Stuff

When I started this blog back in February 2011, Ellie wasn’t even one year old. Now she’s seven – and much much easier to look after. She’s pretty obedient and can manage with one hour’s walking a day rather than two, so long as she can spend the rest of her time in the garden, which is something of a relief for my poor old legs.

Ellie this morning

Ellie 6 years ago

     

She only has one vice (and in my experience all dogs have one): barking. She barks at large vehicles, especially 4x4s and especially if they’re towing a trailer. It must be her farming ancestry. And she barks at the sun and the moon because she thinks they’re hot-air balloons of which she is absolutely terrified.

    Recently we had her clipped, as is the fashion, ready for the hot weather. (What hot weather?) She did keep her magnificent tail however – which you can just see in the photograph. We discovered that under all that fur was quite a thin dog so I’ve upped her rations. She still looks quite thin.

Back in January 2015 I blogged that my mother had been taken ill. Ever since then her health deteriorated and she finally died in February this year aged 89. In the last month or so we have been trying to clear her house ready for sale – or at least my brothers and sisters who live close by have been trying to clear it. Frog and I made the four-hour journey from Devon to the house in Kent in a large van and spent a couple of days loading it with stuff to take away.

    If you’ve ever done it, you will know that clearing away the remnants of someone’s life is a brutal experience. All one can think is that the person concerned does not need all this stuff any more and that they have gone on to higher things.

    All this stuff of course, some of which I’ve passed on to a charity shop but some of which I’m keeping, has meant sorting out a lot of the stuff we have ourselves in order to make space for it. I’ve always been a sorter-outer but Frog, who has always been a hoarder, has turned into a sorter-outer too and has begun to tackle his barn of a shed, a double garage, his music room and everywhere else in the house and garden where his stuff has accumulated around obstructions like debris in a river – outside the shed and garage, outside the back door, the spare room, the loft, the kitchen table and all available corners, shelves and floor space.

    As you can imagine, it’s fairly chaotic.

Outside the back door - Frog stuff

 

In October 2014 I mentioned that I’d taken over as editor of our local magazine. Being editor was a fascinating experience and I’m glad I was able to do something for the community. I learnt lots, both emotionally and technically. In April this year however I gave it up. I wanted to get back to my own writing and I couldn’t take the magazine any further without drastic changes to its organisation which I didn’t have the strength to do.

My penultimate magazine - with one of my own photographs on the front!

 

So, as you can see it’s all change here. And hopefully this blog will help me make sense of it all and take full advantage of all the opportunities now coming my way.

It’s quite exciting really.

PS Monica - welcome! Sorry I've not been in touch. As you can see from the above, circumstances took over. Also, my email programme crashed and I lost all my addresses. So do please email me.