So what's a hangover, Mum?

A dog's life is just so confusing, sometimes:

First, Mum spent all of yesterday in the kitchen, spoiling perfectly good meat with revolting things like nasty smelling onions, and not giving me any treats. Then, strange lumpy houses appeared in the garden that smelt of people, somebody else's cat and food crumbs. And they were tied down with ropes that caught me unawares when I turned round and tripped me up - and when you have four legs, tripping can take on something of a cascade effect!

Later, just when it started to get interesting, because lots of new people arrived, they shut me away in my run! And as if that's not bad enough, it poured with rain, cracking great spears of light started hitting the ground and the sky made a terrible rumbling, crashing noise. I had to hide in the deepest, darkest corner of my kennel until someone came to rescue me.

But they gave me my dinner next, so I sort of forgave them.

Talking of dinner - this is where things started to get very strange indeed - you'd think after trying to cook their house, they'd know better, so what on earth possessed them to set light to the top of the cake, that Mum had just spent all day cooking? At least the one with the long legs managed to blow it out and no hoses were needed this time

Very strange then got even stranger: I get to sleep with my blankie in a cage. Its pretty comfortable (but the new sofas in the kitchen would probably be even better). However, sleeping outside would not be my thing - so you'll probably find this next bit hard to believe - but several of my family and their visitors apparently chose to sleep outside, last night. Then, they disturbed my doggy slumbers so many times with their torches, shrieking voices and giggles that I just had to let them know how unimpressed I was and bark for them to be a little quieter. But that woke Mum ...

Now, I'm just so very, very tired:

Mum seems fine this morning, though, and she's just made blue-berry pancakes. Maybe, if I sit very nicely and open my eyes all big and drool a bit, she might get the message ... the usual message!

But all the others are holding their heads in their hands and talking quieter than normal.

See - I knew sleeping outside wasn't a good idea!

Comments

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn&#

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Confetti for the brain. A little bit of history regarding a use for holes and a couple of quotes.

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