Sunday, July 29th .....

I finally watched the Olympics Opening Ceremony and didn’t it go on forever!  There were lots of high points but I think it dragged on a bit in some places.  I liked the introduction with the children’s choirs from the four ‘kingdoms’ – it was a bit disconcerting to see one of the Scottish singers, clearly of African origin singing his heart out  - ‘who fought and died furr ye’r wee bit hill and glen’, in his best Scottish accent.

There were lots of kids in the ceremony but am I the only one who cringes when he sees children expected to perform in their pyjamas?  I know there might be times when it fits the context but it’s just a bit sleazy for me.  I have visions of dirty old men furtively recording the performance for future viewing.

The concept of transforming the idyllic English countryside into the Industrial Revolution was brilliant – the way the chimneys rose out of the ground was fantastic and the clumsy dancing of the mill owners was great.  Again, there were so many elements, it was hard to notice everything and I’m sure some ideas just passed me by.  I was embarrassed when Sir Paul Mccartney got out of sync at the beginning of his song but I suppose that’s life.

Who would have thought they would feature the music from Chariots of Fire?  What could have been a sorry cliché was saved by the involvement of Rowan Atkinson, the man with the rubber face.  Hijacking the famous scene where Eric Liddell, Harold Abrahams and others ran through the waves was a delight.  To me, this was the epitome of British humour at its best.  I gather the organisers decided to shorten the ceremony and part of that was deleting BMX riders.  Thank goodness for that!

The lighting of the cauldron was also terrific.  It seems that Olympic organisers have to try to outdo each other in their method of lighting the cauldron.  Who could forget the arrow at Barcelona or Cathy Freeman wading across a pool of water at the Sydney Games?  The idea at London of not, in fact, having a cauldron but constructing it on site during the ceremony will be hard to beat (but I’m sure somebody will try in the future).

Like many others I watch the game to see top athletes doing their best and, although I like to see Australia win, I don’t want to see interminable replays of our successes at the expense of whatever else is going on.  It was marvellous that the Women’s Relay won and there are terrific stories in that success, but I think it’s been replayed every half hour since then.  And I’m also disappointed that WIN has the contract to broadcast the Games in Australia.  We see and hear too much of Eddie McGuire and Karl Stefanovic as it is without having them in our faces while we try to enjoy the performances of the world’s best.  There are some top sports commentators in Australia but Eddie and Karl ain’t among them. And what sort of twit is Leila McKinnon, commenting that the Queen had seen everything in her 60-year reign and that’s why she was looking bored?

Oh, well, that’s only Day 1; there’s a whole lot still to happen.

Saturday, July 28th .....

I got up this morning to watch the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games.  I missed the spectacle part but was just in time to see the parade of athletes.  What a waste of time this is!  The other day I saw a replay of the entry of athletes at the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 and everyone was immaculatelyy dressed and marched shoulder-to-shoulder in precise lines.  And most peoeple were of a similar height, which is also tidier.  Nowadays you've got basketballers mixing with people who are smaller.  Not a good look!  Today's entrances are a shambles with athletes sky-larking and mucking around.  You'd think the Games were about them. 

I've just got used to the new countries which have appeared in recent years - Kazakhstan, Slovenia, Uzbekhistan and so on, but now there's a whole new lot I never knew existed.  Apparently, Cape Verde become a sovereign country in the 1970's but I must have missed that.  I've heard of the Cape Verde Islands, of course, but didn't realise it was a country in its own right.  And Comoros - broke away from France in the 1960's and is now independent.  I missed that, too.

These little countries concern me.  Without significant natural resources or great tourism potential, how do they survive?  I can understand the driving need for independence from an oppresive overlord but at what cost.  I suspect that this push in the past 65 years for countries to break apart might be balanced in the next century by amicable amalgamations of neighbouring states.  Sometimes bigger is better.  Let's start the process by joining hands with New Zealand, Papua-New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands and becoming the Federated States of Oceania.  Maybe Tuvalu, Kiribas and Vanuatu might be interested, too.

Friday, July 27th .....

I had a meeting this morning with a farmer who is also involved in sheep dog training.  It was very foggy when I arrived at his farm and I had to paddle through mud (and other stuff) in his driveway before I reached the house.  I was welcomed by the barking of his eight sheep dogs.  I am helping him put together an application for a grant to help organise sheepdog  trials in conjunction with the Craft Fair in 2013.

