HKCs 1-3

For those of you who ever wondered, here are the HKCs (HunterKillerCats)

The small fluffy one is HKC1, Senior Cat, now 16.  I brought her home from a farm with her (now departed) sister when she was just a few weeks old.
The larger tabby is HKC2, now about 13.  I wanted a Maine Coon and couldn't afford one.  However, a friend of a friend in Buckinghamshire owned a siamese queen who had escaped and been Seen To by a vicar's Maine Coon tom ... and HKC2 was one of 6 resultant offspring.  I've always referred to HKC2 as a Tycoon and his mother as a GI Bride. He can take out full-grown squirrels, pheasants, weasels, rabbits, rats and on one hideous occasion also a small snake.  He's steadied down in his mature years, thank goodness.
The ginger job is HKC3 - of indeterminate age.  He walked in one Christmas nearly 6 years ago and we hadn't the heart to turn him out.  He and HKC2 had just one rather bloody-furry fight and thereafter settled down together.  Bit of a boys' club really ...

Just to prove they like one another:

Humour me, just one more Cat Photo and then I'll let you off the hook.

This is HKC1 sunning herself:

OK, that's it, thank you for looking.  Now you know who I'm going on about when HKCs 1-3 come into conversation.

I'm saving Hoss for another day!

Sunshine Award

Now there's a pretty thing!
Thank you, Tosh (OK, Patsy) for this.
Apparently I'm sposed to tell you some random things
about myself and then hand the Sunshine Award on to
somebody else.  Tosh wrote about FeelGood factors and, as most of me is fairly random anyway, I'll just write you a short rhyme about small things that make me feel good:

A sneeze in the morning
An owl in the night
A rainbow by moonshine
A merlin in flight.
Laughter and silliness,
Talking with friends,
Well-written novels with
tidied-up ends.
Views of the wild Moor,
stags in the gorse,
Rides up the Beacon
on Dear Hoss - of course!

Actually, on a good day, just about anything makes me feel good - and even on a bad day, a smile from a stranger or a robin landing on the gatepost or even just the sight of dew on a spider's web can make the day better.

The trick seems to be: you have to want to feel good. 


Look for the good in everything and somewhere you'll find it. Sometimes putting on your glasses can help, however.

And now for The Clever Bit - can I follow Tosh's instructions on how to pass this Award on to three amigos of mine - Shirley, Baggy and Gail.  Shirley's the Proper Poet among my friends, Baggy is the Article Writer (and Daily Blogger) and Gail is Doing A Degree and doesn't get much time to blog at all these days. She once passed an Award on to me but I didn't think I deserved it so I didn't take it ... and anyway I didn't know how to make it appear AND it was on my original - now obsolete BlogThoughtsFromAbroad. Its demise is a long story ... to do with hacking and losing accounts and other IT sadnesses which Did Not Make Me Feel Good.

But being positive - now I've got THIS blog instead.  Must use it more (Moor) often or it'll be going rusty.

Onward March!

There goes another month, and although Winter has not completely been put to bed and indeed there was a frost this morning, the worst of the cold should be over.  That said, I never dump my thermals until the end of April.

The ground has dried up much sooner than usual and I think I've missed the 'roller window' for the fields - that's the time between the very wet ground being too cloggy for the rollers and then, sometimes only days later, it being too dry for the rolling to do any good.

The snowdrops are going over, the primroses have started sprouting in the hedgerow banks and the daffodils - those that didn't flower in December! - are out and blowing around in the high winds.  I even found a cluster of daffydowndillies up in a remote south-facing hillside on Grabbist and have been wondering since how they got there.

Greenfire has started along the Exmoor lanes.  Just a tiny wavelet of grass below the hedges will soon be followed by strands of nettle and wildflower growth and in a month or so, a mass verdant climb-away will light the hawthorn buds.  When they open fully, come May, the whole world will be properly alive again.

Lambing is over for one of my friends and only just beginning for another.  Farmer Joanna wanted hers out of the way early - she's gone to Australia for a wedding now - and Farmer Caroline's season kicked off at the weekend. No signs in either flock of the awful viral disease that has struck this year - Schmallenberg - but 121 farms in the south of England have now had cases confirmed and there's nothing anyone can do except hope.  The virus, believed to be midge-borne, causes deformities in lambs, which can only be detected at lambing time.  It also affects cattle but so far the reports have been mostly in the sheep community.

No Exmoor pony foals yet - it's a bit early, although they have been known to appear at this time.   A notable one, later called 'Bat-and-Ball' was born on the village cricket pitch about ten years ago. His mother has a habit of finding great spots to drop her excess baggage!

That's your lot for now.

Oh no, not quite: Patsy has nominated me for something called a 'Sunshine Award' and although I'm not sure I deserve such a thing - let's face it I'm hardly a regular Blogger - I would quite like to accept it. But before I do I'd better find out:
a) how I cart it over here and
b) what exactly I'm meant to do afterwards.

Something about putting Things About Myself on the web for any passing T,D or H to read and something about Passing On the Sunshine.  We'll see!  This little backwater blog of mine doesn't get many passers-by and I'm quite happy with that. It is, after all, just a Memory-Jog- Blog for the various Celiae Personae (don't ask, but I am Not Alone and neither are you!) rather than anything more serious or useful.