Separation Anxiety

Greyhounds are renowned for suffering separation anxiety . Alice certainly objects to being left alone and usually manages to collect together twelve or so shoes or slippers and lines them up next to her on the sofa pending our return if we leave her for an hour or so .

This afternoon there was a short gap between D leaving the house and my return .
I came in to discover her in her new bed , tucked up with a large cauliflower and a small swede , with a box of shredded tissues at the side for good measure .
Yuk , think how cold they would be . Hardly the bedfellows I would chose .....

I know you wont have the time to read this but ....

Angelina Jolie and the superfast generation Carol Midgley - Times Online

Sitting outside M and S yesterday in the outlet car park waiting for Nat and Kathryn and reflecting that this was the first time I had had five minutes to call my own in what seemed like weeks . probably a gross exaggeration but .... I watched people ..... the world , me included , is in a hurry ..... cars revving past , cross at having to wait for space to park , to get by , men in the car park impatiently waiting for women and kids coming out of the shops , I myself looking at my watch and trying to calculate how much of the twenty minutes agreed had elapsed since I had left the girls .... then wondering if the dog at home would have trashed ... what exactly ? The house ? Not likely ... a shoe ? at worst ..... and stopped myself worrying , wound down the window to enjoy the sunshine and the wait .

So with that in mind , it seemed something of a coincidence that I read this article tonight .
Its worth a read .

Besides my extra duties with M still in hospital and her three cats insisting on going out and refusing to come back in when they should ( why would they ? the house is hot , they dont know where she has gone , they last saw her disappear in an ambulance and I cant help them understand when she will be back . So they go looking for her , is my theory .... ) Im also looking after two matching cats in grey and black with white paws , both elderly , long haired and living in an idyllic spot , house centred around a beautiful courtyard .
The boy cat , who is slightly more into cuddles than his Foodie sister , leads me round the ( extensive ) house showing me places where he has dropped a dribble or a speck of fluff and mooches around nonchalanantly till I clear up . Houseproud he is ..... whereas sister just ushers me straight into the Food dept and heads for the tuna tins and then follows me for a conversation after her dinner .....

But after feeding and clearing are all done we adjourn to the courtyard bench and sit and chat for a while in the sunshine and that is the blissful part of this job cum hobby of mine . I wouldn't change it for anything . Nothing beats those few minutes of rest and recuperation and hanging out with a couple of cats .

This clip is highly unlikely to be of any interest to anyone but me but I wanted to preserve it for posterity .

The view from the garden seat into my Dad's shed , where he has classical music ( playing in the backgound , possibly just audible .

Alice strolling by , not yet having been chased by the cat , but soon after rolling in the cat food and having been wiped down with the Molton Brown hand- wash .

To the left of the shed the Russian vine that conceals the wasp nest .

One of these fine sunny days I will have the presence to have the camera ready as the cat circuits after the dog .

That will be worth pressing the start button for ... greyhound put through her paces by tortoiseshell terror .

Wasp's Nest

Alice whacked after a day out ....

Some weeks are so frantically busy there are no spare minutes for blogging , reading blogs , or even sitting looking at wasps' nests .

Then , out of the blue , there is a spare couple of hours , and the teenage daughter has a brainwave and proposes a visit to the grandparents which involves an early afternoon out of the rat race . How could we resist ?

Alice is now exhausted on her bed ..... the cat having chased her again round the garden , but not before she rolled in some cat food she discovered behind the compost food " put out for the birds " so had to be washed all over with a face cloth soaked in posh Molton Brown hand wash . A faint whiff of bergamot clings with an undertone of ten day old Felix....

Anti Snoring Device

I noticed in the early hours of this morning that Pearl , ( pictured at the top of the blog ) and featured in several other places , though completely deaf , is like me rather antagonistic to snoring . I propped myself up on one elblow to start the usual poking and prodding , which used to bring forth immediate " me ! snoring ! No ! Sorry ..... " with hand caught in the trifle guilt attached . Now its all slightly different with more brute force required , more poking , more prodding , and sometimes the turning over with a definite flounce attached . And within seconds the snoring seems to start up again . (And now to cap it all my blog wont start new paragraphs )....So I prop myself up and stare at the vibrating force next to me . And then I notice Pearl , also propped up , also staring at him , somewhat disgruntled , having deserted her usual post in the far corner of the bed . She stalks forwards stiffly picking her way daintily forwards and positions herself close to the elbow and as her mouth opens slightly I wonder just for a second whether she can be trained to nip as she does in the daylight hours when he behaves against her rules , as the perfect anti snoring device . Just a thought .

Alice checks out her new bed ....

When you gotta go .....

Alice likes a bit of peace and quiet to perform her ablutions .

She is particularly bad in the countryside . She finds all those noises scary , just when she is lowering her backside to the ground and a crow shouts at her or some such and whap! Her tail is down and constipation threatens .

Last friday we were making the most of the last day of the camper van , out walking near Low Newton and the heavy mob thundered up , the fence between us a bit too femur for my liking and Alice was completely unable to do her worst .

She suffered the journey home with a tortured expression until safely back home and onto her own turf .

I have friends who are exactly the same ... take them away from the sanctuary of their own powder room and they are hopeless .

Not for them a life on the road . Mind you having explored many and varied a campsite lavatory in my day , I can tell you , even campsite bogs these days are mostly posh . And thats official .