Why is it....

...that it's only after printing off 300 programmes that someone points out a monumental mistake, despite a draft being shown to everyone 2 weeks ago and no comments made!? Hey ho, such is life! At least I'm in a frame of mind to laugh about it!

Fun!

The Da Vinci Code Quest on Google

It never rains....

My car has been making some odd noises fo rthe last week or so. Called my mechanic but he's on holiday until last Sunday so kept the use of the car to a minimum. Spoke to mechanic and he would pop up Monday evening for a listen and a looksee. Yesterday I had to use it very briefly and it started making an even funnier noise. Mechanic didn't stand over the car, shaking his head, pursing his lips and inhaling through his teeth because he's not that kind of person, but if he was that kind of person then he would have been standing over the car shaking his head etc etc.

He suspects either a gear box or transmission problem, and something wrong with the engine as well. I haven't had any problems with the gear box so my money is on the transmission...not sure if that's the more expensive option or not. At the moment he can't tell me when I might get it back.

Which is all something of a bugger as we've got Greyhound Gap's annual show in Walsall on Sunday and as well as me, OH and The Lurchers, I have a load of boxes and two bloody great big gazebos to take with me. OH's car also has a problem with its engine management system so we can't take that either. My boss has offered me her Freelander but that just isn't going to be big enough. So it looks like on top of the expense of getting the car fixed, I'm going to have to hire a car as well. And it's a Bank Holiday Weekend which means a three day hire and not just the two I need it for.

*moving swiftly to a few hours later* and we might be back on with the Freelander again. Boss asked the very obvious question, why don't we put a roof rack on it? Oh, that's a good idea, so now off to hunt for a roofrack. Anyone know where I might be able to hire one!?

Doesn't time fly....

I've been meaning to blog for days but what with one thing and another I don't seem to have got round to it. Soe here's a synopsis of the last 10 days:

Good Friday - Persisted down all day with that drizzly but very wet rain. Yes, I know most rain is wet but drizzle normally sits on the surface rather than soaks you but this drizzle was ermmmm wet. Moving swiftly on. Anyway, I had managed, for the first time in about 8 months to grab one of the horses from work so I could take myself off for a ride. Got soaked just getting tacked up but one of the Keepers lent me his proper big army riding coat which sits across the back of the horse as well so we were all snug as a bug. Been out for about 10 minutes when across my walkie talkie radio came the call that the farrier had arrived and all horses were to return to the yard. Bugger! Still, better than nothing. Pootled for the rest of the afternoon and then headed on down to Sussex to stay with friends for the weekend.

Saturday in Sussex - walked the Lurchers and their friend Ms Teyha. Eat breakfast then spent the rest of the day playing Mah Jong and poker.

Sunday in Sussex - ditto the walking then card games - crib and Nom - lovely roast Sunday dinner and then drive home.

Monday to Wednesday - I'm on holiday for a few days with the intention of letting my brain and body catch up with each other. Mission almost accomplished.

And that's about it really, this weekend was pretty quiet although we trying to get everything organised for the Greyhound Gap Annual Dun Dog Show on 30th April. One of my tasks was to make up some ribbons to sell for the Justice for Rusty campaign, something we always mark at the show. I never thought getting a bit of ribbon to fold over and stick to itself would cause so much grief, although given I am not really an arty type, I shouldn't have been surprised. Now got to go and sort out some alternative rosettes as the silly company we've been dealing with didn't complete the order and have been so tardy in sending out the replacements that they haven't allowed enough time to deal with the inevitable "lost in the post" somewhere scenario, which of course is exactly what has happened.

Well that was a jolly weekend

I'm a bit late blogging about it as I was too pooped on Sunday evening when we got back and I had a Board meeting yesterday evening.

We departed for Dorset on Saturday lunchtime and arrived there about 3pm. Stopped off at the B&B we were staying at and then headed off to Swanage to give The Lurchers a run on the beach. Got back to the B&B, got changed and headed for the pub for 6pm to join in the celebrations for OH's younger sister's 40th birthday at this very fine establishment (very fine because they didn't utter a word at The Lurchers who were spreading themselves across the floor for a kip!).

On Sunday morning we all met up for a walk round Houns Tout and then down to Chapman's Pool. It's a bit of steep descent and my legs knew about it once we got to the bottom. Once on the beach we all dearched for fossils, drank mulled wine warmed on a campus stove and ate mini creme eggs. Just the fortification we needed to for the trek (albeit more gentle than the descent) back to Kingston.

I could have stayed longer, I love Dorset.

Embrokified

We seem to be experiencing a period of things being embrokified.

The DVD recorder thingie doesn't think that it needs to read DVDs anymore, which is a bit of a bugger because it won't record either and that's bordering on being devastating when there are two episodes of Star Trek Voyager on every day (and I don't care how sad you think it is that I love Star Trek!)

My alarm clock doesn't think it needs to alarm any more, resulting in me oversleeping two days in a row. Well, it seemed only natural that the batteries were going so I changed them. Only it doesn't appear to be the batteries, hence me oversleeping for the second day.

