On Sunday the 8th Novemeber 2009 I went on one knee and asked Paula to be mine forever. We now have a date set as the 24th September 2010

Diamond Ring Princess Cut 1.08 Carat set in Platinum -As modelled by Paula

Paula with the incubator

We left them incubating at paula’s parents house and Paula’s mother carefully turned them several times a day while we were away in Hungary. The day we got back Paula wished to candle the eggs and inspect them, she dropped one and then we were down to six. Frank died as he was hatching which was a little bit sad, Jo was the first to successfully hatch, then followed by Izzy and lastly Truck. There are still two more incubating and they are due to hatch in the next couple of days. See the photos below.

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• They’ve finally gone to the top of the garden and away from the house, we can finally have the windows open on hot days without the smell of ducks filling the kitchen. The other good thing about this is that the ducks are now on slabs and not wallowing in mud. The white ducks are white again. This happend because I spent £100 to hire a digger with which I then mostly levelled the garden with.
• About three days before we went to Budapest we were woken up at about half one by the ducks quacking loudly from the other end of the garden – I dismissed it as the two white male ducks fighting again and went back to sleep but Paula jumped out of bed and ran to the top of the garden. When she got to the top of the garden she opened the lid to the ducks and a fox jumped out and ran off. It seems that a fox had gotten into their pen through a piece of chick-wire we hadn’t put enough zip-ties on. It’s a good job Paula got out there when she did else I think all of them would have been killed and taken away. It turned out that five of them had suffered injuries with the white ones being worst off with bite marks on their necks and damaged wings. The white ones looked sad for a while and Paula gave them special treatment the next day letting them use the bath and spraying their cuts with TCP. They are all well & happy now and when our <pigeon serial killing> cat stalks past their pen on her walk abouts the odd duck out (Jack) flaps it’s wings quacking at her and chases her of (I think she’s freightend of the ducks – stupid pusscat.) Of note, the only duck that wasn’t bitten by the fox was Jack (he/she’s the duck with the odd markings,) I can’t help but think that Jack was the duck that maybe kept the fox at bay for the five minutes that the fox spent inside the cage?? Apologies for the lack of photos to sit, I didn’t think to take any
• We brought six ducklings in total from Melton Farmers Market and to be honest I expected them to all be males because I couldn’t imagine why anyone would flog ‘em on otherwise. But it’s become obvious that they were not all males. Both of the white ducks have their feather tail curls so they are 100% male. Out of the three Khaki Campbells only one of them is a male with a tail curl, the other two have been clearly identified as female by the black feather on their wings. This is fantastic news as it means we have a set of ducks for mating and laying eggs – both of which they can’t be far off doing. It does mean that the white ducks will be destined for Christmas dinner because if we have too many males they will end up fighting or killing the females (who every said too much sex is a bad thing?) The only conundrum left is we have no idea what sex Jack is…. We don’t even know what breed it is so we can’t find out what the identifying signs are. It’s not got the curly feather so we are banking on it being a girl so far, but it was always the runt duckling so maybe it’s not quite matured yet?
• We have been incubating our own duck eggs Paula brought from the internet and today they finally hatched. The next time I post will be about that no doubt.

Hot Weather – Any country knows how to do better weather than us… Budapest’s temperatures exceeded  30 celcius at times which made it important for…..

Cheap Beer - 450Ft (which is roughly £1.50) which was great way to attempt to cool down with. Most English festivals charge at least £4 a pint – and then that’s usually Carling crap label.

Decent Toliets – Real flushing toilets that were cleaned several times day & night not portaloos that get tipped over by some drunk yobs while you’re in them.

Food – Huge selection of food outlets offering different (and interesting local foods) not just Pizza and Burger. (Although, If you ever do go to Hungary be sure to try a Langos, it’s basically deep-fried batter smeared with sour cream and sprinkled with cheese)

Situation – Somewhere decent to wonder off to if you want to do something for the morning before the music starts. They ran a ferry service up and down the Danube to the middle of the capital, so you were never very far from a very beautiful city with a lot to offer. Alot of festival grounds reside outside of any major cities and generally speaking you stay mostly isolated at the festival (unless you are doing a booze run to the local supermarket)

Open - You could set up camp pretty much where you wanted, up a tree, by the banks of the river, by the main arena or by the 24hr party tent. The stage areas were always open – you could hang around in the mornings and catch the bands sounds testing.

Bars – Loads of bars playing music with benches and tables to sit at, usually there was only ever a maximum of one person in front of you in the queue.

Festival – a whole seven days of music.

There are a few negetive points too: The music acts were not all exactly my genre of choice (although saying this when I go to Download I usually find myself only watching a handful of bands anyway.) The other negative is that fesitvals are supposed to social things too. The more friends you have on your camp site the better your experiance will be and because it’d be a logistics nightmare there’s no chance of getting everyone at Sziget. I think I missed the stupid antics and immature atmosphere of British festivals and my friends.

Birdseye of Sziget