The Scarlet and the Black

We just aren't keeping up - that's all there is to it.
First of all it was the strawberries.
A row by row pick yielded what can only be called a glut (not to mention so many personalities that we had to stop and introduce ourselves as we went along).
First name terms notwithstanding, the jam pan came out immediately, and - of course - the actual strawberry bed went straight out of my head.

We're on quite familiar name terms with our strawberries

It's not surprising that I forgot about the garden end of things. Jam-making is a time-consuming enterprise.
Pleasant, but there isn't a whole heap of day left over by the time you're done.
I don't know about you, but it's not the actual jam-making as much as the cleaning up afterwards that's the biggest challenge.
It's probably just me. Everything is hunky dory until I've filled the first pot, but then things go a bit pear-shaped, and by the last pot there seems to be as much jam on the baking tray as there is in the jars. (That's why I have my jars on a baking tray.)

It's the same with nail-painting, which is why no one who knows me will ever recall seeing me with painted nails.
Nail one: painstaking care. Ten minutes on the clock. Not a drop spilled, or splashed or over the edge.
Nail two: Reasonable care. Two and a half minutes on the clock. Large splurge of nail polish up side of nail.
Nail three: Exasperated. 30 seconds on the clock. Nail polish on top of finger and down both sides of nail.
Nail four: I think you're getting my drift here...

But I'm digressing, as usual.
Jam cools to an unbelievably sticky mess with incredible osmotic and reproductive properties. Have you ever noticed that? Perhaps jam is actually a type of fungus - turn your back and it just starts appearing everywhere.
So heaving the old jam-pan, the wooden spoons, the pouring-out jug et al into the back sink and filling them with water is such a relief that it's done immediately, but that is about it. I've had enough by then.
Two weeks on and the jars are still sitting on the tray on the kitchen counter. The lids are on all right, but there's not a label in sight, and I've almost managed to forget that they exist. I have discovered that - the jars being all conveniently the same size and height - they make a sort of conveniently higher surface for putting things on close to the cooker, which is very useful.

We have so far eaten two of the jars, given one away and sold another one at the market, so balance is going to become an issue before too long, at which point the In-Charge will rap out a demand that they be re-located immediately.

In the meantime, we have just been so busy. Strawberries and jam are yesterday's news. Since then we've had to toil and titivate, trying to render the garden fit for the open weekend.  Heaven forfend that our box hedges might not be keeping up with the latest trend in footballer's hair cuts.

The In-Look for Summer 2014

And that's just the garden. There have been a million other jobs, not to mention the roof. The In-Charge has almost taken up residence on the roof (but let's not forget there are real boy's toys involved). Down at ground level there's been less exalted work and meetings and poor Wellington, and who knows what.

The In-Charge lives on the roof these days

And as you can see, I'm getting a whole heap of help from some of the other residents in this place.

Hobbes. Exhausted

The Models. Wiped out

 
Even so, I had ticked the strawberries off with a nice, fat, self-satisfied, licked finger.
So it came as something of a surprise to glimpse flashes of scarlet as I passed the strawberry bed a few days ago. The on-going-ness of production had somehow slipped my mind.
'I thought we'd done that', was my knee-jerk reaction, but of course, that was a ten days ago.
Time has moved on.

Climber-boy went out with a bowl.
He came back awhile later for a larger bowl.
Shortly afterwards he reappeared and got the big cake storage box - the Christmas-cake sized one.

'But we used all the jars,' I wailed when he finally staggered in, hidden behind a red mountain.

'There's loads of raspberries too,' he said. 'But luckily I can't get at them.'
I must have looked slightly puzzled.
'There's too many blackcurrants in the way,' he explained.


We now have strawberry compote for breakfast and pudding every day.
With raspberries shaken over the top. 

Strawberry compote - delicious with yoghurt. Delicious with raspberries. Delicious with blackcurrants?

But it doesn't end there.
I've ten pounds of blackcurrants in the fridge, looking at me reproachfully every time I reach for the milk.

Oh joy

We used the Bob Flowerdew method of harvesting for the currants: you cut the branch, retreat to a sunny place, sit and string while chatting in comfort. We only managed to pick the front branches overhanging the paths, but even so, the blackbirds were outraged at our theft. They have eaten so many, they can't actually get off the ground, so they were outraged from ground-level.

