bona vacantia

when is a door not a door?

2011-12-14T21:36:00.001Z

dear readers, i am not going to bother apologising for my absence. reading over old posts i see nothing but grovelling apologies for not having managed to get herself to sit at the keyboard for me. by now all my faithful readers will either have abandoned ship or concluded that i am a dog of very little influence.

what has persuaded herself out of her cave is the saga of the door. the peep's friend shorn is currently without wheels (for those readers of a literal bent, this does not mean that shorn usually has wheels attached to him. it means he has no car. just so that's clear.)   he is managing fine without wheels on the whole but occasionally has large things which need to be transported. luckily herself has a van.

the large thing in question on this occasion was a door.   shorn is a songsmith by trade but in order to keep a roof over his head to keep his guitar dry he does things with wood and pipes in people's houses in return for which they pay him.   the job he had to buy the door for was a bathroom in a rather nice part of town. herself had arranged to collect him at 2.30 to take him to the door shop, after which they would travel to the house where the door was to be fitted and then back to shorn's house. herself had made it clear that she would have to leave from there at 4.15 in order to fetch my boy from college at 5.

things did not start well. herself was sitting at the computer looking at lurchers in need of homes (something that always makes me a little nervy) when her phone rang.   it was shorn.

"have you left yet?" he asked. herself admitted that she had not. someone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of mathematics would have deduced that she was unlikely to be on time, given that she has no helicopter. for once fortune was on her side. shorn explained that he was going to be late as his daughter's christmas play had overrun. his daughter was playing a playing card which required wearing a wonderful costume made by shorn and mrs shorn and therefore leaving early was not an option.

"no worries," said herself, turning to a web page with irish wolfhounds on it (a sight which had me covering my eyes with my paws), "there's plenty of time." this assumption showed a spectacular lack of memory as to how things tend to pan out around here. 'plenty of time' tends not to be how it works.

herself arrived at shorn's house just as he and the shornlets arrived home. mrs shorn had just popped to the shop to get a few things. after a cuppa, shorn rang mrs shorn to see how long she would be. the shornlets are too small to leave unattended. mrs shorn said that she was in iceland. this seems to me to be a long way to go just to get a few bits of shopping but i am only a lurcher so i may have missed something. the shornlets were duly deposited with a friendly neighbour and the door-buying commenced.

the door shop had only one door of the required size. luckily one was enough. a philosophical discussion followed as to whether this was the last door or the first one which occupied herself and shorn until they got to the till.

"this is really embarrassing," said shorn, "i've forgotten my wallet!" herself pointed out that this was a more usual ploy in a restaurant but luckily she had her handbag so was able to pay for the door.   the door was inserted into the van. while the van is commodious, it was slightly too short for the tailgate to shut, so a piece of rope was employed to keep the tailgate down. previous journeys with the tailgate tied down have taught herself that the only way to avoid being asphyxiated is to have the windows open. in summer this is lovely. in december it is less lovely. in fact it is freezing.   luckily young dave and i were at home in the warm, having been left behind to make room for the door.

eventually herself and shorn made it to the part of town where the door was to be delivered. the road was located fairly quickly. however, it was a very long road and the houses all looked very large and very similar. shorn telephoned the customer but she did not answer her phone so they drove up and down looking at the houses.   shorn knocked on a few doors to try and see if they were the door people. he came back to the van, where herself was shivering.

"no luck so far, but i've found a nice man who i could perhaps leave the door with until i come to do the work. by then i should have got the door number." herself suggested that it would make more sense to take the door back to shorn's house. he was not keen on this plan.

"i won't be able to get it back here tomorrow unless i carry it - in this wind i'd take off!" with which he went off to try more houses. herself drove slowly down the road, keeping pace with shorn, and wondering what they must look like to local residents, with a door protruding from the back of the van and a decidedly dishevelled look. just as herself was about to put her foot down shorn came across the lady whose house he was looking for.   the door was duly delivered.

all that remained now was for shorn to be deposited back at his house and herself to hotfoot it over to my boy's college. even this did not go smoothly. herself could not find the hinges nor the receipt. what she did find was a lego pirate which she gave to shorn.

"this was from my desk at work," she explained. "i thought you would like it!"

the lego pirate was missing his hat and had a gap where his brain would be. i am not sure whether this was the case when he had started working with herself or whether his lack of grey matter was symptomatic of herself's condition. either way shorn seemed rather puzzled by this gift.

"don't worry," called herself as she got into the van, "all will become clear in due course."

well, that's ok then...

2e

2011-10-26T03:53:00.000+01:00

dear readers, this is 2e. 2e is currently our guest, while her peeps visit new zealand, a place that is a long way away.   because it is so far away they will be gone for 3 weeks. 2e is a friend of mine and young dave's from the farm where the magnificent bonzo lives. as you will see from the photograph she is very small.   i have concluded that 2e is actually her size rather than her name, and that small dogs such as this are measured by placing them in a bra and seeing which cup-size will most effectively contain them.

2e's small size does not prevent her from moving extremely fast. she is one of the few dogs who can keep up with young dave, a feat which involves her little legs going at double the speed of light. i have rather a soft spot for her as she bears quite a resemblance to young dave when he was a pup. she has a similar habit of hanging on an old chap's beard, which is endearing, although rather eye-watering.

before 2e came to stay mrs 2e came round to have a look at the accommodation.

"she can be a bit of an escape artist," she said. herself assured her that our garden was dave-proofed when young dave was smaller than 2e and that she would have a job finding any gaps.

this might have been the case, had 2e not had the back legs of a frog. she is able to jump up to face height. in addition she has the climbing skills of a cat. on day 1 of her visit there was a knock at the front door. my boy answered.   it was mr next door.

"have you lost a dog?" he enquired. my boy did a quick head count and saw that our guest was nowhere to be seen. he went round with mr next door and confirmed that the small dog performing the wall of death with young ruby in their living room was in fact supposed to be in our living room. my boy is difficult to surprise, having lived for his entire life with the peeps, but he was at a loss as to how 2e had managed to gain access to next door.   2e kindly demonstrated her route by trying to repeat the exercise, which involved climbing onto the veg patch and through a tiny gap in the trellis that runs along the top of the dividing wall. it was decided that the trellis would be re-enforced for the duration of her visit.

on day 2, herself was spending a happy half hour moving soil around in the garden when there was a knock on the door. it was a neighbour from two doors up in the other direction.   this neighbour owns the house where until recently there were two small dogs.   there is now one large dog, of a breed known as a rotten-wailer. this fellow is large, black and brown, and pretty scary. the neighbour informed herself that 2e had made an appearance in her garden.

herself went round and followed the neighbour into her garden. sure enough, there was 2e sitting looking thoroughly pleased with herself (that is, with 2e's self, not herself's self. glad that's clear.) the rotten-wailer went up to her to have a sniff.   this triggered a ferocious response from 2e which by all accounts was entirely disproportionate to her size and showed very poor judgement in terms of self-preservation. luckily this particular rotten-wailer still has his tail and his owner grabbed hold of it and hung on while herself whisked 2e up into the air and had a firm word with her on the subject of manners.   further fortifications were added to the garden perimeter and so far seem to have been effective, although the peeps are now rather more watchful of our small guest's movements.

as well as being an accomplished escape artist, 2e is rather adept at interfering with himself's use of his laptop.   the laptop is known as the square pet, and is loathed by young dave on account of its unattractive habit of hogging himself's lap when young dave would rather be there. he sits and glares at it and has, with an intellectual skill he does not normally demonstrate, learned which set of key strokes precede it being closed down.   when himself presses the escape key to close down his game, young dave shuffles into position and the minute the square pet is removed young dave takes its place on himself's lap, throwing himself on his back for a tickle.

with a little encouragement from young dave, 2e has developed a method of inveigling herself into the gap where himself places the mouse, next to him on the sofa.   she then sits on top of the mouse hand. it is still possible to operate a mouse with a small dog on the back of your hand, but it does make it extremely difficult for himself in the fine motor skills department.

i just hope she doesn't discover how to do internet shopping...

onwards and upwards

2011-10-11T22:55:00.000+01:00

dear readers, it has been ages since i wrote, for which i can only apologise. as you will know, herself has not been herself lately. she has been off work since january with the collie-wobbles. this takes the form of an allergy to a number of things, including supermarkets, crowds, people standing too close behind her, people shouting, people looking angry, or in fact just being people. as you might imagine this has had a rather debilitating effect on her, and indeed on the whole household.

the only way she can cope with a supermarket is with a minder. my boy has proved to be particularly good in this role. he has years of experience of supermarket fear.   when this was at its worst herself came up with a strategy for getting the shopping done, without having to leave my boy at home, where he might have got up to untold mischief. as my boy was already conditioned to the smell of lavender being relaxing, all herself needed to do was find something in the supermarket that smelled of lavender and my boy would calm down.   so she and my boy would enter the supermarket, dash to where the bubble baths were displayed, and heave the top off a lavender one, whereupon my boy would inhale deeply and calm down. my boy tried to persuade herself to try this but as the peeps now shop at lidl, which tends to have an unusual approach to layout and a rather random selection of products in the personal hygiene field it was not a success. they had had to content themselves with shopping at the speed of light in order to get out of the shop before dizziness and queasiness make it untenable.

there does not appear to be much likelihood of herself returning to the legal world and she therefore was referred to a person called an occupational elf in order to be assessed for retirement. the elf said she was not mad enough to retire. a second elf was asked to give a view and came to the same conclusion.   however, herself cannot do her job and so she is likely to be dismissed. call me old-fashioned but i can't help thinking there is something illogical about all this.    it does give us more time with her and the magnificent bonzo is getting ridden pretty much every day so every cloud has a silver lining.

i am hoping now i have persuaded her to get back at the keyboard i might be able to keep in touch rather more effectively than i have been doing. i hope you are all well and keeping your peckers up. (for the benefit of my reader in canada 'keep your pecker up' is not as rude as it sounds).

horsing around

2011-07-15T08:24:00.002+01:00

bonzo, originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

dear readers, today's post concerns the equine member of our family. as regular readers will know, the magnificent bonzo resides with uncle gary. he has a lovely stable with a little round window high in the wall, and a huge field which he shares with some other hosses. a hoss could not be happpier. young dave and i help herself with stable duties. young dave is a dab hand at clearing a pile of manure in double quick time, and i sit and supervise from the comfort of the sawdust.

in the winter, the hosses go out in the field in the day and come into their stables at night. in the summer this arrangement is reversed in order to keep them away from the flies in the heat of the day and to prevent the magnificent bonzo's magnificent pink nose from burning in the sun. when the hosses come in in the morning they are usually very tired and lie down for a kip after breakfast. the reason for this tiredness has not been altogether clear, although mrs rose, who lives by the field, has heard thundering hooves in the night.

a couple of days ago the gardener at the big house called over to herself.

"your hoss has been attacking the trees!"

it appeared that the magnificent bonzo had been seen going at a eucalyptus tree in the field with more than a little energy. he had pounded at the cage that was supposed to protect it from harm with his hooves until it had given up the ghost and had then munched through the tree, leaving it more of a bush. there had been several witnesses, all of them amazed at the ferocity of the attack. herself was rather concerned about the effect of munching eucalyptus. in the antipodes there are little bears who live in trees and eat eucalyptus. they become drugged by its chemicals and fall out of the trees. i suppose we should be grateful that the magnificent bonzo ate the tree before climbing up into its branches - i suspect having a beast of his size fall out of a tree onto you might hurt.

the next day herself noticed that the magnificent pink nose was a little runny, and that one of the eyes was also a little damp. she concluded that it was unlikely to be remorse on the part of bonzo and decided that perhaps he had a little cold and had been attempting to treat himself with herbal remedies from the trees. when she saw the gardener she shared this theory with him.

"perhaps i'll bash him over the head with a tree to help with his headache," said the gardener, only half joking. it appeared that a second tree had falled foul of the magnificent bonzo's charms. this time it was a london plane. a brief search of the interweb brings up the following on plane trees:

"Legend has it that in ancient Athens there was a long avenue of Plane Trees that became a popular meeting place for Greek philosophers. They used to pace the long avenue amidst heated philosophical discussions, and so they appointed the Plane Tree the emblem of ‘genius’. Apparently the Plane tree offers a remedy to heal general ills, simply chew the bark straight off the Plane Tree. For a cold remedy, the bark should be boiled first."

it would appear that the magnificent bonzo is something of a genius. and his cold has completely gone...

car, bra, hoorah!

2011-07-01T23:41:00.000+01:00

dear readers, in an effort to keep up the newly re-established writing habit, i have persuaded herself to write about today's adventure. the background requires me to refer to matters pre-dating today.

as i have mentioned before, herself is a little flakey at the moment. the collie-wobbles do not help with ones confidence. earlier in the week she was round at her friend kt's house for coffee. kt has an issue with her paperwork. herself offered to help tame the paperwork and in return kt is going to provide advice to herself on a number of things, including style. this came about because herself happened to mention that she could not bear to look in a mirror and that she did not have any full length mirrors in the house. kt promptly steered her to a mirror which had the effect of making herself cover her face and squeal. it was obvious that she needed some sort of boost. an appointment was made for today for the paperwork and style session.

when herself called to make sure things were still on, kt told her that she had no wheels as her car had died. she was going to try and hire a car for a few days while she bought a new one. herself offered to drive kt to the car hire place and it was agreed that the outing would incorporate a trip to marks expensive to purchase certain foundation garments. these are necessary in order to avoid looking like a sack. those of you with long memories will recall that on a previous occasion herself was taken to marks expensive by her maamship for exactly this purpose. the garment purchased on that occasion no longer fits and was abandoned by herself some time ago.

when herself arrived at kt's house she found kt on the phone. more accurately she was on two phones, as you can see from the picture. this was something to do with the car hire plan. herself suggested they just get in the car and drive around until they found a car hire place. on the way kt updated herself with the full story and explained how she had to buy a car very soon or there might not be any cars for sale anywhere (kt makes herself look patient). herself took a lofty tone about the whole matter. only someone who drives an old skoda would dare to get lofty about buying cars.

sure enough, they found a car hire place soon enough. the only trouble was that it didn't have any cars until tomorrow. kt was reeling from herself's discourse on the merits of patience so she agreed to pick one up in the morning. they then turned towards marks expensive.

i will not dwell on the whole bra-purchasing saga. it bore a distinct resemblance to the previous visit, with the added complication of herself's current heebie-jeebies in shops. there was some amazement when herself came out of the changing room in the bra.

"you look like you have lost half a stone!" said kt. there is some scientific reason why hoiking up the ladies should make you look thinner but i am not sure what it is. whatever it is, herself looked less like a sack afterwards. as they were walking back to the car, herself mused in wonder at the size of her new bra.

"i'm a 38d! that's quite big! no wonder the other one was too tight."

"my dear," said kt, "you're practically a porn star!"

i'm not sure i'd go that far. mind you, it depends how far the re-style goes...

something in the air

2011-06-19T09:08:00.001+01:00

i have finally persuaded herself to sit down and type for me so i am hoping that she will remain focused for long enough that i can finish this post. there is nothing so frustrating as having a typist with the attention span of a gnat when you have paws and cannot take over.

today was a day filled with interest. alas, i was not present for most of it so i have had to piece it together from what i have managed to overhear. young dave is often allowed to tag along with herself when she rides the magnificent bonzo but on this occasion both of us were left at home due to today's ride being along roads as well as paths.

the road part of today's ride appeared to have gone fairly smoothly, apart from a fracas with a gate. things only started to unravel when herself and the magnificent bonzo turned down the bridleway leading back to the farm where he lives.   some tents came into view, although not your usual sort of tent of the type the peeps take camping.   these tents were huge. they apparently belonged to the circus. the magnificent bonzo is not easily fazed and walked past nonchalantly. however in the next field were some creatures that made him grind to a very sudden halt.   it turned out that these beasts were camels.

the magnificent bonzo has on occasion been likened to a camel, mainly because of his prehensile top lip, which he uses to grab handfuls of grass with. this lip has a life of its own. at their first meeting, the magnificent bonzo very gently touched herself's face with his lip, causing her to fall in love with him immediately. history does not relate whether himself used the same seduction technique.

herself decided that it would be good for the magnificent bonzo's education to meet the camels. his education has been wide-ranging and random (he must be one of very few horses outside the military who has met two trombones. one was played by a retired shepherd up on the hill where he used to live. the shepherd would take the trombone to the middle of a field to practice to avoid annoying the neighbours. the other trombone belongs to a jazz musician who lives near his stable).

while herself may have wanted to broaden the magnificent bonzo's mind by introducing him to interesting beasts from foreign climes, he had other ideas. after a lot of snorting and huffing and puffing he took off up the bridleway with undignified haste, and was only reined in with some difficulty by herself.

back at the farm, herself left the somewhat flustered bonzo to have his breakfast and went in search of uncle gary to have a cuppa. she found him looking frazzled. the reason for the frazzlement was all too clear. george (usually known as person george to differentiate him from chicken george, who is my boy's cockerel) was in the process of taking uncle gary's old car to the dump. whereas many people would call up a scrap merchant to have the car collected, george had decided to have the car put on the back of his truck by the tractor driver and drive it there himself.

regular readers will already have seen the flaw in this plan from the photograph above. george has the same approach to thinking ahead as herself. he had not thought it might be a good idea to measure the car and then measure the truck to see whether the car would fit on the truck. (as soon as herself showed the pictures at home himself said "he's just like you!") herself's idea as to how they might resolve this issue was that they should drive the car into a wall and scrunch it up a bit, thus making it shorter.   thankfully no-one took this seriously, not least because by this stage the car had been relieved of its wheels.

uncle gary has known george a long time. he had realised george was not the slightest bit deterred by the overhang at the back of the truck and was about to leave to go to the scrap metal place with the car dangling.

"i'm beginning to feel a little queer!" said uncle gary, ever the master of the double entendre (uncle gary was on the stage in a previous life). he had visions of the car falling off onto the bonnet of a police car and his career as an upstanding citizen coming to an abrupt halt. in any event, off went george, making very little concession to his unstable load in terms of speed or cornering.

after several anxious phone calls it transpired that george had missed the car breaker's yard by 10 minutes and would have to bring the car back and try again on monday. at least this gives my boy an opportunity to participate in the fun, having been unavoidably detained by a warm bed on the occasion of the first attempt.

part of the process of preparation for the trip to the scrapyard was emptying the car of all its clutter.   uncle gary takes car clutter to new heights. one particularly fruitful compartment contained a vast amount of coins.

"i'll take these and get them changed in one of those coin machines," said herself. she collected a further pile of coins from the tack room and bagged them all up.

fast forward to the afternoon, when herself managed to persuade himself to accompany her to tescos. on account of the collie-wobbles herself is not up to visiting supermarkets alone. they located the coin-changing machine and started putting in handfuls of coins. about a third of the way through the machine made an uncomfortable noise and ground to a halt. a sign flashed up saying the peeps had to call an operative. himself went off in search of one, leaving herself quaking by the machine.

a lady finally appeared. after putting in numerous codes she opened the front and revealed the mechanism. it was apparent that the machine had been defeated by the stuff mixed up with the coins.

"does your friend have a dog?" asked the lady (herself had explained that she had come by the huge amount of coins because of her friend's car going to the dump rather than having been robbing charity boxes).

"er, yes," said herself, "he does have one or two dogs." in reality the question of whether uncle gary has a dog is in the same category as asking whether the pope has a balcony. uncle gary has a multitude of dogs, ranging in size from very small to very large. the thing they all have in common is they all look as though they have run into a wall and squashed in their faces (as i am a dog of the pointy-nosed variety i am possibly biased).

"that's the problem," said the lady, "its all the dog hair - its blocked up the machine." she proceeded to brush out the innards of the machine with a paintbrush, causing clouds of it to waft around in the air.

by now himself was looking less than keen on the turn-your-loose-change-into-untold-riches project. he was mightily relieved when the peeps were able to retrieve their vouchers from the machine.

"maybe next time it would be an idea to hose the money off first," he suggested.

i feel that this could have an equally, if not more, disastrous effect. wet dog hair would be harder to shift with a paintbrush...

a little something to watch...

2011-06-15T22:14:00.005+01:00

From 2011-06-01

dear readers

i know many of you are finding the long period of radio silence somewhat frustrating so here is a video of my boy driving a ferrari. he was given the ferrari driving day by her maamship for his birthday and christmas and it has taken until now for the peeps to book it and make it happen. as you will see, my boy is something of a chip off the old block in terms of his petrolhead tendencies.

and a special hello to girl in a trench, whose birthday it is today and who is working in a hot place with old things.

hello, is anyone there?

2011-03-26T08:15:00.005Z

hello dear readers, if there are any after this long hiatus. try as i might i have been unable to get herself to focus enough to assist me with a blog post. she is still off work with the collie-wobbles and her state of mind makes young dave seem like einstein. while she usually has the attention span of a gnat, her attention span now is more along the lines of an amoeba. several people have pointed out that ample blog-fodder is passing us by, never to be recorded.

such was the clamour at the waste of good material this week that i have been able to shame her into taking virtual pen to virtual paper and create this post. as always, i have to backtrack a little to set the scene.

the peeps, particularly herself and my boy, are great drinkers of tea. the tea normally comes in little bags that you dunk in the cup until the beverage is the right colour, then hook out and leave to cool on the kitchen worktop (himself is less than keen on this part of the process, being someone who likes a clean kitchen). because of herself's collie-wobbles and inability to venture into a supermarket unattended, stocks of groceries have become depleted. (himself is an accomplished shopper but as he is usually on foot his carrying capacity is limited). the time came when the peeps had run out of teabags. this was something of a crisis.

"never mind," said herself, "we have the emergency leaf tea!" this was a box of tea given to herself by miss shell, her colleague at work.

leaf tea is himself's nemesis. it has all the worktop-and-sink-ruining capacity of a tea bag without the containment. you have to make it in a pot and when you have poured out all the liquid you are left with the leaves, which by now are wet and claggy. they eventually find their way into the compost but first they have to be removed from the teapot. during the course of the day a lot of tea was consumed, and a lot of tealeaves dropped into the sink. until recently there was a little sink strainer thingy in the plug hole which was to catch just this sort of stuff, but himself took against it as it interfered with his clean kitchen policy. this meant that the tea leaves found their way into the pipe below the sink.

herself noticed that the sink was taking a little longer than usual to empty but thought nothing of it. off she went to fetch my boy from college and then they went off to feed the magnificent bonzo. as they left the stables herself made the most of having my boy in the car and announced that they would swing by lidl on the way home, to replenish the cupboards. my boy is showing signs of having inherited himself's shopping acumen and responded positively to the idea.

sadly, the shopping trip was not to be. my boy rang himself to let him know where they were. i could not hear the other end of the conversation from the back of the car but it became clear that we would have to return home. tealeaves and floods were mentioned.

having ascertained that himself had sounded resigned rather than shouty, herself headed for home. when we got in it became apparent that somehow the tealeaves had blocked the sink and caused the washing machine to back up and flood all over the floor. it is not all that long since the whole floor had to be replaced due to a flood so there was a bit of an air of tension around but himself had mopped up the floor and put newspaper around.

herself has a friend who advocates practicing 'restraint in word and deed'. this would have been a good moment to remember this maxim, but unfortunately herself's memory has gone the way of the pear and in one movement she had knelt down and unscrewed the sink trap while asking himself whether he had checked the trap and at the same time asking my boy to pass a large bowl. unfortunately for the floor, my boy's reactions were slower than herself's actions and a large pool of water, gunk, hairy oily nastiness and tea leaves spread across the floor.

i would quote directly what was said by himself but this is a family blog. suffice to say it was loud, very much shouty and not very polite. there followed a showdown, with himself mopping and wringing, herself offering to help, and my boy saying helpful things along the lines of no-one having died. young dave was needless to say interested in helping clear up the oily gunky stuff but was persuaded that this would not be a good idea. regurgitated half-digested oily gunky stuff would not have helped the evening go with a swing.

after a short while herself took over the mopping and eventually the floor was once again clean and relatively dry. the peeps started to put things back in the under sink cupboard. it was at this point that the most blog-worthy bit of the whole business occurred. the peeps use washing powder that comes in a large box with a handle. it usually lives under the sink but had of course been removed in the clear-up operation.

herself picked up the box by the handle to pass it back to himself. unfortunately the box had got wet in the flood. there is no doubt some law of physics which explains how, if you think you are lifting something heavy and it suddenly becomes lighter because the bottom has fallen out of the box, your arm suddenly whizzes up in the air, depositing the remaining contents of the box in the vicinity. i am not all that up on laws of physics so i will leave that to my more intellectual readers but suffice to say that this process is an excellent method of spreading stuff over a wide area.

at this point herself was trying to shrink into as small a space as possible. this is difficult when you are as large as her. luckily himself saw the funny side of things at last and started to laugh. herself joined in, rather nervously. my boy by now had disappeared upstairs but was persuaded down by the promise of washing powder to sniff (sniffing washing powder is something of a treat for his artistic nose) and was persuaded to clear up the latest mess.

there has now been a ban on leaf tea in our house, which seems to me eminently sensible...

friday night at lidl

2011-02-19T10:39:00.003Z

friday night at lidl, originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

herself has been a little flakey of late and has been signed off work with stress, hence the lack of blogging on my part. stress has many symptoms, one of which seems to be an inability to face the ravages of supermarkets. as himself has been otherwise engaged this has meant that the larder has become somewhat depleted.

yesterday herself decided to pluck up courage to visit the local co-op to pick up some essential provisions. my boy was feeling a little under the weather with aches and pains and asked her to pick up some paracetamol for him. herself drew up in the car and looked for a space. there were quite a lot of spaces and she was not planning on being there long so she left the car at a rakish angle and collected her bags from the back. as she got out a small child, whose mother was strapping an even smaller child into a people carrier, started to shout and wave his arms. it appeared that he took exception to the way herself had parked her car.

