Home maintenance

It's that time of year when one has to knuckle down to some very necessary jobs around the house and garden. For a start we have a large tree in our garden (heaven knows what it is called) that chooses this time of year to dump leaves, long spikey bits, and hard pea-like berries all over our lawn. I felt a bit sorry for mum having to rake all this up so I decided to give her some respite by asking her to scratch my back. Surprisingly, she did!


Another emergency arose last week which required some immediate DIY action to fix. Our sofa, on which I have spent many a happy night, decided to shed a few of the bolts holding all together. As a result, dad and I had to work hard to get it all back together again so mum could once more watch Emmerdale in the comfort to which she is accustomed.


Big thank you is due to my mate Princess Jolly Dog's dad as he has helped sort out our computer problem. I am pleased to report we are now all up and running again as the appearance of this new blog entry will confirm.

I'm in a bit of trouble again as once more I seem to have managed to loose a small chunk of flesh from one of my ears (the other one this time). Now for me this does not cause any great problem but mum and dad are not at all appreciative of the resulting burgundy respray of their nice pastel walls each time I have a good shake. Don't really see what the problem is as it licks off quite easily - well, the bits I can reach anyway.

It is usual practice to advise rest after blood loss so I'm off for a kip.

Furthering my social networking skills

As a further step in my attempts to become more techno savy and "in touch", I made my first Skype call the other day. It was to my new mate Princess Jolly Dog and her dad. Lovely to see her lounging on the back of the sofa like she owned the place (which she probably does), and I also needed to get her dad and mine talking in order that we can get this mess that Mac OSX upgrade 10.6.5 has made to our computer sorted. Apparently he knows even more than I do about Macs (which I find hard to believe) but if that is the case then he must be a good man to know!

I got a bit of a lecture from mum afterwards about not being very sociable on the call. Seems I am not supposed to leap about a lot and lick the screen. As I tried to explain, I was only trying to stick my nose up Jolly Dog's tail as us dogs normally do in greeting. Anyway, I don't really do sitting still for any great length of time.

Mum and I are a bit tired today as I had to get her up at 3am this morning for a call of nature. She's not mad at me though, and we had a nice cuddle in the lounge before I sent her back to bed.We might both just have to have a bit of a kip this afternoon to make up for lost sleep.

My first day at the seaside

Having been postponed from my birthday due to inclement weather, my first trip to the seaside finally took place yesterday. We went to Canet Plage which is near Perpignan.



Now those of you who know me of old will be aware that I have a particular distrust of water, even choosing to walk around puddles after rain. So it was with some trepidation that I set foot on my first beach. It turns out that the sand bit is really great fun and you can tear around on it very easily.



As for the sea bit - well the jury is still out. There I was standing looking at it when it dashed at me and got my feet all wet. I was less than pleased about that. And it is such a pain getting all that sand from between your toes afterwards.



We then went to the marina where there were hundreds of boats. I had seen a few of these before at Port Vendres but never as many as this. Not too sure I would like to go on one as you are surrounded by water!



Still, I really enjoyed my day out, and would love to go again, even though it does rather knacker you. I slept all evening when I got back.

On a different note, a strange thing happened today. My mum went out this afternoon and when she came back I did not recognise her! So much so that I had to bark quite severely at her. She had SHORT HAIR. It was quite a shock, I can tell you.

She is on dog walking duty tomorrow so I will try and find out more about how and why this happened. Will report back later.

UPDATE: Interrogated mum as to how and why this short hair happened. It appears she asked this lady to cut it short because she wanted a "change of style". Alright for some. If I wanted a "change of style" with my very short hair I'm a bit stuffed, especially if I wanted it in a "cockapoodle" style which I understand is very fashionable these days.

Mon anniversaire and other matters

Those of you living in Outer Mongolia or on Mars may just be unaware that today is my second birthday. I,m sooooo excited and I thought you might like to see a photo of my birthday cake.