In the kitchen, I have rowed up the sugar, lemons, wooden spoon and the spotless jam pan.
But after surveying the hastily convened and sadly inadequate splinter of jars (the official collective), I have now issued a diktat: the rest of the blackcurrants are to be made over to the blackbirds, on a strict  PYO basis.
It is quite a generous gesture, but a necessary one.
Not just for my own sanity and space on the kitchen counter.
Having witnessed the extreme effort required for the even the fittest blackbird to get off the ground, let alone the young, inexperienced novice flyers, I feel it is necessary to keep them supplied with food in situ, until they learn to handle their expanded undercarriages in flight.

Well that's my excuse anyway.
And meanwhile, I'd better find another, larger, baking tray.

The King is Dead, Long Live the King!

I'm feeling very sad today.
Wellington is dead.
He had an eye infection, which we've been treating for the last two weeks with oral antibiotics and ointment, and I thought he seemed much brighter. But last night when I carried him in to the kitchen for his dose, he felt a bit limp. I wondered if he was all right, but I put it down to the lateness of the hour. I'd been out at a meeting, so we didn't get to treat him until nearly midnight, when he would have been well and truly asleep anyway.

Wellington, the King of the Castle

Poor Wellington. He was dead in his bed this morning.
It's the way they go, generally, birds. In the wee, small hours of the night, but I've never got used to finding someone dead in the hen house. Especially not Wellington.

He weighed over nine and a half pounds. I couldn't believe it.
We knew he was a big boy, but I was amazed when I found out how heavy he actually was. We had to weigh him for the medication - our friend the Cement-Sculptor staggered onto the scales holding him firmly in both hands.
Nearly ten pounds. That's four and a half bags of sugar. It's a lot of bird.

We buried him in the orchard this morning.
ModelDog sat very close to my legs and leaned down to peer into his grave.
She doesn't like graves.
SuperModel disliked the whole sorry process so much that she boycotted the funeral - well, almost.
She compromised and lay under the neighbouring apple tree, watching us and yawning self consciously. It was obvious she didn't want to be there.
I wrapped him in a tea towel that had a map of Jersey on it - it seemed appropriate, as he was a Jersey Giant, although he'd never been to the Channel Islands, map or no map.
Perhaps he'll go now. Make his way to his ancestral fields that look to France one way and England the other. I'm sure he'll like it there.

He was a big boy, and looked all spit and polish

I put a bunch of Felicite and Perpetue roses in his grave too, and a sprig of rosemary. I always put rosemary in anyone's grave flowers. 'There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember.'
Because I'll always remember.
I nearly picked some fennel too, but not pansies, or columbine. And not rue.
The French boys dug up all my rue and threw it away, so there is no more rue.
Just plenty of rueing.

The French boys dug up all the rue

The In-Charge and I stood in the orchard, trying to remember when we got him, Wellington.
I remember the night well enough. I met a friend up at the lay by in the next village, and he opened up the back of his Landrover and took this huge, black cockerel out of a cage and handed him to me, and in return I gave him a bag of layers pellets.
'There you go,' he said. 'Just wait til your ladies get a sight of him, they won't know themselves!'
He was right. They followed him everywhere, he was a beauty.
A great, gentle giant.

Wellington keeping Napoleon in his place back in the day

As we stood paying our respects, a rather frenetic figure hurried across the grass not far from us.
He paused at regular intervals to crow as loudly as possible.
Heinz von Bitzen.

'The King is dead. Long live the King!' the In-Charge commented dryly

But it will take a while before he assumes the crown in my head.
And none of the hens paid the slightest heed either.
Despite Napoleon, his Imperial grandfather, he just doesn't have the presence.
Perhaps he'll grow into it.

Heinz von Bitzen

  

Confessions of a Hopeless Addict

I have to tell you, dear Reader, that I am a woman of several vices, most of which I have kept hidden from this page.
I did plead guilty to one, some time ago, in Secret Vices,  but there is more.

I am an addict.
A plural addict - there are quite a few habits I just can't kick, but yesterday one of them rose up to confront me as I was preparing to entertain 30+ people to tea in the garden.

