31st December 2006
Now today is a serious 'getting ready to party day', plenty of coat washing and brushing and harness polishing - why?
Because tomorrow is the Lord Mayor's New Year?s Day Parade in London and lots of my furry friends are going to be there, and they must be looking their very best.
The Lord Mayor of Westminster's Parade is a very exciting event with lots of bands from all over the world playing music, jugglers and clowns, decorated floats, and people walking, running, riding bicycles and dancing and huge, huge crowds of people, all having fun, and raising money for charity.
It is 40 years since the Donkey Breed Society was established as a Society for the owners of donkeys and so this is to be a very special day and a huge birthday cake will appear amongst the donkeys in the parade.
I don?t know whether it is true or not but everyone is hoping that there will be forty donkeys there, one for every year, which means there could be twice as many Donkey Breed Society Members if you think of two for every donkey, or over one hundred if there are three with every donkey.
My friend Genivieve is forty years old so she could be one of the donkeys who first made owners in 1967 think that they needed to form a society. Their idea being to help teach people how important we donkeys are and to look after us properly, and to encourage others to appreciate us as well; so if you were around in those first years well done, we?ve come along long way from being poor donkeys in fields without shelter, never brushed and needing our feet trimmed.
I?m off to watch the New Year Fireworks from the safety of my stable, it will soon be 2007 and I shall be 5 years old ? and every other donkey out there will be having their official birthday ? so
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ALL DONKEYS
24th December 2006
As you know it is all serious donkey stuff from now until Christmas ? Gigi has taken part in the crib service at the Roman Catholic Church, and took her part very seriously ? she ate the hay from the crib..................................typical!!
I would of course have liked to have gone myself but my human decided that my brown donkey body in close proximity to the nativity figurines which are over 150 years old, was just too much of a responsibility, so settled on a more reliable grey donkey!!!
Shame really as it could have been my shining hour, but even I know that all the pictures of Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem show Mary riding on a grey donkey, so it is only right that modern day interpretations of the stable scene are factually correct.
Christmas is such a special time and when I look out of my stable door and up to the sky I am sure that there really was a star much brighter than the rest ? could that be the Christmas star that I have heard so much about? I think so????????????..
17th December 2006
Oh what joy - I have just attended my first Christmas party and it was such fun - none of the serious stuff that you others might get invited to where you have to listen to hymns and adventure stories - I have been to a Christmas Bazaar - now that is what I call fun.
Lots of pushing and shoving for the best bits, plenty of noise and some jolly music, and best of all, things called mincepies, which I wasn't supposed to have!!!! well no-one actually offered them to me, but neither did they appear to notice that they were missing from the table.
It seemed that the purpose of this event was to be as jolly as you could whilst talking to your friends; but my donkey friends weren't there so I had to be jolly with my human - there were lots of tables with things on to be sniffed, some of them were prickly and quite scary with lots of red berries - big circles of something called holly but my human saw I was frightened and whispered that they looked quite nice when dressed with red ribbon and hung on the front door to welcome visitors. Well I can understand that, as I always look my very best when I am decorated with a red rosette, however I prefer to look over my door.
Then there were bunches of some stuff called mistletoe which was pale green with lots of white berries, and people got all excited and started saying you could kiss under the mistletoe. You humans do some strange things.
Then most important of all, there were tables with cakes and biscuits, things called puddings and the mincepies, they all looked and smelled really yummy, but do you know no sooner had we arrived and looked at everything than it seemed it was time to go again, because Gigi had to be somewhere else - these Christmas parties are all a bit of a rush.....................
9th December 2006
I am so excited.........I have got all sorts of invitations to Christmas parties, and so have my relatives.
Copperfield, my uncle is going to Lincoln Castle to turn on the Christmas lights, how exciting can that be? and then he has got to walk down the roadway in front of the castle to take his place standing by the nativity scene. Bertie a sort of second uncle is busy chatting to the children at a Christmas tree farm in Lincolnshire; he likes that because the visitors give him lots of stroking, he would of course prefer a titbit or ten but that isn't allowed.
Gigi is going to a Christmas nativity play and because she knocked over the teacups at another one she went to last year and now refuses to enter the chapel I am to be entrusted with a 'personal appearance' - well I think I am, but I may have blotted my copy book a bit.
