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I shall have to eat humble pie. That lonely poster of François Hollande outside Nouzerines Mairie that I blogged about yesterday has now been joined by the other nine candidates. And in the right order. Oh yes, this is France, remember. You can’t go sticking up your general election candidate’s poster anywhere you like. Obviously if you’re first on the scene, you’ll nab pride of place for your guy and leave one of the others with a dingy corner for their poster. A decree of 19 March 2012 has determined which order the posters are to go up in on the boards outside each town hall. Eva Joly is first in the line-up from left to right, Sarko is third, Bayrou is eigth and François ‘give us a fiver’ Hollande is tenth. The other forgettable candidates come somewhere or other in the other slots.

Eldest Son called unexpectedly this morning to ask if he can come home for a few days during the spring holidays which start in a week’s time. Once I’d picked myself up off the floor, I asked why. “Oh, you know, to see you guys and chill,” he said evasively and not very convincingly. His dad and I reckon that his grant money must be running low and he needs to raid the parental fridge to make it through the final month! A trip to Limoges wasn’t on our groaning ‘to do’ list but we’ll have to see. Anyway, said cadging son mentined that he’d been to Mélenchon’s rally at Limoges. (Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the Front du Gauche – Left Front – candidate in La Présidentielle.) It was at the Zenith in Limoges which can take a crowd of up to 6,000, but 10,000 turned up! I’m impressed with Limousin being so active.

Lamby's des res

Benj enquired after Lamby. Our little Suffolk lamb, rejected by his psycho mother, is now living in luxury in the front room. His bladder was more than my mop could keep up with so he is confined to the guinea-pig run which is taking up most of the floor space in the lounge. We’ve put down a layer of old towels, a thick layer of newspaper and a final deep layer of hay which will be replaced every day. However, Lamby is spending as much time as possible out of doors. He’s met all the other animals now. He scared the living daylights out of Oscar the wimpy llama, who gave alarm calls for hours after first catching sight of the tiny black lamb!

We upsized to a large baby bottle, 330 ml, which he can empty in about a minute. But he’s going longer between feeds. I have made it back to bed at night now, thank goodness. Caiti took over from me and slept on the sofa next to Lamby’s run last night (and an incriminating photo on Facebook shows that Lamby made it onto the sofa too at some point!) but we really don’t need to any more. One or other of Chris, Caiti and me (actually, ideally just one of Chris or Caiti!) will nip down to feed Lamby when he starts crying.

And he’s been spared from the freezer. We’ve decided we’ll keep him as our stud ram, providing his behaviour doesn’t become too difficult. Bottle-reared male animals can become pains once the hormones hit. They can’t differentiate between themselves and humans, and so tend to treat people in the same way they treat their own species. In a sheep this will mean he’ll butt us if he thinks we’re muscling in on his space or his women. So we’ll see how things go with him. Caiti wants us to castrate Lamby and keep him as a pet but we have enough of those already, probably too man! Plus I think she’s forgotten that the lamb cuteness factor will wear off fairly quickly and he won’t seem quite as sweet any more.

But for now, he’s adorable!

 

Rors helps feed Lamby too - it's a family affair