Rain Rain Go Away

Tomorrow is the first of the two big fundraising dog shows that Greyhound Gap holds each year. Hundreds of people turn up with their hounds and we always have a blast. Whatever the weather.

And boy do we ever always have weather. Every year the weather gods have seen fit to throw just about everything at us. In buckets. This time last year it was torrential rain and, due to the perverse nature of Gap's supporters, we raised the most we have ever raised! Because the weather was so bad, we decided to have another go in September. This time the weather gods threw gale force winds at us and tents and gazeebos took off like giant kites all over the showground.

And tomorrow's forecast? Tomorrow they're throwing both at us. There are severe weather warnings for the central area of England with torrential rain and the possibility of 50mph winds.

But the show will go on because Gap's supporters are fantastic people who just say "oh what the heck" and get on with it anyway! And we love them for it!

Did you know.....

....there are two 5 o'clocks in a day? Apparently there's one at a crack of sparrow fart as well.

My friend Nettie and I got up at this forsaken hour this morning to go to a Car Boot sale to raise some money for Greyhound Gap. I love Greyhound Gap and I'll do anything a lot of things to raise some funds, but please, please please don't ask me to do a car boot sale ever again. It's soul destroying. You sell good stuff so cheap and still people haggle you to drop the price. You'd have though we were asking £100 for stuff, not a £1. Seems it must be a matter of principle at these things not to pay the asking price.

Just pleased that we managed to raise £150 and that, given the weather here over the last week, that it didn't rain.

Phew....

...it's been a busy few days!

Friday lunchtime I left home and headed up the motorway to Stoke on Trent to stay the night with Lisa, Greyhound Gap's founder. An uneventful journey until I got to Birmingham when someone turned the sun off. In the space of a minute I went from driving in brilliant sunshine, wearing my sunglasses, to black sky and a wall of hailstones. Five minutes later I was driving through a blizzard. Twenty minutes later it was back to sunshine again.

Saturday dawned to a couple of inches of snow, although it was already starting to thaw in the sunshine. So that will probably be the only snow I see this year. And did I have my camera? No.

We headed off to the kennels where the Gap dogs live until a suitable foster home becomes available. A gang of us walked the 17 dogs and checked out some of our new inmates: A young, blind whippet cross and his pal, a small staffie cross. Apparently the little blind dog holds on to his pal's tail when they go out! Then there were the two young lurchers who had been due to be put to sleep because they were, wait for it "sheep killers". We'll never know if they did kill a sheep or not but Gap takes the point of view that almost any dog is likely to be a sheep killer if they are allowed to get into that situation. These two were so tiny and so scared I'd have been less surprised if the sheep had attacked them.

That done, we headed off to Birmingham City Dog's Home to pick up a young Greyhound that had been reserved to come into our care. Whilst there we walked around the Home in case there were any other dogs there that we could take on. There were. We came home with the Greyhound, who is possibly a lurcher, and a young lurcher who was racked with kennel cough. Two more are reserved for us if they are not claimed before their time is up....another beautiful young lurcher bitch and an estimated 12 week old puppy. Difficult to tell the breeding as he was a little ball of fluff but we are convinced there is whippet or Bedlington in there somewhere. Not sure where but we'll find it!

Back to the kennels to drop off the two new arrivals, christened Minstrel and Frannie, and pick up Snowy, then back to Lisa's to walk her dogs. Then, in a complete change of direction, off to the Yankee Candle Shop to stock up on candles then the three hour drive home.

Snowy settled like a dream last night. I had been expecting a restless night but it was Himself who had me dragging my duvet off to the sofa because he was snoring like a trooper (Andre, he is normally a very brilliant and clever person to have around but the beer does get to him!). Snowy didn't wake me up once!

Dogs or men? Dogs or men? Mmmmm.........

Well that was fun!

Saturday night was Greyhound Gap's annual fundraiser. This year we decided to leave the haunted houses to themselves and have ourselves a good time with a disco and karaoke. We started organising this in January and I have had all that time to not look forward to it. Disco and karaoke are really not my thing. I had my fill of discos when I worked in a nightclub 20 years ago. I just do not dance and I do not sing. My singing would clear the room. Now I'm middle-aged I prefer a quiet night in with friends to dinner than to boogying until the early hours.

However, I surprised myself. There's life in the old girl yet! The DJ was superb and played some proper rocking and rolling, proper dancin' music (remember "The Bump"!? "Tiger Feet"!?). It was probably the best night I have had in a long, long time!

Doing "The Bump" (That's me on the left. Dancing with the handbag. I wouldn't normally dance with my handbag but there were some very kind souls there who were chucking money at Gap right, left and centre and, as Treasurer, it got given to me. Shortly after this photo was taken I managed to unload it into the club's safe. That was good. It mean I didn't have a wonky shoulder the next day.)



Let's Twist Again (That's me on the left...again.)



C'mon let me see you shake your tail feathers ( You'll realise that's me on the left won't you?)



Me (yes, on the left) and Lisa doing what we do best...being loud!