I am a mug-aholic, as those who know me well will testify. We have lots and lots.
If I ever buy a mug, the In-Charge says: 'Oh good, we needed one of those.'
My response at times like that is immediate and brisk. 'Be grateful it isn't shoes,' I always say.
But, like most men, he doesn't get the joy of small, pleasing things.
Mugs, after all, are not boys' toys.

It started long, long ago, so my collection has been building for years.
In fact I can fairly and squarely blame my mother. She gave me a set of four mugs as a present in the distant moons of the past.
That was all it took to get me hooked.

The RNLI's wonderful Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter mugs

The other side of each mug is the same but different

You can see why. They are totally fab, but sadly the intervening years have taken their toll and they are all now ex-mugs, used for other things. I have tried to find replacements on eBay, but possibly in a somewhat desultory fashion, as my search yielded nothing. But even in their sad state, I still love everything about them.

Looking back, I expect the seed had already been sown, as by then I had acquired two mugs that I still have, although no longer use, as I wouldn't like them to get broken. They are both butterfly mugs, and they sit in the Butler's Pantry, in honoured retirement. (I'm still looking for the Butler, by the way. The whimsical term was wished upon my lovely old pantry by the In-Charge and #1 Son, way back when.)

My two original butterfly mugs

These days, I am very picky about my mugs. They are mostly - but not exclusively - bone china, and if I don't love them, they're gone. I know I'm a bit odd, but it never ceases to amaze me that people just open the cupboard, grab, pour and drink without even looking at the mug they're using! It takes me longer to choose my mug than it does to boil the kettle.
But mostly my pickyness is about seasonality.

Some of the Christmas seclection

Every now and again, I see someone drinking a cup of tea out of a Christmassy mug - in June.
How can they do such a thing?
Does the drink not congeal in their mouths, the milk not turn sour, the taste sicken?
It leaves me astounded.

The boy's Christmas mugs from long ago

My FAVOURITE Christmas mug, that Henri broke - also irreplaceable on eBay

WonderBrother has a mug with Garfield on it. Garfield. I ask you.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against ginger cats - think of Hobbes - but Garfield on a mug isn't even aesthetically pleasing.
Perhaps we are not, after all, blood-relations, my brother and I.

I am sure my mother's present was the beginning of my seasonality. In our house the mugs are changed with a regularity that leaves other household tasks dumb with outrage. We have spring, summer, autumn, Christmas and winter - naturally. And every now and again, a mug just appears for a month and then is gone again.

Some mugs are only out for a month

Yesterday, with rather a large party visiting the garden at tea time, the Butler's Pantry was forced to disgorge some receptacles that were not - strictly speaking - due for an airing. Mercifully, push didn't come to shove, as they say. I wasn't forced to use my February crocuses, or - heaven forbid - any autumn designs.

Autumn mugs

As it was, I was able to rummage out enough to seasonally 'mug' everyone. Any more people and I'd have had to say that, sadly, tea wasn't available.

Summer mugs

More summer mugs - well, a few spring ones too I suppose

Either that, or I could have called the non-players into use.
There are other mugs on the premises. Ones that are used for Bovril, or soup, ones that I don't mind the In-Charge using. (He is guilty of leaving mugs outdoors, in odd places. I find them, weeks later, filled with rain.) Also, it must be remembered that he drinks coffee morning, noon and night and coffee is very hard on mugs, so I tend to point him towards the beakers that will take the strain.

Mugs that can take the strain

Coffee stains china and gets into places that it won't come out of. Plus, quite apart from his other mug-unworthiness, the In-Charge has been guilty of breakages. He broke my favourite summer mug - the #1 Son mug - and committed the cardinal sin of not telling me, so I had to find out by spending a futile morning searching for the missing vessel - to no avail.
Luckily for our marriage, I was able to buy a replacement.
I hardly need add that his use of the replacement is verboten.

#1 Son mug on the left - it makes me think of him. The other one was a gift from him, so is also verboten

My mother can't have realised what she was starting, all those years ago.
I was brought up to love things, and look after them, but not to be acquisitive.
As with many aspects of every upbringing, that proved to be a miserable failure.
I adore things and am happy to acquire.
I love colour, craft, pattern, texture, textiles, art, pictures, images - the whole merry shebang.
I suppose to the wartime generation, acquiring things you didn't actually need was considered extravagant, but that was then. To me things are the produce of mankind, the wonders he dreams up in the fabulous tangle of his mind; the constant evoking of the wonders that surround him in nature.
I suppose art comes from the need to find within ourselves some meaningful way of either expressing or exorcising everything we experience in the world we are brought into, it is our constant struggle to turn it into something tangible and meaningful.

