Mrs Down's Diary - Dec 16 2009

"HAS anyone asked what I want for Christmas" came the plaintive request from John. "Because if they do can you tell them I want some more mole traps."

Goodwill to all men then, but definitely not to moles. Not when they are making such a mess of our newly drained field of wheat.

Conditions are obviously just right for worms now, not too wet and not too dry, and if they are right for worms then they are just perfect for Mr Mole and all his mates.

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But what a Christmas present. I suppose we could make present opening quite a snappy session and preset the traps to go off just as the wrapping paper gets ripped away. Or even include a'One we caught earlier'just to make the whole job as gruesome as possible.

So, 'If you want some mole traps, buy some mole traps' is the official response to that request.

I will consider an extra dog lead or two, especially as it is me who usually loses them, but I do think that Christmas needs to possess more awe and wonder than just be a time for exchanging gifts, and certainly if gifts are involved, not to be as prosaic as a mole trap.

I am trying to go down more of the home made line this Christmas however.

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I have bought some pretty cake tins and pie dishes and plan some game pies and fruit cakes to go in them. Cakes in cake tin and game pie in pie dish. Not the other way round.

My ancient set of alphabet cutters will come in very useful here. I love to name pies and think I will aim for Merry Xmas rather than Merry Christmas as it requires less space round the pie edge.

But John has found more than moles in this field. Leeches abound there too. Proper blood sucking jobs.

The kind that doctors in times gone by, and current times too, apply for bloodletting. The job that took John in there was to clean out the dike down one side of the field.

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The dike is not too deep and narrow and he has been able to do the job with a spade, rather than the digger. What he has turned over has been a wriggly mass of leeches.

Or, as was suggested when I looked up the collective noun for leeches, a politician of leeches. Ouch.

Apparently surgeons make use of leeches ability to drink half a teaspoon of blood in less than fifteen minutes to drain congested blood from wounds or , in the case of plastic surgery , for reconstructive work.

Bet that doesn't figure highly in cosmetic surgeons public relations material.

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In times gone by men would bathe in a ditch, trousers rolled up to their knees, legs smeared in pigs' blood and collect the leeches who adhered themselves to their legs, for sale.

Now I do appreciate that in all the time I have been married to John times have always allegedly been hard, but I do hope that this is not one money making scheme he expects me to contribute to.

However I do have another idea........leech pie anyone?