How Odd…

One of the benefits of having reasonably small feet is that there are quite often really good shoe bargains to be found. I found some Dr Marten sandals on a German website which were an absolute bargain. They were a very old design however, so old, in fact, that they were a model that was made in Northampton rather than China. I quite fancied another pair as I must have walked hundreds of miles in my last pair and as the ones I found were cheaper than a pair of cheap Crocs, I thought I’d give them ago. However, I needed to double check the size, so we were looking for my old Dr Marten sandals, which I haven’t worn since I broke my ankle. I had worn them here, however, as I had them repaired at the village cobbler when we first arrived.

Ian found my old Dr Marten sandals in the barn, covered in dust, debris and spiders. We cleaned them off -found the size which was very faint on each shoe – only to find that they were different sizes. One was a 3 and the other a 4. Looking at them, it is very apparent that they are different sizes and that I had bought an odd pair years ago. But how very odd that I hadn’t ever noticed!

Life with a parrot also continues to be odd. Larry is a funny little chap but it is so difficult to understand parrot. I am sure he does tricks for us, however we’re not sure which are tricks and which is just odd behavior. For instance, he will take a piece of lettuce from us, shake his head and fling it out of his cage. He also opens the door to his cage and stands on the edge looking triumphant. We put clothes pins on the door to keep it closed, however Larry happily removes these. He now has a bulldog clip to contend with, and so far he is unable to remove that.

We found that he likes peanuts in their shells. We bought a bag and he seemed to recognise the bag and got quite excited. He happily takes a peanut from us and then drops it on the floor for future consumption. We are trying to train him to realize that little sqeaky noises are good and huge squawky noises are bad.  Needless to say the pattern is like this – Larry makes little squeaky noise, we say ‘well done’, and Larry makes a huge squawk in recognition.

We went asparagus picking on Saturday and had asparagus on toast for breakfast on Sunday. We had a great time, we cycled up to the olive groves the other side of the railway track, had a picnic pasty and then tracked down the first asparagus of the season. The warm weather has meant that the asparagus is early this year. We have already seen people armed with bundles of green stalks, so we were hopeful that we’d find enough for a meal. With so many classes it is going to be difficult this year to get much asparagussing in, however we’ve been clearing the freezer anyway, so we can store the surplus which we have such high hopes for…