I create lots of things, but I don't create mugs, so I don't suppose my addiction will ever end.

Each one is beautiful, and someone's design, using shape, colour, pattern and form.
That is wonderful in itself.
So why not have your tea out of something uplifting? You never know, it might do you more good than the drink itself.
I know I will.

Favourite dog mugs

My special mug, decorated by #1 Son in the style of a fashion designer he likes, Paul Smith

The Good, The Bad & The Downright 'Orrible

I feel a bit of a part-timer, these days. It seems as if I'm no sooner here than I'm gone again, what with one thing and another.
A bit discombobulating, Life In Transit. I should write a book - I could call it something like There and Back Again - an homage to dear old Bilbo Baggins.

I've been in sunny, blossom-filled Suffolk visiting my folks again, and now I'm back in a, miraculously, sunny Sligo where my own patch, anyway, is also blossom-filled. June is in full swing. There can be no doubt - the Summer Umbrella is up in the courtyard - so you can tell, it truly is the season of wine and roses.

As it happened, this trip, I was away for my birthday, which was celebrated in the bosom of my family. My papa took us all out for lunch, and then my sister and I spent the afternoon happily rummaging through a couple of Suffolk's many antique/salvage/vintage/junk yards. Perfect.

I bought this pretty plate to hang on my kitchen wall.

On the way home, I met my charming boy at the airport. He'd just flown in from Brisbane, via Kuala Lumpur and Colombo and we did the last leg to the west of Ireland together.
It's weird, isn't it, when you are looking for someone in a crowded place. Either every person you look at somehow resembles the face you are hoping to see, or else the whole place becomes a blur.
Stansted was a blur, but that might have been due to my bus-induced headache.
It didn't matter - he found me and enveloped me in a 4-year-overdue hug that was wonderful, if slightly oxygen-less.
Have both my boys grown? I thought they'd stopped growing years ago. They are like cranes. They go up forever.
Perhaps that's why this boy loves climbing - his head is already in the clouds anyway.
I have generally been called tall, but I don't feel tall around them anymore.
Perhaps I have more in common with dear old Bilbo than I thought - he was vertically-challenged too, wasn't he?
Or perhaps I have shrunk.

It was very good to see him, and it was very good to arrive home to evening sunshine and sit in the warm, bee-buzzy potager drinking a celebratory glass to salute his return, my beloved Model Dog rolling upside down on my feet, waving her legs and tail in the air, grinning with delight.

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Just as good to hear him exclaiming over the changes the passing years (and my labours) have wrought in the garden, as we wandered around in the long, light, pre-solstice evening.

'The strawberries are coming along,' the In-Charge said. 'Some of the smaller ones are ready.'
We opened our hands and he placed a few beef-tomatoes in them.
Oh Barney McCreavy - what strawberries!
Fat and fulsome, juicy and gigantic.
And - typically - I've only got 4 empty jars on the shelf in the pantry.
Why didn't I think before recycling?

Climber-boy and I stopped in amazement when we reached the herbaceous border. I don't think either of us have ever seen such huge delphiniums. The girth of them - they are obese, like the paeonies.
Obese and utterly 'tivine' as my other son used to say when he was little. Utterly tivine.

And the bees! The garden is buzzing. Hundreds of our own bumble bees (of all sizes and colours) and lots of our new native Irish black bees to be seen and heard everywhere.
The In-Charge had seen a dark mass of bees on the outside of the hive just a few days ago and rang the Bee-Boss. 'I think they're planning to de-camp,' he said. But when the Boss turned up, he said no, they were just too hot in this sultry weather, and were outside cooling down.
He removed a chunk of honeycomb and added another storey, so now we have high-rise bees - and a foretaste of our very own honey!


Lots of good things to come home to.

But alas, not all good. Bambina's sister, for no good reason that we can think of, upped and died on the day of our return.
The In-Charge had put her into the quarantine cage, because she was sitting in the orchard 'looking a bit gleckit' - but to no avail. I am all the more glad of Bambina's ten little chicks.
Not so little any more. They are definitely entering the spotty, gawky teenage years. I've removed all mirrors from their pen, so that they don't get too depressed. And we won't show them the photos when they're all grown up and over it.

