A difficult week chez Catminder. And now I cannot at all get these photos to line up . I need some sort of Teen Tutorial .

But teens are all doing GCSE s and other important exams.

Last weekend started being tricky at the point I noticed there was a message flashing on my phone and wasnt able to get a signal , being out at Kirkharle and esconsced at the coffee shop and having just realised the full horror that my Dad would have been walking  the dogs in the woods where Derrick Bird shot himself after killing himself having killed twelve other people in Cumbria the previous Wednesday . Fortunately for dad he was at home rather than in the Lakes , as they prefer to stay at home during the Summer holidays. A narrow miss indeed.

I finally manage to get through to our landline and get the message that Alice the skinny greyhound has had an accident herself , having been silly in  the sea and gashed her leg on a rock submerged under the water in a rockpool . D has had to carry her off the beach , her leg helpfully bandaged by a passing paramedic and A(aged four)  and her picnic items  and collections from the beach brought to shore by some useful assistants . Matters are slowed up as A insists on bringing a dead crab she has found.

 A copious quantity of blood finds itself onto all available surfaces, apparently.

Alice is touted around various veterinary establishments and finally finds a home at Ayres where they promise to anaesthetise her , stitch and bill us accordingly. Luckily , we are insured . (NB the bill is still rising but hey , we dont care.)

I suggest that we go ahead with the days plan to meet at Wallington , where we are supposed to be meeting friends, in a forlorn attempt to restore some sort of normality for A ( and ourselves) and I drive across country to wait . The sun is blazing and I find a table and chairs and sit staring into space. An hour passes. And another. Nil . I have no phone signal . This was not a good idea. My friends do not appear . Finally D and A show up and we walk in the woods. It is strange without Alice and A is silent on the subject of the morning's events.

In the greenhouse there is a heat haze and it is too hot even for the little cat which has dug in under a bush outside.

We finally reclaim Alice later that day at eight pm . Too late for the party to which we are invited. Alice has a purple bandage and is a very wobbly dog .

Later that week finds me in A and E at Midnight with N who should be getting her beauty sleep in view of the importance of her exams . However she has an excrutiating pain in her eye and we have already been advised to follow up a routine medical appointment in hosiptal emergency if it recurs. A and E after midnight is not a happy place to be . We are called upon to offer comfort to a sad and frightened young girl who looks fourteen - pregnant and has fled a violent partner at one am. She enters the arena in her pyjamas and fluffy slippers sobbing and crying and is left standing and humiliated , alone until I can bear it no longer. I ask who I can call for her when she tells me her b/f has taken her phone from her. She tells me she has no one and when I press she says No - I have no mam and I don't have any friends now. 

 There is only so far I can go with my involvement before we are called off to our own doctor and then I have to let her go . I hope they admitted her for the night at least . I can hardly bear to think of her. And we hear that with the World Cup on each night that England plays that Domestic Violence can be expected to  increase by thirty one per cent in this area at least .

N is discharged at two thirty am . The doctor is "baffled" . We are exhausted. We piled into bed. I read until three thirty and I am up again at seven. Cats to feed. A lovely present of a dead bird to field .

A picture of a cliff against the pier to remind me that whatever else , it is what it is and some things never change.

And Pearl smirks happily in the corner of the water bed, no matter what befalls the rest of us.