high up on the way downs

this week herself and i had a wonderful day out. herself is signed off work with stress, as i may have mentioned. because she is at home she can meet up with people and go for walks. so she and her friend the writer decided to go for a walk. we met the writer at the station and then drove to a place where we could leave the car.

the first bit of the walk i had to be on the lead because of the skylarks. these are some rather daft birds. in spite of the fact that they can fly and so could quite easily find a tree to nest in, they choose to nest on the ground. to make matters worse they nest in fields that are going to be mangled by combine harvesters. in the face of such carnage it is not clear why a humble lurcher could do them any harm but there are signs everywhere telling people to keep their dog on the lead. as though i would get out of bed for anything less than a rabbit!

things looked up a bit later. we sat down for a rest. herself and the writer had a cup of coffee. i was allowed some prickly water. it has little bubbles in that burn my nose but its better than nothing. no sooner had herself poured out the coffee than some huge vehicles arrived and nearly ran over us. they were harvesting the skylarks, and it has to be said they were making quite a racket about it. one of them stopped almost on top of us while the driver ate his lunch without turning off the engine. ah, the peace and quiet of the countryside!

we got on our way again and after interminable photo stops (at last herself has someone to walk with who doesn't complain at the endless stopping to take a picture) we got to the bench where we were going to have lunch. alas! some people had found it before us! how dare they! so we had to walk further on to the jumping gate. this is where, when i was a bit more sprightly, i used to practice my jumping. i get my jumping skills from my grandad who it would appear could not be kept in anywhere. when the peeps first had me they could not work out how i could get out of the dog jail and into the house. they soon realised i could not be kept away from my bed and was leaping over the 5 foot fence and in through the window. i fear they had not bargained for a flying lurcher.

anyway, after a picnic lunch we wended our way back to the house. by now herself was melting into a pool of lard so had to have a shower before the peeps drove the writer back to her train.

i think the next outing may be to a beach - i only hope there will not be 200 greyhounds there...

joker the schmoozer!

dear readers, i have been honoured with an award! it seems i am a schmoozer! i did not know what this was so i had to look it up. i was given this award by the wonderful mrs deb whose blog herself reads avidly. i have never had any sort of award, nor been tagged to answer those wonderful quizzes full of questions you never knew you would need to know the answer to.

i have only one slight gripe: mrs deb seems to think that the editorial input in my blog comes from herself, whereas of course herself only provides the secretarial support due to my problem of typing with paws. the kernels of wisdom that i share with my readers emanate from beneath my own shaggy eyebrows. however, i would not wish to be a prima donna. herself is often generous enough to share her sandwiches with me, not always knowingly, of course, but that does not in any way detract from their tastiness. so i will share my fame and schmooziness with her.

one of the terms of the award is that i have to name another 5 blogs that deserve a similar award. two of the blogs i would name have already been nabbed by mrs deb so i will have to name some more. it is impossible to choose; herself reads so many blogs to me that my head is spinning trying to decide. but here goes: can we kick the bar here, , spectrum of possibilities, the eyes have it, free range living, and the lurchers.

so there you are people, go forth and schmooze!

beenz

it would be fair to say that herself is a little put out. in fact there is smoke coming out of her ears. the source of her displeasure is himself.

as regular readers will know, himself has dodgy kidneys. they are so dodgy that at some point soon they will stop working altogether. when this happens himself will have to have a pipe put in his rather fine belly and will have to pour stuff in and pump stuff out. in preparation for this i have been instructed that i must no longer jump up for a cuddle in case i pull out the pipe.

because himself has dodgy kidneys, his blood is not getting cleaned up properly. this means there are loads of nasty chemicals floating around in his system. the effect of the chemicals is that he is, to put it mildy, difficult to live with. herself generally puts up with this. so does my boy, although my boy often gets the worst of himself's moodiness. my boy copes with this by doing what herself calls "acting out". this does not mean my boy gets involved in plays. it means he does things like borrowing a cigarette lighter from a kid at school and then trying to light a pile of paper with it. as the house is made of wood, and my boy saw fit to put the paper in a bin next to the wall, this was frowned upon.

anyway, the long and the short of it is that, what with her job and himself and my boy, herself has got a bit stressy. this week she burst into tears at court which is a bad move. the lawyer on the other side knows that you are on the back foot if you are crying. herself has been signed off work with stress. she has been thinking hard about how to manage life.