So much for the Good and the Bad .
And the Downright 'Orrible?
I've got all-consuming, uber-ghastly, life-diminishing, headache-grinding, sinus-punishing, sleep-destroying, med-defying, all-orifice-streaming, in-snot-drowning, push-me-under-and-hold-me-down-forever hayfever.
It just isn't fair.
I've been chewing on the honeycomb frantically. Some say it will make a difference.
I've been chugging down the echinacea - a friend told me it worked for them.
The anti-histamines ain't doin' nothin'.
Any other remedies I should try?
I'm willing to try anything - beheading starts to sound appealing...

Glorious Lives

The trouble with hens is that they die, often suddenly and unexpectedly.
We have, occasionally, had hens grow so old that I don't think they'd have recognised an egg if you'd thrust it under their beaks. The original Wilhelmina was once such. But more often than not, they are creatures that lead short - and in my orchard, glorious - lives.

We have lost two hens in the last month or so.
The first one just disappeared. With no corpse to mourn over, I suspected M. Renard, but our red-pelted neighbour always leaves a telltale pool of dismal feathers, and they were not to be seen. Definitely a point on the plus side.
However, there was no Bambina.


I was rather sad about Bambina. She wasn't my darling in the way that Napoleon, or the little Empress or Mrs Smith, the Golden Princess were - but even so.

We searched high and low and then went back to the beginning and searched again, but I didn't lie awake at night agonising over her vanishment. It was a shame, though, because she was actually Napoleon's granddaughter, given to us by our friend Colin, who'd had some of our eggs to hatch way back when.

Before I'd had time to get used to losing one little bird, Mrs Scissorhands fell ill.
When hens get that hunchy, huddled look, you kind of know it isn't likely to end well. I have tried various remedies, but rarely with success.
Once, years ago, I asked our vet - visiting a sick ewe - if he'd take a look at a 'hunchy' hen. An expression of sheer panic flitted through his eyes and he opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. 
'The average vet wouldn't know a great deal about poultry now,' he eventually managed. 'Generally...' He gave up at that point and ran one finger significantly across his throat.
I got the drift. 
I did take the Little Empress to (a different) vet when she became so poorly, but even though the vet knew what was wrong, there was nothing she could do.
So alas, it came as no surprise when Mrs Scissorhands - she of the most unfeminine spurs - died a day or two later, despite me hand-feeding her and coaxing her to get better.

Two hens in a couple of weeks. Not good.

But then, about a fortnight later, on my way back from the market a text came blipping into my phone.
I pulled over. It was the In-Charge.
'Hen and 10 chicks in turf shed', it said. (He doesn't waste words, the In-Charge.)
Oh joy of joys! Over the moon and back again.
What a clever girl - I've no idea how many times we searched that shed, and I don't know if she even came out to eat or drink in all that time, let alone how she managed to incubate 10 eggs - she's only a little half-pint.

Bambina is only a little half-pint

So what does that make these two?

Napoleon would be very proud - his grandchildren! One or two of them might even be chips off the old block.
We'll have to see.

Who does this remind me of?

A distinct top knot. Will it develop into a tricorne, I wonder?

But ten baby chicks aren't the only new kids on the block.
Two little beehives arrived last week, courtesy of our friend, the Artist-Extraordinaire. His wife, the Shiatsu-Queen was telling me that he wanted to split his hives, and I rushed in.
'Please, please, please,' I said. 'If you think they'd settle here.'
'Settle?' She laughed. 'They'd be moving to bee-heaven.'

The little bee hives arrive

They are, I think he said, Irish black bees, and they are sharing the hen's paddock, where the morning sun will wake them up, warming up their hives; but the whole property (and beyond) is, of course, theirs to share with the bumble bees that live here.
We haven't spotted them around the garden yet, but they're probably still getting their bearings and rearing a new queen, or whatever it is they do in a new location, but I can't wait for them to come over the wall into the flower garden like the cavalry.

