Brief flashback to when junior lab was a tiny puppy and developed a taste for my cookery books …

Just gone to look up the recipe for gooseberry cobbler in my Delia Summer Collection.
Had forgotten the bloody hound ate the spines of all the books so can’t identify them in the bookshelf and when I finally found the right one it appears he had consumed the dust jacket, the entire index and most of the page corners!

My morning so far…

Wake at 6am to the sound of the chair on the balcony clattering over in a gust of wind.
Manage to get back to sleep to experience a number of vivid and alarming/questionable dreams.
Re-awaken with a start at 8am (unheard of lie-in) to a still and beautiful morning.
Go down into kitchen, look at forecast and decide today will be a chore-free, work-free, lazy, self indulgent, politically incorrect and highly unfashionable sunbathing day.
Make pot of tea, set up sun lounger, prepare bowl of fruit and granola with yoghurt and put book out.
Stupidly open dishwasher to find it full of clean stuff.
Unload dishwasher and put stuff away.
Go to let out hens and dogs.
As I pass laundry room, notice washing machine full of clean, wet washing.
Unload and hang washing on line.
Let out dogs and feed junior Lab.
Let out and feed hens.
Find broken egg in henhouse which has soaked into straw overnight and is staring to pong, attracting many flies.
Clean out soiled straw and burn it on bonfire.
Replace straw.
Fill hen up water.
Notice a huge crop of ripe loganberries which are being snitched by the starlings.
Go into kitchen, fetch bowl and pick ripe fruit for jam making later.
Hear postman arrive.
Get mail from mailbox by gate and walk back into house, wiping shoes on back doormat.
Feel something squishy and yielding.
Accosted by suspicious smell
Realise I have inadvertently stepped in one of senior Lab’s random, involuntary and accidental deposits and have ground it into to mat.
Throw shoes in washing machine on boil wash and spend 20 mins frenziedly cleaning and disinfecting area.
Wash hands many times.
Walk into kitchen to find partially eaten and decomposing crow which Big Stupid Spaniel has been snacking on whilst I was otherwise engaged.
Dispose of carcass.
Wash hands many times.
Hear funny grinding noise coming from Lagertha who is stationary on the lawn flashing her headlights in distress.
Turn her over to find the spare key (which I lost a few days ago after a visiting dog exploded through the basket by the front door) with the shredded string wrapped around the blades.
Unravel key and set Lagertha off again.
Go to sit on sun lounger.
Tea cold.
Breakfast has been colonised by a population of flies.

🤨

Day one of my “should be in Cullera” holiday week.
Despite having jumped through the required EasyJet hoops to obtain refund/vouchers for the (annoyingly) only half cancelled flight booking, I got increasingly excitable exhortations via the app to “get ready, get my paperwork in order, proceed to the gate and start boarding” as I sat in the garden drinking a gin and tonic in the sunshine.
Compensated for the lack of Spain by enjoying the morning kayaking with friends along a part of the Moray coast I have long wanted to explore from the water.
Did a pass (or 5) through Bow Fiddle rock and played around the various skerries and caves along the coast from Portknockie to Cullen.
Hundreds of cormorants dive bombed around us and popped up, like periscopes, floating low in the water with just their heads and necks above the surface.
We passed through a long rock tunnel, which seemed to be a form of nursery, as dozens of juvenile, slightly fluffy and dishevelled birds swooped into the water and bobbed around us, intermittently practicing diving in unison, the mothers eyeing us suspiciously from the ledges overhead.
Paddled back in glorious sunshine and as we re entered the harbour, wet suited youngsters were “dookin’” – hurling themselves off the harbour wall and the high rocks into the water.
Finished the day with a noisy and relaxed dinner at home (which included consuming a vast cauldron of Cullen Skink), catching up with friends, one of whom I haven’t seen for 9 years.
Life is good.

Another gorgeous sunset. Days are drawing in: 20:47 compared to 21:17 not even a week ago. Sun is no longer setting far out into the sea (always blows my mind that, up here, it sets in the “north” west in summer!) but dipping behind the land almost due west.
This has been a memorable summer in so many ways both bad and good.
The apples are ripening on our trees and I’ve had to pick all the ones on the lower branches as Big Stupid Spaniel has decided it is a convenient instant ball dispenser so he regularly helps himself to the juicy ones to play with and then consumes them, messily, on the lawn.
Cute and Frolicsome Cocker is, at present, orgasmically rolling in something fetid by the waterline so will have to sign off.
Night all and happy weekend.

So, let’s see, the last two days of leave have been spent doing the following:
Starting car, driving it round to gate for it to conk out, blocking exit, making use of second car impossible until it was moved.
Pushing it back up drive with senior daughter, (not an easy task as it was uphill and one wheel was wedged in a pothole) whilst trying to steer it away from the other car, randomly milling dogs and an escaped chicken, ending up rolling it into the hedge, where it remained poking out at a jaunty angle.
Calling out RAC who after a bit of under bonnet furtling, got it started but have no idea what the issue was.
Driving car to local, friendly mechanic.
Giving up negotiating with work about logistics around possible self quarantine.
Cancelling remaining flight to Spain.
Losing holiday jollity.
Sulking.

Humph. Leave not going entirely as planned. Car inexplicably kaput. Trip to Spain effectively kiboshed by COVID paranoia. Weather being insipid.
Pants.
🤨

Lovely first day of holiday here oop north. I shall be spending the day being that bingo winged, lardy, menopausal wifie who doesn’t care what she looks like, wandering around the garden with secateurs wearing inappropriate shorts and strappy top, topping up my tan and alarming the postman and other various delivery men and tradesman I am expecting.

Reasons to be cheerful:

“Broke up” from work for two weeks leave (although last minute trip to Spain is still in balance..)

Sitting in sunny garden drinking a beer

Surrounded by dogs

Fruit trees and bushes heaving with produce so jam pots at the ready

Hens laying abundantly

Hair appointment on Saturday

Wonderful friend who (because he knows ‘im outdoors’ lack of DIY aptitude/interest well enough) unbunged and repaired drainpipe last week, popped back to refit outside light which had shorted out (contemplating abducting him and locking him in a cupboard for domestic emergencies – he seems to run on chocolate and Chablis anyway so would be easy to sustain)

Discovered a delightful Scottish term for a well known medical skin condition commonly found in elderly patients with chronic pain – (a patchy and dark discolouration caused by extended soothing contact with a hot water bottle – posh name: erythema ab igne) – aka “Granny’s tartan”

Just been out for what can only be described as an hour long dog squelchpaddlewade in monsoon like conditions.
Have brought most of the water that fell on to me in to the house, after my (usually very resistant) waterproofs reached saturation point at the halfway mark.
I knew I was doomed when I felt the layer between me and the falling tsunami become gradually heavier and I detected a tiny area of creeping coldness on my right shoulder.
You know – you think “am I imagining it?” for about a minute before the whole thing gives up the ghost and suddenly all the minute points of ingress join together in a party of failure and you are swamped.
The dogs had a blast.