My mobile phone, whilst not completely embrokified just yet, is well on it's way. The charger won't plug in properly and required vast amounts of wiggling to get it happy enough to work. And the display screen keeps breaking up.

And finally, I seem to be a little embrokified too. The big boss finally flipped me over the edge yesterday and I told him so. Fortunately for me he admitted I was right. Things at home aren't as hunky as they should be and the combination of the two has left me in tears at the slightest thing today.

The first three should be relatively easy to fix. It remains to be seen if I can get myself back on track.

Driving. Slowly.

I had to do two homevisits for Greyhound Gap this weekend. The first was in Croydon, just the right side of Croydon for me, and less than 10 miles away. Took me an hour each way. The second was in Fulham on Sunday. Now that's less than 3 miles away and it took me half hour to get there.

That's fairly normal for driving around South West London. It doesn't matter what time of day you travel, it takes you an age to go even the smallest distance. But you would have thought it would have been quieter on a Sunday. It was only when I was almost at my destination when it suddenly occurred to me what day it was. Choosing to drive through Putney on Boat Race day was perhaps not the best of ideas.

Bang!

Two incidents involving The Lurchers.

Incident 1
Last night I clipped The Lurchers' nails. Something I do every few weeks without incident. Except last night I clipped one of Lurcher No.1's nails an incy bit too short. Damn but overclipped nails can spew blood like the best of cut arteries! Lots of blood everywhere. Fortunately we managed to stop it bleeding fairly quickly and she seems to be fine this morning.

Incident 2
Because of incident 1, after being out on the walk for 10 minutes this morning I stopped to check Lurcher No.1's nail to make sure the exercise hadn't set the bleeding off again (it hadn't). As I was bending down, Lurcher No.2 came bounding up to us and brought himself to a stop by crashing into my nose. Damn but can a nose spew blood like the best of cut arteries! Lots of blood everywhere! I saw stars, birds tweeting around my head and very nearly saw the ground a lot quicker than I would have liked. The shock and immediate pain reduced me to tears and poor Lurcher No.2 was distraught because he knew something had happened and wasn't sure if it was his fault or not ('cos he's like that).

A few hours later and my fear that my nose was broken seem to be unfounded and the swelling has gone down although it still feels a bit battered and sore.

Happy Mother's Day and other stuff

Hope all you Mum's out there have a fantastic Mother's Day! My Mum is currently somewhere of the coast of North Africa (hopefully) enjoying her first ever cruise with my step-father. I can't speak to her today but I hope she knows I'm thinking of her and how much I love her. We tend not to express emotions in our family very much so saying "I do love you, Mum" is not something that happens very often. I do try to show it in other ways though.

I did something incredibly stupid this morning. I've started shopping at our local Sunday market for meat and vegetables because it is so much cheaper than the supermarket and we're on a bit of an economy drive at the moment. I asked the butcher if he had anything on the bone that I could give to The Lurchers. "here you are, love" he said, "you can have this box of chicken legs for £6". 20 of them! Deal! These aren't just chicken legs, their quarter of a flippin' chicken! And that was the silly thing....I had a dog food delivery last week and there's no room in the freezer. I put it down to the fact that we had a late night last night and I was still asleep. Fortunately I have a friend down the road that also feeds raw food to her Lurchers and a quick phone call found a new home for most of the chicken legs!

Now I'm off to make soup out of all the vegetables I bought last week and haven't used yet.

Silly spats

We have a bit of a family situation going on at the moment. One of those silly things that really make no sense but everyone has lost sight of the original issue. It's taking up far more of my time than it really ought to but, hey ho, it will get sorted out.

It's OH's birthday today so I am cooking him his favourite dinner tonight: sirloin steak with chips, mushrooms, peas and fried onion rings. A timeless classic!

Right....

..onwards and upwards! Too much to be doing to be wallowing.

My poor boss....his wife of three months has just walked out on him. Again. Seems everytime she can't get her way she walks out in a strop. It just seems so silly when it's a marriage at stake. But then, I suppose I only get to hear one side of the story.

I'm really pleased with how the diet is going...see the old Slimgraph over there on the right. This last 1/2 stone is proving a bit of a bugger to move but OH fixed my bike this weekend so I can start cycling again. I now need to get Lurcher No.2 used to running alongside the bike so I can do the first part of his morning walk on the bike rather than driving to the car park.

An odd day

Today has been an emotional sort of day. It comes as something of a shock to find out that someone doesn't think you are the the kind of person that you thought you were. Whether they are right or wrong, and whether everyone else agrees with them or not, it is still a shock.

Oooo err

Someone just told me that when I answer the phone, I have THE sexiest voice. That's nice isn't it!?

Well, as it's been so liong since I blogged I suppose I'd better do a catch-up. Crufts was a hoot.....and flippin' expensive. I somehow spent 200 squids without batting an eyelid. Ho hum......dry biscuits to eat for the rest of the month. The morning we left I got confirmation that Greyhound Gap had been granted Registered Charity status...yee hah! Here we go! Oh and I've just had to pay OH's tax bill. £7,500. Gulp.

And that's about it really.....not a terribly exciting time at all.

