Walking The Dog

Insomnia . We are all familiar with its after effects - that head-full-of-fog feeling; the fuzzy ringing in your ears and eyes puffily reminiscent of a myxematous rabbit; an all-body sensation of heaviness and of wading through treacle; a mouth that is disconnected from the brain; and a craving for caffeine and sugar, plus a cold shower, or snow settling on the face ... or pain - in fact, anything that might jolt you back into wakefulness. Wakefulness - a state of untrammelled alertness that exists only in the world of the childless, temporarily childless, empty nesters ... and those who don't share their home with Bertie Baggins. While I lay claim to the world's only fail-safe method for dealing comprehensively with sleepless nights in children - stop worrying about it (you'll miss those midnight sleepy cuddles one day and in sixteen years' time you'll be grateful just to know where your child is at 2am!") and simply wait for them to grow up - I profess th...

In life we learn to accept that there are some things that will never happen. And in the life of my family, one of those things is the getting of another puppy. Not while we have two dogs at home already. Not when the big boss thinks that two is a reckless surfeit of canine friends, agreed to only under the influence of a good bottle of red. Not even when puppies are this cute and Littlest " neeeeeeds" another one - But as the cliché goes 'never say never' unless the never refers to something that is either impossible, or that will absolutely never happen. And in the never happening camp are such activities as me paragliding; or base jumping; or doing a parachute jump; or scuba diving; or bungee jumping; or that old oxymoron of enjoying a hot air balloon ride . Risk averse as always, my inner sheep dog is wagging its tail and keeping all feet firmly on the ground. I don't think Littlest would understand if I suggested that there are three dogs ...

We all walk. I walk every day. I also lie. I don't walk every day, as in I don't take the dogs for a walk every day. Poor boys, in this season of tax returns and desperate seeking of extra work and working to pay the tax bill, they are the losers. Four-legged-friend was looking distinctly skinny in his hind legs, when I brushed his coat while he wolfed down his supper this evening (he tries to eat the brush if I take it near him at any other time, so meal times have become grooming times). Oddly, I lose out on the walking too, but this fails to have the same effect on my 'skinniness'... Anyway, we all walk. We walked on Christmas day - Littlest and I walked at the weekend - Slowly. Time to appreciate the trees. Time to encourage the smelly boys into the freezing water. Time for the sun to go down. Time to walk very, very slowly - Littlest's finger phone was engaged throughout in deep discussion with the zoo warden - da...