Ostrich on the Hoof

[cromwell]

One question: did you have dinner later?

He had to Ally, like it or not! If Os hadn't eaten again later, MrsO would have known that he had been tucking in earlier. as it is, what she doesn't know won't hurt her!

[TheOstrich]

Spot on, Crommers.

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquistion …", but after time, you learn to anticipate ….

[Ally]

@ you two!

[TheOstrich]

“They say you’re never more than 6 feet away from one,” I remarked to Ossie.
“What,” replied the bird, “a McDonalds’ Big Breakfast?”
“No, Ossie.”
“With extra Hash Browns?” salivated the Ostrich
“No, silly bird – a rat!” *
“Oh,” said Ossie, looking crestfallen.

And yes, with this mild, wet and muggy winter, we have had a population explosion of rats in the town, especially as we have three rivers running through it. Judging from Gillingham’s Facebook page, they’re in your rubbish bags, gnawing through your decking - and dropping dead on our patio. Poor ole Ratty.

So how do you dispose of a dead rat? “Recycling bin?” I suggested to Mrs O.
“I don’t think so – what about Household Waste?”
Well, we bagged and dumped Ratty in that bin, but on due reflection, I didn’t think it entirely appropriate, and eschewing Mrs O’s suggestion of some nefarious night-time activity down the country park , I opted to give Ratty a decent Woodland Burial at the bottom of the garden (without undertakers services or due ceremony, thereby saving a packet in fees ).

Have you ever looked up at the contrails of a plane in the sky and wondering what exotic destination the lucky beggars were off to? (Not that you would ever get Ossie, kicking and squawking up in one ‘o they things, of course ). Well, Master O has recently showed me a rather nifty App called “Flightradar 24” and it displays a real time map of what planes are zooming over your house. So I tried it out earlier in the week, when the clear skies gave me an interesting sighting of a jet overhead, and lo and behold it came up as a FinnAir flight from Helsinki to Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic.
https://www.godominicanrepublic.com/puerto-plata/
The next one I spotted was a Jet2 plane from Malaga to the somewhat less exotic destination of Leeds. Or perhaps that was a return flight.

On Wednesday, Mrs O and I ventured out to the first 2020 monthly afternoon meeting of the Gillingham Historical Society, which packed out the Methodist Hall. The speaker was Julian Richards, an archaeologist and BBC television and radio presenter. He spent last summer heading a “dig” in the grounds of Shaftesbury Abbey (founded circa 888 by King Alfred) and utterly levelled in 1539 during the Reformation, on the orders of that dastardly Crommers , at which point in time it was a hugely wealthy nunnery). He gave a very entertaining talk on what they’d discovered in the way of the original layout and decorative floor tiling (they being his small team and some 400 local primary school children drafted in as “slave labour” ), and also remarked that they’d carried out a secondary dig at the bottom of the cliff on which the Abbey sits, concluding from the extremely varied “artefacts” they unearthed that Shaftesbury residents must have been tipping their rubbish over the precipice for at least the last 400 years! Obviously pre- all the recycling regulations. I wonder if there were many dead rats ….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Ri ... haeologist)

So to Saturday, and a 40-odd mile trip across county to my old stamping ground of Beaminster for a Dorset League game. I worked in that town for around 15 years but had no recollection of where the soccer ground was – it turned out to be down a track virtually opposite my old office. I never knew! The town has changed a fair bit since we moved away some 20 years ago – the Post Office and pharmacy are still across the road from my place of work (now reverted back to a town house) but the local stores and newsagents have both closed; the former is now an Indian restaurant. There seems to be quite a few up-market eateries around the place, and it was good to see the centre of the town looking thriving.

The soccer ground’s pavilion is a newish affair, all wood cladding, and a plaque indicated the “Beaminster Memorial Playing Field Community Centre and Sports Pavilion” was opened in 2010 by “Mr. Martin Clunes” who is a reasonably local resident as well as being an irascible Doctor. It was pretty spartan inside, but at least sported a hatch and a tea kettle. No dugouts adjacent to the pitch, but they did lay out two rows of four plastic chairs!

Beaminster’s opponents were the “Mighty Cranes” (Cranborne FC), who weren’t quite so mighty when I first saw them a couple of years ago on their own turf – they lost 2-11 to Dorchester Sports, which is still a record scoreline in my books . Today’s game was characterised by two excellent goalkeeping displays which certainly kept the score-line down, and a bit of niggle at one point that the referee correctly lammed in on with a couple of timely bookings. 1-1 at the interval, Cranborne’s no.8 all but broke the crossbar with a ferocious drive on 49m before his keeper, at the other end, somehow managed to divert a goal-bound pile-driver over the top. Good end-to-end stuff and a draw would have been a fair result but eight minutes from time, Cranborne clinched it when Cullen got through and slipped the ball under the home keeper's body. They should have scored a third in the final minute when awarded a penalty, but Conrad, concentrating hard, managed to place the spot-kick accurately against the post! A good game.

25/01/20 –Dorset Senior League (Step 8): Beaminster 1 Cranborne 2
Admission: free, no programme
Refreshments: well, to celebrate Burns Night, a pre-game breakfast of half a McSween Vegetarian Haggis (£2.88) …..
https://www.macsween.co.uk/products/del ... egetarian/
….. and this evening, we were supposed to be additionally celebrating the Chinese New Year of the Rat with a Pork ‘n Noodles, but Mrs O was fair knackered after spending all afternoon gassing with an old college friend, so in deference to both that and Ratty (deceased), I finished off the other half of the haggis ….
Oh, and a Snickers bar and cuppa at the match (£1.50)
Attendance: 21

* In 2012, a Dr Dave Cowan, leader of the wildlife programme at the Food and Environment Research Agency, analysed previous studies to try to estimate a total population of rats, and eventually concluded that you’re never more than 164 feet away from a rat – which is a darn sight more reassuring than 6 feet!