Leeks, Daffodils and confusing men

Happy St David's Day!!

OH has been driving me bananas for the last few weeks and I've been getting very fed up with it. Nothing in particular, just lots of little things that, to me, seemed to show that he just didn't care about me or our relationship. Then I get home lunchtime and there waiting for me is a bunch of daffodils with the message

"A bunch of daffs for my favourite Taff"

Perhaps he does care after all.

A sad day

I went into work this morning to be told that Bisto, the German Shepherd belonging to our Senior Keeper, had been put to sleep on Saturday. More than a few tears were shed.

Bisto was six years old and just over a year ago it was discovered that he had cancer in his nose. The vet operated but tests later showed that he had not been able to remove all the cancer and Bisto's time would be limited, perhaps a year or so. It was a true diagnosis. A few months ago the cancer returned and Bisto has been going down hill since. He seemed happy enough and he was always pleased to see everyone and still loved to play with Lurcher No.2, but over the last few days, the nosebleeds had become almost constant and he was having difficuly breathing. It became obvious to Bill that his quality of life was compromised to such an extent that his suffering had to end.


We will miss you Bisto, as will everyone on Wimbledon Common, both staff and the regular walkers who all knew you as Bill's constant companion. Wherever he was, you were never far from his side. You sometimes came for walks with me and the Lurchers and we were proud to have you with us.

Run free my sweet boy.

They don't miss a trick

The RMT don't miss a trick do they?

The most telling sentence in that article was in reference to the Sydney Olympics:

"What they had done was put an attendance bonus in place where it gave a benefit to people to come to work, to make sure the Games run smoothly and give the company flexibility on the running of the services"

So, let's see if I've got this right, the RMT employees are asking for a bonus to attend work during the 2012 Olympics. Isn't this what they are paid a salary for? To attend work?

And then this bit:

When asked what would happen if Transport for London (TfL) did not agree to it, Mr Crow said: "I imagine if our members don't get the same as other groups of workers have, we could have difficulties."

If that's not blackmail then I don't know what is. It's disgusting, appalling and any other "disgusted of Wimbledon" adjective you might like to insert.

What happened to having a pride in your country and thinking "Oooh the Olympics are coming, here's a chance to show how good we are".

Nope, all you get here is "Ooh the Olympics are coming, here's a chance to line our pockets boys!"

Makes me sick, it really does.

It seems..

...that quite some time has gone by since I last blogged. Nothing remotely interesting has happened in my life during that time so, fear not, you haven't missed much.

Alhtough that said, we did have a fantastic auction on Greyhound Gap where I spent silly amounts of money that I don't have and had to raid my piggy bank. So did everyone else I think because we raised a mammoth £1950 squiddles!

Another weekend goes by

...with not very much happening.

Saturday morning I rushed about, whilst OH walked the Lurchers, getting my glasses adjusted, again, and picking up a few bit of shopping. Went off to do a homevisit for potential adopters and came home to crash in front of the rugby. Except I seemed to end up crashing in front of the computer instead whilst listening to the TV which was in the next room.

Meanwhile we're all shivering because the heating has packed up. Again. And then, on Saturday night, disaster struck. Tucked up in bed with my hot water bottle behind my back, it all suddenly felt a lot hotter that it should have done. That was probably something to do with the fact that it had sprung a leak. My nightshirt and pillows were sodden and I narrowly missed a nasty scalding. No heating, no hot water bottle, I had no option but to call in the reserves and have The Lurchers snuggle up on either side of me. Warm as toast we all were then!

Sunday I ended up back in bed with the onset of a migraine caused, I have no doubt, by the glasses which were giving me some nasty eyestrain despite only being adjusted the day before. These glasses cost me over £300 squids so I'm not giving up on them yet...but their time is running out fast.

Oh and glory be, the Welsh rugby team pulled out all the stops and bashed the Scottish into the ground. Yay!!

Positive!

Reading back through my recent blogs I've noticed a definite negative swing. Only yesterday I accused OH of being negative and bringing me down but you have to wonder if it's not the other way around. THat's something for me to ponder on. Anyway, I have decided that today's blog at least shall be more positive.

So, the good thing for today is I have booked my tickets for Crufts. A crowd of us from Greyhound Gap are going for two days and I'm leaving OH at home with the Lurchers. Thursday is dedicated to shopping and Friday will be for ogling the Hounds!

I've not been to Crufts before so I am really looking forward to it!

Deja Vu. Again

There are two recurring themes in my life at the moment.

The first is my glasses. Once again the frame seems to have adjusted itself and I can't see properly. Yet another trip to the optician this evening.

The second recurring theme is my central heating boiler. This one is becoming tedious now. We had three visits from our plumber before he finally threw in the towel. We've now had five, yes five, visits from the boiler manufacturers and despite changing just about every working part in it, it's still not working properly. There is just nothing consistent about it working, or not working, and now the manufacturers are starting to scratch their heads. One came out yesterday and said it must be "this" because it was the only thing that hadn't been changed. 2 hours after he left it stopped working again.

I'm just not quite sure where this saga is going to end.