A Good Egg – a guest post by Paula

Today’s blog post comes from Paula – the lovely nun that Sheila has mentioned before, and talks about in this post. Thanks Paula!

Paula in the Catching Lives kitchen
Paula in the Catching Lives kitchen

I am a friend of Sheila’s and work with her at Catching Lives.  What an adventurous lady she is.  I enjoy her blogs and her keen and appreciative eye for nature and recycling.

Her recent blog post about finding a wee bird’s egg and holding it in her hand and her granddad’s canaries reawakened memories of my own childhood.

My uncle Tom was a thrifty man and lived with his wife and four children in a place called Thornley just outside Durham. He had a strong Geordie accent.  He was a big man – rather a gentle giant as evidenced by the flowers he always brought Mam from his garden.  He kept goats, hens and ducks and grew all his own vegetables and flowers in three allotments near his home.  We loved visiting and especially watching eggs hatch in an incubator, which he kept in their small back bedroom.  We would spend hours both with the goats and hens and especially in the small back bedroom.

Chicks

He also had hedgehogs, tortoises and tame birds. When I think of it now, I imagine he must have driven my aunt Ada mad as she loved to keep her home just so. Not a chance – my uncle also brewed the hens’ feed in the boiler in the scullery so their home always had an earthy perfume about it.

Copper boiler
Copper boiler

I imagine that Sheila’s keen eye will be on the look out for treasures as she does her climb on Kilimanjaro. I can imagine her picking up feathers, stones, small flowers for pressing – and who knows, by the time she descends she will have a wealth of small hand made gifts and may even open a small stall to sell her gifts for the charities that are so close to her heart.

Now every time I see a small bird’s egg I shall think of Sheila and my uncle Tom.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *