the rakes progress

dear readers, herself has been having a fine old time this week. as regular readers will know, she has been having raking. this makes people more relaxed and in tune. the raking lady suggested that, because herself has such a lot of energy, she might like to share it with others and do a bit of raking herself. i was quite keen on this idea. the old hips have been giving me a fair bit of gip lately what with my arthritis and apparently raking can help.

it seems that in order to do raking you have to learn to sing properly. this is called attunement, which i assumed is something like tuning a piano. herself could certainly do with tuning up a bit. her singing is, to put it bluntly, somewhat feline (wash my mouth!). she only sings in the car, and only then when she is alone. however, alone in this context means with no fellow humans. young dave and i are expected to put our paws over our ears and get on with it.

so on monday the raking lady came round to make a start on the tuning. all four of us boys were banished from the house. unfortunately we returned before the end of the tuning. young dave was rather curious about what was going on. he spent some time sniffing the raking lady and tickling herself's face with his beard. we could not tell whether the raking had been successful or not as herself did not treat us to any songs that evening. tuesday was the second session, which was at the raking centre. part of this session involved herself learning how to do raking on someone else. the raking lady suggested that my boy might make an ideal model to practice on. herself suggested this to him.

"i'm not having black magic practiced on me!" he squawked, "i might turn into a toad!" herself tried to explain that raking was nothing to do with black magic but my boy was not moved. the raking practice therefore had to be done on the raking lady. she seemed to survive and gave herself some special stones. herself will also get a certificate which she can put on her wall next to the one that says she can use a chainsaw.

after becoming tuneful herself has to do a bit of meditation every day and practice raking for 21 days in order to make it stick in her head. she decided that this would give her a good reason to start yoga again as the raking could be tacked on the end of it. young dave has not been exposed to the joys of yoga. when he saw herself doing the downward dog thing he got very excited. herself ignored him so he decided to lie down on the yoga mat. i think this position is called 'child' which suits young dave rather well.

next week will be interesting. we have been invited to join her maamship and the prof on their boating holiday. i love a canal boat holiday. i am ideally designed to lie down along the middle of a boat. i am not sure how young dave will take to it. but what will be most interesting is the thought of herself doing yoga in such a confined space...