"mummy, that lady has taken two spaces!"

the mother tried unsuccessfully to turn his volume down.

"but mummy, look!" he continued.

herself by now was mortified. she has quite a big social conscience and generally tries to do the decent thing wherever possible. the prospect of being thought a sociopath by a small child was too much for her in her fragile state and she very nearly got back into the car and left. all that stopped her rushing off in tears was the thought of the paracetamol for my boy.

walking swiftly into the co-op whilst avoiding the gaze of the judgmental 4 year old, herself grabbed a basket and found the hypochondria aisle. she shovelled 2 packs of paracetamol and 2 packs of ibuprofen into the basket and grabbed a carton of milk before running out of bravado and heading for the checkout. but her shame was not over yet. the checkout lady looked at herself's purchases and rang her bell to summon a colleague.

"am i allowed to put all these drugs through?" she called over. it seems you are only allowed a certain amount of pain at a time. fortunately herself's purchases were of two sorts of drugs and were therefore acceptable. by now she was very keen to leave.

later on mrs toby came round. after a bowl of spaghetti with cheese and tomato the talk turned to shopping and how difficult it was. mrs toby has issues with supermarkets herself and was able to empathise wholeheartedly with herself's experience at the co-op. she confided that, only that same evening she had been compelled to seek out the warm and well-appointed toilets in the very same co-op in order to gather her thoughts before carrying on with her shopping. in fact she may well have been sitting there while herself was having the collie-wobbles.

it was agreed that there was safety in numbers and, as mrs toby pointed out, it was important to purchase provisions before all the food ran out. a plan was formulated to go to tescos that very evening. mindful of the previous outing to tescos herself said that she would be more comfortable with lidl, where she knows where things are and where hers was not one of the mugshots on the security desk. a check on the interweb showed that lidl was open until 10pm and the fearless pair therefore set off without further ado.

when they arrived at lidl the car park was deserted apart from one car that was just leaving. herself parked, again rather rakishly. she was just taking this photo when mrs toby came back from fetching change for the trolley.

"i suddenly thought you might look a bit mad taking a photo of an empty supermarket carpark so i thought i'd better get back quickly," she explained. had i been there i would have pointed out that taking photos of empty supermarket carparks is the one of the least mad of herself's foibles.

they went into the shop and spent a leisurely while collecting foodstuffs. then they got to the central aisle. regular customers of lidl will know that the central aisle is a wonder of the modern world. you never know what the theme will be, other than that it will be a surprise that a not very large supermarket has a market for whatever it is. this week's theme was horsewear.

the pair fell upon the rugs and saddle pads with glee, finally selecting a saddle pad each for the magnificent bonzo and toby and a special rug for bonzo for when he is sweaty. these were remarkably cheap (for my horse-owning readers the pads are £4 and the rugs £6 - get along while stocks last!)

by now the pair had begun to attract the attention of the security guard. this may have been partly to do with mrs toby's famous high-viz yellow shopping jacket, which rather stands out. or it may have been that they were both rather muddy, having been involved in horse-related activities earlier in the day. either way, once they carried on round the shop they were followed closely by the guard. they were also followed by a lady in a grey suit who spent more time than is natural examining the labels on things as uninteresting as bleach and not buying anything. this is a sure sign of a store detective. herself had a job once as a store detective and knows all the tricks. (her store detecting career was short-lived due to her only arrest being one of someone who turned out not to have stolen anything.)

herself refrained from approaching the security guard with her 'i'll have you know, my good man, i am an upstanding member of the legal profession' speech, on the grounds that she did not have any proof of this on her person, and anyone looking at her would have laughed at such an assertion. they finally paid for all the shopping and loaded it into the car, discussing the security guard and store detective.

"i think the security guard fancied us," concluded mrs toby.

mrs toby has great faith in the pulling power of a high-viz jacket...

a guest post from her maamship

2011-01-16T14:57:00.001Z

Joker has asked me to write a guest blog about how his boy's dressing gown tag came to be removed.

At first I was deeply honoured. Then, being the old cynic I am, I realised I really am the only writer who can do it. I am the only witness able to give a first paw account of what happened. This is for two reasons. First, herself's cowardice. Secondly, because Tesco's are not too keen on lurchers, however eminent, lurking with very definite intent around the meat fridges.

Joker's boy has, since Christmas Day, been compelled to wear a dressing gown with a security tag attached. This was not of much concern in Joker's sartorially challenged household except to the wearer, who strongly objected to being tagged. For transatlantic readers, this has connotations of a negative involvement with the criminal justice system. At best, it made herself look like a shoplifter.

It was perhaps for such reason that herself bottled out of taking the dressing gown back to the store herself. Using all her powers of persuasion and a bottle of Dr Loosen's riesling, I was cajoled into taking the dressing gown and receipt ( for, despite scurrilous growls to the contrary, she is not a shoplifter) for the tag to be removed.

My problems began when I hadn't appreciated that the security sensors wail just as loudly when you go into the store with a tagged item as when you leave it. All heads turned to look at me. Including the security guard's. Keen to make his first arrest of the day, he trotted officiously over to apprehend me. He was much disappointed when it became apparent that I was not making off out of the store with a stolen item but was heading the wrong way, brandishing a receipt above my head. Deflated, he accompanied me to the customer service counter. Perhaps hopeful that there might still be something dodgy to detect.

I then had the task of giving a credible explanation to a formidable lady in charge of the tag removal gun as to: (a) why the dressing gown was only now being brought back for de-tagging some weeks after Xmas Day; (b) how the purchaser herself had not been apprehended when the alarm went off as she left the store and (c) why herself had not brought it back. She gave me a pitying look and reached for her gun. I was put out of my misery. The tag was removed.

Apologies to my patron and his kind for those last sentences. They were a bit near the bone.

Her mugship.

falsies

2011-01-14T12:56:00.004Z

dear readers, as many of you will know, the weather has been wet pretty much everywhere lately. at least we have not had to deal with the awfulness that so many folks around the world have encountered. the main effect of the rain for us has been mud.

the magnificent bonzo is oblivious to mud. he has a large coat that he wears in the winter which has by january acquired a unique and not entirely unpleasant aroma. it keeps out most of the weather and enables him to spend the day in his field with his buddies, munching grass. herself was always under the impression that munching grass was a perfectly happy way for a hoss to spend the day and had no inkling that the magnificent bonzo might like to be inside in his cosy stable rather than out in the rain.

however, yesterday herself received a phone call from a lady whose hoss is bonzo's neighbour, informing her that the magnificent bonzo had come trotting into the yard, along with one of his buddies, having eased his not insubstantial frame through a gap in the fence. this was not welcome news. bonzo has something of a history with fences. luckily he had come to no harm and was shut in his stable to await further instructions. herself arranged that she would assist with fixing the fence. although i suspect she is more of a hindrance than a help with this sort of job, uncle gary is far too polite to say so.

the following morning found herself suitably attired in waterproof trousers and boots, ready for wading around in a muddy field. on the way to the stables she rang her friend kt who has been poorly. during the course of the conversation kt rather unwisely let slip that she was going to be having some eyelash extensions done.

"oh, crikey, are you sure?" shrieked herself, "they can sometimes make people look a bit scary, you know!"

kt admitted that she was having second thoughts about the plan and that she was not entirely sure why she had thought it was a good idea in the first place. it seems that mr kt is not overly fond of false eyelashes and said that when kt wore them she bore more than a passing resemblance to a drag artist.

"maybe that's why you want to have them," said herself, ever the cod psychologist, "its probably subconscious passive aggression!" she went on to explain that when she wanted to annoy himself she sprinkled sugar on the kitchen worktops, which worked out much cheaper and had the added advantage of being less permanent.

kt said that mr kt was in fact currently in her good books so she did not think it was passive aggression but that she was going to cancel the eyelashes anyway and have a nice rest instead. herself by now had got to the stables and had to get off the phone in order to help with the fence.

some while later she emerged from the field looking rather muddy and dishevelled. while a mud mask might well be good for the skin in certain people, in others it merely adds an air of the swamp. herself falls into the latter category. there is something decidedly ironic about advice on false eyelashes being dispensed by someone who resembles the creature from the black lagoon...

tagged

2010-12-26T23:18:00.002Z

dear readers, i hope you all enjoyed a happy and peaceful christmas. the peeps had a very low-key but fun time. my boy was born a couple of weeks before christmas, not being able to wait until his due date in january, and so tends to have one big present for both. this year's present was a graphics card for his computer. this is to make the pictures on the screen more realistic, so much so that the virtual world is fast becoming indistinguishable from the real one.

because my boy had already been given his graphics card, herself decided to buy him a new dressing gown and slippers so he would have something to unwrap on christmas day. herself does not do well in crowded shops, so she planned to go along to the nearby 24 hour tesco at an hour when other folks would have something better to do. this plan, like many, did not go quite how herself would have liked.

herself's friend mrs toby spends her time between denmark, where her beloved man lives, and england, where her beloved horse lives. at some point mrs toby plans to locate both beloveds in the same country but for the time being lives a rather peripatetic life. a couple of days before christmas mrs toby was due to visit. at about teatime herself received a text message from mrs toby, who is a little averse to telephone conversations. the text said that mrs toby was stuck in tesco doing her last minute christmas shopping and would be along as soon as she could.

herself decided that there was no time like the present for buying a present and texted back to say she would meet mrs toby by the tills in tesco, and would therefore be able to give her a lift back to our place. mrs toby was easy to find as she was wearing a very big high-viz jacket. herself helped mrs toby to choose which queue to join (a fellow high-viz jacket wearer was in one of the queues and herself suggested to mrs toby that she would be less conspicuous next to someone in similar attire) and then went off to collect the dressing-gown and slippers.

on returning to the tills herself was overwhelmed by the length of the queues, which had increased yet further. the only tills that had no queue were the self-service ones. these are tills where you scan your own stuff rather than a person doing it for you. they have various crafty gadgets to stop you forgetting to pay for anything. herself and my boy have tried them before but they made them feel guilty, even though they were not stealing anything. however, in the interests of escaping tesco as quickly as possible herself approached the machine.

the slippers were scanned and a bleep went off to let herself know that she could put them in the bag. herself had brought an ecologically sound cotton shopping bag with her but the machine seemed to want the shopping to go into its own plastic bag and kept showing a message to that effect. when herself tried to substitute her cotton bag for the plastic one the machine told her that the slippers were the wrong weight. herself gave in on the bag issue and turned her attention to the dressing-gown. again the machine bleeped to let her know all was well and instructed her to place it in the plastic bag. it then told her to checkout and asked her if she had brought her own bag. herself by now was feeling decidedly misunderstood by the machine but thought better of engaging in a debate with it. she went and stood by the window to wait for mrs toby to finish paying. on the way out the alarm went off but as it seemed to be going off all the time herself and mrs toby took no notice.

i will now fast forward to christmas morning. my boy unwrapped his present and was thrilled to bits with it. the slippers fitted perfectly and the dressing-gown was as soft as could be. he tightened the belt.

"mum," he asked, "did you nick this?" he pointed to the anti-theft tag that was still in the neck.

"of course not," said herself, "they must have missed taking the tag out!" in her youth she was something of a dab hand at shoplifting, aided at times by a voluminous cloak which had belonged to her mother. she had to abandon this potentially lucrative career when she decided to train to enter the legal profession, but she has teased my boy with the promise that as soon as she retires she will resume a life of crime, so his assumption was not quite as odd as may at first appear. i should say that my boy is horrified at the idea of having to fetch his mother from the police station and has threatened to disown her if she so much as dreams of failing to pay for her shopping.

it was agreed that as soon as the shops opened they would take the dressing-gown back and have the tag removed. himself stressed the need to take the receipt along too, in order to avoid arrest.

it was not until her maamship and the prof came over for a cuppa that the reason for the tag still being there became apparent. it was when herself was describing her antics with the self-service machine that the penny dropped. the machine had been so busy worrying about the bags that it had forgotten to take out the tag...

to all my lovely readers...

2010-12-21T07:55:00.001Z

you can read about yule at the owl underground's place...

visitors

2010-12-20T08:35:00.005Z

dear readers, those of you who were paying attention will have noticed that in my last post i referred to being in something of a grump (aunty jos - you are forgiven for misunderstanding whose grump it was - i know it is hard to keep track of events round here). the reason for my grump will now become clear.

as is the way with things round here, i will need to go back several steps to explain how things came about, so pay attention. or make notes.

above is a picture of ellie. she is one of grandma's dogs and is a sort of lurcher. she claims to be 10 years old but i feel this is a demonstration of the vanity of the female of the species and that she is probably older than me.

[editor's note - much more of this sexist drivel, joker, and you will be doing your own typing]

moving swiftly on, ellie is one of two dogs owned by grandma. the other is gemma, who is even older and is rather rotund. grandma believes in indulging her dogs. this has led to them having slightly flaky manners in a number of areas, particularly involving food.

on tuesday grandma had a fall. or in fact two falls, the first being when she was pulled over by ellie on the grass in the park. the second was unfortunately on concrete in the post office, when grandma was opening the door for a lady with a pram (grandma is a lady of impeccable manners, unlike her dogs, and great thoughtfulness). an ambulance was called and grandma was taken off to hospital where it was discovered that she had a fractured pelvis. this is no joke for anyone, but for someone of 80 it was decidedly unwelcome.

the first the peeps knew of this was when uncle martin phoned that evening. arrangements were made to visit grandma the following day. the peeps suggested that grandma's dogs could come and stay while she was in hospital. uncle martin is out at work all day so this was on the face of it a good idea.

the following day the peeps went off to see grandma, and came back with the two lady dogs. young dave was thrilled with having new folks to sniff and pester. i have in the past enjoyed good relations with the lady dogs and was looking forward to their visit. however, while the lady dogs with grandma are pleasant guests, the lady dogs without grandma are an entirely different kettle of fish. to be fair, gemma is no trouble. but ellie was extremely anxious and squealed and fussed. when bedtime came she sat at the bottom of the stairs howling loudly, interspersed with barking. herself came down and settled her into the living-room, shutting the door behind her. but the racket came up through the floor and herself and my boy spent most of the night trailing up and down trying to keep the neighbour nuisance to a minimum.

the following day the whole household (apart from himself, who could sleep through a hurricane) was rather tired. i have to admit i was not at my best. but we are nothing if not adaptable and that afternoon young dave and i took the lady dogs to the park to show them the ropes. when we got back himself had just returned from the pub, where he repaired after work with mr snake-charmer. since herself gave up alcohol she has a tendency to adopt a rather frosty air when himself goes to the pub - you would think he was sitting on a bench sipping absinthe. there is nothing quite so messianic as a convert.

anyway, i digress. himself bumbled around getting the dinner ready for young dave and i and our canine guests. i am not quite sure what happened next but all i remember is seeing ellie jumping up trying to get her nose in my bowl on the worktop and the next thing i saw red and lost the plot. regular readers will know that i am usually a gentleman and no-one was more surprised than i to see ellie sitting on the sofa with a wound to her head. in my defence i can only plead lack of sleep having affected my judgment.

herself rang the local vet hospital and arranged for ellie to be seen. the vet had a look at ellie and gave her some jabs and said she had to come back the next day to be sewn up. that night we had a reasonable night's sleep. i think ellie was feeling somewhat chastened. there was also the added advantage of himself having been banished to the sofa on account of his snoring.

the next day herself was up early to take ellie to the vet hospital. young dave and i and gemma, our other visitor, had a quiet day. at about 8pm herself brought ellie back. the bill was over £500. ellie was wearing a large trumpet collar to stop her scratching her stitches. it had the disadvantage of amplifying her wailing and barking in the manner of a megaphone. she carried on wailing and barking all evening. i have to say i was not entirely thrilled. i may have made this known with a curled lip. later in the evening i may even have let out the odd growl.

when it came to bedtime there was a certain amount of kerfuffle about where the canine members of the household were to sleep. himself had already dozed off on the sofa and was snoring like a train so herself covered him with a duvet and left him there. there followed several hours of too-ing and fro-ing by my boy and herself, trying to settle ellie down and keep me from showing my displeasure with my teeth. himself slept like a baby throughout.

herself decided that if ellie knew that she had human company she might feel comforted. she pulled out one of himself's arms from under the duvet and placed it on ellie. the arm was pulled back under the duvet. herself tried again. this produced an expletive from himself, who was still asleep.

by 2am tempers were frayed. herself could hear the neighbours (the other side to the next doors) muttering through the wall. they are nice people but even nice people find the sound of a dog screeching for hours on end a little trying. eventually herself and my boy fell asleep, to the sound of howling. herself dreamed of dogfights and my boy dreamed of vats of petrol in the back of the car. in the morning the peeps rang uncle martin and recounted the events of the previous couple of days. it was agreed that the visiting dogs should return to grandma's house, where uncle pete would be coming home for christmas shortly. they were duly returned. by all accounts the journey was somewhat hellish, with icy roads and deafening screeching from ellie the whole way. but the minute she set foot in grandma's house it was as though someone had flicked a switch and the racket stopped.

if anyone had thought to mention that uncle pete was going to be at grandma's house the lady dogs would not have had come to stay with us in the first place...

the snood

2010-12-17T21:13:00.004Z

dear reader, here you can see the young snake-charmer modelling herself's latest creation. herself has taken up knitting in an effort to while away the dark winter nights. her friend the hypnotist has shown her a website where you can look up patterns to knit and find out all about knitting. needless to say, herself has taken to knitting with gusto. you couldn't hear yourself think for the clicking of needles. as soon as it was finished herself wanted a photo of it for the knitting website. as the young snake-charmer was visiting she offered to be the model.

no sooner had the young snake-charmer got into the snood than she let out a massive sneeze and ran towards the kitchen in search of kitchen paper.

"don't get snot on the snood!" wailed herself. luckily the snood escaped harm. after the young snake charmer had worn it for a while she complained of being hot and peeled it off.

it was then the turn of himself to try it:

once my boy had seen how fetching it was he too had a go:

i refused, being in something of a grump. but young dave was persuaded to model the snood, albeit reluctantly:

i somehow feel herself is unlikely to see much of it...

the business end

2010-12-11T07:27:00.002Z

here is a picture of young dave on the beach. my more observant readers will note that he is searching for something to eat. this is one of young dave's favourite pastimes. unfortunately for the rest of us, young dave is not discerning in what he eats. or rather, he is discerning, but not about the same things as the rest of us. whereas i might choose to eat something because it tasted nice, or because it represented a challenge to my skills in craftiness and thievery, young dave selects his foodstuffs on the basis of their microbe content. the mouldier the better would seem to be his motto, especially with things found on the beach or the farm.

this has led to some interesting outcomes. usually they are limited to those of the gaseous variety, but occasionally young dave's gastronomy leads him into more dangerous waters. such was the case last week. i have no idea what morsel set off the reaction but young dave was dashing outside with rather more urgency than usual. this would not have been cause for comment had it not coincided with thick snow.

young dave was introduced to snow some while ago but, as is his way, he had filed the experience under "not particularly edible" and not given it much further thought. so when we had a thick covering of snow in the garden he had pulled up sharp with surprise, before teetering across it looking like someone in stiletto heels. to watch young dave trying to answer a rather urgent call of nature without putting too much weight on his back legs made me laugh until my old sides ached.

the snow remained for several days. this meant that young dave's outpourings left the garden looking like a jackson pollock painting. i had to pick my way carefully round them when leaving my more modest offerings. eventually the snow thawed and the peeps were able to make some effort at clearing up the damage. young dave continued to burble inwardly and produced further colourful delights on the newly cleaned deck. by now he was on a diet of plain boiled rice, having been starved for 24 hours, but there was apparently still scope for artistic endeavour. then we had a very sharp freeze.

by now herself was a little tired of the jackson pollock thing and was pleading with young dave for a move towards the techniques of frank auerbach. frozen pools of colourful dog soup were doing nothing for her already rather low mood. one particularly cold morning she was coming into the house and came across mr next door on his way out. she thought she had better explain.

"in case you see me kneeling in the garden scraping the paving and the deck with a paint scraper, its not what it looks like," she said. i am not sure what this behaviour would look like. the possibilities range from a new found interest in archeology to a case of rapid-onset obsessive compulsive disorder.

"its just that i've clearing up frozen puddles of dog diarrhea," she went on, proceeding to explain about young dave's internal difficulties in more detail than necessary.

"i wouldn't have dreamed of drawing any adverse inference from your behaviour," mr next door assured her, no doubt making a mental note to refrain from offering to assist.

it is just as well that we have kind and understanding neighbours...

an unwieldy beast

2010-11-30T22:16:00.004Z

dear readers, i will not even bother with grovelling about my lack of communication. by now no-one will be here to hear my snivelling anyway. in the past, when life has thrown its little slices of chaos in her direction, herself has been in the habit of drawing comfort from the blog-fodder that it will provide. many is the time when, rather than bursting into tears, she has chuckled quietly at the sheer silliness of it all and consoled herself with how much i would enjoy recounting events to my readers.

lately she has fallen into the habit of taking life a little too seriously and i have had to point out that not only is this bad for her, but it is bad for me too. after all, i have my reputation as a world-famous author to think of. so when the saga of the futon began to unfold, i made sure she recorded events with her camera.

a futon, for those readers who have not had the pleasure of meeting one, is a mattress made of cotton and more cotton, squashed into a cotton cover. it is worthy and ethical and environmentally sound. its one drawback is that it is not very comfortable. that is to say, the only way to make one comfortable is to heave it up and roll it round every day to fluff up all the cotton. modern life being what it is, most futons remain unfulfilled on the fluffing up front. ours was no exception and the peeps had been waking up with aching bones for quite some time. eventually herself decided enough was enough.

"we'll just have to get a mattress with springs!" she said.

"we'll save up for one," said himself, ever the sensible one.

"but you have the money left from your tax rebate," pointed out herself, failing to mention that the money left from the tax rebate had pretty much disappeared after the incident with the cone.

"that's in case of emergencies."

regular readers will recall that herself is not very good at waiting. after another night of a sore back herself decided that this was indeed an emergency. no sooner had she mentioned the mattress idea to her maamship than she had been given details of the correct mattress to purchase and where to purchase it from. an order was duly placed on the appropriate website for mattresses.

herself thought it prudent to mention this to himself on the basis that it would be a rather large delivery to pass unnoticed. once himself had got over his irritability at having his tax rebate usurped he was pleased at the prospect of a comfy night's sleep and asked herself what she proposed to do with the futon.

"i'll put it on freecycle," she said. freecycle is a website where you can advertise things that you don't want so other folks can have them. herself is a frequent visitor due to her de-cluttering tendencies. as soon as the new mattress had arrived the futon was advertised. the peeps left it folded in half on the bedroom floor. as the bedroom is not all that large this meant they had to climb over the futon every time they went in and out.

"never mind, " said herself cheerily, "its only for a day or two!"

the first advert drew some interest but unfortunately not from anyone with the means to transport the futon to their home. these futons are heavy things and are not amenable to pedestrian travel. so herself put it on freecycle again. by now a week had passed. several people got in touch.

the first person arranged to collect the futon on monday evening. mondays are a busy day for herself. she has to take my boy to his college, which is 16 miles away. then she has to drive to work, which is 21 miles in the opposite direction, pretty much going past the house. then she has to spend the day at work, which is not exactly a bundle of laughs these days.

after work she has to drive back to pick my boy up from college, which is another 21 miles. they she and my boy go to sort out the magnificent bonzo (uncle gary lets him out into his field on work days which saves even more driving). this is another 22 miles. then they have to shovel out his stable, get him his hay and water and his dinners and fetch him in from his field. herself then has to spend a few moments hugging the magnificent bonzo and getting all the office nonsense out of her head after which she and my boy drive home, another 9 miles. as it is 2 hours between leaving work and getting home, herself tends to fancy a little rest when she gets in, before she goes out again to a weekly meeting where she makes the teas so has to be on time.

on this particular monday the rest bit was not on the menu. as herself and my boy opened the front door they were greeted by the sight that is recorded in the photo above. while it looks like a rather large person lying down, i can assure you that it is the futon. himself had started to bring it downstairs ready for the person to collect it. it had then got stuck.

my boy dissolved in giggles and proceeded to lie down on the futon. young dave and i came out to see what the fuss was and were almost crushed as it slid further down the stairs. herself edged round and went into the living-room while himself and my boy tried to drape the futon over the banisters. it was not particularly co-operative. himself at this stage began to get tetchy, which set my boy off into further giggles. when himself began to shout herself decided it was time to leave for her meeting.

when she returned later on the futon was no longer on the stairs. herself breathed a sigh of relief. unfortunately her relief was short-lived. as she went into the living-room she was greeted with the following sight:

while she was of course pleased to see yours truly, she was less pleased to see my new bed. as the more perceptive of my readers will have deduced, the futon was still here.

the following day herself got in touch with the next person who had replied. she stressed the general air of the surreal that surrounded the "give away the futon" project and extracted a promise from the potential new owner that they would come that very afternoon to collect it.

tuesdays are the same as mondays in terms of mileage, the only difference being that herself does not have anywhere to go out to once she is home. when she and my boy finally opened the front door on tuesday evening and rushed into the living-room, the futon was still there.