A few days ago the precious Annabelle was allowed into the same field as the rest of us, Annabelle rushed over to Gigi who made a face at her, so I thought that I would go over as well, I chose my moment very carefully, Capella was off her guard and concentrating on her rolling. I thought I would have a game with Annabelle and chase her, had she stood still then of course there would have been no chase, but off she went, with Gigi and me after her, but the others saw us and they spoilt it by joining in. Annabelle is very fast but with seven of us chasing her we could have soon cornered her!
So what did she do? shouted very loudly for her mummy who dashed to protect her. Capella was so angry with everyone thatshe put her in a corner of the field and stood guarding her precious Annabelle all day. Of course our human saw it all and when Annabelle shouted again she was on hand to help, and with Capella keeping us away, Annabelle was quickly shepherded into another paddock and the gate was closed. She had to spend the rest of the afternoon in a paddock by herself, serves her right for being a telltale, but she was able to talk to her mum through the fence.
When it came to supper time there were eight of us in one field and Annabelle on the other side of the gate in another and we had to go through hers to get to our stables. Now I had high hopes of some fun here because usually we all crowd the gate and then everyone stands back so that I can go through first - can't think why !! However on this occasion Capella had other ideas, and pushed to the front and then proceeded to kick her heels up to clear a very large space so that she could go through the gate alone.
That was not very nice, but I have to admire her intelligence in realising that she needed to get Annabelle into her stable before the rest of us.
I really would like to friends with Annabelle and am certain that she would like to play with me, but Capella says ?no she belongs to her?..............
2nd December 2006
Recycling ? now there is a subject to get humans all hot under the collar, should we, could we, will our rubbish get weighed? Oh yes there isn?t much passes the stable door that we don't understand.
Did you know that you shouldn?t make a muck heap near any where that might allow the liquid that it produces during the rotting down process to get into a watercourse? But like it or not we donkeys do produce an awful lot of dung and because we don?t have running water and toilets like you humans we tend to make a nice neat pile in the corner of our stables which mean that some of our bedding has to be taken out as well to keep everywhere clean and fresh. Manure as it is called whether it be from donkeys, horses or farm animals is a valuable commodity and much sought after by gardeners, but it has to be well rotted, and as much as a year old before it can be used to enrich the soil. Well that begs the question where is it all going to be kept for a year?
Where I was born it used to be stored in a concrete area surrounded on three sides by walls, so that it was contained, but depending on what sort of bedding is used in shelters and stables it can get to be a very big pile!!! And the pile needs to be looked after ? who ever heard of that? Looking after a dung heap!!!!
Straw bedding is lovely and soft and when it is cleaned out quite a lot of wet straw has to come out as well as the dung.
Wood shaving make a lovely bed that smells all woody, but they do press down into quite a hard mass unless they are kept forked over and fluffy, and the wet shavings need taking out as well, but usually there is less of a pile than with straw as it is easier to sort the wet from the dry.
You can also make beds out of shredded paper, it smells funny, especially when it gets wet, but it is very warm, and easy to muck out. As well as paper you can get recycled cardboard and paper pellets that have been specially treated to make them very absorbent.
There are also various other products made from naturally growing plants which are shredded, but given that we donkeys like to eat our beds, they are not a good idea as the clog up our insides and cause colic.
Last of all and very luxuriously we can have rubber carpets, which are like black rubber gym mats that are cut to cover the stable floor; they are very warm and comfortable but do just need a layer of something absorbent to soak up the wee so it can be swept up and helps keep the floor dry.
The down side of all this is that whatever you use, the dirty bedding and manure needs stacking in a nice neat cube, the sides of which should be kept as vertical as possible and the top flattened and pressed down to help the rotting process. The top should always be kept flat because the chemical reaction of ammonia and vegetable matter inside the dung heap creates heat, (science in action) so hot that it could catch fire and if the heap came to a point like a volcano it might turn into a chimney!! When I was just a foal I saw my human jumping up and down on the dung heap to compress it ? but she didn't seem to think it was very funny when I did the same thing, however that may have had something to do with the holes that I made in it
The next thing to happen is that worms move into the dung heap (unless it is from paper bedding, which they don't seem to like) and chew their way through the layers to help the composting process and lo and behold after they have finished you have the perfect organic recycled addition to your vegetable and flower garden.
Well having got all that off my chest and in the interests of responsible recycling I will go and count how many barrow loads are leaving the stables this morning, maybe I'll get paid in carrots???