I’ve seen sheepdog  trials on TV and in real life but I had no idea of the importance sheepdog training still has in the work of the modern sheep farmer.  Michael, the farmer, tells me that he runs training sessions across Tasmania and has no trouble finding candidates.  Many are young people training to be shepherds, but some are just people who have a couple of acres and a few pet sheep to keep the grass down.  Training a dog is a great hobby.

The trials run over the four days of the Craft Fair and need about 250 sheep, which they borrow from local farms.  Each dog gets three fresh sheep to work, then they are taken back to the farm.  The animals are worth about $200 each, and the farmer provides them at no charge, so they’re looked after very well.

Michael also talked about how farmers are becoming more interested in understanding how sheep think (not very deeply, I would have thought).  It used to take three men to load sheep into a truck, using sheer physical force.  Now, a NZ farmer has invented a 1200mm long ramp which the sheep have to cross as they approach the truck.  Once they reach the top of the ramp and put their front legs down, they are in an uncomfortable position so bring their rear legs down as well.  To keep their balance, they have to move forward and find themselves in the truck - no problem.

He had lots of other stories about handling sheep and cattle, and the problems farmer have in growing crops.  He used to grow potatoes for McCains but gave it up because of the damage being done to the soil.  After five or six consecutive crops, he said that the soil was like concrete and it would take seven years of nurturing to get it back to a reasonable condition.  And all the time McCains is pushing to reduce the contract price so that it becomes hardly viable.  One of the reasons that McCains is moving its production to New Zealand is that they’ll be starting the cycle with a new group of farmers who haven’t experienced the heartbreak of seeing the destruction of their land so that MacDonalds can sell their fries at a rock-botttom price.  The farmer might get $200 per tonne of potatoes; by the time they are processed, cooked and served, they bring in $3000 per tonne.  If 5c were added to the cost of a price of a bag of MacDonalds fries, McCains could afford to pay the farmer an extra $50 per tonne and we would have more people staying in the industry.

Tuesday, July 24th .....

Last night was the regular meeting of the Board of Giant Steps. I’d had warning that it was to be the Election of Officers and I should be prepared to be nominated. In the end, I found myself Treasurer. Now, I’ve been Treasurer of organizations before but being Treasurer of Giant Steps doesn’t mean keeping a set of books and presenting monthly reports of Income and Expenditure. The books are kept by a professional bookkeeper (by the way, bookkeeper is the only word in the English language where three sets of double letters follow each other, oo-kk-ee) and the job of the Treasurer is to keep an eye on how the school is going and recommend to the Board whether particular financial decisions should be made.

I was told that my background as an accountant made me qualified for the job. What a joke! My accounting experience occurred in the early 1960’s and was more Charles Dickens than Price, Waterhouse. I used a fountain pen rather than a computer and always went home with inky fingers. In those days, the practice was double-entry bookkeeping where everything was entered twice, once in the debit column and once in the credit. There were three columns in our ledgers, one each for £, s and d. We weren’t allowed to use green ink which was reserved for auditors.

My first job was with a bus company and part of my duties was to count the money brought in by the drivers at the end of their shift. It was a filthy job and was mostly coin. A good day’s takings from one bag rarely reached £50. Of course, the driver might only earn between £5 and £6 per day. As a Trainee Accountant, I earned £10.4.6 per week. Luxury!

I then went to a department store where I really did keep the books. It was an old-fashioned store which still used a pneumatic cash transfer system. Every few minutes in our office we would hear the whoosh of a cylinder arriving from one department or another. One of the girls would open it, take out the money, put in the change and send it on its way back to the right department. In between doing this and gossiping, the four or five girls worked on what were called accounting machines – like typewriters but with a 3-foot carriage and dozens of keys.

One thing I do remember is that there are only two jokes about accountants. One is about the constipated accountant who couldn’t budget at night but managed to work it out in the morning and the other one is so weak, it doesn’t even make accountants laugh. I can’t help thinking that, if I had worked as a plumber for five years I would be just as qualified to be the Treasurer of Giant Steps.