"you couldn't make this up!" said herself, "are we destined to have a giant dog bed with us for ever?"

as she put the kettle on (a figure of speech, dear readers, and nothing to do with being sartorially challenged) the door knocker went. at the door was a man with wonderful boots and long curly hair. he bore some resemblance to an ageing rock star.

"ah, you've come for the futon!" cried herself, dragging him inside and closing the door before he could make his escape. had the man come to try to sell us new windows, or indeed an electric guitar, he might have been somewhat surprised. regardless of his primary purpose in paying us a visit, he would not have been allowed to leave without taking the futon with him. fortunately he was the new owner of the futon. without further ado the beast was heaved into the back of his car and given a send-off more appropriate to the launching of a luxury liner.

the only member of the family who was sorry to see it go was me. i have had to revert to slumming it on the sofa...

jobz for the dogz

2010-10-10T20:20:00.007+01:00

dear readers, i have to start with another groveling apology. as ever. that is, if i have any readers left, which i doubt after all this time. in the cut-throat world of blogging it is important to keep your reader's interest by occasionally writing something.

life has been busy as always. herself has been in the running for a promotion at work which has involved a lot of looking like a grown up responsible person, at least while at work. she was unsuccessful at this and remains a serf, so normal service is resumed on the grown up and responsible front. it appears that what let her down in her ambitions for global domination was the presentation that she had to give as part of the interview. the presentation had to be about reorganising the department. herself's presentation focused on the fact that unless the department made itself useful to its clients and the outside world, reorganisation would be about as much use as rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic. the feedback on her presentation was that she had not focused enough on what was good about the current structure, which rather suggests that she had not made her point forcefully enough.

herself was not helped in her attempts to look grown up and responsible at work by her dealings with the lift. herself works on the 2nd floor of the building. many of her colleagues take the stairs but herself takes the view that as she spends such a lot of her time moving the not insubstantial steaming piles left by the magnificent bonzo she does not need any more exercise. the lift has a lady's voice that tells you which floor you are on, and where it plans to go next. what is supposed to happen when it reaches the 2nd floor is that the voice should say: "second floor. doors closing. going down."

lately the lift has become confused. the voice has been saying: "second floor. doors closing. going up." and then "third floor. doors closing. going up." this is alarming. there is no 3rd floor.

herself told her colleagues about this. they were of the view that the lift was becoming unstable and might break down at any moment. ignoring the possibility that this may have been a devilish plan by management to save electricity and improve the fitness of the workforce, herself decided to be a good citizen and report the fault. she toddled down to the reception desk in the front hall. there sits a lady in a smart uniform who is in charge of dealing with the public, and occasionally members of staff.

"i'd just like to report a problem with the lift," she said. "the lady in the ceiling of the lift thinks she is on the third floor and that she is going up."

the receptionist gave her a long look. herself persevered.

"the lady in the lift is saying 'third floor. doors closing. going up.' when as you know there is no third floor and even if there was there would be no 'up' from there as there certainly isn't a fourth floor."

the receptionist looked desperately round for security but was unable to find them. they were probably chatting to the lady in the lift. the receptionist promised to report the problem to the relevant department and went back to being icily polite to members of the public. i can't help but think that before herself had even made it back to her office rumours were circulating.

there is an upside to herself's thwarted ambitions. she has gone back to working two days a week. this means we see much more of her. and this week she has not been to work at all as she has taken a couple of days off. she decided it was necessary to be around as my old sparring partner lupin has come to stay. this is because mrs lupin has gone off for a few days to recharge her batteries. mrs lupin regularly sings arias to lupin which has led to him singing back, rather less tunefully. given my history with lupin herself thought it prudent to be around to mop up any little spills of blood. i am of course big enough to let bygones be bygones. at least as long as he keeps his skinny nose out of my bowl, and refrains from attempting mahler.

coincidentally, this week the downstairs is being painted. some time ago himself agreed to paint the downstairs during the long summer holidays that people who work in schools need to have. the long summer holidays came and went. himself made a start but sadly term started before he had got very far. herself embarked on a programme of snidey remarks about the half-finished kitchen. then girl in a trench e-mailed to say she would be down this week and would be able to put in some decorating days for the peeps. so you have the makings of a wonderful blog post - lupin, bleeding copiously all over newly-painted white walls as he is pursued by yours truly, while young dave sits with his paws over his ears, praying for a door-to-door salesman to call and distract me with talk of plastic windows.

part of the decorating project is replacing the bookcases with shelves made from old scaffolding planks. herself plans to make a feature of the wood being distressed and therefore less likely to need dusting. i think after being exposed to lupin's singing any wood would be distressed. it might even be tempted towards self-immolation. herself has talked her buddy into building the new bookcases. he is by all accounts a dab hand with a saw. on friday they are going to buy the scaffolding planks.

we are also being visited by mrs captain and her youngfolk. and possibly the captain as well, although he may be otherwise engaged flying a large plane. they are arriving on friday and will be staying at her maamship's house over the road for the weekend. there is great excitement as the peeps haven't seen them for a couple of years. on friday mrs captain is going to be at a nearby village for choir practice with her old choir and will need to be collected at lunchtime on friday. she rang today to make the final arrangements. upon hearing that herself would be fetching scaffolding planks on friday before picking her up, mrs captain said that she could feel some blog-fodder presenting itself in this sequence of events. she has not even heard about the operatic lurcher...

ouch

2010-08-17T08:48:00.005+01:00

it has taken me several days to persuade herself to sit down and write this post. on this occasion this is not because she has been uber-busy. it is that she feels something of a twit. i don't see why this should prevent me from sharing what is, after all, a rather good story.

last week our car, together with its boot, was booked in for a service. it was not before time; the poor thing had developed an awful lot of squeaks and groans, what with bombing up and down to see the magnificent bonzo. hosses never live anywhere with a decent road. they prefer their digs to be situated at the end of a bumpy track like the surface of the moon, which, while it may suit a hoss, does not suit a car. our car is what is known as a 4 wheel drive, which in theory makes it more able to cope with the bumps. (i am not sure how you could drive a car with any less wheels. it would surely tip over? ) but in any event it needed a bit of tender loving care.

herself duly drove up to the garage where the work was to be done. as it was some way away, she had arranged to borrow a car from them for the day.

"you'll have to insure it yourself," said the car lady.

"that's fine, i'm covered in other people's cars," replied herself, confidently. the lady gave her the key to a little brand new red shiny car.

no sooner had herself turned the key in the ignition and let out the clutch than there was the sickening noise of scraping metal. herself applied the brakes. outside the driver's door was a cone. this in itself would have been innocent enough, but the cone hid a heavy metal post. i can only assume that the cone had been placed there to alert people to the existence of the post. how herself had managed to get into the car without falling over the cone is beyond me. the man from the garage said pretty much the same thing.

"you'll just have to claim on your insurance," said the man, "its going to need two new doors and quite a bit of other work."

herself gulped. when she said she was covered on other people's cars, what she meant was that she was covered if she bashed into other cars, not if she was stupid enough to bash into a stationary object. her insurance only allows her to bash into stationary objects if she is driving her own car.

"that's easy enough," said the man, "just ring your insurers and put temporary cover on our car, then later on ring them and tell them you have had a crash."

herself explained that in her line of work insurance fraud was frowned on. she also pondered on the irony of the situation. only the day before herself had spent some time telling my boy that under no circumstances was lying acceptable and that 'white lies' were still lies. this conversation had involved various examples of how to avoid being brutally truthful whilst not actually lying.

"if someone says 'does my bum look big in this?' you say something like 'that colour is lovely on you (if it is) rather than 'yes it looks huge!'" she explained.

"but you always say you want to know if your bum looks big!" protested my boy, truthfully.

"well, i do, but then you are my tame clothing adviser," said herself, "you have to be a bit more gentle with other people." i am not sure how much of the subtelty of all this sank in. my boy is not always terribly subtle.

herself did not trouble the garage man with discussions of morality. he did not seem to be that sort of man. the garage man showed her up some steps to a place where customers could sit and have a cup of coffee and read shiny magazines full of pictures of cars with no dents in them. eventually a more senior man came.

"its going to cost over a grand," he said. he showed herself a breakdown of the cost. even with them doing the work at cost price it was still £1,200. this is more than herself earns in a month. herself gulped again. the service would be another £500. there was no option but to take the little brand new red shiny car and drive around in it for the day. at least the door still opened and closed. herself took the precaution of ringing her insurers from the garage and putting the little brand new red shiny car on her insurance on the basis that just because she had stuffed one side of it in didn't mean that there wasn't another post out there waiting to stuff the other side in.

fortunately, himself is sitting on some money from a tax rebate. even more fortunately the money just covered the cost of the garage bill. less fortunately, himself does not like nasty surprises where money is concerned. or indeed at all. herself spent the whole day worrying about how he would react. as regular readers will know, himself is a man with something of a short fuse on certain occasions.

herself was a little wobbly when she got in. himself gave her a cuddle. herself mistook this for an ideal moment to drop her bombshell.

"you've what?" roared himself, backing away from her and standing behind the table, as though bashing into posts was a communicable disease.

"how much?!!" he continued, at a slightly higher volume. herself went off to have a bath. sometimes you are so much on the back foot that you are better off lying down...

the old boot

2010-08-11T07:35:00.002+01:00

herself is in bed having a cup of tea before starting on her day so i have pressed her into typing for me so my readers don't get the idea that i have deserted them. it is getting harder and harder to find a moment when she is not tearing around doing things. a chap just has to pick his moment i suppose. (even then, while i was yawning, she was dashing off into cyberspace to check on some new webby thing she has been playing about with! the woman has the attention span of a gnat!)

anyway, back to the point of this post. last week, herself and mr next door decided to go to a car boot sale. i was mightily alarmed at this. the car boot is where young dave and i travel. was she planning on putting us on the roof if she sold the car boot? whilst i am sure young dave would look on roof travel as an adventure, for a chap of my age it would be torture. my old bones are not so good in a draught.

however it transpired that the car boot was not going to be sold. it seems that a car boot sale is some new-fangled idea where you fill up your car boot with all the things that clutter up your house, drive them to a field and sit there all morning hoping someone else will come along who would like to use them to clutter up their house instead. as mad schemes go, this was not one of herself's most extreme, and it had the advantage of getting her out of the house for a while, so himself and my boy were relatively positive about it. that is, until they realised that in order to fill up your car boot with things that clutter up your house, you have to first retrieve them from the various dusty corners where they are located and pack them into boxes.

the whole operation of packing the clutter up was made rather less relaxing by the fact that herself had not grasped this basic point about car boot sales until the night before. or if she had, it had slipped her grasshopper-like mind. and to complicate matters further, the night before the peeps were over at her maamship's having a delicious meal. girl in a trench had concocted a mouthwatering fish pie which was followed by lots of chocolate. by the time the peeps returned home it was nearly 10pm.

himself settled down for a little spell on his laptop and my boy contented himself with wandering in and out making pithy remarks, while herself hauled books, cds and other associated clutter onto the floor. within minutes the living room looked as though we had been burgled. young dave and i resolutely held our nerve and lay pretending to be asleep on the sofa. i know from bitter experience that moving from one's warm spot at moments like these is a mistake. before you know it there will be a pile of junk in your place.

eventually the clutter was bagged up and placed in the hall and something resembling calm returned. the car boot sale started very early on sunday morning so herself retired to bed, to dream of becoming a millionaire from the sale of dog-eared novels and promotional cds.

sunday dawned sunny, as one would be entitled to expect, given its name. herself and mr next door loaded up the car and roared off to the appointed field. mr next door has been under the weather for quite a while and had not been to a car boot sale for some time, but luckily had not lost the knack. herself has only been to one in the distant past, so it was just as well she went with someone who knew what to do. people landed on the car like locusts as they pulled up. unfortunately they were more interested in mr next door's interesting bric a brac than our clutter. this was the theme of the morning, although herself did manage to offload the saddle that came with the magnificent bonzo and which no longer fits him, quite a few of the cds and books, and a jigsaw puzzle.

when herself returned home, himself and my boy gathered eagerly round to find out how much money she had made. it was at this point that a flaw in her marketing strategy became apparent. she tipped out a vast pile of coins and quite a few notes from her purse. himself and my boy counted it all.

"how much did you have as a float?" asked himself.

"i didn't have a float as such..." said herself, sheepishly.

it transpired that herself had no idea how much money had been in there before she went. normally this would not be a problem as herself rarely carries cash, rather like the queen. (although something tells me that if the queen went to a car boot sale she would have a butler handy to count the float.) but on this occasion herself had some money given to her by my boy from when she ordered a game for him on the internet, and more money given to her by girl in a trench when they went shopping at asda. so her moment of triumph was somewhat marred by lengthy calculations and loud laughter.

eventually it was agreed that she had made somewhere between £30 and £50, which was not bad for a morning's work. especially as the work involved sitting chatting, drinking tea and eating chocolate, activities which herself is well-versed in.

the plan is to repeat the experience next week. i feel a headache coming on...

showing off

2010-07-18T08:11:00.004+01:00

dear readers, i have been attempting to get herself to sit down and assist me for some time but this is the first opportunity that i have had to put paw to keyboard. last sunday was a write off from the writing point of view as the magnificent bonzo was in a hoss show. this was uncle gary's idea. uncle gary is very successful with his own hosses in hoss shows. he has a little stallion (who looks very like king charles the first) who scrubs up particularly well and often wins prizes for being the shiniest, hairiest or even simply the classiest little hoss at the show. because of his success uncle gary is asked by other people to show their hosses too. so many a summer weekend finds uncle gary giving one or more hosses a shampoo and set, ready for a hoss show.

uncle gary learned his shampooing skills in his previous career as a hairdresser. shampooing is what is known as a transferable skill. once you can shampoo a person it is fairly straightforward to branch out into hosses. there is the small matter of tails to perfect, but for someone as clever as uncle gary this presented no problems.

so how, i hear you ask, was herself persuaded to get involved in all this? for someone who makes a living arguing the toss with other people she is remarkably lacking in competitive spirit. and, while the magnificent bonzo certainly scrubs up well, herself is not known for her sartorial elegance. it seems that uncle gary sowed the seed a week or so before the show, with talk of it being a bonding experience for hoss and human and being a good opportunity for bonzo to practice his social skills. uncle gary is very good at psychology and knows that fluffy things like this appeal to herself.

it seems that there are classes where it is acceptable for the human to stay on the floor and lead the hoss round. these are known as 'in hand' classes. i have to say that this brought to my mind a rather colourful picture. the magnificent bonzo's magnificent wedding tackle is world famous through these pages and the thought of herself parading round the ring holding it brought tears to my eyes. but it appears that 'in hand' refers to the hosses head rather than parts further south.

anyway, the day before the show uncle gary and little lou gave the magnificent bonzo a bath in special blue shampoo to bring out his white bits. he was then dressed in a rather interesting garment which you can see from the picture. this was to keep him clean overnight (regular readers will be aware that bonzo shares young dave's proclivities in the rolling-in-poo department). herself was lent a tweed jacket by uncle gary and polished her boots up till i could see my face in them. she borrowed one of himself's ties and his white shirt.

the day of the show was sunny and hot. the hosses were put on the lorry and driven to the show. there were hoss vehicles everywhere. mrs rose was due to arrive later with her own hoss, fergus. mrs rose is an old hand at hoss shows, having been the hoss of the year show last year, so she is as cool as a cucumber about it all. my boy was lined up to come along to record the event with his camera. he duly arrived with himself, together with his lunch in the form of a flask of hot water and a tub of pot noodles. my boy is a great believer in being prepared for all eventualities.

the magnificent bonzo was entered in two classes: the best in hand coloured hoss and the handsomest gelding. (i appreciate to the uninitiated that all hosses are coloured, and indeed a black and white hoss like bonzo is less coloured than a brown hoss, but these hoss people are not the most logical souls). the classes involved the human leading the hoss round a field at a walk, then trotting along so the judge could see the fluffy feet in action.

it was the trotting bit that was herself's downfall. regular readers will know that herself had some difficulty in teaching bonzo that humans travel with considerably less velocity than hosses. however with perseverance and patience this has now been achieved. bonzo will walk along at herself's pace. all well and good until the time came to do the trotting bit. having been taught that trotting along with your human, particularly when they are face down on the ground clinging onto the end of the rope, was not good form, it was hardly surprising that bonzo would only walk round the ring. so he was placed last in the most handsomest gelding and fifth in the best coloured horse. herself was very happy with both as even coming in last place merited a rosette and bonzo was the most handsomest gelding in her eyes anyway.

as soon as she was out of the ring herself gratefully peeled off the tweed jacket and tie and got back into her "i never finish anyth" t-shirt. i feel that herself's showing career may have reached its peak. the hoss world will never know what it is missing...

pastures new

2010-06-20T21:27:00.000+01:00

hello dear readers! i have finally managed to get herself to sit still and type for me. as regular readers will know, she has been thrown a little off kilter by the loss of her dad. whereas most people might want to rest and relax when things like this happen, herself, after a short interlude of calm, got back her taste for activity.

to be fair, some of the activity was thrust upon her. there was the small matter of the chickens, for example. one afternoon at work herself received a text from mrs toby to let her know that the magnificent bonzo had seen some rather tasty looking grass over the track to his field and had decided to go over and sample it. he had failed to take into account the fence in the way and had simply launched himself at it in his usual enthusiastic fashion. he had cleared most of it but the top rail had bitten the dust. herself persuaded miss shell, who gives her a lift home from work, that they might need to leave a little earlier than planned. no sooner had she returned to her own desk than her phone rang. it was my boy.

"we're just on the way back from college," he told her.

"oh good," said herself, "i'll see you when i've fixed the fence up at the field." so famous are the magnificent bonzo's showjumping ambitions that this needed no explanation.

"there's a bit of a complication," said my boy.

herself waited.

"i've got a cockerel in the boot." it transpired that the cockerel was surplus to requirements at my boy's college due to being unable to father chicks. had my boy not brought him home he would have been for the chop.

"just as long as you understand that we are not setting up cockerel rescue!" said herself, mindful of the fact that she and her colleagues deal with complaints of noise nuisance in the area. as it was obvious that the cockerel could not live in our small but perfectly formed back garden due to his vocal range he was taken up to the field to share with the magnificent bonzo. he was named george and was temporarily housed in a metal feed bin pending more salubrious quarters being constructed. bonzo appeared to be oblivious to his operatic warblings and indeed took something of a brotherly interest in him.

the rest of that week was taken up with finding some company for george and building him a house. the company side of it was sorted out by mrs rose, who has many chickens. she was able to supply the peeps with a lady chicken who was duly named rose. this was particularly apposite as mrs rose has a husband called george. the accommodation was slightly more tricky. herself designed a chicken house which was to be made from a large crate that the snake-charmers donated, clad with the leftover wood from the horse shelter in the field. true to form, herself went at its construction hammer and tongs. unfortunately the hammer part of this very swiftly left herself with a painful and unusable arm. it appeared from research on the internet that herself had acquired golfer's elbow. for someone who has only played golf once (and that on the other side of the world so presumably using the other arm) this had a certain irony.

the lack of a hammer arm meant that himself and my boy were drafted in to finish the chicken house. suffice to say that there was a certain amount of discord. in fact so much discord that george the cockerel seemed positively melodious. eventually it was finished and the chickens moved in. an electric fence was purchased at great expense to stop them being eaten by foxes and then things briefly calmed down.

shortly afterwards bonzo was due to go to uncle gary's hoof camp for some more lessons. he has now progressed to the module on "keeping your rider calm in spite of squirrels leaping out from hedges and scaring her", to be followed by "putting up with inane hoof-curling sweet-talk from middle-aged women". the latter is essential study for all horses. it takes a strong stomach and an iron constitution to put up with some of the gooey nonsense herself and the Hoard of Menopausal Women come out with.

anyway, on the way back to uncle gary's in the lorry the talk turned to the sometimes tricky business of keeping a hoss up on the windy hill, especially in the winter. an arrangement was hatched out whereby herself would work in uncle gary's stables in return for bonzo's keep. there will still be hay and food to buy but there will be a lot less hassle and a lot more company. so bonzo's friend libby is going back to her owner and the chickens were moved yesterday to uncle gary's. the chickens traveled in her maamship's cat basket and the chicken house followed behind on the trailer. i could have sold tickets to the performance of putting the chicken house onto the trailer. and indeed getting it off at the other end. but eventually the chickens were ensconced in chicken heaven under a tree in the field at uncle gary's.

this morning herself and my boy went up to uncle gary's. when they arrived they saw an ambulance. it transpired that the chickens had been causing trouble. when the horses were being led in from the field george and rose had been making chicken noises and scrabbling around in their house. to a horse unfamiliar with chickens the house would have looked very scary and the horses panicked and galloped off. unfortunately a young person who works there got injured in the middle of it all. fortunately she was not badly hurt but she was very shaken and bruised and everyone felt awful, especially herself and my boy. the ambulance people checked her over and said she was ok to go home so her mum came to fetch her.

so the chickens had to be moved from where they were to somewhere out of the way of horses. herself and my boy spent the morning doing the whole chicken house moving thing again, although they have now for it down to something of a fine art with all the practice. the chickens are now in a new place and all that remains is for herself to erect the electric fence and they will be fine.

i have just realised that the 'small matter of the chickens' to which i referred earlier has turned out to be rather less small than at first appeared. so you will have to wait until next time to find out what else has been occurring...

sad news

2010-06-01T21:23:00.005+01:00

dear readers, again i have to apologise for not writing for so long. this time it is not just that i haven't been able to get herself focused. our whole family has been low and rather lacking in fun. this is because herself's dad has died.

shortly after the horsebox affair, which my readers will recall from my last post, herself received a call from her dad's wife to say that he had had a stroke. this was not the nice sort of stroke that dogs and horses enjoy but more by way of a sort of brain accident which left him in a bad way. herself went up to wales to see him in hospital and came back very quiet and rather sad. it seems he was not able to talk or move or do very much other than show with his eyes that things were not feeling all that good inside. for someone who had ridden a motorbike until he was 70 it must have been hard being stuck in hospital unable to swear at anyone.

herself rang every night to see how things were. for some time they stayed the same but then went downhill. on 15 may he died.

i was very fond of him. he had a soft spot for dogs and whenever we met he would give my head a scratch and say nice things about me. he was nearly as old as me if you take the dog years/human years thing into account. last week was his funeral and he was given what the welsh call a good send off, with jazz music playing him out.

three wheels on my wagon

2010-04-15T08:18:00.002+01:00

dear readers, i was going to fill you in on the progress in bonzo's education since his course. during the course he did particularly well at the module on 'how to tread on your human's foot and make it black and blue for a week'. the following day he built on his progress by jumping out of his skin at a passing shed while out on one of his walks, shoving herself face-first into a clump of brambles and nettles and leaving her face looking like she had fallen out with a tiger. but, true to form, life has thrown up yet more blog-fodder at a speed i find impossible to match.

the latest chapter came about because of herself's wish to continue bonzo's education with uncle gary, who is a first class teacher of both horses and their riders. it is rather pricey to pay for bonzo to be transported around the place so herself has been unable to take him to see uncle gary. the idea of purchasing a horsebox to transport him came upon her the other evening. no sooner had she had the idea than she was bidding on more than one horsebox on ebay. this was a rather risky strategy, although one of the horseboxes was only £5 at this point so the risk of having to embark on a programme of quantitative easing was lessened somewhat. in the event the £5 horsebox soon shot out of herself's price bracket, leaving her bidding on one that was within her budget (or more accurately within her overdraft limit).

herself was unable to wait for the outcome of the auction, and in any event the bidding price was reaching the 'buy it now' price, so herself's shopping finger clicked on the 'buy it now' button and the horsebox was ours. there is a little thing called paypal in ebay which allows you to pay for things very quickly indeed, so herself duly paid for the horsebox and then e-mailed the seller to arrange to pick it up.

it was at this point that things began to unravel somewhat. the seller wrote back to say she would only accept cash. herself replied that the ad had said that paypal would be fine. the seller appeared to have put the ad on ebay on her blackberry (not the edible sort, but a little communication gizmo that my more technically able readers will be familiar with) and had not pressed the correct button. anyway, herself was not to be put off and collared her maamship (who was down for the weekend) to come along with her. young dave and i were not allowed to join them, so what transpired took some time to filter through.

it appears that there were further communications from the seller during the journey, but none of these gave the exact address at which the trailer was stored. so herself and her maamship arrived in a little village in remotest surrey, where the local population was obviously extremely rich, without the foggiest idea where they were headed. they drove slowly around, trying not to look too dodgy, peering through hedges to see if they could see any horses (their combined forensic legal minds had concluded that someone with a horsebox to sell most probably had a horse to put in it). by now her maamship had started to giggle. herself kept trying to phone the seller but, what do you know, there was no mobile phone signal in the little village. i suppose the very rich people who live there send their butlers up to the top of the nearest hill to send text messages on their behalf when they need to contact their mates.

anyway, eventually herself and her maamship turned into a drive leading to a very large country mansion which had a sign saying that tradesmen and those visiting the riding stables should use the track to the left. on the basis that the people at the riding stables would know other people with horses in the area this was as good a plan as any. after travelling up a track for some time, turning round when they came to a dead end (by now extremely conscious that they were being monitored on cctv and probably being tracked by gun-toting private security forces) our intrepid explorers stopped to ask a man who was wielding a hose whether he knew where the seller lived. the man, at the mention of the name, looked as though he had a bad smell under his nose and pointed to a gate.

