showing off

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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.