Sunday, July 22nd.....

Another quiet day.  Marilyn has a cold and is miserable so is spending the day in bed.  It’s often the only way to short-circuit an ailment.  Every piece of advice you hear about a cold is to give in to it, rest and it will clear in time. Jamie is finishing off an assignment for his IT course so I’ve taken the time to cook some zucchini pickle.

I’ve only ever cooked pickle once before: in 1975, we had a surplus of pears so I found a recipe for Pear and Fennel Chutney.  It wasn’t bad but I haven’t done anything like that since.  The zucchini pickle has turned out very well so I’m going to attack Bread and Butter Cucumbers tomorrow.  I’m using the Margaret Fulton Cookbook which has a strong Scottish influence.  Can you believe it has recipes for Finnan Haddie and Girdle Scones?  Still, there’s also Coquilles St Jacques a l’ail and Fettuccine Verde alla Gargiulo, so it’s not too tartan.  Tonight, we’re having Curried Scallops so we looked more than once at the Coquilles recipe but decided it might have too much garlic.

We’re having some trouble with possums.  For several nights now, we’ve been wakened by crashing noises from the back verandah.  I thought they might be attracted to birdseed that Jamie keeps on the shelf, but this morning I found a box of UHT milk had been punctured in one corner and knocked over.  We have got into the habit of using the shelves on the verandah for storing milk, OJ, soda water and so on – things which take up too much room in the pantry.  Sadly, we’ll have to make other arrangements for the milk.

The box, of course, was empty and most of it had dripped down into one of my wellington boots.  Typical!  What might have been a reasonably easy clean-up has the added problem of sour milk in my boots and, once the smell has established itself, there’s no getting rid of it.  Just as well that wellies are designed, not only to keep out the water, but also to keep in the smell (with thanks to Billy Connolly for his timeless lyrics to The Wellie Song).

Friday, July 20th .....

We’ve had a day of cooking.  Marilyn came home with a shopping bag full of lemons so I turned some of them into Lemon Butter.  I found a couple of recipes on the internet so I made a batch of each to compare them.  No contest ... one was sweeter than the other so that will get the flick.  I’ve started to use the microwave more and more when I make jams and so on and it’s magic.  The first batch today only took three minutes to cook, the second took five.  When I look back on the days of double boilers and constant stirring, I appreciate advances in technology even more.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been making various soups to get us through the winter chills.  A $2 pumpkin from a roadside stall will make 2 batches.  Sometimes we add potatoes or sweet potatoes for variety but the basic recipe is always good.  I’ve made similar soups with different bases: broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, carrots, etc.  We sometimes replace the onion with a leek and try different herbs and spices, and even cheese.

This week, I found a recipe for Cream of Cauliflower soup with grated parmesan and mustard.  It’s a Neil Perry recipe and I found it on a QANTAS site: someone saying they had it in First Class on an A380 and wanted to make it at home.  It is fantastic.  Marilyn brought a recipe for Curried Carrot soup home from Mudgee and it’s good too, but I’m particularly fond of a Turnip Soup with Bacon. That’s the one I made today and Marilyn is making Roasted Pumpkin and Thyme with Gruyere Cheese.

There’s not much to look forward to in a Tasmanian winter so, if we can find pleasure in a series of hearty soups, that’s all to the good.

As an aside: every day I realise how the world is moving further and further away from where I am.  I was sitting in the Pharmacists (we older folk do this more and more often) and noticed a little box on the bottom shelf with the word Marijuana on it.  No, it wasn’t the dreaded weed but a do-it-yourself detection kit so you can make sure you won’t trigger the police drug-testing apparatus if you’re pulled over when you’re driving home after a party. It wasn’t like this in my day!

Wednesday, July 18th .....

I’m listening to Judith Durham being interviewed on the radio and it raises so many memories of entering adulthood in those rather innocent days of the 1960’s.  Judith was born in the same year as I was and we both turned 18 in 1961.  At that time, she was on the road to international stardom and I was aiming for a career as an accountant.  By 1965, I had realised I needed a change of direction and started training as a teacher, and Judith, with The Seekers, had an international #1 hit, I’ll Never Find Another You. She's not the fresh-faced girls she was in the 1960's but none of us is.