"they own those woods there," he said, before calling his dogs and retreating into his garden with the hose.

herself and her maamship parked by the gate and let themselves in, pausing to say hello to a bunch of dogs who were unconvincingly pretending to guard the place. a harassed looking woman greeted them, with a tale of woe about ebay and paypal and trailers and banks. she said her husband was on his way, at which point said husband arrived in a very large 4 wheel drive.

the conversation at this point concerned the fact that herself had clearly paid the price of the trailer to paypal and the fact that the seller and her husband had not managed to get the money into their bank account was due to their own lack of a password rather than anything herself had done. in spite of this the man asked herself how much cash she had on her, or whether she could let him have a cheque. she pointed out that as she had only just met him and his wife, and as they were in a wood rather than at an address, she was not inclined to part with any more money. when the man took a slightly lofty tone and said that it might be necessary to come back the following day, the fact that he was dealing with a solicitor and a judge somehow got dropped into the conversation in an effort to convince the man that the horsebox would not be stolen (for my american readers i should point out that our solicitors are rather different to yours) much to her maamship's embarassment.

there then followed a long discussion as to why the trailer was for sale which seemed to involve the sellers having bought it two weeks previously, from ebay. the reason the man gave for selling it so quickly was that his horse was too big for it. herself asked how big his horse was, to which the man replied that it was 18 hands high (a hand is a unit of measurement for a horse, and 18 of them makes for a very big horse). now call me a suspicious old lurcher but i would have thought that if you had a very big horse (and we are talking very, very big - the magnificent bonzo is only 16 hands high), you might just think to measure the trailer to make sure your horse would fit inside it. on the way back to the car, the man invited herself and her maamship into the barn to see his very big horse. herself was rather surprised to see that it did not appear to be an 18 hands high horse and indeed was not much bigger than bonzo. it could of course be the case that the floor inside the stable was lower but the man said the horse bit anyone who came near it so herself was unable to tell.

herself decided that at the end of the day what she was buying was the trailer in front of her and the sellers clearly had some sort of 'grip on reality' issue which she was not going to bother her head about. she and her maamship hitched it up, with the help of the slightly delusional man, and drove off. the minute they were out of earshot herself had pieced together a life story for the sellers, based on one or two facts and a lot of supposition. her maamship was slightly less judgmental, as befits someone who spends their whole week judging. she needs to sit on the fence at the weekends.

it would be hoped that this would be the end of the saga, but there is one final twist which i must share with you. it became necessary for herself to pull into a layby on the way home so a phone call could be made to himself to arrange for him to cook the evening meal (her maamship had promised fish pie but was of course unfortunately delayed). while they were there, her maamship took the opportunity to check the trailer. she was giggling even more when she got back into the car.

"call me pernickety," she said, "but there are only 3 wheels touching the ground. the fourth wheel is spinning in the air!" this did indeed seem to be the case. it was only when they got back to bonzo's field, and parked the trailer by the muckheap, that it was possible to see that the fourth wheel was a different size to the other 3. i feel a visit to a scrapyard in search of new wheels is likely to be the subject of my next blog post...

back to skool

2010-04-09T20:59:00.003+01:00

dear readers, bonzo is going on a hoss course! herself came across a lady who teaches courses on 'what makes hosses tick' on the internet and decided to find out more. she was most impressed by the course outline and booked bonzo on straight away. today was the first day, when only the humans went along. herself came back full of how good it was and how nice the people were. one lady sounded particularly nice. she said that she really liked hairy lurchers so herself hooked out her phone and showed the lady pictures of young dave and i. it seems we were just the right amount of hairiness, and of course young dave looked very cute, as he does in a photo (in the flesh there is obviously the olfactory angle to deal with which is not to everyone's taste).

later on there was an exercise where the group had to get into pairs. one of them had to pretend to be a horse while the other one led them along. the one being the horse had to shut their eyes so they could experience how it was to move to someone else's signals. the lurcher-loving lady was herself's partner for this. it seems this lady had been blind for some years but had been given an operation which had restored some of the sight in one eye so she as at some advantage when it came to negotiating round a field without being able to see. after herself had been led round with her eyes shut, she said to the lurcher-loving lady how apposite it was to have the partially sighted leading the blind. luckily the lady had supernatural powers and understood this was intended to be witty or herself could have been dumped into the horse trough.

days 2 and 3 of the course have the hosses along. herself was a little worried about what sort of impression bonzo might make. he is very muddy at the moment as the field has been so wet. when the course lady rang to see about numbers, herself mentioned that bonzo looked rather like a yeti at the moment and she would have to tidy him up a bit. it seems this will not be a problem as they allow yetis as well as hosses.

the plan is for mrs rose, a friend of uncle gary's, and now of herself, to collect bonzo in her hoss trailer and deliver him to the course. he will stay overnight and then come back, with impeccable manners, on sunday evening. or at least that is the plan. i suspect it may take more than the one course...

lazing on a sunday afternoon

2010-03-28T21:44:00.008+01:00

dear readers, i know many of you will have been waiting with bated breath to find out what happened to the dishwasher. would the wonderful engineers manage to fix it or would the peeps be doomed to wash up by hand for ever more?

well, sunday dawned fine and herself was up with the lark to go and feed bonzo and libby. young dave and i tagged along and were rewarded with a walk along the south downs way. on the way we came across a man trying to tempt rabbits into a wooden box. young dave and i were just about to offer a little help when we were rather unceremoniously placed on our leads. we never did discover why the man had not just got himself a lurcher.

i digress. we shot off home and herself set to with gusto preparing a large brunch for her old friend traveling john, who had stayed the night, the snake-charmers and the next doors. there was a lot of frying and grilling, during which young dave managed to liberate several chipolatas. i think he would have settled for one but herself had failed to cut them apart from their fellows before cooking them. of course i had to help him finish them. there ensued a cheerful interlude of munching and chatting. eventually the guests began to head off to get on with stuff.

then there was a knock at the door. it was our aunty! and mr jos! they had come prepared with bags of tools and, hardly pausing for a cuppa, set to work dismantling the dishwasher. they very politely did not comment too much on the battered panels caused by herself having tried to lever them off without removing all the screws. aunty jos even refrained from commenting on herself's failure to keep track of which screw went where. things were going swimmingly until herself offered to help*. she was persuaded to stick to taking pictures of proceedings, so i will leave it to them to illustrate how our wonderful engineers sorted out the beast in double-quick time.

and here, dear readers, you can see a lot of shiny, clean pots and pans! yay!

it only remains for me to say, unaccustomed as i am to this sort of thing, that the peeps, young dave and i are forever grateful to aunty and mr jos. the peeps, for not having to wash up by hand, and young dave and i for the resumption of the canine pre-wash, which was put on hold for the duration due to handwashed plates not getting sterilised afterwards. bit fussy if you ask me but its all water under the bridge now...

*this sentence was actually thought up during the operation by aunty jos, but i am sure she will not mind me stealing it.

don't whine

2010-03-27T08:02:00.005Z

dear readers, yet again i must apologise for the long gap in communication. things have been busy as usual. herself has been particularly busy. her additional energy has been due to a sudden healthy lifestyle choice. she has decided to give up wine, and indeed all alcohol. this was in part brought on by a desire to put to the test the saying "you can never be too rich or too thin". herself, as regular readers will know, is neither rich nor thin. but the theory is that she will be less poor and less fat under the new regime. and will no doubt live longer, allowing her to nag my boy for the foreseeable future with impunity.

the downside of this is that she no longer sits down and relaxes of an evening with a glass of wine. this has extended the period of frenetic activity each day considerably. spring cleaning is happening with a vengance, including a foray into my boys's room. my boy's room is a place where untold things live under the bed, and spiders swing from the ceiling. or did. herself hoovered under the bed, for what must be the first time since we moved in. this was accompanied by a fair bit of screeching at the sheer horror of it all. but my boy was happy with the result and can now breathe more easily.

the hoovering has not been confined to our house. as part of the 'help bonzo knit his own hay' project, herself has got herself another cleaning gig to pay for his shoes. horses need big metal shoes to stop their delicate little hooves from wearing out. (that may sound a little bitter but since when did anyone ever worry about my paws?) the big metal shoes don't come cheap. so the snake-charmers are going to pay for the shoes in return for hoovering duties.

mr snake-charmer has very dodgy lungs which get irritated by the tiniest bit of dust so herself is charged with taking their new monster dust-defying vacuum cleaner and giving their bedroom a forensic makeover once a week, followed by the rest of the house if there is time. i just hope the snakes keep their heads down. trying to get a snake out of the innards of a hyper-allergenic hoover might prove tricky.

other news - our aunty is going to visit tomorrow! and she is bringing her other half with her! this visit, so soon after the last one, was necessitated by our recalcitrant dishwasher. (i have mentioned to herself that if she had put those anti-calcium tablets in the dishwasher it might not have become recalcitrant but she was having none of it.)

regular readers will recall that a plan was formulated to mend the dishwasher with the aid of a webcam. suffice to say this, like many of herself's ideas, was not a success. it all started promisingly enough. the dishwasher was pulled out from under the worktop, and unplugged (our aunty had placed great store by the unplugging of the beast, no doubt because of the water involved.) herself's laptop was placed nearby with the webcam.

here the first problem became apparent. herself's laptop did not have the correct drivers for the webcam. there was a short interlude while she searched the internet in vain for them. then my boy's laptop was brought down. this too did not have the drivers but, being a pc rather than a mac (don't get me started on that whole thing) was more likely to be able to work with the webcam. but my boy's laptop was equally unable to assist. this was because it requires a little gadget in order to be able to pick up the wireless network and my boy could not lay his hands on the gadget.

herself had a cup of tea while she thought things through. then, before you could say "stick to the day job" she had disconnected all the plumbing from the dishwasher and wheeled it into the living room where big mac, her computer, lives. big mac knows how to use a webcam and has even been known to try skype on occasion. having positioned everything properly and procured a torch, herself made contact with aunty jos. aunty jos was already giggling. i fear she knew what was to come.

"it is really important that you make a note of which screw came from which bit," she said, "mark them with a magic marker or something." herself did not quite understand how important 'really important' was, and very quickly muddled all the screws up. but this was not the main problem. the main problem was that the webcam was of very low resolution. couple this with the dark innards of a dishwasher, illuminated only by a torch, and you are beginning to get the idea. aunty jos was unable to tell her actuator from her elbow. coupled with herself's inability to remove the side panels from the beast without using a crowbar (best avoided dear readers, if you want to use the appliance afterwards) it appeared that the endevour was doomed.

however, in the background was mr jos, who is also an engineer, and a filtration engineer at that (aunty jos is some sort of hydraulic engineer, i think). a plan was hatched whereby aunty and mr jos would come down and deal with the beast in person. i think even our dishwasher will have to admit defeat in the face of two engineers.

so the dishwasher was replaced to await its fate. however, true to form, herself failed to reconnect the drain pipe. this was because the dishwasher is no longer working so did not need to drain. what herself failed to appreciate was that the washing machine was still draining, and without the pipe from the dishwasher, was draining all over the floor.

it is just as well the floor is already ruined from a previous leak. and also just as well that the peeps have not yet got round to having it replaced. the insurers might have pulled a bit of a face at two claims for a new floor within as many months...

an aunty!

2010-03-09T07:09:00.005Z

dear readers, young dave and i have found ourselves an aunty! we haven't asked her yet but i hope she will take us on. she is already an experienced aunty to a couple of young chaps who sound like human versions of lurchers so we are hopeful that she will add us to her portfolio of nephews.

our new aunty came to visit at the weekend. she is called jos and is a friend of herself's. she lives a bit of a way away so she stayed the night. my boy offered to sleep on the sofa with young dave so aunty jos could have his bed. or more accurately his sofa - he has a bed and a sofa in his room, but the bed is full of things like guitars and boots so he sleeps on his sofa.

this bed-lending arrangement was necessary because of a certain fear of dogs on the part of aunty jos. young dave tends to make himself comfortable snuggled up on the pillows of guests who sleep on the sofa, and if possible inserts his long and woolly body under their duvet. this is all very well if you are a lover of hairy grey beasts but not so great if they make you nervous. as you can see from the photo, by the second day of her visit, aunty jos had been charmed by young dave to the point where she read him a story about clouds and let him lie in her lap.

as well as being a perfect aunty, aunty jos is also an engineer! we could not have chosen a more useful guest on this particular weekend as the dishwasher had decided to give up heating the water. young dave and i offered to take over dishwashing duties but we were rudely spurned. a brief discussion with our clever guest identified the problem as the element. as himself fried the eggs for breakfast herself and aunty jos got online and found a place that sells elements. herself ordered one, which should arrive in a few days.

however, obtaining an element and getting it into the dishwasher are two very different things. it appears that the element lives somewhere deep in the floor of the dishwasher. aunty jos was of course rather blase about how easy it might be to fit such a thing, being an engineer. herself, somewhat uncharacteristically, was a little concerned about making sure the dishwasher did not become live and dangerous. aunty jos offered to talk herself through the operation on the phone, once the element had arrived, but this still left room for human error.

"how will i know which wire you mean?" she squeaked, "it might all go zap when we switch it back on!"

but a solution presented itself in the form of skype. skype is a sort of webcam telephone thing. herself is going to rig up a web cam pointing into the innards of the dishwasher and aunty jos is going to tell her which bit to do what with. there is an added complication just now in that herself has laryngitis and has very little volume. my boy may have to be roped in to provide audio from our end.

if this proves a success there are plans to post the recording of the whole operation on my blog. watch this space...

a bit cleaner

2010-03-02T05:30:00.004Z

dear readers, here you can see the magnificent bonzo at rest, with his dear friend libby standing guard. it may not seem that someone as small as libby would be required to protect someone as large as bonzo, but let me tell you, this libby is a fierce little creature. young dave and i have learned from bitter experience to stay well clear of her heels. so bonzo can doze in the sunshine safe in the knowledge that no mountain tigers will be leaping on him from above.

i would have used a picture of the actual subject matter of this post, but this is a family blog and while this post is about something connected with family, using a photograph might result in it being filtered out by those helpful little creatures inside your computer that protect you from scary things. (herself had cause to wish she had some of the helpful creatures in her computer this week. bonzo and libby's field is drowning in mud so herself decided she needed to put down more hardcore. all i will say, dear readers, is do not google 'hardcore' without adding 'ballast' or 'rubble'.)

the reason for my caution is that this post is about the magnificent bonzo's magnificent wedding tackle. (i have added a link to the definition of this phrase as last time i used it there was consternation among my readers in canada. and possibly elsewhere.) it seems that horses, unlike lurchers, are unable to keep their own wedding tackle clean. this is because of the way they are designed. so their owner has to clean it for them. mr snake charmer is the sponsor for the wedding tackle, but herself does not trust him to approach the task of todger husbandry with sufficient gravitas. (i would advise my readers against googling 'todger' without turning off the image search facility. for those readers of a curious nature, the correct term for this operation is 'sheath cleaning'. again i would recommend switching off image search.) herself has bought some special stuff to do this with. on the label it says 'sheath cleaner' and then underneath, to my great relief, 'for horses'.

herself has never owned her own horse before so has never had the responsibility for this task. many years ago she had a horse on loan, but this was a lady horse and therefore did not have any appendages. herself was rather alarmed at the prospect of tackling the wedding tackle, and has been trying to rope in her maamship to provide moral support, using blandishments such as what a good story it would make if her maamship was asked to give an after-dinner speech at a judicial function.

herself delivered her sales patter by e-mail. she thoughtfully attached a description of what was involved which she had found on the internet. unfortunately the e-mail arrived at her maamship's at lunchtime. her maamship was not overly pleased to receive this helpful discourse and e-mailed herself back to say it had put her off her soup.

herself made a couple of attempts to persuade the magnificent bonzo of the importance of a clean todger but he was having none of it. uncle gary was approached and gave herself instruction on how to proceed. mrs lupin asked her brother, who has a horse, and was told that baby oil was the way to go. herself continued to prevaricate and was chatting to mrs toby, her new friend who has a horse near bonzo and libby's field, about the problem.

"oh, i'm an expert sheath cleaner!" said mrs toby, "toby has a bit of a problem down there so i have to do it quite often. i'll give you a hand." i should explain that toby is mrs toby's horse. mrs toby went on to explain that once a horse understood what was going on he generally got to quite like the experience. it seems toby likes it rather more than is entirely decent, and goes into something of a trance.

mental note to self: make sure my boy does not come out with comments about horse porn when the nice ladies from social services are next round...

a good read

2010-02-23T06:57:00.002Z

dear readers, i have asked herself to help me with a very short post this morning, just to direct you to a new blog written by a dear friend of ours, which is a refreshing antedote to the daily grind in which we find ourselves mired.

forty days of happiness

and if you pop by, make sure to let her know who sent you.

channel hopping

2010-02-22T18:58:00.002Z

dear readers, here you see the sad remains of our zapper. there has been a certain amount of confusion relating to the telly lately. herself, as part of the ongoing "save money so bonzo can spend it" campaign, has moved her mobile phone provider to a much cheaper one which also meant she could get a free new phone.

as the old mobile phone provider was the same company that provides our broadband this meant that she could change the broadband provider to a cheaper one too, which she did with great speed. what she had not bargained for was that the telly digital box would no longer work as the telly was coming down the broadband wire. himself was somewhat peeved about this as he has a special 'wall to wall football' channel which also ceased to work.

herself settled down to research the issue and came to the conclusion that the only way round this was to buy a new digital box which would allow the 'wall to wall football' to be accessed. however in the meantime there was no telly at all coming down the broadband wire so the peeps had to go back to what is called 'terrestrial telly'. i am not sure why it is called this as the signal comes down a different wire from the roof.

the terrestrial telly has a different zapper to the digital box. this would be fine, but for the fact that the terrestrial zapper was a little the worse for wear, as a result of young dave having tried to change the channel from wall to wall football to the dog whisperer when no-one was looking. unfortunately for the zapper, young dave had to use his teeth, which resulted in a problem with the number 3 button. the peeps were aware that young dave had been at the terrestrial zapper because of the teeth marks, but until now have only been using it to turn the volume up and down so they were unaware of the number 3 button issue.

"why does it keep trying to find channel 333?" wailed himself (terrestrial telly only has the 4 channels).

"i think it must have been when dave chewed it up," said herself, changing to channel 33 with no appreciable effect. the screen was just as blue as before, as was the air.

when himself had left the room, herself got out the toolbox and de-constructed the zapper. this allowed the number 3 button to express itself again and thus gave access to 4 channels. the only snag was that the labels for most of the buttons were on the case. herself gleefully showed himself the newly operative zapper when he re-appeared.

"the only thing is, you can't see what half the buttons are for now, but i'll keep the top bit so we can use it to work out what's what."

i just hope the new box turns up soon...

some new readers

2010-02-20T16:08:00.003Z

dear readers, yet again i must grovel and apologise for the lack of contact. it is a wonder i am able to retain my loyal readers with such a poor service. my problem is, as always, that herself is so busy horsing around that it is very difficult to pin her down to do my typing.

however she was shamed into finding a moment after an exchange of text messages yesterday with the gypsy. the gypsy, who has known herself for hundreds of years, keeps a quiet eye on the peeps from afar and reads my musings in order to gauge the level of chaos and madness in our house. of course when there are no musings she has to resort to her crystal ball, or to more modern methods such as text messaging.

last night the peeps were watching telly when herself's new phone gave a little dingle. it is a rather pleasing little toy with a touch sensitive screen. what this means is that pretend buttons appear on the screen and you press them, rather than real buttons like the old phone. the phone has a little stick that you can use to press the buttons, in the interests of accuracy. herself, needless to say, is in too much of a hurry to get the little stick out of the bottom of the phone, so tends to rely on her less accurate thumb.

anyway, the dingle was a text message from the gypsy.

"hiya u. is everything ok? u.ve not written your joker blog for a while. i.m just checking! Xxx"

herself was mortified that her poor approach to her secretarial duties had caused her old mate to worry. quick as a flash she texted back,

"i'm fine, great to hear from you. come and visit soon"

the gypsy replied that she would when she could but her dad is not well. this was when things went a bit haywire. herself's reply merely said, rather cryptically,

"o4"

the gyspy replied,

"whats o4?!!!"

herself made the mistake of trying to be cool and use text speak. her next message said,

"SoS have spent the last half hour"

this clearly did not convey the fact that the peeps were snug on the sofa watching telly and the gypsy wrote back,

"Nope! Messages r garbled. Either your phone is [bust] or you r trying to tell me something that i am not getting. R u having an emergency that i need to seek aid 4?"

this last message was not discovered by herself until this morning so it is lucky that the gypsy had not summoned the emergency services. i suppose she knew that i was here keeping an eye on things...

as well as writing a post to let the gypsy know that we are still alive, i also want to welcome some new readers. young dave and i were charging around mrs collie's front garden, after a visit to mrs collie for herself to scrounge breakfast. i got into the car when asked but young dave, true to form, decided to pick up a piece of the magnificent bonzo's hoof and run round in circles with it. i should point out for the benefit of my more sensitive readers that the piece of hoof was no longer attached to bonzo - the farrier came yesterday to trim up his feet and put on new shoes and there are always tasty morsels of hoof left around afterwards.

herself was doing the usual thing of trying to look more interesting than what dave was playing with, unsuccessfully, it has to be said. it is rather poignant that she is less interesting than a discarded bit of horse hoof. just then some greyhounds came into view. one had a coat on and a basket muzzle just like the one i had to wear after the misunderstanding about the deer. the other one had a rather elegant embroidered collar. herself managed to grab young dave while he was making eyes at the lady greyhound, and got chatting with their people. it seems these lovely creatures are called lily and dennis. i am not sure what the people are called.

the magnificent bonzo and little libby came and peered over and through the fence respectively, hoping for carrots. the nice people said that next time they went past they would try and remember to bring carrots. herself told them about me being a world famous lurcher and they said they would try and find my blog. so in anticipation of them succeeding:

hello dennis, lily and your people!

one and a half hosses

2010-01-28T19:35:00.002Z

dear readers, another eventful week! at the weekend bonzo's new friend arrived. she is being lent to bonzo to stop him escaping in search of company. she is called libby and is very small and just like a bear. she has very thick fur and lots of hair over her eyes, just like bonzo. bonzo took to her straight away and soon they were happily charging round the field.

things were going swimmingly until bonzo realised that he had to share his food with libby. this caused a certain amount of ear flattening and teeth baring. libby pretended not to notice this rather ungentlemanly behaviour but drew the line at bonzo nipping her rather large behind. she turned round and let him have it with her back feet in his chest. this is called establishing the pecking order. it seems that whoever can behave in the most scary fashion is allowed to peck the other one. young dave and i have a similar arrangement.

so the equine friends settled down to domestic bliss, punctuated by argy bargy at mealtimes. for a couple of days this was fine. then yesterday herself was getting the food for the pair of them, while young dave and i were pootling round the field, and all of a sudden bonzo sped up to libby at full tilt. bonzo is not called 'the magnificent bonzo' for nothing. he is a sight to behold at the best of times, but at speed is something else. libby sped along beside him, her little legs running at twice the speed of his.

unfortunately bonzo has not read the highway code and had no idea about stopping distances. as he approached the new wooden fence we could see his large but rather slow brain working. it was clear that even with an emergency stop he was not going to avoid catastrophe. but behind all that hair is a hint of genius. as bonzo approached the fence he suddenly took off! young dave and i had never seen anything like it - a flying horse! unfortunately bonzo had got his calculations slightly adrift and, while he cleared the lower two rails, he smashed through the top one as though it was matchwood.

libby galloped around the field neighing. bonzo galloped up and down outside the field shaking his impressive head and neighing. young dave ran round the field, dodging libby, with a plastic bottle in his mouth. the only creature with any sense was myself, as you would expect. i sat quietly and made mental notes.

eventually herself managed to catch young dave and we were placed in the car. then herself whistled for bonzo, who came running in a way that put young dave to shame. with the help of the nice lady at the stables eventually everyone was where they were supposed to be. herself stood staring at the wreckage of the new fence. i could not hear from inside the car but it looked to me as though she may have uttered an expletive.

the rest of the morning was taken up with fitting little rubber screw thingys into the new fence to take an electrified tape. this gives bonzo a zap or two, after which he avoids it like the plague (the problem with the previous electric fence appears to have been that the electricity was not traveling down the tape).

aside from all this horse-related drama, things have been a little sore in the thumb department. regular readers will recall a little problem i had with my thumb. it appears that, true to form, i am taking a while to heal. so this evening, after a busy day of horsing around, off we went to the evil vet. dr andy had a look at the thumb and gave it a little bathe. then he stuck more needles in me. having the ear of the vet herself asked about my poor old hips, which give me a fair bit of gip these days.

