. However, the most difficult thing lies in understanding him; not only does he have a strong local accent but these days he is pretty much mumbling. So we think that the control centre was unable to understand him properly, and presumed he had fallen over.

I trimmed a couple of oak tree branches which had been getting in the way of the tractor, and brought the wood back to join the pile waiting to be transformed into logs. In the late afternoon we bought another four hens as planned. In the evening we found that three of them had roosted quite happily inside with the others; the fourth had roosted rather forlornly on its own, on a small log in the middle of the pen. We picked that one up and manually put it on the roost.