I hadn’t remembered that Judith went to school in Hobart, in fact at Fahan, and had her first opportunities in Music and Drama there.  Fahan had been established in the midst of the Great Depression by two remarkable women with very progressive ideas.  I don’t know whether they knew Winifred West of Frensham but the schools were founded on similar ideals: that women should be known for what they can do rather than who they are married to.

Miss Audrey Morphett, one of the Principals, wrote a play each year for the school to perform and one year, Judith Durham was cast as the Principal Rat in The Pied Piper of Hamelin.  It was performed at the Theatre Royal in Hobart.  The other famous pupil who was at Fahan at the same time as Judith was Robyn  Nevin. In the photograph, Judith is front row, second from left; Robyn is front row, far right. Robyn went on from Fahan to NIDA, a member of the first intake in 1959 … and the rest is history.

Saturday, July 14th .....

Marilyn and I watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel yesterday and really enjoyed it.  The actors are familiar and people like Judy Dench and, especially, Bill Nighy have a magic presence. Of course, it was mildly racist and Indians could take offence at the stereotyping, but it was quite sympathetic too.

I mentioned the other day how much I enjoyed quotes and this movie was full of them.  I had to write them down.

“If I can’t pronounce it, I won’t eat it.”

"Let me through, my brother is a doctor."

“We have a saying in India: everything will be all right in the end.  And if everything is not all right, it is not yet the end.”

“It’s our 40^th wedding anniversary and we haven’t worked out to mark the occasion” “How about a minute’s silence.”

The rain continues in Tasmania and the ground is waterlogged.  The grass is not growing quickly but I would love a few days of sunshine to dry it out so I could mow it before it gets too thick.  I think back to last Spring when it was a metre tall and took days to cut down.  We have to avoid that at all cost.

Thursday, July 12th .....

Every town has its characters and I heard yesterday about Kenny Gee who is well-known in Deloraine and the subject of many conversations. I’m not sure if that’s how he spells his name but there are lots of Gees in Tasmania.  The only other Kenny G I know of plays the saxophone.

The Deloraine Kenny lived with his Mum until she died.  Then he surprised everybody by selling her house and buying an enormous caravan and a Land Cruiser to pull it.  He went off to the mainland for a while but, a bit later, he was back in town.  The caravan was too big for the free camping spot in town so he parked it just outside the Council Works Depot, clearly there for the long-term.  Eventually, he was moved on and he was next heard of at a picnic area under the Batman Bridge on the East Tamar.  Before long, he had bought some chooks and was settling in. 

There are No Camping signs all over the place but the Council usually turns a blind eye to the occasional overnighter but chooks are a bit much, so he was moved on again.  His next move was to a picnic ground mid-way between Deloraine and Devonport.  Again, No Camping, so the Council heavies had to move him on again.  By this stage, he had three separate Councils off-side.

After another stint in Deloraine, he tried the Batman Bridge again but this time he tried to clear some scrub by setting fire to it and the police moved in.  He’s back in Deloraine again and causing the Council no end of trouble.  His 4WD is at the Auto Electrician’s who won’t give it back to Kenny until he pays the bill.  And, without a 4WD, he can’t move his caravan.  Stalemate!

The Council man is tearing his hair out, especially as he’s been saddled with the job of evicting Kenny because the man who should be doing it is on leave.  I reckon Kenny is winning this one. He certainly hasn’t paid rent to anyone in years.

Wednesday, July 11th .....

I’m home alone today.  Jamie is at work, of course, and Marilyn is baby-sitting Freya, the 6-month old baby of the Principal of Giant Steps and his Filipina wife.  It’s raining outside and I’m miserable with a cold.  I have an appointment this afternoon in Deloraine so I’ll have to give myself a shake and get organised.

Jamie and Marilyn are planning a trip to the Philippines in September.  Jamie has been building a relationship with the sister of one of our Filipina friends and has been invited over to Manila to meet her.  Her name is Xenia and she is a nurse, currently working in Dubai. They made contact through Facebook and have been conversing ever since.  Her family owns a rice farm in the Albay province in the southern part of Luzon but her two brothers have a house in Calamba where most of our Filipino friends live.  Xenia is very pretty and seems keen to get to know Jamie better.