Maybe we'll even get back to the days of yore, long ago when the boys were about eight.
'Listen, mummy,' my curly-haired son said as we sat on the bench together. 'That's the sound of summer.'
I listened.
Behind us, the fuchsia hedge sounded like a helicopter about to take off. It was, literally, humming with honey bees.
'That's the sound of happiness,' he added.
I couldn't have summed it up better myself. The sound of happiness. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.
But that was long ago, and the hedge has been silent for far too long.

In a few weeks, my curly-haired son will be back from a long sojourn in the far-flung antipodes.
I hope he will be greeted by the sound of happiness.

Effing Visitors

Time flies.
Time lingers.
Time is elusive.
But mostly it just stalks you, and gobbles you up when you're not looking.
I have been gobbled.

The trouble is, it also leaves you gagged. It's like bumping into someone you haven't seen for ages, and the silence draws out between you, stickily, rooting you to the spot with an inane smile but nothing to say.
Where do you begin? The intervening days, weeks, months don't lend themselves to broad sweeps of the brush, yet the minutiae seems irrelevant, trivial.
'How've you been?' you ask lamely.
'Fine - great! Well - you know...busy...'

I haven't intended to be away from these pages. In an ideal world, I would sit down on Wednesdays and Sundays and fill in the gaps - dash off a few lines summing up my week, my life, my plans for world domination; stir in some photos and hopefully a pinch of spice and try to get it to the boil before life embroiled me again.
But then, in an ideal world, my house would be spotless, I'd live somewhere warm and dry and my bank manager would call me 'Sir'.
For some unknown reason, nothing ever works like that.
Why is that, d'you think?


Fantasies aside, I'm not really sure where the last few months have gone.

What was Henri doing in the cherry tree? Posing

I went to England for while, and when I got home it was blossom time - which suits the posers in my household to a T. But have you ever noticed that the clock moves at very high speed during April and May? The days, which allegedly are getting longer, in fact get shorter than ever. There is never time for anything, and the weeks whizz past with unseemly haste and no decorum.

Goldilocks on the terrace

Model Dog sashaying past the tulips

I don't think the In-Charge really noticed the blossom at all. He has been working like a demon, practically walling himself into his college studio. His Grad Show was last week, he is taking part in another Exhibition which opens this weekend - Sligo Emerging Artists, and has just submitted some work to a third.

He's there, at the moment, hanging - not himself, hopefully - but lots of pictures: drawings and paintings. I saw a good few of them for the first time this morning, and will be very disappointed if I don't see them on the wall later in the week.

It's not that I don't trust him, but quite frankly, I wish I was there, hanging them myself. He is all too likely to dismiss his own work and put it to one side. Left to his own devices, he wouldn't even have taken most of them to the gallery this morning.
In my experience of the In-Charge, taking them is no guarantee of hanging them.
Eejit.

The best and loveliest thing that has happened this year was way back in April. I'd just returned from a visit to the UK, and on the Saturday morning set off for the market, as is my wont.
'Will you be gone all morning?' the In-Charge asked.
What kind of question is that?
When did I ever return mid-morning on market day?
When I did get back, there was an unknown British car in the yard and my heart sank. I was tired, and unexpected visitors were not what I wanted, especially as the house resembled a bomb-site.
I sat in the car for several minutes, watching the hens and gathering strength. It would probably be someone who'd grown up here, or stayed with us when we were a B&B. We get visitors like that quite often, which is lovely in general - but just not that particular morning.
The In-Charge appeared. 'We've got effing visitors,' he said tersely, confirming my worst fears. 'You'd better come in.'
It took several more minutes to get myself sufficiently motivated, but I finally pinned a smile in place and went inside.

There have not been many occasions in life that have rendered me totally speechless, but this was one of them.
My son - my darling, gorgeous, and not-been-seen-for-over-a-year son, the very same, was sitting at the kitchen table, along with his adorable ex-girlfriend and her own little boy .
A surprise visit, cooked up between them and the In-Charge (the rat).
And not a bed made, nor a cake baked, nor a single barrow of rubble cleared from the bomb-site.

But what bliss.
He's been in Miami and the French West Indies since October, and was working constantly before that, so it's been a long time. Too long, but here he was, for his birthday weekend.

The sun shone, the sky was blue and we went to the beach, picnicked, ate cake and drank champagne. All the things you should do.
Total heaven. And the best bit of all was seeing them back together again and meeting her dote of a son.
The best 'effing visitors' in the world.