Aaarrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!!

So much to do and so little time!!!

What to do first?  I'd love to spend more time in the garden.  The hens' enclosure needs a little re-think and some fencing re-positioning.  It's been too cold and wet so far, but in my mind I've pictured what I want so just need the weather and time.

I've cracked on with the ironing today.  The iron didn't blow the fuses (it's been doing that a bit recently, quite annoying, and an excuse not to do it, but the pile's too big, even by my dodgy standards...) so I got a good way through.  It's an unwritten rule to myself that I can't/shouldn't do anything in preference until the ironing's under control.  And, as those of you who know me know, I'm not a martyr to housework by any standards.

I do vacuum.  More than some, less than others.  Mainly because the dog hairs get everywhere, and it's embarassing when they're gathering along the hall skirting boards like tumbleweed.  I should probably do it every day.  But I don't.  And it feels like I'm forever going on at the children not to crawl/sit/fight on the floor because it's filthy...  I can't win on this one, although they do say that if children grow up in a dirty environment(!) their immune systems are stronger....  That's good enough for me.

The kitchen floor needs mopping again - I did it on Monday.  That's the problem with having a dog.  As soon as you mop the kitchen floor, and leave it to dry, the dog goes out and/or it rains, usually both....  I know how to fix the drought in the south of England - mop my floor!  It always rains within 12 hours of me doing it.

Roly's  bed needs changing again.  It's old and smelly - a bit like him now, really.  Oh yes, me and dogs.

So I'm not really a dog person - they're too needy for my liking.  So... we thought it would be good to have a dog for Phoebe to grow up with, but I was working part-time, and it wouldn't have been fair, and then, as luck would have it, in 2004, I broke my leg... (and that is another story!!!).  So I was off work for about 14 weeks (bad break), and it seemed the time was right to get a dog, train him up, and help me to recuperate...  And Simon said let's get a dalmation because they're good with children and he'd grown
up with them as his mum used to breed them.

We had also been bungled.  Yes, bungled.  A burglar came into our house, at 2am.  It was a hot summer (2003) and we'd left a downstairs back window open (stupid!!!) to let the air circulate.  This was in Twickenham, and our back garden was fenced off, but he came in nonetheless.  Moved our bin to stand on, and climbed in.  Luckily(!) I'd just settled Phoebe back to sleep and was having trouble drifting off myself, and I heard a noise downstairs...  In my drowsiness my first thought was "oh no, there's a fox in the house"(!).  On a couple of occasions we'd left the back door unlocked and when I went downstairs in the morning I'd found the door ajar.  So I thought there was a fox inside, snooping around.

I didn't go downstairs, however, I thought I'd check out the back bedroom window to see if the door was ajar, and then wake Simon up to help shoo the fox out...  However, when I looked, the door wasn't ajar, the bin was moved, and this fox had a torch which was erratically scanning and flicking over things.  Yikes!  So I woke Simon up, and we decided to switch the hall light on.  This precipitated the bunglar to leave the property by the same manner that he'd entered, and in his haste he didn't actually take anything!  The police were as good as useless, I'm sorry to say, they didn't turn up that night at all, and didn't get around to taking fingerprints for another two days...

Anyway, that clinched it.  A dog would be a useful deterrent, and would at least bark if intruders broke in in the middle of the night.

I had absolutely no idea how big dalmations are.  In my mind I thought they were about knee high.  No.  Well this one's not.  He's a hand high over your knee and 25kgs of mad muscle when we first had him.  He was a rescue - that's another story - and is now around 9 yrs old.  He's cost us a fair bit of money in his time - that's also another story - but, he's an integral part of the family and usually drives me mad.

He's quite needy.  He spies on me - when I'm doing the ironing(!).  He's like a shadow, but he tries to anticipate if I'm going to go out, he's always approaching the kitchen door, in case I want to go out.  How would he know????  But he's there, just in case.  Argh.!  He sheds hair year round, day in day out, as soon as you've finished grooming him, he sheds.  I hardly bother to groom him these days.  It's not going to make any difference.

I'm the one who takes him his walks weekdays and at weekends we try to do it as a family.  However, the children are less pliable, and more whiney, and don't like walking the dog in the rain, so it's a big pallaver, so quite often I'll whizz Roly round the park at the weekend, so it's done with.

The joy of dogwalking, however, is a pleasure I didn't anticipate.  I'll tell you more about that next time.

I've nearly finished reading The Ghost Road, so will get onto that now.  I had a chat with a fellow dog walker this morning, and she told me she'd just finished reading something by Ken Follett - so we had a chat about him, and I'll be putting Pillars of the Earth onto my list of books to read...  sounds epic.

You know, Spring really is here.  Apart from the snowdrops, crocus and daffs just popping their heads out, last week I saw my first....  postman in shorts!  Not long before the clocks change.

On that note I'll bid you good night and good reading.  Keep it sweet!  Kat

I'm not really...

… a dog person.

It’s not in my genes.