Xenia was one of the bridesmaids at the wedding we went to in 2010, so Marilyn and I have met her.  I’m sorry to say I have no memory of that but she says she remembers us. I’ve attached a photograph of her in her bridesmaids dress.  It’s not a good copy but the best I have. 

 Apparently, Xenia’s parents will be in Calamba at that time and have invited Marilyn and me to visit as well.  I can’t get away but Marilyn is keen so I made the bookings last night.  September is a busy month for Rotary in the Philippines and we’ve been there several times in that month.  There’s a Rotary function almost every night and Marilyn just loves the dressing up and the contact with new people.  She’ll stay with our friend, Kit; we have our own room there.

I don’t know where this is going but I hope it all works out as Jamie hopes.

Tuesday, July 10th .....

Don’t you just love our cousins from over the ditch.  I noted a tiny paragraph in the Sunday newspaper about a Kiwi who lost his sight when he put a nailgun to his head to test if it could pierce bone.  He pulled the trigger and it had enough power to drive the nail into his skull, pinning his beanie to his head and ending up behind his nose.  Just wonderful! Well done, Bro.

It made me think that he might be in line for a Darwin Award.  These are awarded each year to the humans who make the best effort to improve the gene pool by taking their own lives in interesting ways.  The 2012 awards make exciting reading:

Eighth Place   -  In Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.

Seventh Place   -  A 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally zoned when he ran", accidentally jogged off a 100-foot high cliff on his daily run.

Sixth Place   -  While at the beach, Daniel Jones, 21, dug an 8 foot hole for protection from the wind and had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom, when it collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand. People on the beach used their hands and shovels trying to get him out but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him. Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Fifth Place   -  Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed as he fell through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burglarizing. Death was caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth to keep his hands free rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor.

Fourth Place   -  Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.

Third Place   -  After stepping around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door, a man walked into H&J Leather & Firearms intent on robbing the store. The shop was full of customers and a uniformed officer was standing at the counter. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.

The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, and several customers also drew their guns and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt.

HONORABLE MENTION
Paul Stiller, 47, and his wife Bonnie were bored just driving around at 2 A.M. so they lit a quarter stick of dynamite to toss out the window to see what would happen. Apparently they failed to notice that the window was closed.


RUNNER UP
Kerry Bingham had been drinking with several friends when one of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped from a local bridge in the middle of traffic. The conversation grew more excited, and at least 10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30 AM.  Upon arrival at the midpoint of the bridge, they discovered that no one had brought a bungee rope. Bingham, who had continued drinking, volunteered and pointed out that a coil of lineman's cable lay nearby. They secured one end around Bingham's leg and then tied the other to the bridge. His fall lasted 40 feet before the cable tightened and tore his foot off at the ankle. He miraculously survived his fall into the icy water and was rescued by two nearby fishermen. Bingham's foot was never located.

AND THE WINNER IS....
Zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn , Germany) fed his constipated elephant 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up giant finally got relief. Investigators say ill- fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded.The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected (expletive deleted) knocked Mr Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock as the elephant continued to drop 200 pounds of sh#t on top of him. It seems to be just one of those freak accidents that proves... 'Sh*t happens'

Friday, July 6th .....

Tomorrow night is the Rotary Changeover Dinner when a new President is installed.  I’ve been asked to write a poem for the occasion but Iack inspiration and might have to renege.  I’ll have another go this evening and tomorrow morning, and if I can string a few verses together I’ll be happier.

It’s been three weeks since we returned from our trip and i’m starting to browse the internet looking for ideas for the next.  There are some nice Christmas cruises to New Zealand and the South Pacific and it might be time for another trip to the Philippines.  Because we were so happy with the accommodation we had in the Osaka, I thought I would check the timeshare website to see if I could another deal like that but they seem to be few and far between (as you might expect).

I did come across a couple of nice resorts in the Philippines at Tagaytay, in Manila and Boracay.  The trouble is our friends in the Philippines don’t like us going off on our own, worried about our safety.  I had another look at Japan and found a number of possibilities.  Nagoya had two places, Kagoshima was another possibility but the best looking resort was in a town called Fukushima – why do I know that name?  Ah, yes, the resort probably has a good view of the nuclear power stations.  Maybe not the best choice.

