Three eggs.
On a patch which I saw being ploughed 30th October or a day or two earlier, the grain is now 4-6” high.
Oranges now ripe & on sale everywhere. Pomegranates now on sale are over-ripe & quite a different colour, brown instead of red.
Form of donkey shoe used here.
Orwell Diaries 1938-1942 
The egg series, more than anything else, has encouraged me to begin keeping my own journal. If one of the greatest authors of the 20th century writes stuff like this in his journal, then mine really couldn’t be all THAT banal, could it?
This is not a horseshoe. It is a secret weapon.
Anybody who has read Graham Greene’s spy story ‘Our Man in Havana’ will be familiar with this kind of ploy. In Greene’s book a hapless vacuum cleaner salesman drew a childlike sketch of the workings of his new vacuum cleaner. Naturally, Cuban intelligence immediately spotted that it was a clever drawing of a secret weapon.
This was starting to remind me of the scene in Kubrick’s “The Shining” when Wendy discovers that all Jack has been typing for weeks on end is “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”.
“This is not a horseshoe. It is a secret weapon.”
No,surely it’s an egg. At least one.
3 eggs.
*sigh*
I feel peaceful.
Yes, life is good…
THREE EGGS! YEA!
Sorry Bob, yes it’s an egg. A fried egg for his breakfast. Should have seen it. Thanks!
Orwell’s problem is that he is trying to run a small sale egg production unit a couple of years before ET Halnan’s seminal text on “Feeding Poultry” was published by the War Office in 1940. If he had had the benefit of that valuable pamphlet, I reckon he would be up to about six eggs a day by now. (It later reappeared as Chapter XV of Halnan & Garner’s “ Principles and Practices of Farm Animals”, published by Longman, Green & Co also in 1940.)
1000 Pounds for the date he gets 4 eggs.
That egg diagram obviously has some nice freshly ground pepper on it; yummy…
Are those Donkey Shoes imported from Czechoslovakia per chance?
Well, yes or no, they sure do make a fine projectile for use in a slingshot, catapult or trebuchet.
Mmm, pomegranates, ’tis the season. When my sister lived in Turkey she learned how they extract the seeds there with a minimum of mess, you do it underwater in a big bowl. The seeds sink and the skin & membrane float, so it’s really easy to get the pips & you don’t get red juice all over.
When the breakthrough came,
The three egg day, I complained,
Of pomegranates
Don’t you think the closed shoe would tend to be lost or pulled more often than an open shoe? Also, stones and debris would be trapped more often between the hoof and/or frog and the shoe.
I woke up this morning just knowing that it felt like a three egg day.
I can’t stop thinking about the catapults. He said the weaker one would shoot 90 yards max, and the other 150 yards. That’s a really long distance for a handheld unit, isn’t it?
Can you really *find* buckshot once it’s been shot that far? I guess for a guy who’s so good at looking for eggs, it’s not that big a deal.
Overripe pomegranates are really disgusting.
Ed Webb: Next to the excitment of what Eic is writing next, I’m allways looking forward to read your Haiku poem of the day.
Thank you very much for bringing a smile on my face every evning
Roving:
I don’t think you try to “find” your buckshot, anymore than duckhunters do.I think he was wishing he had some,as opposed to using pebbles. I,me 99% sure “catapult” is UK 1938 for “slingshot”
300 feet for a real slingshot,and small stones, is far,but doable .I routinely built many nasty devices as a boy. I think GO is wanting some childlike fun…
My question is what does he want to hunt….Probably rabbits.Better to snare them..I’me staying tuned for details.
Dave, thanks for your reply. I didn’t imagine that GO was trying to retrieve buckshot, or pebbles, but I assumed that he was trying to measure how far it would go. I guess you could just stand there and shoot at a mud wall and watch for a little dust cloud…but from 90-150 yards I wouldn’t count on seeing that.
I’m sure his catapult = slingshot, too. After writing the previous comment I realized that if he was referring to anything larger, it would go a lot farther than that (and be even harder to retrieve for performance evaluation).
I can really sense the studied nonchalance in that “Three eggs.”
Like it’s not a big deal. It’s only THREE DAMN EGGS, MO FO!
The chickens. He’s threatening the chickens. He has used his bow saw and bow lathe skills to create a fearful weapon. At point blank range, he could rip their heads off with a BB. Note the increased production.
Catapult seems to be one of those words that are different in English English and American English. I remember a friend having his catapult confiscated at school – age about six. That was definitely not on the siege engine scale! I don’t think we talk about sling shots in England.
That thing in Dennis the Menace’s back pocket is a slingshot.
I wonder, does Dennis have the accent of the hearer? And does the hearer see a catapult?
This blog, George, man, what fun. An international playground of imaginations.
Another term that causes confusion is “to ride shotgun”. In England of course this means to place said weapon between the legs and waddle around the room on it, crying “Tally-ho!” and making believe that it is a thoroughbred stallion.
DE; Are you making that up ??? Having me on??? I wouldn’t put anything past the Brits mind you…(mad dogs and Englishmen) and yet I can’t believe that…………(I’me in Canada )
RT; I’me sure he made some fine targets out of old paint(lying around his rented villa) and last weeks newspaper…Set them up @ intervals…We are going to hear more on that topic ,I’me sure.
He is fabricating a new model in the evenings by the light of his “Butagaz”
George~~
Let those hens know we’re rooting for them.
By the way, once again you have outdone yourself with your exquisite rendering of the UFO.
If only donkeys could lay eggs.
“Catapult” in England and English: see my comment second from the end of GO’s entry dated 2.12.38. Remember also when a schoolboy he was a dedicated and knowledgeable naturalist, fisherman, hunter and shooter. Later in life he had a vegetable and fruit garden and kept chickens and goats for milk. AM
“Catapult” in England and English: see my comment second from the end of GO’s entry dated 2.12.38. Remember also when a schoolboy he was a dedicated and knowledgeable naturalist, fisherman, hunter and shooter. Later in life he had a vegetable and fruit garden and kept chickens, and goats for milk. AM
me bruvver’s mate made catapults from his big sister’s knicker elastic. tin can off a wall at 30 mtrs? chickenspit! he even did it once with his eyes closed! just to show off.