part of the problem is that herself is in charge of earning most of the money. this is not because of the dodgy kidneys. it has always been this way, even before the kidneys got dodgy. from where i sit it looks like a reasonable way to divvy up the stuff. herself is good at earning money, himself is good at cooking and shopping and stuff. the thought of herself being in charge of the cooking and shopping and stuff and himself being in charge of earning money fills me with dread. we would be living in a cowshed with the smoke alarm going off the whole time.

for years and years the arrangement worked well. however, it seems it is no longer working well for herself. she is shaking and crying and not in a good state. she came to the conclusion that she has to cut down her hours at work, given that she has quite a lot to do at home as well.

the only way to cut her hours is to cut how much the peeps spend. at the moment they spend more than they have coming in. they do this by way of little squares of plastic. about once a year herself rings up the money man and gets more money. she does this by way of a magic device called a re-mortgage. the downside of this, which herself has just realised, is that you have to pay the money back. this means that herself has to keep working to earn money.

herself announced that there was going to be a change of plan.

"if i don't stop working so hard i will drop dead!" (this struck me as overly dramatic but she did have a point) "we will have to look at our money!" i am not sure how you look at something that is in fact not there.

herself drew up some spreadsheets. for someone who cannot add up how many fingers she has she is pretty sharp when the chips are down. the spreadsheets made it clear that the peeps will have to a) spend less and b) pay off the mortgage, before herself can cut down how hard she works.

the spending less idea is a novel one. herself can spend money without getting out of bed. in fact when she can't sleep she often sits in bed with the laptop, shopping. but once she is on a mission there is no stopping her. the first thing to go was lavish food shopping. the peeps went to waitrose (which for the benefit of my overseas readers is a place that sells yummy stuff) after parents evening at my boy's school. parents evening is a bit gruelling for the peeps so himself was looking forward to buying a tasty treat.

"don't spend too much!" said herself, "remember our economy drive!"

himself chose a tin of baked beans.

"we've got baked beans in the cupboard," pointed out herself.

"i want these f***ing beans!" shouted himself. several people turned round to look. herself was a little unnerved but had the presence of mind to warn himself that his little outburst would find its way into my blog.

today herself put her energies into sorting out the household bills. she found a deal where you can get your internet, phone and telly all for £26 a month. this will save a lot of dosh. the downside is himself will no longer get his football matches. he decided this was sufficient reason for another tantrum.

"its all i have left!" he wailed, forgetting that he also has computer games and the internet and normal telly and his season ticket to go and watch football, which herself has just bought him at huge expense. and he could of course talk to herself and my boy, although that i fear would be a last resort.

"i can't believe you!" said herself, "you are seriously expecting me to carry on working full time so you can watch bloody football!"

"just because you are miserable there is no need to make the rest of us miserable!" himself retaliated.

at this point herself had, for once, the common sense to retreat before she said something she might regret. i will tell you about the plan to build a house in the front garden to pay off the mortgage another time....

geography

this is just a very quick post but i have persuaded herself to write it now before i forget this morning's gem. my boy was just chatting about school to put off the evil moment when he has to get in the shower.

"in geography i had to design a travel poster about an exciting holiday," he told the peeps, "my poster was of a static caravan."

"lovely!" said herself. not everyone would enjoy a caravan holiday, and certainly even fewer would consider it exciting but my boy has been desperate to go on one for ages.

"my poster didn't look all that exciting so i jazzed it up a bit."

"how?" asked herself, nervously, thinking about more messages in the home/school book.

"oh, i drew britney spears in the background, being electrocuted."

"britney spears?" asked himself.

"yeah, she only had one leg." said my boy, a trifle too nonchalantly, "she lost the other one to diabetes."

these beefburger people have unusual minds...

new shoes

herself collected the new shoes yesterday. they are, as my boy said, well cool. they come with a dvd to show you how they work. this in itself is rather odd. shoes should, it seems to me, just go on your feet and then be forgotten about. but then i only have paws so what do i know.

everyone gathered round the laptop to watch the dvd. a canadian robot provided the soundtrack. the extreme programmer is staying and he rolled up laughing. he is very tall so there is a lot of him to roll up.

"i am going to set up a company that makes shoes that need a training manual and become a millionaire!" he cried. in reality the extreme programmer is already well on the way to becoming a millionaire. he is only 24 and already earns more than herself. he works for the best company on the planet who seem to own most of the internet. they have toys in their office and dogs are allowed to go to work there. they have a gym and restaurants and it is so cool that the employees never want to go home. so he is really not going to diversify into shoes.

anyway, i digress. after watching the dvd herself did a few laps of the kitchen. the shoes seem very wobbly. my boy, who now has feet the same size as herself, tried the shoes. he was impressed. he did a few laps and then gave them back to herself. by now herself was keen to try some of the exercises. it seems that even when you are standing still you can exercise by rocking backwards and forwards. in the dvd the people were doing this while waiting to check in at the airport.