Wednesday, July 4th .....

American Independence Day!  It’s easy to make snide remarks about the Americans but we must wish them all the best on their special day. 

I have to talk about glasses today.  I’ve needed to wear reading glasses since about 1990 and I can’t count how many pairs I have destroyed or lost in that time.  If I had to wear them all the time, it might be different but I only put them on to read and have to take them off at other times ... and when I take them off, I forget about them so they fall to the floor or are sat upon or slip into crevices where they can’t be seen. Marilyn just shrugs her shoulders when I complain that I’ve lost my glasses, (but it doesn’t stop her borrowing a pair of mine when she can’t find hers).

Usually I have about half a dozen pairs on the go at any one time: a pair in the car, the caravan, my computer case, on the desk, and so on.  When I had my eyes checked in September, I had two more pairs made to top up my supply.  And I’ve been pretty good – not a single pair misplaced since then.  Or at least not until last week.

I was vaguely aware that a pair of my new glasses was missing but I wasn’t worried ; there were several other pairs to fall back on and I expected that the lost ones would turn up at some time.  And they did – I noticed them yesterday afternoon, buried in the ground near where I park the car.  I could just see the top of the rim peeking through the surface.  Clearly they had fallen on to the ground and the car had run over them, forcing them vertically into the dirt.  I couldn’t pull them out with the fingers and had to get a spade to chop out the whole sod. 

I thought they were deceased; maybe I should have left them buried.  But apart from being a bit bent and one of the lenses having popped out, there was nothing broken or missing so I rinsed the remains and took them in to the optometrist for a diagnosis.  “Leave them with me and come back in an hour. “  I can’t believe it; she worked a miracle and they look like new again and, best of all, there was no charge. 

Tuesday, July 3rd .....

There’s been great excitement about the incident on Q & A last night.  For those who haven’t caught it, during the show one of the panellists slumped forward in a coma.  The reaction of the other people on the panel is causing some comment.  Nobody knew what was going on and I suppose many of them, like me, thought the dropping of his head to the table was intended to make a statement about what was being said.  Not so, it was a genuine blackout.

The first one to move in support was Greg Combet who left his seat to help.  The moderator, Tony Jones, in the tradition of ‘the show must go on’, said: “We’ll just take you off the panel, Simon, and you can wander around out the back.”  He’ll never live that down.  Simon was taken to hospital where he was admitted for observation.

The best reaction came from Sophie Mirabella who was sitting next to Simon.  As he slid forward to the table she pulled back and lifted her shoulder so she could hide behind it.  No Good Samaritan instinct there, Sophie!  As one TV tweet said this evening: “If I ever need First Aid, I hope Sophie Mirabella is not first on the scene.”

Monday, 2nd July .....

Today, I had twenty minutes to spare before an appointment so I stopped at a little picnic spot in St Leonards to read my book.  It’s quite a pretty area with a stream running through and it’s popular with campervans looking for a free overnight stop.  Although I wasn’t eating anything, I was mobbed by a flock of chooks expecting a handout.

 I’ve seen seagulls, pigeons, ducks and even pelicans scrounging, but I’ve never seen an organised flock of domestic chickens before.

And these weren’t your average White Leghorn or Rhode Island Red; there were some quite exotic breeds among them.  I suppose someone thinks he owns them but they certainly have a life of their own outside the chook pen.

I was sent a Grammar Quiz for my amusement so, of course, I gave it a go, expecting a reasonable score.  I’ve been called a Grammar Nazi, and used to get quite pedantic when I was checking school reports in the days when that was an important part of my work.  Marilyn will tell you that I’m still prone  to correcting TV presenters when they use ‘less’ instead of ‘fewer’ and I have to hold myself in check in case I correct shop assistants and taxi drivers.  So, imagine my dismay when I got three questions wrong!  Apparently, I don’t understand the difference between the usage of ‘that’ and ‘which’.  I had always thought that they were interchangeable and that ‘which’ was a word used more by better-educated people.  Not so!  I’ve since looked it up and have tucked the rule away in the back of my brain so I don’t show my ignorance in the future.

This is the link to the quiz.  Give it a go.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304870304577488881827650056.html?KEYWORDS=grammar+quiz