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...

My inner sheep-dog is troubled. By troubled I mean unsettled, discombobulated and partaking of a personal worry-fest. Am I the only human to possess an inner sheep-dog? Surely not. Sheep dog - the keen dog that rounds up its little flock, coaxes it into a safe pen, then guards it fiercely. 'Over protective' possibly springs to mind but wouldn't be strictly accurate - this sheep-dog is happy to let it's lambs stray, but worries if they wander too far, or into activities that the sheep-dog may not consider 100% safe. I suspect most mothers are sheep-dogs. Or do you need to be both mother and in possession of an over-active imagination? Currently, this sheep-dog's concern is that snow, plus slopes, plus planks attached to feet, equals potential hazard. Or many, many, many potential hazards. Skiing like sailing has been spoilt for me by having children. Instinct tells me that I have a duty to get to the end of the day without breaking anything or drownin...

Autumn - season of Halloween, Guy Fawkes and bonfires.So essentially a couple of months devoted to burning things. When having a garden bonfire, there are a few rules one should observe - never light one before the farmer has harvested the crop on the other side of the fence avoid days when the wind would blow the smoke into the neighbours gardens or the road never turn your back on it and only burn things that were once growing. Leaves for example ... Then there are the ten things to consider that if considered and acted upon make having a bonfire easy - 1. Don't embark upon bonfire building without friends. And a bench. Not for burning! For resting on. I can't remember when I last had time to sit in the garden, nor when I last wanted to sit in the garden and the bench wasn't covered in bird droppings. 2. The more friends, the merrier. 3. Wear a polo-neck jumper or a scarf. Because if you do the sparks can't fl...

Little things - the things that don't really matter, the things we can and do live without, the things we stumble upon and notice only when we're not too busy, the things that may not exist except in our imagination but that if we could capture and hold them would make our lives better - these are the little things I would wish for intelligent grass (Yes! Getting off to an improbable start.I know. But stick with me, the probability of veering close to reality improves with the other little things below. For now lets get back to this one ...) - grass that senses when it is growing at the edge of a flower bed, aligns itself neatly in the horizontal plane and never creeps vertically down the precisely cut lawn edge and would baulk at the idea of throwing runners out onto the pristine soil between the flowers.( Hmmm ... if only it were pristine.) bottled kisses - I'm not talking about the full mouth kiss of lovers but the familial peck on the cheek between parent and c...

A mess is only a mess to the person who is bothered by it. If another person is not bothered by it, then it is very likely that to them it is not a mess. Therein lies the difference between mothers and daughters and their attitudes towards the daughters' bedrooms. If you think this is a mess you are a mother. Or have mothering tendencies. Heaps of books! Heaps!!!!!! Books are for stacking on shelves or reading And as for older girls - what is it with them and bags? Bags that contain so little - an empty water bottle; the labels taken off new clothes; a crumpled magazine and only ever one sock.These bags are never binned. They're a scented reminder of the shopping experience, scattered in flocks across the bedroom floor. I moved into Littlest's room with my own bags to gather rubbish and paper. And rubbish and paper. And rubbish and ... several hours later, had filled the boot of the car. Just in time for the recycling centre to close. Grrr! Any...