"i have a friend who is an acupuncturist," said dr andy, "it is very good for arthritis in dogs." herself looked amazed.

"you mean stick more needles in him? wouldn't the screaming be unbearable?" at this i pricked up my ears. i have no idea what an acupuncturist is but if they stick needles in you then i would be out of there before they could get their sewing kit out.

anyway, i now have more pills and painkillers. as soon as we got home from the evil vet's i felt better. i gave young dave a little duffing up, just so he remembered who is where in the pecking order...

no snow

2010-01-20T06:43:00.002Z

dear readers, at last the magnificent bonzo is coming home! regular readers will recall that after herself fell off him in december, bonzo was sent to uncle gary's hoof camp for some lessons in coping with an incompetent rider. this included modules on standing still while said rider clambers aboard, keeping all four feet relatively near the ground, only galloping when told to, and saddle management, with special emphasis on its positioning on top of the body and not underneath.

just before christmas uncle gary declared that bonzo had passed with flying colours. he took herself out for a ride. herself was a little apprehensive. her apprehension turned to panic when bonzo started to get a little irritated with a small dog who was running in and out of his feet and barking incessantly. bonzo prefers his dogs large and hairy, like his good self. fortunately young dave and i are able to oblige in the largeness and hairiness department.

"gary, i'm really scared!" squeaked herself.

"just breathe," said uncle gary. uncle gary is not herself's uncle, by the way. he is bonzo's uncle, although i fail to see the resemblance. i think it may be one of those courtesy titles.

herself breathed.

"i'm still scared!" i suppose at least she was scared but breathing.

"if you calm yourself down, bonzo will respond," said uncle gary, "make your voice lower."

herself understands the importance of a low voice. going into court and squeaking tends to give the game away to the other side that you are on the back foot. over the years herself has learned to sound deeper voiced and more confident that she feels.

"good boy, bonzo," she said, sounding like a sumo wrestler. or perhaps a bishop. the rest of the outing passed without incident.

a second attempt a couple of days later was much more successful and uncle gary said bonzo was ready to return home to his field. however, the night before the big day it snowed and carried on snowing for some time. everywhere was bathed in white. the stables were snowed in. the field was snowed in. bonzo wasn't going anywhere. it has to be said that bonzo had no objection whatsoever to this. uncle gary's place is the horse equivalent of a health farm, with a warm barn, friendly people to scratch bonzo's big head, nice horses to chat to and lots of grub. bonzo was very happy to spend christmas in the warm rather than in his drafty field.

eventually the snow thawed and plans were made for the journey. but the day before bonzo was due to come home it snowed again. this time it snowed even more. mrs collie was snowed in up the hill where bonzo's field is (or more properly where mrs collie's field which bonzo lives in is) and had to be rescued by herself. i was beginning to think that bonzo had come to an arrangement with the weather people. it is decidedly suspicious that each time he was due to come home a blizzard arrived.

time passed and last week both the stables and the field were accessible. herself began to make the final arrangements at the field to make it comfortable and safe for the big fellow and his new little friend. there was one last bit of fencing to do, which fortunately a proper fencing man is doing today (the prospect of a fence erected by herself does not bear thinking about).

there is a ton a gravelly stuff to spread where the mud is but first herself needed to lay her hands on some hardcore to build up the area by the gate. yesterday she went on the internet and found some. she rang the man and arranged to come and collect a trailer load. the only downside was that the man was an hour's drive away, but at least the hardcore was free. herself peeled herself off the computer and took young dave and i out for our walk. as we approached the house the new neighbour the other side of the next-doors (this is not the owner of the little dog but the other way) came out. he and his dad are doing major building work before his wife and baby move in. the building work involves knocking down walls.

"you wouldn't have any hardcore, would you?" asked herself. i didn't know where to put myself. herself is a totter of many years experience. she finds it hard to go past a skip without peering in to see if there is anything useful in it. the advent of recycling as a worthy lifestyle has made this less of an embarrassment than it must have been in the past but by all accounts herself was at this lark long before recycling was invented. but this poor man had hardly got the wall down and there she is scrounging it.

anyway to cut a very long story short (a saying, dear readers, no stories were injured) herself popped young dave and me into the house and wheeled her trusty trailer along to where the building was happening. the arrangement is that the builders will fill the trailer with hardcore and herself will take it up to the field. on the way down she will bring a load of the unmanageable and prickly old fence which she is slowly taking to the dump. it made the fencing job cheaper if herself got rid of the old fence but she is regretting this particular money-saving ploy. getting several hundred yards of rusty wire netting into a small trailer is something of a task. it involves herself standing in a very precarious manner on top of the coils of wire in order to squash them into shape. i may start selling tickets.

anyway, i am being told that i must draw this musing to a close as we are off to the field with the first load of hardcore. i just hope that hoss appreciates all the effort...

a new toy

2010-01-11T21:13:00.006Z

dear readers, thank you all for your good wishes for my recovery. i am now back to normal and much relieved to no longer be in pain. this evening young dave and i had a surprise. mrs next door knocked on the door saying that there was a little dog running up and down the road. herself, being a lover of animals, put on her coat and joined mrs next door in trying to ascertain what the little dog wanted. herself immediately recognised it as being one of the little dogs from next door but one.

the peeps had been over the road at her maamship's house when the new next door but one moved in, giving them ample opportunity to view her and her two little dogs. and a few days later the same little dog had been found in the road, having escaped from the garden through a very small gap.

herself and mrs next door tried to find the little dog's owner, but could not get a reply. as the temperature is sub-zero it was clear the little dog could not be left outside. mrs next door has a house full, what with young ruby and the next doors, and mrs next door's friend who is staying while she recovers from pneumonia. added to this mrs next door has had a tooth out and is suffering. so the little dog was brought into our house and a note was placed on the door where it lives.

i have to say i was at first rather concerned at the appearance of a canine visitor. young dave, however, was thrilled.

"look joker, they've got us a toy dog!" he beamed. it was only when he approached the little dog that he realised it was alive. and not only that, it bore more than a passing resemblance to the chihuahua that chases him at the local park. young dave circled the little dog very cautiously, sniffing its ears.

the evening has proved entertaining. young dave is huge compared to the little dog but is very alarmed every time it moves. the peeps were hoping to have an early night but are rather worried about going to bed before the little dog is claimed by its owner. i think young dave and i may have to share our sofas again...

ps: the little dog's owner arrived to collect her at 10.45 so all is well!

all fingers and thumbs

2010-01-05T05:19:00.002Z

well dear readers, happy new year to you all! i hope you all had a nice break from the daily grind over the winter hols. we have had a lovely time with a stream of friends round, most of whom are not clued up in thievery. this has allowed young dave and i to liberate considerable amounts of grub from unattended plates.

the new year was seen in with true lurcher style. we went for a visit to herself's friend miss jones, who lives on a boat. the boat is on an island in a large river. as miss jones has two lurchers, young dave and i were also invited. we have met these two before when they visited us, so it was assumed that things would go smoothly. however, for some reason, perhaps due to female hormones, the lady lurcher decided to have a bit of a growl as young dave and i climbed up the steps. in the chaos that followed i somehow managed to catch my thumb claw on something and wrenched it upwards. to say this hurt is something of an understatement. and then there was the blood, although not in the quantities i am capable of producing it, thankfully.

when things had settled down a little and i had declined the offer of a bathed thumb, followed with a sock and gaffer tape, herself, miss jones and another friend sat down to lunch. because the boat has windows in the roof, lunch was punctuated with snatches of young dave running around above, chewing a squeaky turkey which he had taken a fancy to. there was something decidedly surreal about the sight of young dave's undercarriage above the table, with a rubber turkey clutched in his over-enthusiastic jaws.

luckily the rest of the visit passed without incident and we headed home. by now the old thumb had settled down to a dull ache so i was saved a visit to the evil vet. but only until the following day. herself arranged for me to see the evil vets where we used to live, as they understand my delicate constitution. the new vet in our road has not yet managed to worm himself into my affections. young dave of course has been won over with gifts of dog treats. but i have had to curl my lip on a number of occasions when the new vet has tried to take liberties. so it was off to the old evil vet for an appointment with dr andy.

on the way we called into the feed merchants. this is where magic jim works. magic jim is the man who saved my life when i was hit by the car. he was on the phone when we arrived so herself and i had a chat with the nice ladies behind the counter while we waited. no sooner had i accepted some dog treats than a lady came in looking for a coat for her goat. it seems the goat is called hermione and has a nasty cough. the lady rather carelessly did not have hermione with her so when it came to choosing what size coat she should buy i was drafted in to do an impression of a goat so she could see which coat might fit. luckily i did not have to cough as well. it seems that every time we go out of the door something interesting happens, but this is the first time i have had to pretend to be a goat. magic jim was still tied up on the phone so we eventually reluctantly left for the evil vets.

we had quite a long wait while a very fluffy lady dog was seen but eventually the moment could be put off no longer. dr andy looked at the thumb claw.

"i could have a go at just tugging it to see if it comes off," he began. he must have seen the look on my face because he swiftly moved on. "but given this chap's age, and the fact that he is a lurcher, i think it would be better to sedate him and do it properly."

it seems that i am to have a sedative that costs as much as gold dust, which is reserved for dogs with poorly hearts (there is nothing wrong with my heart but due to my advancing years you can't be too careful). so today i am off to the evil vets again. i have to say i don't relish the thought of more pain. i am a bit of a delicate soul on the pain front. but at least i know i am in safe hands. dr andy and dr matt are responsible for the bulk of the train network of scars that criss cross under my fur. without their needlework i would not be around today so i must be brave and try not to cry too much.

it is just as well i have a personal assistant to do my typing. it would be even harder with one paw...

now we're cooking

2009-12-24T18:14:00.004Z

dear readers, here is a picture of our new oven. when we moved into our house the kitchen had been put in fairly recently. there was a rather technical oven which had all sorts of features that no-one would ever use, like steam cleaning. i mean, who cleans their oven?

along with a lot of other features of the house, the oven was a bit temperamental. the people who used to own the house were rather slapdash about reading the instructions before doing things, much like herself. the oven would throw a wobbly when it got to a certain temperature and blow all the electrics, plunging the house into darkness. it became the peeps' habit to warn everyone that the oven was on as it would crash all the computers. this was most frustrating if a chap had just written a musing and had not yet saved it.

herself is fortunate in that she has a dear friend who is an engineer. a series of increasingly technical e-mails were exchanged. it appeared that the element might have gone caput. or more accurately the coating on the element had gone caput. it seemed that a certain type of electrical measuring device called a multimeter was needed to ascertain the cause of the problem.

but no sooner had herself borrowed such a thing than the oven stopped blowing the electrics. however, next the grill went caput. the grill was a dual grill. there was an element that went round the middle and and an element that went round the outside. the middle element was the one that went caput. so anything that was being grilled had to be arranged precariously round the outside and would only half cook even then.

herself investigated how much the spare parts might be. and then investigated how much a new oven from ikea might be, while munching her muesli. she spoke to himself, who is the main user of the oven. himself said he just wanted an oven that worked. herself ordered a new oven online and then polished off her breakfast.

the new oven arrived yesterday. the peeps are having curry for christmas dinner so strictly speaking the oven could have waited. but, as regular readers will know, herself does not do waiting. as soon as she got home from work the lights went off and out came the torch. there was a brief interlude when the lights had to go back on so she could look up on the internet how to get the door of the old oven off but no sooner had that been done than we were back in darkness. the young snake charmer was round being looked after while her peeps were off doing something. my boy and the young snake charmer decided that the house being in darkness would make the ideal setting for a swift game of hide and seek. this did nothing to calm things down. the young snake charmer is off her head with excitement about christmas and cannot stop bouncing up and down.

as the old oven came out of the gap, a load of crunchy burnt stuff fell on the floor. young dave considers it his civic duty to hoover up crunchy burnt stuff so placed himself in front of the gap where the oven had been, munching. herself by now was inside the gap, doing up the new wiring by torchlight, showing her generously upholstered rear end to its full effect.

the young snake charmer decided it might be a good idea to hide among the ovens, polystyrene packaging, burnt stuff and dave. a loud crunch rang out.

"oops! i've trodden on something!" giggled the young snake charmer. the peeps exchanged looks in the gloom, hoping it was not a vital part of the oven.

eventually the new oven was in place, the power was restored and the oven was tested. it worked. amazingly. the bit that had been trodden on was repaired and stuck back in place below the oven. it is a fairly essential bit as it is to keep dogs out of the underneath of the oven. young dave has a habit of getting singed while trying to steal food so it is just as well it was not beyond repair.

baked potatoes were put in to cook. the young snake charmer carried on bouncing. by now my boy's friend from next door had come round, wearing a rather interesting hat that makes him look like a spaniel. my boy's friend turned to my boy.

"can we go upstairs? she's scaring me!"

"i'm going to have 3 porn pies!" said my boy.

the mind boggles...

a most blogworthy day at the office

2009-12-12T17:26:00.002Z

dear readers, today's photo has nothing whatsoever to do with my post, save for it being a collection of incongruous things. the thing that would have made a fabulous photo was unfortunately not captured on camera, due to a certain urgency about the proceedings which will become clear in due course.

on thursday herself had a rather tricky start to the day, having got stuck in traffic between my boy's college and her office. she was late for work and on the way into the building she got chewed by the lift doors. due to the lateness she had to cancel a meeting about hovercrafts in order to prepare for the afternoon's court hearing. no sooner had herself done this than her young colleague, whose office has a connecting door, came rushing in, all of a fluster.

"that is positively the last time i take the dog for a walk before work!" she fumed.

"what happened?" said herself, mindful of when the young colleague's dog had eaten a pigeon for breakfast and caused all sorts of cafuffle.

"come and look!" said the young colleague. herself went into the next door office. sitting under the young colleague's desk was a very sweet, very small, brown and white dog. herself works in a large, imposing town hall where people are not even allowed to bring their children to work, never mind their pets.

"i got locked out of my house when i took her out!" explained the young colleague. once herself and the very small brown and white dog had become acquainted herself went to fetch a drink of water for her from the watercooler. she had the presence of mind to put the water in a plastic cup rather than a bowl, to avoid giving the impression that the office had a canine visitor.

the very small brown and white dog settled down and, with a few near misses when colleagues came into the office, remained undiscovered until lunchtime. the young colleague then faced the problem of how to smuggle the very small brown and white dog out of the office. herself, ever the inventor, hatched a plan. or in fact several. the first one did not work. this was that the young colleague would wear herself's baggy coat and secrete the very small brown and white dog under it. this would have worked had the very small brown and white dog not wanted to peer out of the top. and had the young colleague not been rather more generously endowed in the chest department than herself, leaving considerably less room in the baggy coat.

plan b was slightly more sensible. the young colleague's room-mate has a rucksack. this was emptied out and the very small brown and white dog was placed inside. yet again her curiosity was a problem. the head sticking out of the top gave the game away. but herself came up with an idea. she smeared the inside of the plastic cup from the water cooler with peanut butter and placed it in the bottom of the bag. the small brown and white dog was occupied trying to lick it out and kept her head tucked in, thus being removed from the building without discovery.

the rest of the day was less eventful, save for herself getting into an argument with the security guard at the court when he insisted on keeping hold of her camera while she was in court. herself was reduced to spluttering in a pompous fashion about how she had been going to court for 20 years and had never had to hand over her camera, and about how everyone has cameras on their phones anyway.

luckily she had the sense not to berate him about how he had failed to discover her swiss army knife...

hoss chaos

2009-12-09T05:18:00.004Z

dear readers, here you can see bonzo the hoss in his field. he is a most magnificent beast and herself has fallen in love with him. he has many funny ways, including a trick where if you tickle him under his chin he sticks out his very long tongue. he gently snuffles herself's face and when he is following her round the field he nods vigorously to let her know he agrees wholeheartedly with what she is doing.

on the riding front things have been less successful. herself has been riding since she was a child, but has not really gained much skill. about two weeks ago herself was gently pootling along the lane enjoying the sunshine. she came to an area of open country and having manoeuvred bonzo through the gate was pootling along the track. suddenly a wind came up out of nowhere. bonzo found this most disconcerting and galloped off, heading towards a very steep slope. herself tugged him round sharply to avoid catastrophe. however the saddle did not realise they were about to turn and slid down. it is not clear whether bonzo bucked before or after this happened but herself ended up on the deck. luckily bonzo is very fond of herself and came over when she called but due to his large size and bouncy nature there was no way of getting back on so herself had to walk home.

the next time herself rode, she decided to ride around the field first to settle bonzo down. he was rather on edge and showed this by galloping off and bucking herself off. this time she landed less gently. bonzo came over, shaking like a leaf, to see if she was ok. she was just about ok but very battered. luckily the peeps have plenty of heavy duty painkillers left from when himself had his kidney op so she managed to avoid completely seizing up but it was clear that bonzo would need a little more training before they ventured out again.

luckily the lovely man where herself used to ride is an expert in talking sense into wayward young hosses. so it was arranged that bonzo would go for a little holiday to his yard and herself would go along every day and learn how not to fall off. the lovely man is coming to collect bonzo on friday. and when bonzo returns he will have a little lady friend to share his field. he is clearly lonely and herself has been searching high and low to find a companion but until this week had no luck at all. the little lady friend is a shetland pony called libby. i am not sure what libby will make of the magnificent bonzo. at least she can shelter from the rain under him.

this afternoon herself went up to the field. before she got there she came across bonzo on the track, chatting to another hoss over its fence. luckily herself had a tow rope in the car, and also luckily she knows how to fashion a halter from a rope from her youthful days of riding other people's horses when they weren't looking. bonzo was persuaded to return to his own field. herself went into mrs collie's house and did her cleaning, peering out every now and again to check the errant hoss was in the correct place. when she had washed the floors she left, carefully locking up mrs collie's house. as she got out onto the track she saw bonzo down the track chatting to the hoss from earlier, just as though nothing had happened. herself was less than impressed with this as she had just spent over an hour sorting out the electric fence, getting a shock in the process.

bonzo was persuaded to return yet again with the promise of food. by now the light was going and it was raining hard. herself stood in the field wondering what to do. clearly she could not take bonzo home. we only have a small house and he is a large fellow. but equally clearly she could not contain him in the field. luckily there are some stables owned by mrs collie's neighbours. herself went round there. a lady was feeding her hoss and told herself that she had had to return bonzo to his field earlier, having witnessed him leaping out over the fence. this did not fill herself with joy. she had thought he had stepped over the fence after it fell down. it was not welcome news that he could jump.

"oh, no - he jumped out. he has a huge jump. i saw him last week jumping backwards and forwards over the electric tape that you put in to keep him out of the muddy patch!"

this hoss is clearly something of a comedian.

the lady who owns the stables arrived and after some discussion about worms and passports it was arranged that bonzo would board with them until friday. herself went to fetch him. he was most impressed with the facilities, apart from the geese, who he took a bit of a dislike to. herself had to rush off to fetch my boy from college and deposit him at home and then she returned to feed bonzo and put him to bed, finally getting home properly at 7pm.

all i can say is this hoss makes young dave look very well behaved indeed...

matters automotive

2009-12-03T03:10:00.007Z

dear readers, here is a picture of a car very like our new motor. the new motor is called gerald and the peeps are hoping for a little more luck than they had with arthur the audi. as regular readers will recall, herself bought arthur the audi with the remains of her redundancy money. he was a most luxurious vehicle and went very fast but after some months things went the way of the pear, as they have a habit of doing in these parts.

arthur's little problem became apparent at a most inopportune moment, when the next-doors had borrowed arthur to make an important trip to the west country. water suddenly flooded into the footwell and soaked mr next-door's feet. it transpired that this was a problem not unknown in audi A6s. herself got on the net and read about it in some detail. i will not bore you with the technical details but it all comes about because a very tiny drain hole under the bonnet gets blocked, causing water to pour in through the heater vent.

this would not be quite so bad were it not for the fact that the clever people who designed these vehicles had decided to place the car's brains in the floor. just where the water ends up is the computer that works all the electrics. and what do you know - when the computer gets wet all the electrics go funny. the car locks itself with no warning. this is very funny if the keys are inside and the owner is outside. the car flashes its indicators randomly. this can perplex other drivers. sometimes the indicators stay on and don't flash. this happened when the peeps were towing mrs next-door's car to the garage and could have resulted in a double whammy of an accident. there are many other symptoms of a wet brain in a car, most of which give the impression that the car is haunted.

the local garage was unable to ascertain the cause of the water so herself reluctantly booked arthur into the audi dealers. it transpired that the problem was indeed caused by the blocked drain holes and that it would cost a lot of money to fix. the computer part on its own was over £600. herself could see no option but to have the work done and used up the last of the 'emergency cushion money' which the peeps had in the bank in case they needed to buy cushions in a hurry. the bill came to over £1,000 so it is lucky that we have plenty of cushions already.

the following week, while cruising down a canal in scotland, herself received a phone call. it was the audi dealers, calling to tell her that her car was subject to a manufacturer's recall in respect of a problem to do with blocked drain holes.

"i know all about blocked drain holes," squeaked herself, "you folks have just relieved me of over a grand to sort this out!" needless to say, matters did not rest there. on our return from our hols herself engaged in protracted correspondence with the local audi dealers and audi uk over the refund of the money. it was not until she made it clear that a) she was a lawyer and b) if the money did not turn up pronto she would see them in court, that a cheque miraculously appeared.

herself thought this was the end of the matter. but a couple of weeks later arthur had to go in for his yearly MOT test. he failed miserably and herself had to shell out yet more money to fix him up so he could be driven. £800 later arthur was in the middle of his re-test when the brakes jammed on. the garage phoned herself. it appeared that arthur needed a new brake servant because, you guessed it, the drain plugs were blocked again and water had been sucked into the brake system. the garage stripped everything down and wrote herself a report which she could send to audi. arthur was off the road for over a week while the part was sent from audi, who had run low on stocks of them. this is hardly surprising given this masterful piece of automotive design.

while arthur was off the road herself was lucky enough to borrow her maamship's audi tt, a vehicle of modest size but great style. unfortunately young dave and i are not allowed in it due to young dave's unsavoury habits. also unfortunately, it is a rather low slung beast and could not be trusted to make it up to the hoss's field without becoming impaled on the rocky track. herself therefore spent several happy nights striding along the track to feed the hoss in the dark in the face of horizontal wind and rain. arthur's name was mud, as was the field.

no sooner had arthur returned than herself was yet again in correspondence with audi. this time they did not put up much of a fight and a cheque to pay for the brake servant was soon winging its way to us. by now it had become apparent that a car with greater ground clearance was going to be needed to get up to the field but herself had fallen out of love with arthur anyway so did not feel in the slightest bit sad to see the back of him. and so we are now the proud owners of gerald, having part-exchanged arthur.

gerald is a very pleasant vehicle and apparently has heated seats in the front. not that young dave and i are ever going to get to try them. the heated seats have come in very handy for herself as she is rather battered and bruised, having fallen off the hoss twice in just over a week. i will save that little saga for another post...

long time no see

2009-11-21T07:13:00.001Z

dear readers, yet again i find myself starting a post with a grovelling apology for my absence from these parts. since the arrival of the new family member things have been somewhat busy even by our standards. quite a lot of the busyness was hoss-related but, as is the way with the peeps, circumstances conspired to cause further chaos. much of the chaos has been excellent blog-fodder but herself has been too busy to assist me in recording it.

the hoss arrived at the end of october but for reasons relating to arthur the audi young dave and i did not meet him for some time. so we were reduced to eavesdropping on hoss-related conversations to find out about him. he is a large hairy fellow called bonzo, who is showing the beginnings of a fine moustache. were he a lady he could join the Hoard of Menopausal Women with such a moustache. he has big shaggy legs and a wiggly top lip like an elephant's trunk. when young dave and i finally were introduced the hoss put his huge head down and gave us a little sniff, before nodding vigourously. i feel we are going to become good friends.

once the hoss had arrived herself had to sort him out a shelter. he lives on a very windy hill in a very windy field belonging to herself's friend mrs collie. as mrs collie is very soft-hearted about animals it was essential that the hoss had a shelter very soon. otherwise mrs collie would have parked him in her living-room which, given herself is cleaning mrs collie's house in return for the field, would have added considerably to her workload.

hoss shelters, it seems, are quite expensive. herself trawled the internet and spoke to local shelter builders but was unlucky. luckily mick the builder was nearby, doing work on her maamship's house over the road. mick the builder and his brother martin have been doing building for the peeps for years and are used to herself's ways.

