What of my Blog , I ask myself ? In fact I cannot recall the last time I blogged , so busy holidaying have I been. Though the word holiday perhaps creates the wrong impression , implying a lengthy stay in another part of the world . Maybe this is apt though as I sit here staring at the screen and finding it strangely tricky to encapsulate the events of the last few weeks .Nothing too strange or startling , but we have hopped from one ninor upheaval to the next. Nat was in Majorca at the same time as the Eta bombs , Toby was stuck behind a wardrobe whilst we were fitting a new coffee pot to the bedroom , and meanwhile

(Pearl looks on whilst the wardrobe is dismantled) the rooms downstairs were being re carpetted, involving a whole new look down there . The upstairs look is not yet complete , still resembling Offshoot Junk Yard but will be attended to " sometime soon " . A day or two after this my new car is due to arrive . Bliss . But ... this precipitates under major event .... the "clearing" of the old car . The Scenic was large , larger than I knew and proved to hold skipfulls of Stuff which was not quite fit for the rubbish dump and yet could not quite fit in anywhere in the new look downstairs rooms and the junk outpost upstairs areas were already fit to bust . Oh!

A trip to Barter Books was needed . Nat and I set off there with Alice and several carrier bags full of books and video tapes ( is that what they're called? I forget...) We were given a stern telling off ( for bringing in too many bags) by a fourteen something young woman with a tight pony tail who rejected our videos with a curl of the lip ( we can't sell these ! ) but no one objected to Alice joining us in the lunch dept waiting room where we had cheese on toast and jacket potatoes so all was forgiven. Greyhounds seem to attract the right sort of attention wherever we go even when they insist on lying across the doorway and refuse to move for passing trade.

My new little green car ( actually black, though with Green credentials ) is far from silly and as Nat's dad said it would goes like "sh*t off a stick" a metaphor I initially found somewhat intriguing but now I have driven the C1 , quite understandable . I picked it up on August 21 feeling sad at losing my lovely old Renault , but .... I have not looked back .

Nat and I whizzed to Grasmere and Ambleside for our annual pilgrimage on Sunday and managed to contain our luggage in the boot . Nothing was too much trouble for the cute little thing .