"but you don't go to the airport every day!" protested my boy.

"well, you could rock in the queue at the supermarket." said herself, firmly.

"might as well go on the grape diet and sit on the bus rolling your eyes!" said himself. this was a reference to herself's birth mother who was of an eccentric disposition. she once read a book that said you could throw away your glasses if you did special eye exercises so she used to sit doing them in a spare moment, often to the entertainment of strangers. she also went on odd detox diets which gave her headaches.

in the evening my boy's sitter came so the peeps took the extreme programmer to the pub. herself wobbled in on the new shoes. after a pint of guinness the shoes were even more wobbly.

"i wouldn't like to wear these when i was drunk," she said, "they ought to warn you about that on the dvd." himself observed that the sort of people who were on the dvd wouldn't let anything other than distilled water past their lips.

"maybe that's why they make your stomach more toned," mused herself, "you can't drink too much guinness when you are wearing them." i feel she may need to watch the dvd again...

kick boxing

herself has ordered some new shoes. these are no ordinary shoes. these are shoes that will turn her into a masai warrior. i am not sure she needs to get any more warrior-like. she is already quite stroppy enough. when she answered a few questions on the internet to see what sort of weather she was the answer was: "you are wind, strong and overpowering, a force to be reckoned with - no one dares cross you. you have the power to change everything around you.
you are best known for: your wrath. your dominant state: commanding." i think maybe a pair of fluffy pink mules would be a better bet.

this shoe thing all started with the pilates teacher. pilates is nothing to do with flying planes. i don't think the captain would like it at all. it is to do with trying to make your stomach look thinner. my own view is that herself would have more chance of a thinner stomach if she gave up having fried eggs for breakfast. anyway, herself goes off every tuesday to flex her stomach muscles in the vain hope that people will stop asking her when the baby is due.

last week the pilates teacher gave herself and the other baggy stomached people a leaflet about the shoes that she wears. herself had already noticed these shoes. they looked comfy and springy. since herself snapped her achilles tendon doing taekwondo (a whole nother story) she has been finding it hard to find comfy shoes.

as soon as she got home she got on the net. it seems that not only are these masai warrior shoes comfy and springy but they also exercise your legs and stomach just by wearing them. this is because they are unstable. i don't like to speak out of turn but herself is quite unstable enough without wearing dodgy shoes.

it seems that these shoes are worn by all the film stars and models that you see on the telly. so they will make you look like madonna. madonna is quite a cool lady, even to my untutored eye. but frankly, to make herself look like madonna would take more than a pair of shoes. one thing is for sure, they will be good for doing what herself and her colleagues seem to do a fair bit of, kicking ass.

fish

regular readers will remember the new pond. herself planned for it to be zen. she resisted my boy's suggestion that they get a shark to live in it. himself wanted a water lily. but herself decided it should be wonderful in its simplicity. not long after it was formally opened, herself noticed that the water was beginning to turn green. mrs captain came up with a solution. "what you need is chemicals!" she said and brought round a bag with various noxious-looking chemicals and a floating mushroom to put them in.

the peeps were a little alarmed at the idea of chemicals. they have not used any chemicals of any sort in the garden for 9 years. this has led to an abundance of wildlife, some more welcome than others. there is a grass snake, for example, that swims in the other pond and occasionally eats a frog. herself does not take too kindly to this as the frogs apparently eat the slugs, of which there are a multitude. she came up with an idea about the slugs, which had himself and my boy laughing like drains.

"we are going to adopt a hedgehog!" she announced, "it will eat the slugs. it has to be a disabled hedgehog as hedgehogs are a protected species so the only ones you are allowed to adopt are those which won't survive in the wild."

"will it have a wheelchair?" asked my boy, "how will it catch slugs if it is disabled?"

"we will have to collect them for it," said herself, "hopefully it will catch some for itself. its not as though slugs move very fast."

i have to say i was less keen on the idea of the hedgehog once i had seen on the net what hedgehogs looked like. my hopes of a nice morsel between a couple of slices of brown bread were dashed. i will eat most things, including (in a crisis) lettuce, but not things covered in prickles.

anyway, as usual, i digress. the chemicals got rid of the green water. but a couple of days later herself noticed a lot of little wriggly bugs in the pond. these were mosquito larvae. they were clearly immune to the chemicals. herself is plagued by mosquitoes. they love her.

