A man of many hats

I've been wearing lots of hats today.

Started with vet's hat to help Caroline treat an egg bound chicken. It got poorly yesterday. We asked local chicken keepers and and we tried the remedies here, including sitting it in a bowl of warm soapy water, but unfortunately she didn't make it.

Spent a while on the mower (gardening hat) cutting the grass on the croquet lawn and front field. The lawns are looking good, apart from a few persistent moles, which is when I put on my pest control hat. I made a hole in the molehill to find the tunnel and just as I was lighting the smoke cartridge to stuff in the run, the hole filled up with earth from the mole digging. A quick poke with a stick and in goes the smoke. With luck he didn't manage to crawl away fast enough and should be an ex-mole. A bit ironic, trying to save an animal one minute and then kill another.

The fish still have white spot but at least none have died recently, so now (with vet's hat) I mixed in the medicine to the pond. The trouble with white spot is that you can only kill the parasites when they are free swimming from one fish host to the next. So repeated doses are required.

Gardening hat back on to scrape all the little weeds and grass from between the paviers on the patios in front of the gites. It's one of those jobs that sneaks up and by the time you notice all the greenery it's a major cleaning exercise. I have not finished but made a good start, because I got distracted by (painting hat) sanding down another window, and replacing the (glazing hat) putty at the bottom of some of the panes of glass. Caroline is doing the painting tomorrow so I wanted to get as many windows prepared as possible. Being south facing the windows take the full sun which seems to attack the wood stain and putty quite badly.

Whilst Caroline was at the shops getting some putty she got into a parisian parking situation. The car in front left a tiny gap, and the car behind was touching the towbar of our car. So, the only thing for it was to nudge backwardsa and forwards gently to make the gap big enough to escape. About 5 shuffles, she said