"can you build me a hoss-shelter?" asked herself, as mick the builder struggled with an acrow prop and a large metal beam.

"when do you need it done?" grunted mick the builder.

"yesterday," said herself. i think this may have been slightly tongue in cheek. mick the builder, while very good at building, has not yet mastered time travel.

the shelter was built and here you can see the hoss enjoying a haynet in comfort. but as herself had the attention of the builders and they had a little slot before their next job, the peeps decided to have a wall taken down and the leaky kitchen roof mended. this entailed the living room being encased in a plastic sheet and made to look like a crime scene. the ensuing untidyness and distraction meant that young dave was able to eat yet another pair of herself's glasses. this brings the total almost into double figures, if you include the ones that herself ordered off the internet that young dave ate when they came through the letter box, and of course the various sunglasses. herself was surprisingly laid back about this. she said she had a spare pair at work.

when she got to work she found she did not have a spare pair. after a couple of hours of peering at her monitor with the picture zoomed in she went out and bought some reading glasses from the optician over the road to the office. the new glasses were called 'so slim' which made the peeps laugh. herself is not very slim at all.

the next day herself got into work and could not find the glasses. she had put them in her bag when she left the house but they were nowhere to be found. young dave's name was mud. at lunchtime herself went to boots and bought another pair of reading glasses. these ones make her look like michael cain. when she got in the car to come home she found the first set of replacement glasses under the seat. why does this not surprise me?

as for the trials and tribulations of arthur the audi, i think i am going to have to tell you about those another time. there is only so much a chap can cope with at my age...

my kingdom for a hoss

2009-10-16T06:33:00.003+01:00

dear readers, much has been happening of late. but the most notable thing that has happened is that we are to have a new family member! he is large and hairy and by all accounts a thoroughly nice chap.

when i first saw a picture of him i was rather alarmed. he is very large indeed. he is so large that there is no way that he would ever fit on the sofa. or indeed in the living room. or the house. but i need not have worried. herself had a plan. she has a friend with a field opposite her house. the new family member is to live in the field, in return for which herself is going to clean her friend's house every week.

i was also concerned as to how on earth the peeps were going to afford to feed such a large animal. the saying 'eating like a horse' was invented for a reason. but herself has that covered too. she is doing her maamship's gardening in return for hay and cleaning for the snake charmers in return for sacks of horse food.

and for all the other expenses like horseshoes she has come up with an ingenious plan. it will be possible to sponsor bits of the horse! the original idea was just to have people sponsoring a hoof. but as is the way with herself's ideas, the idea morphed into something altogether more complicated.

the snake charmers jumped in first and bagged their favourite body parts. the young snake charmer is going to sponsor the face. this is because she loves horse noses. mrs snake charmer is going to sponsor the mane, and has negotiated the right to tie ribbons in it on special occasions. mr snake charmer originally expressed an interest in sponsoring the wedding tackle, but swiftly changed his mind when he heard that part of the sponsorship arrangement involved being allowed to groom your body part when ever you wanted to and being given a photograph of your body part to hang on the wall. while there is no doubt that the wedding tackle on a horse is a sight to behold, hence the saying 'hung like a horse', having a photo of it on your wall might lead to gossip. particularly if, like mr snake charmer, you work in a school.

my boy, needless to say, was scathing about the sponsorship plan.

"are you going to have signs all over the horse? will there be one on the tail saying 'sponsored by marks and spencers'?" herself mulled this over for a while.

"you've given me another idea!" she said, "i can sell advertising to local businesses!"

i am not sure what the horse will make of this. he does have a lot of white areas on him but he may draw the line at having the name of the local butcher scrawled across his rump...

fame and misfortune

2009-09-28T19:48:00.003+01:00

dear readers, this picture has nothing much to do with my musing for today, but herself likes to have a picture for you. this is gimley and daisy. more unlikely friends it would be hard to imagine. daisy tells gimley what to do. daisy is on the right.

today's musing is about legal matters. and shingle. i will start with the shingle since it is more interesting. regular readers will know that her maamship has had to buy a house over the road to the peeps in order to avoid having to sleep in her van when she visits. the house over the road was previously owned by a lady whose health was poor, so the garden is in a bit of a mess. herself offered to do the garden. her maamship was pleased with this plan. she gave herself a free rein on the design, as she is so fond of our garden. i am not sure this was such a good idea. himself was rather negative about it too. he likes things to be done properly, with a plan. herself tends to be rather more organic in her designs.

today herself ordered a huge bag of shingle and some railway sleepers. the shingle is to cover all the weeds and the railway sleepers are to make a raised veg bed. herself made it clear to the bloke at the builders merchant that when they delivered them they should place the bag of shingle in the front garden on the lawn and be careful not to crush the flowers. she then went off to ride mrs lupin's horse, who is a most charming chap.

when she got back, the builders merchant had delivered the railway sleepers and the shingle. the railway sleepers were neatly stacked alongside the house. the huge bag of shingle was in the road. this in itself would not have been such a problem. but it was in the space for the car owned by the lady at the end of the road. this lady cannot walk very far which is why she has a special space for her car. her car was in the rest of the space but herself felt very worried that the lady would have trouble getting out. she went round and apologised to the lady. then the peeps spent a happy hour shovelling shingle into the front garden of her maamship's house. as soon as they had lightened the bag sufficiently they were able to pull it out of the lady's space and into a space that adjoined it. by now the peeps were a little flaked, so after a shower they settled down to an evening of chefs and forensic science dramas.

and the legal thing? i am threatened with being sued! i cannot think of a greater honour than to have annoyed someone enough for them to feel they need to sue me. and as herself says, all i have to my name is a magnetic collar, so it is a fruitless exercise. i am to be sued because i offered words of support to the famous inspector gadget, a blogger of repute. as the dear inspector is also owned by a lurcher i felt it was the least i could do. so watch this space...

fame at last

2009-09-27T06:52:00.005+01:00

dear readers, i have finally arrived. i will need to provide a bit of background first, so do try to keep up. i know i am prone to rambling a bit, but a chap my age is allowed a bit of leeway.

as regular readers will know, a nice lady comes to see my boy every saturday for a couple of hours. this started some years ago when the peeps discovered the sitting service. this is run by social services and involves volunteers coming to sit with wild young people so their parents could go out together. when my boy first had his sitter the peeps had not been out together for almost a year so it was revolutionary.

now my boy is old enough to be left on his own you would think he would no longer need sitting on, but my boy and his sitter have become firm friends so she still comes every week. they are an unlikely pair to be friends. she is a retired civil servant, who has led a very quiet life. she is a lady of strong religious convictions, so my boy had to be firmly instructed very early on to keep his atheist rantings to himself. so they sit side by side in my boy's room, surrounded by imitation guns all over the walls. my boy plays whatever horrific computer game has his fancy that week and his sitter does crosswords and word puzzles. meanwhile the peeps go out on a date.

it has to be said, the peeps took some time to understand the meaning of going on a date. they were decidedly out of practice. so for a long time they went to lidl, or the tip. but they are gradually learning. last night, when my boy's sitter came, young dave and i took the peeps for a lovely long walk along the beach. we rounded off the outing with a pint at a local hostelry. i have of course been visiting such places for many years but for young dave it is still a novelty. there was a certain amount of grizzling from his direction, largely because the people at a nearby table had failed to understand that he wanted to help them finish their dinner.

herself apologised for young dave's manners. it is stretching things to say he is a puppy these days as he is over a year old, but he still retains a very puppyish look so he is forgiven a lot of misdemeanours. the people at the nearby table were charming. they said they had seen us earlier on our walk and that we were gorgeous.

"they ought to be famous!" said the lady. herself explained that we were indeed famous and that i was a world famous author and had my own blog. she had to explain about the typing business and how i found it hard with my paws so she had to do the typing for me.

"so he even has his own p.a.!" exclaimed the lady, thrilled to have met me.

as we left the pub herself said that having a p.a. did not mean i was going to get away with any nonsense and that i shouldn't get too big for my boots. we shall see...

one step forwards, two steps sideways

2009-09-26T09:05:00.003+01:00

dear readers, this week has seen yet more drama. my boy goes to college on mondays, tuesdays and thursdays. herself foresaw potential for fussing on monday and tuesday and roped in girl in a trench to assist. monday dawned and my boy was hauled out of bed, placed in an upright position and left to get himself dressed. girl in a trench had spent the night on the sofa with young dave keeping her feet warm. at home she has a hot water bottle with a grey furry cover so young dave is a good substitute. when herself came down in the morning, girl in a trench told her about having got up in the night for a pee and returning to find dave fast asleep in the warm bit in her bed.

"you had better watch out how you tell people that," said herself, "it would be less open to misinterpretation if he was called fido."

my boy eventually came downstairs, munched some breakfast, took his meds and was ready to go. herself, girl in a trench and my boy set off in a fairly cheery fashion. after my boy had been dropped off, herself dropped girl in a trench at the station as she had to go to london to see about getting herself a trowel and various other tools ready for her own college course. herself went off to the stables. she was having a lovely ride in the autumn sun when her phone went. it was my boy's tutor. herself said she would ring back when she had disembarked from the horse. at the stables she called back.

"he's saying he wants to come home," he said. herself said this was not really a good idea as my boy would not go back if he was allowed to do this. then my boy came on the phone, wailing. herself spent some time explaining to him that this was not going to happen and that he had to get used to college. then his tutor came back on the phone and said that it was fine and that my boy would be ok. when herself went to fetch him at the end of the day he was indeed ok and had spent some happy time with the chickens.

on the tuesday girl in a trench was again in attendance, having returned from london the night before. dave had again performed hot water bottle duties. my boy was much more alive and ready to roll and they set off with no bother at all. when he was collected, having managed to keep in good heart all day, he grudgingly agreed that it was not such a bad place at all. herself almost refrained from having a good gloat.

on wednesday evening things began to look less positive. my boy had spent the day at home and had reminded himself of the comfort of a darkened room. he started up.

"if i say i feel sick you won't think i am making it up like with school will you?"

"i will make a judgement based on the facts before me," replied herself, in something of a lawyerish tone. her scepticism proved well-advised. about half an hour later my boy re-appeared, looking pale.

"i've got a bad tum!" he wailed.

"that'll be the thyroxin," said herself. my boy has to take pills to make his fire-oid work faster.

later he appeared again.

"i feel sick!" herself stood firm.

"we'll see how you are in the morning. if you still feel sick you can have a travel pill."

my boy eventually went to bed, moaning and groaning. in the morning he started where he had left off.

"i'm too ill to go to college! i feel dreadful."

"its just nerves," said herself firmly, "we've been through all this. if you feel sick you can have a pill."

some time went by and there was no sign of my boy. himself went up to get him moving. soon yelling could be heard from under my boy's duvet. it became clear that he was refusing to get up. young dave and i were unable to assist as there is a gate across the bottom of the stairs to keep young dave downstairs. (on the odd occasion when he has managed to wangle his way past it he has been found stretched out on the bed, once when both peeps were asleep on either side of him. it takes considerable stealth to climb onto the bed without waking herself, who is a very light sleeper.)

herself went up. himself had hold of one arm and was tugging my boy out of bed. my boy was resisting. in the end he stood up and himself got him dressed. my boy came downstairs and spent the next quarter of an hour slouching around looking pale. by now himself had lost the plot and was told to take me and young dave out for our walk. this was probably wise as he was looking rather murderous.

herself then tried reasoning with my boy for a while. she offered him a travel pill to help with the sickness. my boy refused, no doubt worried that he might stop feeling sick if he took the pill. when herself was reduced to shouting "take the bloody pill!" she realised that she too had lost the plot and went for a shower.

himself returned. by now my boy was back in his bed, although he had not had the forethought to get undressed. this was his downfall. the peeps pulled him out of bed and shuffled him down the stairs, with himself behind pushing and herself in front, pulling. young dave and i watched open-mouthed. my boy is nearly six feet tall and not easy to push, or indeed pull. he was brought to the bottom of the stairs. herself opened the front door. my boy took the opportunity of her having let go of one hand to attach himself to the bannisters like a limpet. for someone who had been so wan and feeble he had found a store of strength from somewhere.

himself went behind and pushed from a different angle. herself pulled. all at once my boy was in the front garden. herself let go of one arm to shut the front door and my boy sprinted off up the road. it is amazing how a little fresh air gets rid of nausea so quickly. the peeps stood on the doorstep looking at each other.

"you get his bag and i'll get some help," said herself. she went next door. mr next door opened the door.

"help!" said herself, pointing up the road to where my boy was visible, pressed against a wall.

"i'll go and get him," said mr next door. he is a man of imposing stature but in fact did not need to do any more than chat to my boy for a while before my boy came back. the peeps were waiting by the car. mr next door was talking to my boy about how he would teach him the guitar (mr next door is the most amazing guitar player) and talking about how long my boys fingers were.

"i need my pocket knife, and my satnav," said my boy. herself got out her phone and rang the house. from the road you could hear the phone in the house ringing. you could even hear himself answering. it is at moments like this that the absurdity of the situation strikes home. himself said he would look and bring them out. at this moment mr snake charmer came round the corner, carrying the long-handled pruners. my boy looked alarmed. in fact herself had asked mr snake charmer to drop them off so she could tackle her maamship's garden, but their arrival was opportune.

"so we're in the happy tree today then?" asked mr snake charmer. herself was feeling somewhat out of her tree so did not grasp that this alluded to a rather odd tv programme. just then herself's phone rang. it was himself to say he could not find the pocket knife.

"look, i'll go in and get it," said my boy.

"if you think i am going to let you go back in there after all this you have to be madder than you seem!" said herself.

"i know when i am defeated," said my boy, waving vaguely at the surrounding adults. having extracted a promise that he would come back out herself agreed. as they stood by the car waiting for the next round, herself remarked on how moments such as this, while trying at the time, provided good blog-fodder.

my boy was eventually put in the car and herself drove off, having locked the doors as a precaution. one of my boy's earlier efforts to put the peeps off making him go to college had been to say he would jump out of the car when it was on the dual carriageway, so herself was not being over-cautious.

after 5 minutes in the car my boy ate a bag of crisps and settled down to his fate.

"did you know that you can send yourself into a catatonic state by reverse blinking of the eyes?" he asked.

"did you know that you can send yourself into a catatonic state by having an autistic teenager?" she countered.

when she went to pick him up at the end of the day, his tutor came out. he is a wonderful man with a will of steel, disguised in a slightly camp manner, a nice sense of humour and a clear empathy for wild young people.

"how you went on this morning is not acceptable," he said to my boy, "if you give your mum jip, you give me jip. i will not have it again." my boy looked suitable chastened and promised not to repeat the experience. i think this time the message has sunk in...

and relax...

2009-09-18T15:27:00.003+01:00

i know my readers will be keen to know how today went so i have forced herself to type a quick post. the day started off with a rather poor omen - herself cut her mouth on her muesli. how anyone can get an injury from breakfast cereal is beyond me but if anyone can it is herself. luckily things improved after that.

my boy got dressed with scarcely a whimper. mr snake charmer came round to cheer us all on. mrs next door went along to the nice college with the animals with herself and my boy and by all accounts it went swimmingly, in spite of there being a lot of hanging around and paperwork. my boy was photographed for his id card and managed not to look like an axe murderer. they met the other students and the tutors who seem very nice.

my boy is going to be part of a project involving chicken husbandry which herself said meant he had to marry a chicken. my boy said this was a rather limp joke. anyway, they came home half an hour ago looking very much cheerier than before. so there will be celebrations this weekend...

the end of the world is nigh

2009-09-17T07:08:00.002+01:00

dear readers, since our return from our hols, things have been a little on the tough side with my boy. regular readers will know that he has not been in school since january. for the whole of this year herself has been attempting to sort out some sort of education for him, against a backdrop of threats from the local irritation authority to take the peeps to court.

after several false starts, the peeps settled on the nice college with the animals as a good place for my boy to go. my boy was on the face of it very happy with this. herself and my boy went for taster days, which, although my boy was less happy with, seemed to go pretty well. my boy was offered a place to start in september. herself then embarked on a lengthy battle with the local irritation authority about them paying the fees. this has yet to be resolved so her maamship has very kindly lent the money to the peeps in the interim.

fast forward to the present. as the date for starting at the nice college with the animals drew near, my boy started to get the collie-wobbles. this is largely because he does not like new things. people of the beefburger persuasion do not like change. there was a lot of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. herself felt this keenly and spent many hours comforting my boy, whilst telling him that it would be fine once he got there and got used to it.

as my boy's main objective was to avoid going to the nice college with the animals in order to devote himself to a career sitting in a darkened room playing computer games, he decided to try a new approach. this involved saying his life was no longer worth living if he had to go to college. herself felt this even more keenly. she grew up with a father who had a similar approach to life and went to considerable lengths to put it into practice, at great emotional cost to his family.

after 3 or 4 days of my boy saying he was going to kill himself herself snapped and burst into tears.

"when i was your age i was in an ambulance with my father being rushed to hospital having his stomach pumped out! it is totally immoral for you to be using emotional blackmail like this to avoid going to college!"

with that she went into the garden for a good cry. my boy came out and apologised. for a few days things quietened down.

as the day approached when my boy would start college, he tried a new tack.

"i'm not going to that hell-hole. you can't make me. you are practicing satanic experiments on me!"

"we can make you and we will make you," said herself, "your father and i will end up in court if you don't get back into education. i will get the Hoard of Menopausal Women to come round and we will get you dressed and put you in the car and take you there every day until you get used to it and stop fussing."

my boy went off to think this over. a little later he came back.

"you can't make me go if i am not here. i will run away."

this plan had the peeps open-mouthed.

"running away might be a little tricky, given the agoraphobia," himself pointed out, "where would you run away to?"

"the stables." said my boy, "i like the stables. the atmosphere there is nice."

"that's good," said herself, tongue in cheek, "i'll be able to see you when i go riding." (my boy has recently been to the stables with herself and girl in a trench. they had spent a morning painting stable doors while my boy harangued herself with how poor a parent she was and how she had never made a good decision about his upbringing in his whole 14 years. girl in a trench took the opportunity of him wandering off to kick a stone around in a depressed manner to compliment herself on her patience in the face of such a relentless onslaught of woe. "it takes practice," said herself glumly.)

yesterday mr snake charmer and the young snake charmer came round after school. the young snake charmer had made up a song about mushrooms which she sang to everyone. in between the mushroom song my boy entertained the assembled folks with increasingly extreme plans for avoiding college. mr snake charmer has a robust approach to my boy. having taught him smiths for most of a year he knows most tricks in my boy's book. the running away plan came up again.

"how will you know where to start?" asked mr snake charmer, "have you got 'running away simulator' on your computer?" (my boy has been collecting the weirdest simulation games he can find, including 'fork lift truck simulator', 'crane simulator' and 'farming simulator'. he also has 'subway train simulator' which has the added complication of being in german.)

then my boy moved onto a more extreme plan.

"i will nail myself to a cross," he announced, "then you won't be able to get me in the car."

this was greeted with a stunned silence, followed by a cacophony of responses, ranging from guffaws from mr snake charmer to herself's more thoughtful contribution.

"there is a rather obvious flaw with that plan," she said.

"what?" said my boy, taken aback at her lack of distress.

"unless you have a very long handle on the hammer you will not be able to hammer in the last nail." herself often retreats into practicality in the face of horror.

this prompted mr snake charmer to do an impression of my boy trying to persuade a passer-by to help him out with his last nail which had even my boy beginning to see the absurdity of his latest idea. he went off in a huff with the young snake charmer to play bus simulator, leaving the adults to plan for friday, when he has to attend for the enrolment and induction day.

as well as the Hoard of Menopausal Women, mr snake charmer is going to call round to supply additional muscle if required, together with caustic wit, which he has in spadefuls. i think my boy is beginning to realise that he is going to have to buckle down and get on with it...

tanked up

2009-09-15T00:54:00.004+01:00

on day two of our hols we were woken again at the crack of dawn, indeed well before the crack of dawn, and taken off to the park with the metal trees for a quick run around. then the peeps spent a frantic hour tidying up her maamship's flat, which had descended into the chaos they take with them wherever they go. after that we all piled into hattie, who is her maamship's campervan. the reason we went in hattie rather than arthur the audi was because of my boy's fear of travel. he loves hattie and spent lots of time fiddling around with her cupboards and switches before settling down with his laptop to play a computer game called morrowind.

young dave and i managed to find a space on the floor to kip, although young dave very quickly wormed his way onto himself's lap, where he collapsed in a hairy grey heap. after quite some time we arrived at the services where we were meeting her maamship and the prof. and sure enough, there they were! it always amazes me when any of the peeps' arrangements comes off. after a bit of pottering around and a cuppa we set off again, following their car. about 20 miles further on the deisel light came on. this was hattie's way of telling the peeps that she was thirsty. herself indicated to her maamship and the prof that she was turning off and we headed into the filling station. herself pulled up by the pump and got out.

"its the other side!" called her maamship. herself got back in and moved to a different pump. she fiddled around with the keys and unlocked the filler cap. as she finished filling up her maamship came out from the shop, having paid for her own fuel.

"its the ignition key," she said, seeing herself having trouble locking up the cap. herself managed to lock the cap with another little key and got back into the driving seat. we headed off again up the motorway. a little bit further on herself turned to himself.

"the fuel light hasn't gone off," she said, rather worriedly, "i hope its ok."

"you don't think you put it in the wrong place do you?" said himself, ever the optimist. a rapid phone call to the prof established that this was indeed what had happened. herself had filled up hattie's water tank with deisel. there was a fair bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of herself. it was agreed that we would all turn off at the next exit. it was also established that hattie would need a new water tank. herself was somewhat crushed.

this time her maamship filled hattie up, which seemed like a sound idea. herself might have filled up some other tank instead. luckily her maamship is a person who is not easily flustered. she seemed to take all this in her stride.

we carried on with our journey and eventually got to the place where the boat was. we had a quick lesson in which end was which (something her maamship and the prof have very little need of, being boat experts) and then got into a sort of boat queue. ahead of us was a rather impressive structure, which i discovered was a boat lift. now usually it is young dave who exhibits signs of a nervous disposition. but on this occasion it was my good self who got the collie-wobbles. teetering hundreds of feet in the air in a boat in a large container filled with water is not my idea of a relaxing time. in the container with us was a tour boat, filled with people taking photos of us, with a man giving a commentary with a microphone.

once we were at the top things improved. over the next couple of days we pootled along the canal to edinburgh, a large city full of people who we couldn't understand. young dave left his mark in the middle of the main street, much to the peeps embarassment. herself did what she could with the old plastic bag trick but a certain miasma followed us. young dave never fails to deliver.

the rest of the week was spent pootling back again, and was unremarkable save for one breakfast time when herself was frying eggs for everyone. she was about to pour in some oil when she let out a shriek. yet again she had got her liquids muddled and was about to pour whisky into the frying pan. in her defence, the bottles are very similar. i suppose it gives a whole new meaning to scotch eggs...

oop north

2009-08-28T17:01:00.003+01:00

hello dear readers! this is a post from your globetrotting reporter, joker the roving lurcher. as i dictate this we are in birmingham! this is a place of tall buildings and a lot of roads.

some time ago, her maamship invited us all to join her and the prof on a canal boat holiday in scotland. the peeps were very keen on the idea but unfortunately, because of my boy's fear, it was a no no. my boy, as regular readers will know, has not been very far from the house since last year. so the peeps thanked her maamship and the prof for their kindness and reluctantly declined.

as the summer went on my boy got a little more adventurous, at least on foot. he took to coming out to the local park with young dave and i when we went for our run. he even went to visit his mate pj. the peeps began to think they might have a holiday after all. the big problem with the scotland idea was that scotland is about as far as you can go from where we live. the prospect of my boy on a car journey of such magnitude filled them with dread. my boy loves canal boats,and felt most miserable at the idea of missing such a wonderful holiday.

her maamship had an idea. herself rang the doctor and asked about getting a sedative to knock my boy out for the duration of the car journey. the doctor told herself of an excellent car sickness medication that had the added bonus of making the recipient sleepy.

so this morning at some ungodly hour we were awoken by herself, in her usual cheery morning mode. herself is the only member of the family capable of cheerfulness at an early hour. himself was decidedly uncommunicative. my boy was fast asleep but once awoken, sprang into action. the peeps had done about half their packing last night but there was still quite a bit of organising and sorting out of chaos to be done. we finally set off at just after 5am.

after a couple of stops to empty the old tanks we arrived in birmingham, where we are to stay for tonight in her maamship's flat. had it not been for a rather tiresome feline member of the maamship-prof family we could have stayed with them in cheshire. but the flat is rather nice. it has a lift. i have, of course, been aquainted with lifts before. but young dave was enthralled. there was a lady in the roof of the lift. when the doors closed she said "doors closing!" and as we went up she told us which floor we were passing. young dave was listening so hard his ears did that funny thing where they join at the top and look like a cheap toupee. at the top floor we spilled out of the lift and went into the flat. the floors are all covered in pale carpet, which i have to say was not a very good choice on the part of her maamship if she is going to make a habit of having disreputable characters like us to stay.

we have now settled in and have been for a little stroll in a local park which has strange metal trees. now it is time for a little snooze...

the rakes progress

2009-08-27T12:12:00.003+01:00

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...

from the sublime to the automatic

2009-08-18T15:34:00.006+01:00

dear readers, the fun with cars has continued apace. as regular readers will recall, arthur the audi had a small lake in his rear footwell which was in danger of mucking up his inboard computer bits. herself tried to get estimates from a few garages but they said they could not guarantee that they would sort out the problem even though they would have to charge for their time. this did not appeal to herself, who tries to watch the pennies nowadays. so she went to the local audi dealer. while they are expensive, they at least know what makes an audi tick. or leak.

the estimate for the work was a scary amount but luckily herself had put some money aside for car repairs so all was well. the only problem was that herself was due to go away on her horse therapy course (or horse hugging course, as mr snake-charmer calls it) and driving up the motorway with the lights flashing randomly did not fill her with joy. luckily the audi dealer has spare cars which they lend to people. rather apologetically, the audi dealer said to herself,

"the only thing we have left to lend you is an A3." herself was fine with this as her old audi, sparky, was an A3 and was very pleasant. on the day when she went to drop off arthur the audi the man said, "change of plan. we are letting you have an A4 estate." herself was also fine with this. she likes audis in general. the paperwork was all done and the man went off to collect the replacement car.

herself stood outside, waiting for the A4. but the man appeared with a different car. it was a brand new jaguar. it turned out that the A4 had a warning light on which meant they had to let herself have a rather classier car than they intended.

