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.
