"Can you not roll in sheep poo?" and other tales

Are sheep colour blind? Seriously are they? I imagine as country type I should Know stuff like that, I don't though, so I ponder and ask. So if anyone knows, let me know, even Google doesn't seem to know and Google knows like totally everything.

The reason for my question? It's OK don't worry it's not like I've become some crazed sheep stalker just wondered based on recent sheep activity. Picture the scene, me and scruffy dog out for our prosaic lunch time wander, approaching the top field and saw, oh joy electric fence, no sign of animals though so that's fine. So we continue our rather prosaic wander or rather I Do. It took a few minutes before I wondered where's the damn dog. A quick look over the shoulder showed me where she was, having a roll, in , oh yes you guessed it, sheep poo. What's a girl to do? Well I approached it in the highly sane way of reading the dog the riot act. "Seriously, do you have to do it, do you, rolling in sheep poo, ffs Lucy I mean, rolling in sheep poo, wtf". It went on for some time. It went on until I became aware that the dog, who was happily wagging her tail was looking past me. She was doing this because some bored working from home village bloke was approaching from behind. He was chortling, he presumably had heard my full sheep poo related rantings. Oh dear.

Decided to confine contact with village bloke to a vague grimace and plodded on, with a very happy scruff dog in tow, after all in her mind she smells damn fine. Trust me you only realise how pongy sheep poo is when your dog has rolled in it.

And what of the sheep? Ah well they had been sheltering behind the hedge at the top end of the field but emerged when they saw me and scruff bag and decided to follow us, yep all of them, sheep like following stuff, other sheep mainly bu tin this case scruff bag. Not sure if it was because she was exuding "aura de sheep poo" but it seemed they'd decided she was their spiritual sheep leader, even though she's ginger. Which is the reason for the are sheep colour blind question. Problem is now, every time we cross the field it's the same, followed by sheep, all of them. Will have to buy a Bo Peep hat at this rate.

and then came Owl

Well he just turned up one night did Owl. Pretty sure he turned up having discovered that our garden for some unfathomable reason is some sort of mouse hotel. How do I know this? Well two reasons, the first being that Cooper (the bandy legged cat) frequently brings me little mouse offerings, in varying degrees of life. On a good day it's still squeaking and intact so a good wail of "Drop it you little *$!*er" allows for mouse rescue. On a bad day, well, decapitated mouse with dripping entrails. I've told him now on numerous occassions that it's best to show his love in other ways, say it with flowers, say it with chocolates, hell even a dubious smelling perfume would be better. But no it's mice, oh or the occassional bird. This is the main reason that Cooper will never, ever get a cat flap. The other way I know that I appear to be running a garden retreat for middle aged mice is that they pop up regularly in the compost bin. I actually apologised to one when I dropped some potato peelings on his head one evening. Oh dear, no hope really.

Anyway as I said, I know for sure this is Mouse central and Owl knew it too, so owl (or perhaps I should call him Wol?) established base camp somewhere nearby and our garden became the Owl equivalent of McDonald's.

Initially, I was rather taken with Owl and his twit twooing. Like I said, initially, my enchantment with the whole romantic owl swooping and twitting started to fade. Why? well because in typical me style I couldn't get a normal owl could I?, oh no, my one had to have a sleep disorder. Trust me life with a sleep disordered owl is not fun. The twitting and wooing suddenly extended quite dramatically. At it's worst Owl twitted all day and all night. For a couple of day's straight, he wasn't even to be scared off by playing the Prodigy at full volume.

I didn't quite now what to do about Owl's weirdness, I mean it's not the sort of think you learn anywhere is it? I mean would his Owly clock redjust at some point? Did he have some Owly need I should be addressing? Was he just a lovestruck Owl looking for lurve? I pondered long and pondered hard. Is there an Owl equivalent of Match.com where I could find him the Owlette of his dreams? or did he need carting off to the Owl loony bin aka the RSPB just in case he'd flown into a tree or something and got brain injured. It was a tough few days.

But then, he vanished, as quick as he came, he disappered. Pretty sure the power struggles with Cooper for mice probably got too much so he flew off to some other woman's garden, a pussy free zone I'd wager.

I miss Owl and yes I did give him a name Wart - because like one, he was sort of annoying but you miss it when it's gone.

Gingerbread People

A recipe from the Big Lunch because gingerbread men make most people smile and they're fun to make. This is a pretty rufty, tufty dough which can stand up to kiddies messing about with it, there's no messing about "making the mixture like small breadcrumbsetc" you just whack it in a mixer. As black treacle is used they do come out quite dark gingerbreads you can always use Golden syrup instead if you like them more pasty faced, I don't, I like a nice sun bronzed ginger myself. This works just as well in any shape so could be valentines cookies or alphabet letters, anything really.

Ingredients and how to make

•400g plain flour
•¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda
•2tsp ground ginger
•2tsp ground cinnamon
•½ tsp ground allspice
•¼ tsp ground nutmeg
•½ tsp salt
•180g unsalted butter, at room temperature
•125g soft dark brown sugar or dark muscovado sugar
•1 egg (always free range and preferably from a hen whose name you know)
•125g black treacle

•Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and salt in a large bowl and set aside.

•Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Then beat in the egg and treacle. Life’s short, so use a hand mixer.

•Slowly add the flour mixture a couple of tablespoons at a time, you have to stop quite a bit to scrape any unmixed ingredients from the side of the bowl. Once the dough has formed, take it out of the mixer, divide into 3 and wrap each piece in clingfilm- basically its easier to roll out in smaller chunks than one big one)

•Leave to rest overnight (if possible, unlikely in V world) in the fridge. If not just stick it in there for half an hour while you have a cup of tea and a biscuit.

•When you are ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 170°C (325°F) Gas 3.

•Take the dough out of the fridge and leave to soften for about 10 minutes. Lightly dust a clean work surface with flour and roll out the dough to a thickness of about 4mm with a rolling pin. Cut out shapes with the biscuit cutters (they do make great Ginger people but also a tip for you single men out there - lovely hearts and flowers biscuits for Valentine’s Day). Pop some Smarties on for buttons if you fancy Arrange the cookies on the prepared baking trays and bake in the preheated oven for about 10–15 minutes.

•Leave the cookies to cool slightly on the trays before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Decorating - now this is the fun bit. You can make your own icing of course but it's just as easy to buy the ready to pipe stuff in very handy tubes. For the Big Lunch I did all shapes and sizes. There was "Corporate Man" with his piped shirt collar and tie. "Y fronts man" who had Y fronts and a bow tie and "Medallion Man" who you guessed it sported his rather fetching gold neckchain.

There was also "Yummy Mummy" and "Granny Ginge" .One thing you learn when cutting out Ginger people is that as in life Gingerbread Women need lots more dough, they just do OK ;)

Happy Ginger baking