When I was growing up the dogs in my life were the farm dogs on my Grandfather’s farm.  They were working animals, and lived outside year round.  They weren’t allowed in the house.  The one I remember was Patch.  He was barking.   Mad.  Literally.  Whenever a car arrived or departed from the farm he would chase the vehicle, barking savagely at the wheels.  How he didn’t get run over I’ll never know.

At home we had a cat.  Bimbo.  So no dog in the house.  At one point we also had gerbils.  We had two gerbils to start with, both girls, but they quickly multiplied….!  I remember my mother wondering why they were playing with chunks of beetroot - they’d not been given any - before realising they’d had babies.

When my family moved to Hong Kong in 1980  I lived with my best friend’s family for 9 months or so, in order to complete my ‘O’-levels.  They had traditionally kept Lancashire Heelers - short legged dogs, black and tan, a little like a Daschund, but more personality.  Around the time I lodged they got a Heinz 57 type dog called Maisie.   Not being used to living with dogs in the house, Maisie would drive me crazy, and I would be constantly opening the back door for her to go out into the garden.  Eventually either I trained her or she trained the family, but when I left, to go to Hong Kong, Maisie would woof to be let out to do her business….

The next dog I met was Bertha.  My then boyfriend, now husband’s, mother Verity, had a rescued Rottweiler bitch.  She (Bertha, not Verity) had evidently been mistreated in the past, and didn’t really like men, but other than that she was a good ambassador for her kind.  They followed up Bertha with Kruger, and he also demonstrated that it’s not the breed that deserves the ‘bad’ name, but the owners….

So, how come I ‘have’ a Dalmation called Roly?  I'll tell you next time!  In the meantime here's a photo of the hens, so you know what they look like...

They're not used to posing for their photograph!

Gotta dash, lots to do, thanks for reading!  Kat

The one about the hens...

"Sweet dreams are made of this", according to The Eurythmics.

Bear with me, I've got a dream to relate.  If you can analyse this you're doing better than I am!

I had this dream about a year ago.  It's memorable because both of our children remind me, "Remember when you had that funny dream Mummy?  The one about the hens."

Ah yes, the one about the hens.  Well.  First of all you need to know about the slide.

There's a photograph somewhere of me and my younger sister aged about 5yrs and 3yrs at Christmas. Probably around 1970/71 I'd say.  We're in the front room of our first house and we're standing on the steps of the slide(!) which Father Christmas had delivered the night before - in our front room!!!!  I know it's Christmas as we're wearing our new matching red dressing gowns with ladybird buttons.  I used to love that dressing gown!  And we're posing holding our Christmas sacks.  More about the slide.  It's got a metal frame (probably about 5ft tall) and the slide bit is probably plywood.  It was painted blue and red I think, and it was in our front room!  I still smile when I think about it.

I don't actually remember that Christmas but for the photo.  What a great reminder, thanks to my Dad (thanks Dad!), he was always an 'early adoptor', a bit of a gadget freak.  He'd put on slide shows, and later in my childhood he got into cine film in a big way.  When the family moved to Hong Kong in 1980 he got a video camera, and he's still doing it.  Latest digital camera, he's got a Kindle and an iPad2 as well...  but I digress.

So, the slide was put into the back garden for us to play on, and we had a swing and a large cabin for a playhouse as well.   It must have featured largely in my childhood as there are more photos I can remember.  (I remember the photos more than the actual memory...what's that all about??)  Blankets on the ground below the slide, and various birthday parties going on - posing on the slide in our swimsuits with ice lollies (was it really always summer then, and were the summers really hot?). And I think there's cine film of us, bigger now, with dreadful 1970s haircuts, polo necks and wide-bottomed trousers (must be Spring or Autumn then), running down instead of sliding down the slide...

So, to the dream.

I'm back in back garden of my childhood home, and the slide is there.  As are my hens. (you met them in the previous blog).  My hens are hopping up the steps of the slide, sliding down the slide and then as they gain speed they're propelled on an upwards trajectory towards a large black curtain - like a cinema or theatre curtain, heavy velvety and quite dramatic.  My hens bounce into the curtain and rebound over the slide to land onto Roly's (our dalmation) back.

End of dream.

No.  I don't understand it either.  There was NEVER, as I remember, a theatre curtain in the garden.  But it's made an impression on our children as they both remember it quite clearly.  I sometimes wonder if they think they've dreamt it themselves...  who knows?  Well now you do.  So make of that what you will.

On the subject of not sleeping (but dreaming), I noted this report (on BBC news website) on sleep today.  Thought it made interesting reading, particularly with my insomnia tendencies at the moment...  hope the link works.  Myth of 8 hour sleep

I've started reading the final part of the Pat Barker 'Regeneration' Trilogy - The Ghost Road.  Only one chapter in, so will report back when I've finished it.

On the Letcombe circular route we take - May 2011 - just to remind us of what the spring looks like round here - something to look forward to!

Thanks for reading.  Keep it sweet (dreams?).  :)  Kat