[Ally]

What a fantastically entertaining read.

Do you not like flying Ossie? Thanks for that app....perfect for Nerdy Norma me and her passion for planes.

[cromwell]

A very entertaining read Os, and it sounds like you saw an entertaining match as well.
Cromwell flattened a fair few things around here too, Os. Certainly Pontefract castle looked a bit second hand by the time he'd finished with it! Sandal castle also.
I remember reading that the civil war was in two parts. When the second half kicked off by the sneaky Royalists they just re-occupied the castles that they held the first time around. Old Ollie was not amused by this and after victory at full time made sure that they weren't going to pull that trick again!

[TheOstrich]

Do you not like flying Ossie?

The Ostrich is not known as the Largest Living Flightless Bird for nothing, tha' knows …..

[Kaz]

[TheOstrich]

No real news from the Nest this week; neither dead rodents nor cleaning equipment malfunctions. The Grand Town Roadworks Scheme has finally got underway, involving much racing around in dumper trucks and the laying out of around 400 brand new road cones, all conspiring to make driving around our metropolis extremely difficult. There is a constant low-level drone of discontent with all this on the Town’s Facebook Page, but most of the collective ire this week has been devoted to the silly sausage of a farmer up by the Showground whose sheep keep wandering out of his fields into the main road, creating both a road traffic hazard and a potential source of lamb chops.

So to Calne Town today (up in Wiltshire), the "Lilywhites", to watch the visiting Lebeq United FC, whom I believed to be the final team I needed to see to complete the Western Leagues , (although in hindsight I now discover this was fake news as a more detailed scrutiny of the Master Spreadsheet shows I haven’t caught up yet with Hengrove United , an omission I must attempt to remedy before the season’s out!)

A strange team, Lebeq (pronounced “Lee-beck” apparently). Their website home page is in Latin * and is of no help whatsoever ( website designers sometimes put Latin script in their templates to show the client what the resultant layout will look like, and if the client then fails to update the website ….. ) As far as I can glean, they were only formed in 2008, started a Saturday men’s team in the lowly Bristol & Suburban League, acquired a presumably wealthy backer with ambition, and rocketed up to the Step 7 Gloucestershire County League which they then won at the first time of asking. That gave them promotion to Step 6 and at this point the FA got involved, if I recall correctly, placing them in the prestigious Western League whilst telling their near neighbours Almondsbury, an established Western League club, that they would be shunted sideways into the extremely less prestigious Hellenic League. Almonsbury raised Merry Hell indicating they’d appeal to FIFA and/or the European Court of Human Rights at this injustice if necessary, and when the dust finally settled, both teams started this season in the Western League Division 1. It is worth noting at this point that the Hellenic League, which sort of covers Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Gloucestershire, has in recent years very much struggled to find teams, and the FA have given due warning that this coming Summer, certain clubs are going to be conscripted into the Hellenic whether they like it or not, so we may be in for an interesting close season!

Now Lebeq appear to have developed something of a reputation this season. There is a reference on social media to other clubs’ antipathy towards them, but why, I have no idea. On the other hand, they were involved in a strange incident a few weeks ago at Radstock where right at the end of the match, with the score at 2-2, the Lebeq players suddenly downed tools and walked off the pitch , claiming the referee was biased against them! The match was abandoned.

They arrived at Calne today with only a bare minimum of players. The team that took to the field, as far as I could glean, consisted of 10 players and their assistant manager – no substitutes on the bench. And they initially approached the match, it seemed to me, in a rather disinterested fashion which Calne actually found rather difficult to play against. The Lilywhites are leading the league at the moment but have found it hard to score goals – the key to their success this season has been the defence which had only conceded 14 goals in 21 games. They got a breakthrough after 22m when Stuart Windsor rocketed home from 10 yards after Lebeq had failed to clear the ball, but then didn't really create many meaningful chances. Lebeq created none at all.

Midway through the second half, frustration crept in and some fairly agricultural tackling led to a bit of a fracas which resulted in one booking for each side, following which a Lebeq player was very lucky to remain on the pitch after taking an opponent out on the touchline. Seemingly heading for a rather ground-out 1-0 victory, out of the blue, we finished the game with 4 goals in 11 minutes. Calne’s Jamail Chevolleau scored direct from a corner, the ball curling in at the far post, before a pin-point cross was met by Windsor with a thumping downwards header to make it 3-0. A Lebeq defender then made a forward run down the left hand side, cut inside and shot underneath the home keeper, before Calne’s Sol Pryce thumped a direct free kick from the edge of the area round the wall and just inside the net. Overall, a rather strange game with quite an unexpected conclusion.

01/02/20 –Western League Division 1 (Step 6): Calne Town 4 Lebeq United 1
Admission: £3, programme £1, raffle £1
Refreshments: quite a nice pasty for a reasonable £1.50, and a minestrone cuppa-soup £1
Boutique clothing : it was blinking cold in the wind today so I treated myself to a Calne FC “Lilywhites” black and white scarf – 100% acrylic and double-knit thermal – for £5. It certainly raised Mrs O’s eyebrows …..
Attendance: officially 86. I would just note I personally counted 54 - twice!

* Their home page reads “Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore fugiat nulla pariatur.” According to Google, this very roughly translates as “A pain in the ar$e gives no resultant pleasure” …..
How very true!

[cromwell]

That was a win with the snap (old Yorkshire word for food) Ossie!
Great read and I hope all the sheep are ok!