"we'll have to do something about them!" she squealed, "the place will be swarming with them soon!"

it was decided that the answer was to get some fish. it seems fish eat mosquito larvae. but first the pond had to be cleared of chemicals, which took a few days. by then there were millions of mosquito larvae. himself went out and came back with a plastic bag containing 6 fish. he also snuck in some plants, including a water lily.

"they are called ghost koi" he explained. they were pretty little fellas. in they went. they were not seen again for some time. it seems they are not called ghost koi for nothing. as the mosquito larvae were at the top of the pond and the ghost koi were lurking in the depths, too embarrassed to emerge, the mosquito larvae continued to multiply.

my boy suggested they got a trout. this did not meet with much enthusiasm. himself went out a few days later and came back with more fish. these were ordinary goldfish. thankfully they were braver than the ghost koi and made a start on the mosquito larvae.

at the weekend some friends came to visit. they peered into the pond.

"do you want some fish?" they asked. the fish were hiding. the peeps explained the problem. it seems the friends have a huge number of fish which need a home. they are breeding like, well fish, and are eating newts and things. so about 40 new fish are going to move in. i would imagine eventually there will be standing room only at the bottom of the pond so some of the fish will have to be brave and come to the surface. the only trouble is, if they keep breeding, the peeps will need to dig another pond...

swiss night

last night i was lucky enough to be invited to a swiss meal. the captain and mrs captain used to live in switzerland and picked up all sorts of useful kit there. they have a little gadget that you screw into the middle of lemons to pour juice out, and another little gadget like a bit of garden hose that takes the skin off garlic cloves. but the most impressive bit of kit is undoubtedly the racklette machine.

this is a sort of hotplate that you plug in. it heats up and you put loads of stuff on the top to cook. but the cleverest bit is that you put little shovels underneath the heater with slices of cheese on them. the cheese melts and bubbles and when it starts to sing you pull it out and pour it over the food. you have to get special cheese for this. funnily enough it is called racklette cheese. i am not sure if the cheese was named first or the machine.

the peeps were invited round to partake in this feast. mrs captain is on a diet which only allows her to eat special soup and drink pink milkshake so it is very noble of her to keep feeding other people. as the peeps got ready it was not clear whether i was invited or not. so to be on the safe side i rushed around wailing about how lonely i would be if they left me at home. luckily they took pity on me.

as soon as the machine was set up i could see opportunities for gleaning some grub. with a little nifty footwork i could wrap myself in the cable and thus tug the machine down to a more acceptable level. this ploy failed dismally. in the picture you can see me trying to persuade himself that i should be allowed to smell the racklette cheese. in reality you could smell this cheese from up the road but i pretended i wanted to savour its finer qualities. unfortunately himself is wise to my old lurcher tricks.

but i managed to taste some of the goodies. the wild girl had loaded her plate up with bockwurst, potatoes, prawns, gherkins and of course cheese. i could see she was grinding to a halt so i emerged from under the table with my cheeriest smile and was promised the leftovers after the peeps had finished. and my was it worth the wait!

i am thinking of applying for a job in switzerland as a st bernard. these are dogs that dig people out of snowdrifts. they wear little barrels of brandy round their necks. the only snag might be that i am a little lean to be taken for a st bernard. they are hefty chaps. maybe i can persuade herself to doctor a photo of me to make me look chunkier. or maybe if i just keep on eating the racklette....

a tidy ship

herself came home tonight with the news that she and her colleagues have to tidy the office. it seems that captain chaos is to visit. herself's office is a bit tight for space. there are a whole bunch of them in there. it seems that an instruction has come from on high that the office must appear to be organised. they have to get rid of the drugs and the guns. i hasten to add that these are not drugs and guns used by herself and her colleagues but drugs and guns which have been removed from the bad people and are on their way to being destroyed. they are allowed to keep the plastic gun that they shoot at the plastic cans on the plastic log. it works by infra red and makes a very convincing ricochet noise. the battery operated noo-noo should be ok as it has to be switched on before it wanders round the floor making a rather scary sucking noise. it is just a shame that it does not actually clean the floor.

they also have to clear up the microbe farms. these have become popular because they are not allowed to bring their pets into the office. instead they carefully grow cultures of interesting furry moulds in cups and bowls. while these are nice to stroke they do not give a great impression. herself decided recently to introduce a 'slut of the week' award for the most revolting desk. she is looking for a rubber glove to form a trophy. i feel that the rubber gloves may be needed in the clear up.