"i'm sorry, its an automatic," said the man. "that's fine, i'm sure i'll cope," said herself, magnanimously.

the following day was the first day of the horse hugging course. as it was a long way away, herself had to get up very early indeed. even when herself can see what she is wearing she is sartorially challenged. when she gets dressed in the dark she is a sight to behold. add to this a distinct lack of sleep and you have a vision of loveliness. herself set off into the night. after a while she stopped for coffee. she noticed as she got out of the jaguar that she was being stared at a lot. the attention was not reduced when she set off the alarm on the jaguar by opening the boot instead of the fuel flap. it dawned on herself that the people looking thought she had stolen the car.

eventually, with one eye on the mirror in case of flashing blue lights, herself arrived at the horse hugging course. there were 30 other people on it, ranging from psychotherapists to people with livery yards. it seems everyone wants to learn to hug horses. i may volunteer as a stand-in huggee for smaller participants. i like a good hug myself.

the first evening herself was staying in birmingham with her maamship. her maamship has a flat in birmingham where she stays in the week while she does her judging. the following day herself drove to where the course was. this necessitated going up the M6. when you got off the M6 you had to turn left.

the second evening herself stayed with her maamship and the prof in their family home, which is north of where the course was. on the sunday morning, herself drove down the M6 and turned left, as she had the day before. even young dave could have worked out the problem with this. herself ended up somewhere miles away and was rather late, in spite of having risen very early.

the course ended that afternoon and herself headed home down the M6, proudly clutching her certificate. the jaguar had a little light on to say it was thirsty and needed diesel. herself saw that services were imminent. but alas, she had to turn off the M6 onto the M42 before she reached them. all was well as there was a sign saying that there were services in 20 miles. the on-board computer told her that she had 22 miles left in the tank. but as fate would have it, the turn-off to the M40 was before these services. there was a sign saying that the next services were in 20 miles. by now there was less than 20 miles in the tank. herself slowed down to 56 mph, having remembered that this was the most efficient speed. she also tucked in behind a lorry, a trick she remembered from her motorcycling days. as the distance to the services went down, so did the amount left in the tank. it became clear that there would be a shortfall of 2 or 3 miles.

herself got on the blower to himself. fortunately himself was on his computer.

"can you look up how accurate the fuel indicator is in a jaguar x-type?" she wailed. himself duly googled this, but found nothing helpful.

"just treat it like the diesel challenge!" he said. the diesel challenge was a game that the peeps used to play with my boy when he was young. for some reason not unconnected with lack of organisational skills and lack of money, the peeps were in the habit of driving round with very little fuel. it was often touch and go whether they would make it to the petrol station. so they turned it into an exciting competition between the humans and the car. fortunately the humans usually won.

luckily herself won the diesel challenge on this occasion too, with sighs of relief all round. when herself told people about her diesel adventure, everyone told her about an episode of top gear, on which some bloke had driven a jaguar right across europe on one tank of petrol. but he presumably had a film crew handy if he ran out...

chasing cars

2009-08-06T22:22:00.006+01:00

here is a picture of the next door's car. to put it bluntly this car is a very unlucky car. mrs next door calls this car "a corker of a car". i fear she is delusional. this picture was taken a couple of months ago. the next doors were having a bit of a busy time and the reminder for the car tax got left until the last minute. then when mrs next door tried to tax the car there was some bit of paper missing. when the bit of paper was found mrs next door's friend took all the stuff to the post office. but some other bit was now missing. in the end mrs next door had all the bits of paper and went along to tax the car. when she got back she found the car had been clamped. the nasty clamping people would not let the car go until money had changed hands. no amount of pleading made the slightest bit of difference.

then the next doors had a long journey to make. the day before the journey the corker of a car decided to drop its exhaust and develop a spluttering engine. as the journey was quite important herself lent mrs next door arthur the audi. herself drove mrs next door's car to work. this was a mistake. the corker of a car would not go out of second gear without spluttering as though it was going to die. herself would have got there more quickly on her bicycle. but arthur the audi did not let the side down in the bad car-ma stakes. halfway along the motorway a flood of water appeared from nowhere and soaked mr next door's feet.

it appears that the lack of power in the next door's car was due to a dodgy throttle cable. the cable had stretched to the point that when it was on the floor it hardly moved the engine. the garage did some greasing and fiddling and said that would keep it going for a bit. the next long journey that mrs next door went on the corker of a car did the opposite. it revved and revved with no encouragement whatsoever. in fact the revving was somewhat alarming. this it appears was due to the throttle cable sticking. herself knew about this because it happened once when she was on her motorbike, depositing her in a ditch. mrs next door managed to get back in one piece from this journey, largely because on motorways it is less noticable if one is going very fast.

as she drew into the little town where we live, the throttle cable gave one last groan and snapped. mrs next door managed to roll to the side of the road and left the corker of a car where it stood. when she rang the garage it turned out they did not do towing. this was something of a problem as mrs next door did not at this stage have breakdown cover. luckily the peeps have a tow rope. they set off with arthur the audi to where the corker of a car was malingering. having pushed it backwards to make a space arthur the audi assumed the position. herself got out and peered underneath for the towing bracket. there was none to be found. not a single thing presented itself as being vaguely suitable. at this stage himself was all for giving up and retiring home to the sofa.

but herself was not to be defeated. the manual was located and after some puzzling over diagrams of cars that looked nothing like the corker of a car the peeps found out what the problem was. i have to say that without the manual it would have been very unlikely that they would have worked this out. the peeps had to remove rather a lot of stuff from the boot, then remove the spare tyre, then locate a brass lump of metal which had to be unscrewed from the car body. even this simple task was not simple. the brass lump of metal (the towing eye to give it its correct name) unscrewed the other way to any other screw.

the peeps went back round to the front and peered at the bumper. it was not obvious where the towing eye screwed in. eventually they located a circular plate in the bumper which they managed to prise off. as the towing eye unscrewed the wrong way it also screwed back up the wrong way. but in the end they were ready. herself got back in arthur the audi and himself sat in the corker of a car. himself is an old hand at being towed as one of his brothers is a mechanic and himself learned to be towed long before he could drive. (unfortunately the mechanic brother lives hundreds of miles away so was not much help on this occasion). the peeps set off. almost immediately all the indicators on arthur the audi came on and stayed on, regardless of which buttons were pressed. this made it hard for herself to let himself know which way she was going. luckily the peeps had talked about the route beforehand. himself would have had very little choice anyway, given he was attached with a rope.

the corker of a car was duly delivered to the garage and arthur the audi was left outside the other garage which was going to look at the pool of water the next day. it seems the pool of water is the cause of the odd indicator behaviour. the electrics were very cleverly placed under the floor where the pool of water was.

as i dictate this missive the next doors are heading off to the west country to visit relatives. i just hope the corker of a car behaves itself...

punctuation

2009-08-06T07:47:00.006+01:00

readers, here you can see a rather poorly designed box. as you will see, the bottom slopes. every time the box is stood up it falls over. this box contains puff pastry. himself was making some sort of meat pie with pastry on top and herself decided to make a tart with the leftovers. but every time she stood the box up to read the instructions it fell over. so before she could make a start she had to modify the box. as you do.

then the tart was made:

and baked:

and was by all accounts delicious, although of course yours truly never got within a munch of it.

meanwhile, my boy was filling in one of the endless forms from the irritation authority. this form was to get my boys views about his education. my boy was scathing about the form.

"what do they mean 'what do i like about school?' i haven't been to school in months!"

"just keep it polite and try and answer the questions" said himself.

"and why has it got an exclamation mark after where it says 'tell us about yourself!' ? do they think i am going to be more motivated if they put an exclamation mark there? how patronising! i will not be controlled by punctuation!"

as my boy gives the Hoard of Menopausal Women a run for their money i somehow doubt a little bitty exclamation mark is going to cut the mustard...

boys will be boys

2009-07-30T13:32:00.007+01:00

dear readers, meet gimley. he is a large fellow with many wrinkles as you will see. i have yet to meet him as it is felt i might forget myself and try to get macho with him. it is not hard to guess who would come off worse in an arm-wrestling contest. gimley lives at the stables where herself goes for some peace and quiet. he has 6 fellow canines, one of which is a pug. the young snake-charmer is mad about pugs so herself took her to be introduced. i would show you a picture of the pug but pugs, it appears, do not stand still long enough to be photographed.

herself has been particularly enjoying her time at the stables this week. life is, as usual, a little fraught and time with large calm beasts seems to be the order of the day. the fraughtness arises from my boy and his education. "what a surprise!" i hear you say. my boy says he is no longer keen on the nice college with the animals. i think that in reality he is again feeling the pull of a career sitting in the dark playing computer games. getting used to change is not something that people of the beefburger persuasion are all that good at.

it has not helped that the peeps have still not managed to get the local irritation authority to agree to pay for the college. herself wrote a rather cross letter to the lawyer for the local irritation authority, saying that if they wouldn't agree to pay the fees she would pay them herself and sue the local education authority to get them back. she was able to make this promise because her maamship has offered to lend the peeps the money.

the letter seems to have moved things on a little. a nice man called ed sike came earlier this week to talk to my boy and do tests to see how clever he is. the peeps were rather concerned that young dave might let the side down with his mutty behaviour but mr sike has a dog of his own so was thankfully unshockable. next week my boy has to see a doctor and then hopefully the local irritation authority will be able to issue a new statement saying how wild my boy is and how much he has grown since the last statement of wildness was written. once this has been done things might finally get sorted out.

herself, meanwhile, is forging ahead with her own plans for education. she is going on a horse course. this is not to learn about horses but about therapy using horses. her maamship, upon hearing about horse therapy, said she had a mental picture of a horse sitting with its legs crossed asking someone how long they had been feeling like this. herself explained that the horse does the therapy without even speaking, which sounds most impressive. the horse course is not far from where her maamship resides so herself is going to spend the weekend with her maamship and travel to the horse course each day. young dave and i are to stay at home with himself and my boy. it will be very odd without the feminine influence that herself provides. i will miss the sound of drilling and hammering...

old age

2009-07-22T13:30:00.005+01:00

dear readers, as you will be aware, i am a lurcher of a venerable age. in may i was 11, which in human years i believe makes me 77. i have to say that in recent months i have been feeling my age, with the old hips getting more achey. young dave is beginning to outstrip me in speed, although at the moment i make up in guile what i lose in velocity so i am still able to thrash him at fetching things. the hips have had arthritis for some time. the evil vet diagnosed this after taking a photograph of them a couple of years ago.

there is some stuff that can help achey bones. it is called metacam. but it can cause other bits to give up the ghost so herself has been reluctant for me to be taking it on a regular basis until i have to. so she has been investigating other things. the nice man at the stables, who knows a huge amount about this sort of thing, suggested something he uses on horses called devil's claw. when i overheard herself talking about this i got the collie-wobbles. sticking something sharp in one part of the old frame did not sound to me the best way to stop another part hurting. but i worried in vain. devil's claw is some sort of plant. it comes in capsules and i get to have them wrapped in a little bit of ham or cheese so i am a happy fellow.

one slightly less popular change is that i am to have old dog food. young dave and i have dried dog food that comes in a sack, so it is not all that fresh, but it seems i am to have older dog food. our current food is called champ, and i am now going to be getting old champ. herself tried to put my mind at rest by saying that the old refers to the dog rather than the food but i am reserving my position until i have tried it. the reason for this change in diet is that i am apparently getting a little portly now that i am not charging around so much. and any extra weight is not so good for the achey hips. i did ask herself if she had looked in the mirror lately. if she is going to be pointing the finger at my spare tyre she would do well to look at her own. she responded by saying she is not 77 yet.

as well as all this, herself has bought me a magnetic collar from a lady called rose. the theory behind this is that it will make my blood magnetic which will somehow help the achey hips. i am just worried that i will attract the wrong sort of attention. it is very hard to retain any scrap of street-cred when one is coated with metal objects. i am just going to have to develop some patter about my magnetic personality...

the swines

2009-07-16T05:00:00.005+01:00

dear readers, herself is currently working at home. this is because her room-mate at work, miss shell, has been signed off with swine flu and herself does not fancy sitting in the germ-ridden office waiting to start sneezing. given that himself has a compromised immune system as a result of the drugs he has to take to keep superkidny ticking over, this is a very wise move. luckily, with the geeky household that we have, this arrangement has not resulted in any interruption of service on the work front. if anything herself gets more done, on account of not having colleagues to natter with.

while the work arrangements are tickety-boo, the arrangements for my boy going to college are causing herself some grief. this is because the local irritation authority has a mission to make life complicated. they employ people for this very purpose. they are called irritation officers.

my boy, as regular readers will know, is of the beefburger persuasion. he has a number of other things that make him special as well. because he is prone to wildness at school, he has a thing called a statement. this is a long document that describes his wildness and says that if he gets too wild the teachers have to sit on him until he calms down. because he has this statement the peeps have more dealings than they would like with the local irritation authority. herself has been in correspondence with the irritation officer assigned to my boy. what follows has been edited to remove any identifying features that might lead to a visit to the irritation authority offices by members of the worldwide chapter of the Hoard of Menopausal Women.

it all started on a friendly note with an e-mail from herself:

Dear Ms Irritation Officer

Further to the recent meeting at our boy's school, I am writing with regard to his education from September 2009. Last week our boy attended at taster days at the nice college with the animals and also had an interview. He has been offered a place on the course, subject to us arranging the funding. I gather that the nice ladies at the college have spoken to the nice lady at our boy's school and that she has contacted you, but I thought I should also make contact in case there is paperwork I need to complete.

Can you let me know how to progress this?

Herself

to which the irritation officer replied:

Thank you for your email.

No decision will be made in respect of placement for your boy until the statutory assessment has concluded. I cannot pre-empt the outcome of the statutory assessment, however, if we decide to issue a further statement for your boy you will at that stage be invited to submit your parental preference of placement.

I hope this is helpful.

well dear readers, i don't know about you, but helpful is not what i would call it. herself was fuming. my boy wanted to deal with things in his own sweet way but herself explained that this would result in more grief. instead she wrote back in a slightly less accommodating tone:

Dear Ms Irritation Officer

Thank you for your message. Our boy will be starting at the nice college with the animals in September. If the Local Irritation Authority has failed to complete the necessary assessment in time we will borrow the money for his fees. We are not willing for our boy to remain outside the education system indefinitely. The Local Irritation Authority is not in a position to be able to justify its inaction and obstructive approach given the fact that our boy has been out of school since January with no support from the LIA . I suggest you seek advice from the LIA's solicitors.

Herself

so it seems the gloves are off. what is amazing is that this is the same irritation officer that dealt with my boy some years ago. you would think she would have learned that resistance is useless. what she may not have realised is that she is now dealing with the Hoard of Menopausal Women...

an irksome troll

2009-07-08T14:01:00.002+01:00

dear readers, i am afraid i have had to enable comment moderation on my blog after all this time. this is due to a rather sad individual who has nothing better to do than write insulting drivel about my boy, something which, as i am sure you will all understand, herself will not countenance.

rest assured, your comments will appear eventually, when i can manage to get herself to approve them, so keep writing.

a learning curve

2009-07-03T18:18:00.006+01:00

relax dear readers! my boy has not ended up in jail! this picture was taken in the equine unit at college where he went for a taster day. or in fact two taster days and an interview. to explain how this came about i will need to backtrack, so you may want to get a pen and paper and take notes.

regular readers will remember that in january of this year my boy's fear had reached such proportions that he was not going out of the house. since going to school not only required going out of the house but also a car journey of well over an hour each way, his education ground to a halt. in the intervening months a number of potential options were discussed for keeping my boy off his computer and getting him educated. each came to nothing. the most recent was a local school for artistic young people that has been set up by a charity. this place would have been ideal. but there was the small question of persuading the local irritation authority to pay for it. and what do you know? the ever helpful lady at the local irritation authority said they would not because the new school did not have some sort of registration number from the government. this is because the number takes a couple of weeks to come through, so by the time the money was being paid the school would be properly numbered.

by this stage herself was getting a little frustrated. my boy had been out of school for 6 months and the only input from the local irritation authority had been to threaten to take the peeps to court. then a friend who lives nearby and who has an artistic daughter suggested a college up the road where they teach stuff about the countryside. this had not occurred to the peeps because my boy is not yet 16, but the college takes younger folks than this on a special course.

this week was the taster days and the interview. my boy has known about these for some time and was, on the face of it, looking forward to them. that is until the time came on saturday to buy the boots that he needed to wear to stop his feet getting busted by heavy things.

"i can't do this!" he wailed.

"you can do this." said herself firmly. there followed a stand-off for about 3 hours while my boy threw a major wobbly and the peeps continued with their efforts to get him out of the house. by 12 o'clock he had weakened and we went for a walk to the local park. to do this he had to get dressed, which was part of the peeps' fiendish plan. when they got back they persuaded him into the car and off they went, returning shortly afterwards with some very sturdy boots.

the first taster day was on monday and was blacksmithing. herself had prepared my boy down to the last minute as to what they were going to do in the morning. things went to plan until they were in the car.

"i don't think i can do this!" wailed my boy, looking pale.

"remember the boots?" said herself, "this will be the same."

all the way there my boy fussed about how impossible it was. at one point he curled up in a ball and started shaking. herself by all accounts found this a bit hard to ignore, but it is so important that my boy gets out into the world that she gritted her teeth and drove on. soon they were there.

the first bit involved a talk in a room where there were a large number of chairs laid out. my boy went even paler. herself walked purposefully towards the back and sat down. my boy reluctantly sat beside her, muttering out of the corner of his mouth like a gangster. as the room filled up my boy became more vocal.

"get me out of here!" he growled.

"no." said herself. there followed a whispered exchange worthy of a courtroom. eventually the man in charge appeared and explained what was going to happen. then various people came to the front of the room to collect their victims.

"no way can i do this!" growled my boy. herself ignored him. "you sure know how to make me suffer!" he continued, "i thought you loved me."

"i do," said herself, that's why i don't want you to spend your whole life in a darkened room playing computer games." with which she marched off after the man who had come to collect the blacksmithing people.

when they got to the forge my boy tried to take herself to one side to continue with his protestations. herself is a wily old bird and made for the middle of the workshop where the man in charge was demonstrating how to measure a length of metal. the man was called dave, which in my book gives him a head start. one of the peeps' friends has known a couple of not very nice daves but in our house the name has only positive connotations. it became clear that they were going to make a poker. once this was explained my boy should have thrown in the towel and got on with it. the peeps need a decent poker. they have a very large poker that would be more suitable for a baronial hall but which is unusable in the little fireplace in our house, so they shuffle the fire around with salad tongs.

"it's great you are going to make me a poker!" she said. my boy must have seen the writing on the wall. once herself has an idea she is not easily shifted from it. the day ran on. my boy fussed. herself was tough. eventually the poker was finished and they left, very hot but triumphant.

the next visit to college was on wednesday. this was for the interview for the course that my boy is hoping to go on. herself had prepared him in minute detail about what was going to happen. my boy had written a piece about why he wanted to go to this college and what he hoped to get out of it. more accurately my boy had dictated and herself had typed it. although my boy can type, he cannot type and think at the same time. there was a certain amount of kerfuffle about trousers the previous evening, which i will gloss over in the interests of brevity.

somehow monday's experience had not had any impact on my boy's psyche. 10am found him curled up in a ball in bed. herself did the cheery thing for about an hour, sounding less cheery as it failed to work. eventually my boy was persuaded out of bed.

"don't come near me!" he wailed, "i can't do this!" herself heaved a large sigh and carefully explained that not only could he do this, but that he was definitely going to do this.

"you can't make me! go away!" my boy presented an interesting sight as he said this. in one arm he was clutching bertha the bear, who has been with him all his life. in the other arm he was waving a full size replica machine gun.

"i will make you," said herself firmly, "this is too important for you to dip out of it. you need to get dressed." i have to say it was not clear to me how she was proposing to make a 5' 10" teenager do anything. the days of picking my boy up under one arm and carrying him out to the car are long gone.

herself got on the phone to himself. himself, true to form, did not answer his phone. then herself had an inspired idea. mrs snake charmer was off work for the week. when herself rang her she was cleaning her oven. she promised to be here in 10 minutes. herself told my boy that if he did not get dressed she and mrs snake charmer would dress him. mrs snake charmer used to play rugby and is very strong. my boy decided it might be prudent to get dressed himself, but continued to mutter throughout. herself went into the garden to cool down and spied mrs next door over the fence. as soon as mrs next door heard what was going on she offered to come round too.

mrs snake charmer arrived and the kettle was put on. my boy made an appearance, dressed at last, but still refusing to leave the house. at this point mrs next door arrived. mrs next door is a person of small stature, but what she lacks in height she makes up for in charm and strength of character. my boy opened the door.

"thank goodness you're here! she has got [mrs snake charmer] round to bully me!" (dear readers, i am under strict instructions not to use anyone's real name, in order to prevent embarrassment to the peeps' friends). mrs next door did not like to say that she had come round for a similar purpose.

by now my boy was starting to realise that his recalcitrance was unlikely to succeed. faced with three determined menopausal ladies he had to admit defeat. he decided to try another tack and lit an incense cone. the ladies exchanged glances. young dave and i exchanged glances. but all was well. he was simply making some magic smoke. he came in with a test tube full of smoke. when he took out the bung the smoke wafted round the room, making a smell reminiscent of an eastern bazaar.

"i'll take some magic smoke to the interview!" he said, "that will relax me." he was dissuaded from this plan and it was explained that this might look rather eccentric and might also set off the sprinklers at the college. i could only agree. while it is always good to make an impression, one has to be careful what sort of impression one makes.

it was soon time to leave. mrs snake charmer agreed to come along to the college in case of last minute wobbles. she was glad she did as she collected a large amount of literature about interesting courses for mr snake charmer and himself to go on. one course was about smoking. her maamship later pointed out it might not be wise to send my boy to a college where they teach you how to smoke, but it appears this is not that sort of smoking.

anyway, i digress. suffice to say that the interview was a success and my boy was offered a place on the course, starting in september. he just had to get through the taster day on thursday. one the way home herself made it clear that if there was a repeat of that morning she would call in her friends again.

