Golly Forgotten Marmalade.

It was whilst I was trekking across the fields on a walk with Mia the German Shepherd yesterday that I remembered - I say trekking, I mean, stumbling slowly with mud-logged boots – I needed to buy a jar of marmalade. I can’t be doing with toast without marmalade and Christmas Day the shops will be closed. Not sure what it was that jogged my memory but it might have been thinking about, why aren’t there any ginger birds? The feathered variety that is. I wasn’t thinking about redheads of the human variety. Well, not at that moment. I always think of marmalade as being ginger. Strange, as it is obviously orange?

It occurred to me that Mia The German Shepherd is quite ginger. And Bonnie the Ginger Cat of course. And some of the hens could be described as ginger. But is there a ginger bird other than the hens? I am talking wildlife here, not tame hybrids.

I googled ginger birds. Got loads of photos of women none of birds. It seems there are no ginger birds. I feel I have defeated google. A long-held ambition.

After consulting with Mia the German Shepherd, it seemed she wasn’t interested in my marmalade dilemma so we continued our outward walk. We went around the reservoir. Just two birds on the water - neither of them ginger. A coot, or it could have been a moorhen, that didn’t hang about when it saw us and a lone goose that could have been a Brent or a Canada. Difficult to tell due to the weather being drizzly and visibility not good. It was coming up to four in the afternoon and it gets dark around four thirty just now. I spent a few minutes wondering why the goose was on its own - geese usually go around in pairs – sadly, concluding that its mate was probably cooked.

I am walking a lot easier since I stopped taking the statins but due to the mud underfoot clogging my boot treads and making them twice as heavy as normal I was moving quite slowly. Trudging. That’s a nice word I don’t use too often. A little laboured with the old breathing too I noticed. Probably, sans statins, lining myself up for a heart attack? Strange how Mia’s paws don’t get clogged up?
Indeed, it was dark as we arrived back home, but with marmalade still on my mind I left Mia playing ball with my Extremely Handsome Son George and drove to the village shops.

I bought three new wire bird feeders, two bags of peanuts, A block of suet with embedded mealworms, a bag of mixed bird seed, two pints of semi-skimmed milk, half a pound of butter (unsalted), six mini apple pies, pot of double cream and a large family size Rice Krispies.

It wasn’t until I got back home that I realised I had forgotten to buy marmalade!