Home again, home again, jiggety jog

It's been a lovely week away; mostly warm and dry weather, big watercolour-washed skies with cloud formations, good food, beaches (if mildly radioactive), gardens, woods, animals both wild and domesticated, and a pleasingly home-made adventure playground at the farmstead (not banned to adults).

I didn't take any photos of the farmstead at Barncrosh, which was an error. This is their fourth time there, so one starts to take it for granted. But we spent at least half of each day here playing, reading or smoking according to whim. There's maybe eight holiday flats within the farmstead, almost all with kids in tow and for the first time the kiddos split up- the Big Wan camping out all night in the wood with the trio of bigger lads, their fires, poo-holes and Ray Mears, the wee wan hanging out at the trampolines and the flying fox with the smaller ones, including Annoying Jessica.

Most evenings I was out at dusk to admire the aerobatic house martins scooping up midgies on the wing to deliver to their nestlings hidden in beakerware nests under the eves. The binoculars came in handy for this, and for watching the seabirds on the Fleet estuary. The wee wan and I spoiled the seven pigs of the farm after gaining permission to feed them vegetarian scraps. They needed to sleep cuddled up together in their shelters when it was sunny and hot and also when it was damp and drizzly, which covers much of the time. But the porkers got to recognising the smell or sound us coming down the lane with a carrier of leftovers, whether potato and carrot peel, wilted salad, baked potatoes, or (on the last day) dhal, rice and naan. You've never seen such a squealing and oinking, collective scramble and rush to a gate! Most of the soowees are odd tortoiseshell spotted types with long attractive ginger lashes, but the seventh is a huge Vietnamese pot-bellied sow- Big Pig- probably the weight of all the other oinkers combined. She doesn't seem either to act or be treated by the others as different, but given her mass we made sure she got more than a straight share.