"you always get your hoard of menopausal women to bully me," said my boy. herself pointed out that menopausal women strike terror into the heart of most men and that she quite liked the idea of being part of a hoard. readers, beware the Hoard of Menopausal Women...

summer fun and games

2009-07-01T06:43:00.008+01:00

dear readers, i must yet again apologise for the dearth of musings. the peeps have been distracted by a number of things so i have been without a scribe. the distractions have taken the form of a horse, a party and my boy.

the horse is one that herself has been riding. he lives in a yard in the country near here and herself has arranged with the man who looks after him and his fellow horses that she helps out a bit in the stables and in return gets to ride round the countryside. unfortunately young dave and i are not allowed to go riding with her so i have only seen photos of the horse. here you can see his nose.

he is by all accounts a large brown and white horse with shaggy feet and a friendly nature. the man who looks after him is someone who does raking at the place where herself had her raking treatment. he also does raking on the horses which seems to make for a calm and friendly crowd, in spite of several of them being rather important in the horse world.

as well as horsing around, herself has been partying. herself reached the grand age of 50 in april, 6 weeks after her maamship had achieved the same. they decided to have a party, as between them they had accumulated a century. the party was in a field behind a pub and many of the guests camped. a collection of cooking appliances were gathered together and himself and mr snake charmer were placed at strategic points among them with instructions to feed the guests. her maamship and my boy concocted some delicious looking kebabs (i cannot vouch for how they tasted as, in spite of several attempts, i was unable to liberate one). wonderful music was provided by a young and very talented clarinetist and some older but equally talented guitarists, one of whom was a member of the judiciary. a harmonica also made an appearance later in the evening.

the highlight of the evening from herself's point of view was a performance of her very own song. this song was written by the young snake charmer and has been developed over some months. the song was accompanied by a puppet performance on a stage which the young snake charmer made. the characters were some rather brilliant drawings of herself, himself, my boy, young dave and me, all cut out and made into puppets. the snake charmers made a film of the song which, if herself has got the technology right, should appear below. but in case my readers are unable to make it work, here are some pictures of the main characters:

yours truly - aka man in a dog suit

young dave - complete with air of puzzlement

many of the references in the film will escape those who are not familiar with the day to day detail of the peeps' lives. the chives are some plants in our garden which my boy has decided calm him down when munched. this is known as 'getting chived up'. my boy gets chived up before stressful events such as his smiths lesson with mr snake charmer.

the reference to 'teabagging' is to a rather clever deterrent which herself invented to stop my boy coming out with some of his more outrageous sexist comments. it involves the placing of a cold wet teabag down the back of the neck. should the sexism continue, a sound pat on the back is delivered, bursting the teabag and leaving cold wet tea inside the sexist's tea-shirt. needless to say this has only had to be done once; the mere mention of teabagging now has my boy turning from an unreconstructed caveman into a fluffy liberal feminist.

herself and her maamship had foreseen that the partygoers might find the evening chilly as night fell, in spite of it being midsummer. some while before the party they decided that what was needed was a firepit. many hours were spent scouring ebay for a firepit but all were exhorbitantly expensive. so herself decided to manufacture one from a dustbin lid. now you would think that this would be an easy item to find. but no. you can only buy dustbin lids if you buy a whole dustbin. and no one round here has a metal dustbin any more due to the advent of wheely bins.

luckily herself works for the local authority. she got on the blower to the man in charge of rubbish collection. he said that they only had wheely bins but that herself was in luck as some local flytippers had been dumping rubbish in dustbins which were going to be picked up that very day. herself shares her office with a lady called miss shell. when she related the saga of the dustbins, miss shell very sensibly advised her to take a photograph or two before drilling holes in them in case they became exhibits in a court case. the following day herself shot off to the depot to collect them, but it turned out that they were still at the scene of the crime. in the end some other bin lids were found which avoided the problem of evidence being destroyed by a member of the legal department.

the firepit was a great success as you can see here:

the partying went on until 3am. there were some rather sore heads the following day.

you may recall at the beginning of this long and rambling missive that i said there were 3 things that had been occupying the peeps, the third being my boy. i will tell you about my boy in my next missive, otherwise this will turn into a novel...

joker the lurcher? never heard of him!

2009-06-22T14:01:00.005+01:00

readers, you may wonder why i am in disguise. well it seems that the anonymity of the blog world is about to be removed. a newspaper has decided that, while it is perfectly acceptable to keep the identity of people who give its reporters information private, it is somehow in the public interest to expose the identity of those of us bloggers who tell the world about things.

i suppose it all comes down to cutting out the middleman. if people can just log onto a blog and read about how it is, why would they bother buying a newspaper? so the newspaper is out to close down blogs so it can keep its share of the market in telling people about things. at least that is my take on it. but then what would i know? i am only a humble lurcher after all.

well i for one will never set a paw on the newspaper in question ever again. as herself is fond of saying about persons she has no time for, i wouldn't piss on it if it was on fire. in fact, i especially wouldn't piss on it if it was on fire...

more than my job's worth

2009-06-02T19:53:00.004+01:00

well, dear readers, it seems herself is not destined for greater things on the job front. yesterday was the big day of her interview for a full time job. the day started well with a foot pampering with a nice lady, who gave herself a complimentary foot file. herself said it would be nice to have a file which gave her compliments. most of her files give her a headache.

herself then had to print off her presentation for the interview. she has been trying to buy printer cartridges for the past 2 weeks but everywhere under the sun seems to have sold out. the lack of ink may explain why the printer was so cheap in the first place. herself only bought this one because it was cheaper than buying new cartridges for the old one. how mad is that? so she had to go next door to print out the stuff there. luckily the next doors are more organised on the printer front and after a tussle with leads and memory chips it was done.

just as herself was reading over the presentation her glasses snapped. these are the pair of reading glasses that she bought to replace the pairs that young dave ate. so she was reduced to the previous chewed pair, which do not stay on her nose without holding them.

himself ironed her shirt for her and then she was off. the weather is really hot here and she was melting almost immediately. by the time they called her in for the interview she was glowing. but worse was to come. the interview was in a room which was hot enough to melt bread. the glasses had no hope of staying on her face, even with help. herself gamely made a start on her presentation. it was about teams. the first slide had a picture of ants on it, carrying a piece of bread. this was to illustrate how teams have to pull together.

"ants - they are the bane of my life!" said one of the panel members. herself was grateful that she had not included any pictures of snakes. "don't worry," she said, "these ants are in portugal!" given the ants were photographed a couple of years ago they are unlikely to still be alive but who am i to quibble.

the next slides caused a certain amount of puzzlement. there was a picture of a lemon among tomatoes and then of a pile of eggs. then a mouse eating peanuts out of a bird feeder. this was to illustrate challenges. it was not immediately obvious why this was the case so herself explained that the birdfeeder was 6 feet off the ground and the little mouse had gone up and down the pole about 30 times fetching a peanut each time. as herself had only 10 minutes to do the presentation she had to speed up a bit after this diversion. she galloped to the home straight and rounded off with what should have been a neat little ending, summarising what she hopes are her best qualities as a leader.

then it was on to the questions from the panel. at this point things started to unravel. herself was flustered and hot and bothered and found quite a lot of the questions unintelligible. those she understood she answered in a way that had the panel frowning. one question she had to ask the bloke to repeat twice. it quickly became apparent that this was not the job for her and she was most certainly not the person for them. but the panel soldiered on with ever more complicated and opaque questions. herself began to wish the fire alarm would go off and put them all out of their misery.

eventually the questions were over. but then there was all the stuff about terms and conditions. there was no way that they needed to tell her this, given they would have to have had their fingers in their ears to have gained a positive impression. herself finally escaped and wended her way home, feeling rather flat.

it was not until she was sitting in the garden with young dave and i that it dawned on her what a lucky escape she had had. working full time would put an end to all the lovely mooching about time that we all enjoy so much. so herself has asked her boss if there are any more hours that could be tacked onto her current job. i hope there are. the old bird is quite good company really.

we are family

2009-05-29T04:45:00.003+01:00

dear readers, the peeps have started their family therapy sessions. they were originally referred for family therapy when things were rather more fraught on the domestic front but as there is quite a waiting list it has only just started. the sessions are held at the clinic for sad, fearful and deranged young people, where my boy goes to see his psychiatrist.

the peeps were slightly nervous at the prospect of family life being put under the microscope. as regular readers will know, the peeps are a little on the eccentric side. but they need not have been concerned. the sessions are with a very nice man called dr roger. as well as him, there are some ladies who sit in the room next door and watch what is going on via a video link. dr roger has a little earpiece which the ladies use to cheer him on. there is a one way mirror as well, through which the ladies can peer into the room.

young dave and i were not allowed to go to family therapy. this is because it is held in part of the hospital and there is a risk of germs. young dave and i are very careful about germs, as regular readers will know. but the peeps were very enthusiastic when they returned, so we very quickly learned what happened.

it seems that it was quite some way into the session before dr roger realised that he was only seeing part of the family. he discovered this when he asked what my boy did when he was stressed about something. my boy said that he came and sat with me and young dave as we were very calming. i am not sure i would concur that young dave is calming but i will gloss over this. dr roger asked my boy to tell him about us.

"well joker is 11 years old and is very wise, a bit like gandalf," he said, "and dave is nearly a year old and is all floppy and chaotic. joker is the sanest member of the family."

dr roger turned to the peeps and asked them if they agreed with my boy's view. both peeps nodded vigorously. herself even went as far as to say that i was the only sane member of the family, a statement which himself and my boy wholeheartedly agreed with. to be frank they could not really fail to concur. dr roger said that he was not sure about the policy of the clinic for sad, fearful and deranged young people as far as dogs coming to family therapy. i think it may have been a first for him.

i think it is probably best if we don't go. once young dave was introduced into the proceedings things would very quickly start to unravel...

my kingdom for a horse...

2009-05-27T22:11:00.007+01:00

dear readers, as you know herself has stolen my boy's therapist. the therapist is called claudia and is a very nice person. i know this because i went to visit her to make sure the peeps were safe in her hands. one question that claudia asks herself on a regular basis is "what are you going to do for yourself?"

herself has been brooding on this for a while. she does quite a lot for herself in some ways, including spending many happy hours laptopping. but i think what claudia has in mind is other things. so herself, in typical fashion, has wholeheartedly leaped into doing things for herself (as it were).

first she had a massage. this was with a lady who does raking. i think this means that as well as pummeling the muscles she also rakes her victims to get rid of all the knots. herself came back looking slightly dazed, having booked more raking for a couple of weeks time.

then she booked a foot overhaul. the feet are well overdue a bit of fuss. an orbital sander would be needed to make them soft and smooth. and the massage lady had commented on their general roughness. which, given how rough herself is, has to be saying something.

then she booked a blood test to see if she has any kolesterol. i would be most surprised if she does not have kolesterol, as it appears to be found in butter and cheese, and herself is largely composed of butter and cheese, with layers of pasta and spinach and red wine. in fact she is a little bit like a lasagne.

then, after a cyberchat about riding horses, herself decided to try and find a horse that needs riding, preferably by a large heavy lady. herself used to ride a horse where we lived before. this was a strong and positive horse, and riding her was like a workout in the gym, but herself loved it and came back glowing. she was sad when it stopped due to the horse's owner getting a new enthusiasm for the saddle.

but help was at hand. the internet is a marvellous place. herself found a local person who wants to find a horse to ride too. through a convoluted chain of events, herself has found a horse that needs to get out more. it appears that this too is a lively sort of horse and may need a firm hand. herself was cheerfully telling my boy and himself of this development. himself was chuffed to bits. this morning herself was looking at adverts for horses that needed a home, which had himself looking very pale. himself clearly felt that just riding one was tame by comparison. i have to agree. we have a very small house. the thought of sharing our sofas with something as large as a horse filled me with dread.

my boy roared with laughter at the prospect of the riding arrangement.

"you might as well write the letter now," he giggled, "it will be just like kinky". (herself has had to give up walking kinky the dalmation as her escaping tendencies were too much for her nerves). "dear mrs bewilderforce, i am sorry but i am not going to be able to ride your horse any more because it keeps running off. yours sincerely, etc."

the peeps found this most amusing. the idea of anyone being called mrs bewilderforce in itself was humorous. conversation turned to the horse that herself used to ride.

"don't you remember," said my boy, "they had that daughter who was going to grow up to be a prostitute."

herself sat open-mouthed.

"why on earth do you think she was going to become a prostitute?" she asked. "she was only 6 years old!"

"she was called samantha." said my boy, as though this explained everything.

dear readers, take care when you name your children...

a lidl of what you fancy

2009-05-25T09:36:00.002+01:00

dear readers, himself is a happy man. yesterday he had bacon for breakfast for the first time in ages. there has been a hiatus in the bacon supply. or what the legal profession calls a lacuna. this sorry state of affairs has resulted from herself having been without her big shopping buddy. mr next door generally accompanies herself to lidl, which as regular readers will know is where the peeps do their shopping. he is the perfect shopping buddy. he knows a bargain when he sees one, unlike herself, who is what is known as an inexperienced shopper. this is not from lack of practice but from lack of attention to detail.

in some shops there is a type of special offer called 'buy one, get one free', or bogof'. herself is in the habit of buying only one of such items. this would not be so bad if the one she bought was the free one but she inevitably buys the one you have to pay for and forgets the free one. lidl does not tend to have these sort of offers. i suppose it is so cheap that if they knocked any more off the price they would be paying you to shop there. but they do have great reductions on vegetables and all sorts of other things. i am not a great one for vegetables myself but the peeps seem to enjoy them. the problem with herself is that she has a great fear of numbers. this makes her very poor indeed at noticing the signs that tell you about the bargains.

mr next door has been under the weather lately so herself has had to shop alone. she has missed her big shopping buddy. as she does not eat meat she has no idea what sort of bacon to choose, or indeed what sort of chops or anything fleshy, so she leaves well alone. himself has had to content himself with the vegetarian breakfast option of fried eggs on cheese on toast. this is just as full of calories but without the meaty flavour that himself loves. young dave and i love it too as there tend to be juices that get poured over our grub on bacon days.

mr next door, while still a bit wobbly, is now available for shopping buddy duty. my boy was also roped in to help carry stuff. all went well on the way round the shop. bacon was found, vegetable bargains and all manner of goodies. herself and my boy were just starting to unload things onto the conveyor belt when mr next door was accosted by a man with an unintelligible accent. from what herself could understand he was from south africa and was the owner of a fertiliser company. herself's grandmother was from south africa so you would think that the accent would not have caused a problem, but this man was something else in the incoherence stakes.

herself watched aghast as mr next door was drawn into a very long and convoluted conversation about the state of the world economy, the decay of the british banking system, the gold standard, the history of south africa, how to cook various dishes, the best method of fertiliser manufacture and no doubt much else of great import.

my boy by now was needing to get out of the supermarket. his tolerance for the beeping tills is fairly low at the best of times but the 'being accosted by strangers' thing set off his fear. he started pulling at his hair and generally looking pale. herself decided drastic action was needed and called across to mr next door, while pointing at my boy. the unintelligible stranger saw the expression on herself's face. after letting out a deafening bellow of a laugh he said to mr next door,

"looks like your wife is trying to get your attention!" all the people in all the queues looked around in the hope of having a diversion in the form of a domestic dispute. mr next door is an imposing figure at the best of times and coupled with the unintelligible stranger and an agitated lady the scenario had the makings of a fun time.

"oh, no, she's not my wife," said mr next door, with scant regard for volume control, "my wife's at home. but don't tell anyone!"

herself could see her morals were becoming slightly frayed in the eyes of her fellow shoppers.

"he's my next door neighbour," she explained. the disapproving looks became, if anything, slightly more disapproving.

"let's get out of here," said my boy, through gritted teeth. he was clearly not relishing the idea of the question of his paternity coming up.

in the car my boy said that he thought the unintelligible stranger was making up the bit about owning a fertiliser company.

"he drives too crappy a car to be the owner of a factory. its an old peugot 106."

"maybe he keeps the cadillac in america," suggested mr next door. my boy folded his arms and wiggled both hands. herself asked if he was ok. my boy has many nervous twitches, although this was a new one.

"its the international sign for bullshit." said my boy, showing her the horns and the other end.

i suppose that is one sort of fertiliser...

this is the bbc

2009-05-20T18:47:00.003+01:00

here is a picture of my boy doing a passable impression of a 1950s tennis umpire. why, you may ask, did that occur to him? i am not sure. it all started with the smiths lesson, which, as regular readers will recall, is delivered twice a week by mr snake charmer. as the young snake charmer needs an eye kept on her after school she comes along too.

smiths went well. when it was time to go, the young snake charmer wanted to stay a bit longer. she and my boy were in the middle of building some rather odd things out of wood. mrs snake charmer was at the golf course being given an award for hitting a thing called a hole in one a few weeks ago. this is apparently something of a feat in golfing circles. it does not involve hitting the holes but rather hitting a ball down the hole.

mr snake charmer and himself said they were going to pop down to the off licence to buy some beers. something about the look in himself's eye led herself to believe that they may have planned to pop into the pub on the way past. herself was not keen on being the only adult in the house when my boy and the young snake charmer were in full creative flow, particularly if the other adults in question were away for some time, so everyone accompanied them to the off licence, just to be on the safe side. mr snake charmer said that herself was demonstrating a lamentably suspicious streak. herself said that life had made her that way. on the way back herself said that, while they must have cut something of a funny sight, at least the outing made for good blog fodder.

safely back at home, the peeps, or more accurately himself, set about making curry. by now mrs snake charmer had tracked down the missing members of her family and was on her way round, with her golfing trophy. the evening was beginning to turn into something of a celebration. there were a number of things to celebrate. herself has been offered an interview for a job that would help considerably with the peeps' financial ruin. himself has been offered more hours at work. then there was the golf trophy. and last but by no means least, was that herself had finally got the results of the tests on the chew-mer on young dave's elbow. the chew-mer could have been several things, one of which would not have been good. but it is a nice type of chew-mer which should go away on its own. if it doesn't take the hint young dave will have to have a little op. but at least young dave is not poorly.

anyway, due to the air of celebration, my boy decided to get out the ladder and do an impression of a 1950s tennis umpire. i am not sure where this came from but it was very funny. he started to speak in a posh voice, with very clipped tones and began by saying that this was the british broadcasting corporation and that the score was 17 - 7. the main reason for this particular score was that he has a rather amusing way of saying 'seven' which he acquired from a tv programme and which he likes to use wherever humanly possible. it was pointed out that tennis is not scored in this way but has scores that are rounded up to the nearest 10, or 5, but my boy persisted in commentating on the imaginary match with scores that included the number 7 to great amusement all round.

then the young snake charmer took over the ladder and started to do impressions of the angel of the north statue. here is a picture of one of them.

at last it was time to eat. by this time young dave and i were worn out. we were very pleased to see the tools put away too. while young dave is partial to munching a bit of sandpaper, we both find the hammering interferes with our sleep. i just hope the young folk don't get into sculpture...

a word in your ear

2009-05-16T07:44:00.004+01:00

dear readers, here you have an action shot. it is not immediately obvious what the action is but believe me, a lot of action was involved. yesterday, herself was just putting away the hoover, after cleaning up the chaos caused by her re-covering my chair and mending our dogbed again, when the phone rang. it was himself.

"i'm in the pub," he said, "do you want to come and join us?" it appeared that himself and mr snake-charmer had been so exhausted after running after-school football club at the school where they work that they could not quite make it home and had to seek refuge in the local hostelry. with them was the young snake-charmer, still in her school uniform. herself and my boy did not need asking twice. herself had quite a thirst after all her exertions with the dogbed and my boy is great friends with mr snake-charmer, who laughs at his often rather opaque jokes.

the pub in question is one which allows dogs, but young dave is under-age so we agreed to stay home and try out the new furnishings. however, as always, the peeps filled us in when they returned. no sooner had herself and my boys been furnished with drinks than my boy started causing strife.

"i'm going to count how many words there are on this beer mat," he announced. the beer mat in question had quite a lot of words as it was telling people not to drink and drive. why anyone would think it was a good idea to get behind the wheel of a car after ingesting a substance that makes the room go round is beyond me, but i digress. within minutes everyone round the table (with the exception of herself, who cannot count, so photographed it instead) was arguing about how many words there were on the beer mats. mr snake-charmer is my boy's smiths teacher so he has a certain authority in the field of numbers. but it soon transpired that my boy was playing a prank.

"my devillish plan worked!" he said, triumphantly. you have to admire him. within 30 seconds he had everyone round the table counting the words on the beermats. and this was before drink had been taken.

herself, fearing all-out war, changed the subject by telling the snake-charmers about paneity. this did nothing to calm things down. mr snake-charmer felt that if someone were to find themselves turned into a loaf of bread, the last thing they would be doing would be contemplating the nature of breadness. herself tried to explain that it was a philosophical concept but was drowned out by the assembled crew discussing what they would do if they were suddenly enbreaded. views ranged from accepting the situation with good grace, and embracing one's fate, to finding someone to eat you and put you out of your misery. mr snake-charmer, in spite of his initial scepticism, could not resist contemplating different categories of breadness, and even did a rather wonderful impression of a miserable sweaty white loaf in a plastic bag on the shelf of a happy shopper store.

seeing that discussing breadness was not helping, herself changed the subject again by hooking out her notebook, where she had fortuitously asked the young pirate to write down some other wonderful words.

"how about sesquipedilian?" she asked. it transpires that this is a long word meaning long word. at least i think that is what it means. my lurcher brain was not really designed for abstract thought. my boy seemed to think it meant foot-and-a-half-long.

"or petrichor?" piped up herself. this word i like. it means the smell of the earth after rain. i like this smell. it usually means a walk is in the offing.

alas, a walk was not in the offing when the peeps returned. the rain was so torrential that even young dave and i did not fancy venturing out in it. but today i am looking forward to sniffing a bit of petrichor...

get on your bike

2009-05-15T05:13:00.003+01:00

dear readers, herself has taken up cycling to work. the new offices are 5 miles from where we live. herself needs to get fit so she has decided to kill two birds with one stone (a saying, dear readers, no birds were harmed in the making of this post) and get out her bike. yesterday was the big day. the bikes live in a funny tent in the front of the house. herself spent quite some time oiling the chain, fiddling around with levers and strapping her clutter on the rack. when it was finally time to leave, farewells were said. himself was rather concerned about the whole venture.

"what if you fall off, or get a puncture?" he said.

"i'll phone you to come and fetch me." replied herself, confidently.

"but then i'll be late for work!"

herself said it was nice to know he cared.

all went well and herself arrived home glowing. or more accurately melting. some guests were due so she leapt into the shower. she came down smelling fragrant and looking rather damp, only to discover a little accident that young dave had had earlier on the sofa. young dave had helpfully been pruning the bamboo and had accidentally swallowed some. it did not stay down long. bamboo is tickly stuff in the throat. herself was not best pleased at having to deal with the sofa after her shower, but himself was busy cooking curry. he is always cooking something when messy jobs need to be done.

the sofa was thoroughly scrubbed ready for the guests and order was restored. the peeps were very much looking forward to seeing them. they are pirates. they have many pirate costumes and often go to parties dressed in them. there was some debate as to whether they would come dressed as pirates for the meal, but it was a weekday and piratical gear seems to be confined to the weekend. mrs pirate works with himself and comes once a week to do art with my boy. she is very talented at the art thing. they have made some wonderful creations. i think her secret is that she allows my boy little breaks in the art session. these are called 'bullet breaks' and my boy can charge around making gun noises and letting off steam before getting back to the business of creating.

the young pirate is a year older than my boy and is a person of the beefburger persuasion. for some reason this has only been discovered recently, although all 3 peeps had diagnosed him the minute they met him. the problem is that the doctors in charge of diagnosing beefburger people have some sort of test that they use which bears no relation to beefburgerness. it involves things like imagination and empathy, both of which a lot of beefburger people have in large quantities. it does not involve asking parents if they have to cut the labels out of clothes, or buy socks with no seams, or anything that actually helps spot beefburger people. so the young pirate has been in the dark about why he is so clever, and has such a fantastic memory.

the pirates kept the peeps entertained all evening. the young pirate has some brilliant words which he is teaching the peeps. he has a book at home full of words that no-one has ever heard of. my boy is enthralled at some of the things that words have been made up about. for example, there is a word for the quality of being bread. this word is paneity. so, dear readers, if you suddenly find yourself turned into a loaf of bread, you can say to yourself "i am just encountering a spot of paneity, it will soon pass."

another brilliant word is haeccity. this means "thingness". i will not try to explain what thingness is. the very idea of it makes my head hurt.

the peeps also learned of the medievel practice of corsned. this was used to test whether a person was innocent or guilty. the person was given a piece of bread, or mouldy cheese. if they could swallow it they were innocent. if they choked, they were guilty. herself was interested in this from a lawyerly point of view, no doubt with a view to short-circuiting the problem of the wheels of justice grinding slowly.

young dave has clearly developed his own version of corsned. i fear he is doomed to perpetual guilt. even young dave cannot keep down a mouthful of bamboo...

its official

2009-05-10T10:51:00.003+01:00

dear readers, herself has moved offices. she was not thrilled with this as it meant that rather than walking to work, she now has to drive, cycle or get a train, all of which take quite a bit longer. but the new offices make up in humour what they lack in proximity to home. someone in the new building is a bit of a wit. or maybe not - it is possible that they are deadly serious, which is rather worrying. the new office has some very funny signs. while herself's colleagues have been getting rather hot under the collar with all the pettiness that the existing residents exhibit, herself has been photographing the various manifestations of oddness. so without further ado i give you - the new offices!