as for the flying monkeys, they are allowed to stay so long as they are not too obvious and so long as they do not scream while captain chaos is around. this latter requirement could be tricky as they have the habit of going off every time you slam a drawer shut.

the 'quote of the week' from mr mad-and-bad can stay. this is a mugshot of a rather tricky customer which every week has a different philosophical quote underneath. at the moment it has something about truth, a concept which mr mad-and-bad would not understand if it fell out of the sky and hit him on the head.

there is also the problem of health and safety. the office was re-arranged after herself's assistant hurt her back but it has slid back into something you might find in a health and safety video. if you manage to negotiate the floor without tripping over a stab vest you are likely to become entangled in the telephone extension cable that herself has stretched from the cupboard so she can have the fax on her desk. this helps with keeping on top of urgent things. not that she does anything with faxes but she likes to know they are there so she can worry about them.

at least they no longer have the door dosher keeping the fire door open. this was an iron cylinder filled with concrete that is used for opening doors when the occupants of premises are not very welcoming. herself got sick of stubbing her toe on it so she was very glad when it went off to pastures new.

at least when i went to work with her i was able to make sure she kept a tidy ship...

lunch

today herself went to lunch with a famous author. he is interested in all sorts of shady stuff. he is planning to write a book about dodgy people. as herself and her colleagues come across quite a lot of dodgy people they may be able to help.

regular readers will recall that herself wrote a book while she was on holiday. the original plan was that the book would be a joint venture, with each person writing their bit from the point of view of a character they had invented. however none of the fellow holiday-makers had the slightest intention of getting involved in this hair-brained scheme so herself knuckled down and wrote the book on her own.

the fellow holiday-makers did not escape entirely. every time one of them opened their mouth herself piped up "that'll be fantastic for the book!" so at the beginning, while most books have a little bit saying "any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental", herself's book has a little bit at the beginning saying "any resemblance to any person or dog is entirely deliberate. the author is too lazy to waste time inventing characters." i suppose people are used to being blog-fodder. book-fodder is just more of the same.

i managed to persuade her to take me along to meet the famous author. i told her that i was interested in seeing east sussex and that we could go for a walk before lunch. but this was just a ruse. i was hoping that if i was charming enough i might get a bit part in a book. herself has put me in her book but to be honest no-one will ever read it so it doesn't count. i have made it clear that she is not to give up the day job.

we went for a walk around the grounds of a big posh house and then went into the pub where we were meeting the famous author. at this point herself realised that she did not know what the famous author looked like. it would have been straightforward for her to purchase a red rose to wear in her buttonhole, or carry one of the famous author's books, or indeed for her to have mentioned that she would have a hairy companion. but that might have required thinking ahead which is not something herself engages in. luckily the bar person knew the famous author so all was well.

we sat outside, next to 3 very fat labradors whose panting did nothing to help with the clamminess. later a very sweet puppy arrived. she can be seen in the picture above. the conversation turned to how proper authors develop characters in their books. (herself had confessed that she had stolen the souls of her friends and family for her book). it seems proper authors sometimes base characters on folks they know too. the famous author explained that he would, for example, perhaps use someone's physical description but then give them a different job. "i might make you a brain surgeon, or a police officer or something."

"you'd have to make me thinner!" said herself. i was more concerned about the thought of someone as easily distracted as she is being allowed anywhere near an operating theatre. i could just see her wandering off to put up a shelf in the middle of a tricky procedure.

the famous author asked herself about a typical day. regular readers will know that these are few and far between. herself tried to describe what she gets up to at work. but she wandered off the point and told the famous author about the flying monkeys instead. herself has persuaded her colleagues that it is a good idea to have flying monkey battles in the office. they have 6 of these little chaps. the trouble is at any one time someone will be on the phone, or on the radio to someone. a lot of the conversations are about serious stuff. suddenly a flying monkey will land on their head, making them want to laugh. it can be a bit tricky explaining what the noise is. one of the colleagues was heard to say on the telephone the other day, "oh, its just a flying monkey. so, anyway, back to the machete incident..."

when we got home, himself asked about lunch. "did you tell him how you have been glued to one or other of his books for the past month and we haven't been able to get any sense out of you?" "oh no," said herself, "famous authors must get sick of people raving about their books. i didn't want to sound like a starstruck groupie!"

it seems the famous author may be visiting the office in the autumn. herself failed to mention the other toys. wait till he sees the battery operated noo-noo...