Stylish!

Thank you Eileen over at Life’s Hard, Wine Helps for awarding me a Stylish Blogger Award. Almost forgot to do it, but life is getting back to normal so here goes with seven things about me with apologies if I’m repeating myself (I’m allowed to, I’m getting on a bit).

1. I have recently become allergic to codeine which is a pain (literally).

2. I am allergic to permanent hair dye.

3. I can swim a whole length of the pool holding my breath with my face in the water – what I cannot do is swim like a dolphin . There I was swimming up and down with Imogen sitting on my back and she said, “Come on, dolphin, leap out of the water.” Isn’t it wonderful when children are young enough to believe you can do anything?

4. I don’t like sentences that begin with “I”. A way around this I have to find.

5. My twin died in the womb and I have always felt as if a part of me is missing.

6. When I was a child coming home from school at lunchtime, I used to sometimes cadge a lift down the hill with the bread delivery man. It is very exciting riding in a van with neither seat nor door – well it is when you’re little and fearless. And I still remember the lovely smell in that van.

7. Which reminds me, at around the same time I had to be rescued by a lady at the top of that same hill from the attentions of an amorous golden retriever called Sandy (lovely, friendly dog, but on that occasion too friendly). She ushered me through her house and let me climb over her back fence so I could run home through the allotments.

That got me thinking, can you imagine those last two things happening these days?

And I’m going to be horribly lazy and instead of nominating fifteen blogs I am going to ask you to cast your gaze to the right (I think – I’m not good with left and right) and visit some of the very stylish blogs in my list if you haven’t already. And if your blog is there, consider yourself nominated! These seven "things" are a good prompt if you can't think of anything to blog about.

This morning as I walked down the lane (fields on the right, caravan park on the left) with the dogs, I suddenly realised I couldn’t see quite as much of Tilly as I should. She’d found a small hole at the base of the wire fence (well she’s spent the past ten years looking for one) and zipped through.

She went off rather purposefully and disappeared behind a caravan while I was leaping up and down in a panic – rather like a headless chicken really. Without the feathers.

She was heading in the direction of a caravan where a couple of bull terrier types had gone mad at her through the fence at the weekend. She’s a plucky little soul and stupid enough to think she can take anyone on and she’s got the memory of an elephant.

I was jumping up and down, calling her, panicking, wondering how the hell I could run to the park entrance and get there before she did, if she did – it was all going through my mind, roads, traffic, people, dogs – or if she went in another direction she’d end up on the marshes. All the camp exits are at least a ten minute run from where I was and I don’t do running.

Then I remembered my whistle and gave it a blast. Almost immediately she came trotting back to the hole in the fence. No sooner was she through it than she was running ahead down the lane looking for another. I put her on her lead then until we reached the fields where there are no fences for her to squeeze under, just dirty ditches to jump in.

She’s lost 200 gms so far on her diet and she seems to have a lot more energy. Whether it’s the food or the cooler weather or second childhood I don’t know.

Anyway I’ll be blinking glad when the other fields have been harvested and all those ear- and paw- invading grass seeds have gone so we can forget the lane and start going round the fields again.

My intention when I started blogging was to write about writing so I’ll make an effort to do that next time. If I can think of anything to write about. Writing Avoidance Techniques perhaps which is what I am indulging in right now.