We were going to go to the coast today in celebration but the weather is wet and miserable so we are now going next week when it promises to be much better. By the way, a big thank you to all my Facebook mates who took the trouble to send me birthday wishes, even if some of them were in languages I don't speak (Dutch?).

So what else have I been up to? Well, earlier this week I had a trip to the vet. No, nothing serious - just a few small issues to be addressed and a six monthly MOT or should I say Controle Technique as they call it here. It was nice to see the lovely Marie Christine again and she and I had a big cuddle for a few minutes.



Other than that the event of note was that we went to a wine sale at Domaine Gayda - this is apparently the place where they make that bottle stuff that seems to feature so highly in mum and dad's lives. They of course bought some more to top up the always dwindling stocks whist I took the opportunity to pee on some of Gayda's prime vines. It also turns out that this is the place mum and dad go to eat sometimes as it is also a restaurant. They never offer to take me with them, but than again it does look quite a posh place.

Socks and snow

We had another bit of a drama the other day. Mum was putting washing in the machine and I just couldn't resist pinching one of my dad's NEW socks. What started with what I thought was a game of chase finished up with me swallowing the sock in order to resist all attempts at retrieval. Now whilst this did not cause me any great problem, it seemed to really stress out the parents. I must admit that during the evening I did feel a bit off colour but otherwise OK. The next morning said sock fortunately (for all) reappeared in one piece, although dad did not seem too keen on then rescuing it for reuse.

Now you may remember that I said a little while ago that I thought winter was on its way. Well, today it arrived. Frost and 2 degrees in the garden and snow on the Pyrennees. We all thought it was a bit early this year but checking back it seems to be a few days later than last year. Does not make me any happier about the cold though. However, this afternoon it is warm and sunny so I have been busy topping up my tan. Never know when the opportunity will arise again.



Looking forward to tomorrow when I have got the lovely Lilly coming to stay for the day. No doubt there will be a few things to tell you all about that later.

I'm now a social networker!

I have been writing my blog now for some 18 months and am thoroughly enjoying the experience, so I thought it about time I stepped further into the modern era and had a dabble in social networking.

First of all I set myself up a Twitter account and played around with that for a while, but after a few days I just could not see the point of the inane messaging that most people tweet (sorry Stephen Fry). Not only that, but I have no pockets to carry a smartphone so I could not tweet on the move. So I binned Twitter as unsuitable for me.

Next I took a look at Badoo which is a sort of French flirting/dating site and found it totally irrelevant to my needs and very intrusive, so dumped it.

The other obvious choice was Facebook so I set up my own (heavily protected) page and started looking around. Immediately I found a number of old friends and set about "befriending" them. Some of those in turn referred me to new friends, like Princess Jolly Dog - a Jack Russell - with whom I now chat. So first impressions of Facebook are OK and I think I will be sticking with it at least for the time being. However, I will be restricting my friends only to those I know and love or whom I find interesting.

Finally, many of you have questioned if I really write my own blog or whether I have a ghost writer do it for me. Well, in answer to all you doubters out there, here is a photo of me at work on my blog, so put that in your pipe and smoke it!



It's raining cats and humans today so I am going to have a lazy day in front of the telly. And the really good news is that dad has turned on the central heating! Speak to you all again soon.

First signs of winter

First of all it was the pool being covered up with my big blue trampoline (that I am now too heavy for!). Then there was all the garden furniture being put away. The grapes have all gone from the vines and the leaves on the vines are going yellow and falling off. When I get up in the morning it is dark outside. This weekend it rained solidly for nearly two days - the first significant rain in over two months. And now when I get back from a walk I find the need to snuggle down in my duvet to warm up.



All of these suggested to me that winter was about to arrive. However, I now know for sure it is. How is that you might ask? Well, dad is now wearing his cloth cap and hiking boots on our walks. No, don't be stupid. I insist on trousers, shirt and coat as well. Well, one has to keeep up one's standing in the community.





And how humiliating. Now, just because it's so muddy, I have to have my feet washed when I get back from my walk. Grrrrrh!