eptivity

We don’t really do the whole half-birthday thing (and, according to Stephan, neither does anyone over the age of nine, but what does he know), except for this year HOORAY!

It all started with Hay-on-Wye, a lovely town on the Welsh border that’s like the king of second-hand bookstores. The only problem is that the aforementioned Stephan hates bookstores, or at least hates how much time I spend in them. So I figured I’d have to play the birthday card for a Hay-on-Wye trip, and my birthday is in December, so we’ll pretty much always be back in the U.S. for it.

Enter the half-birthday! Imagine Stephan’s delight when we spent less than the allotted time, money, and quota of books than planned. I’m glad that we went, but I’d still take Powell’s any day.

We camped overnight at a private campground next to a creek perfect for cooling our tiny-little-baby-bottles-of-Coke.

We watched James Bond in the car and played Rook, which I lost magnificently. The campsite also featured five free range ducks who live in here:

when they are not busy waddling to the creek and back, in a row, as fast as their little duck legs can carry them. Also, a rooster.

We stopped on the way home for a walk and cream tea and then I spent a few hours tidying up the garden like I’ve been telling Stephan I would since we moved in here.

Our final excursion was a short trip out to the canal to see if the ducks would eat the hashbrowns we don’t like as well as the kind from Costco.

Little known fact: the duck is not a fan of the potato. Of course there was the added difficulty of the hashbrowns not actually floating, so they had to be speedier than normal, but then it was “[nibble, nibble, nibble] PATOOIE,” and they would turn around and hightail it out of there. I’ve never seen ducks actually turn away from a potential source of food before.

Then Stephan remembered the moorhens and how “those little guys will eat anything!” and he was right. They actually fought over our offerings. The parent would catch it (see: sinking) and then try to pass it to one of the babies, who would then drop it, so the parent would dive in after it again. Eventually a baby would get a hold of it and swim away as fast as it could so it wouldn’t have to share, all the while trying to swallow a piece of potato as big as its head. We thought one of the more aggressive ones may have choked to death, but he turned out okay after all.

And then I wiped the proverbial Rook floor with Stephan.

Happy half-birthday to me.