Lost in duvet

I have finally changed my bed from the divan box bed that I’ve had for as long as I can remember, to a king size wooden one.

The delivery from Dreams finally came yesterday and I had been advised at the point of sale that the bed would need minimal assembly. This turned out to equate to complete assembly required and the assembly notes indicated that this would take an hour. Now I am a competent person and I know my way round my tool box, but it took the best part of three hours to put the damn thing together.

Still, the difference from a double bed to a king size bed is immense. I swear that this morning it took ten minutes to find my way from the centre of the bed to the edge so that I could get up.

The new mattress is the firmest one I could find. I laid (and/or flomped) on most of the mattresses in the show room and ended up going back to the first one suggested by the somewhat young salesman. I tell you, it was sheer luxury and for once, I am looking forward to going to sleep tonight, as I suspect is the dog who is up there asleep right now.

Teenage kicks

Well, I very nearly donated the dog to the Blue Cross animal shelter on Friday night.

Obviously I was out all day on Friday, so I arranged for my dog walker to come in and take the dog out for a couple of hours, which she did around midday. I then got back later afternoon and immediately took the dog out again for an hour or so. After a couple of good long walks she is usually tired and needs a good sleep.

I decided I’d have a takeaway pizza for my tea, seeing as I’d had a busy day and I couldn’t be bothered to cook. So I popped out to order a pizza and have a sneaky pint whilst it was being cooked. I was only out of the house for half an hour or so.

This is what I came back to -

Something must have scared her, because she had dug through the plasterboard down to the bricks! Judging from the scratch marks, she was really going for it. I was so angry, she knew she was in big trouble and all the puppy dog eyes in the world couldn’t help her out.

Normally she loves eating my pizza crusts, so as punishment she got to sit there and watch me eat them all myself. I felt bad, but hopefully not as bad as she felt.

The hole is now half plastered, I am having to do it bit by bit to make sure it doesn’t fall out or crack in the future.

The beginners guide to (bohemian) dogging

Here is the Perpetual Spiral guide to dogging -

1. You don’t know who you might meet as it can be pot luck who is there, so make sure you are clean and well presented.
2. If you are lucky you could be there quite a long time, so best take a drink to keep yourself hydrated.
3. Always take a toy or two with you, they can turn a boring time into an exciting time.
4. The larger the car, the easier getting in and out is - this is very useful at the start and the end of the dogging activity.
5. Where possible, you should endeavour to remember the names of people you meet.

Now that I have the attention of you all, I am of course talking about walking my dog, rather than the more salubrious kind of dogging. So those of you who are dirty perverts can go stand at the back for the rest of the post and think about how you should cleanse your dirty, warped mind.

I have discovered so many places to take the dog walking and as a consequence so many people and other dogs that it is an if I have a whole new social circle. We have places to go for short walks, medium length walks, huge walks, watery walks, hilly walks, you name it.

Last week I bought the best dog present ever, a box of 60 tennis balls off Ebay. Recently she has really got into chasing after a ball and we were losing a fair few (one time I did not realise how far I could fling a ball and promptly flung it into the middle of a river, I got a sad look for that one). I reasoned that from the pet shop it was expensive to keep buying them in packs of three, so 60 for twenty quid was a bargain indeed. One week later we are down to 56 with the River Thames having claimed a couple more at the weekend.

My driveway has become a collecting area for sticks, last night I counted four of them sat there by the back door. Quite often a stick will get picked up, taken on a walk and brought right back home again. I hope by November to have collected enough for a bonfire on the 5th!

Shenanigans, shopping and Sebring

Yesterday the dog and I had a lazy day which involved not much working and to be honest not much laziness either. We went off to meet a friend and his dog and went for a very long walk. By the time we reached the welcoming confines of the pub, we’d covered about eight miles in total. We wandered through fields and forests, over streams, through streams, up hills, down hills, over grass and occasionally on tarmac too.

The dog discovered that she liked to chase pheasants and that she was too loud and slow to catch a deer. I realised that even after seven miles, when I was feeling like I couldn’t walk any more, the dog just kept running and running. I am convinced that she will never walk anywhere off the lead! Walking with another dog means she runs harder and faster anyway, with two dogs together they almost self exercise.

Lunch in the pub was delicious. A couple of pints of 6X accompanied with a scrumptious fish pie was just what I needed. It was the first time the dog has been inside a pub and she was very well behaved, especially as she was being fed chips dipped in fish pie. We finally got home about 3.30pm and she collapsed on the sofa and proceeded to snore loudly for several hours, before getting up going upstairs and doing the same on my bed.

All in all it was a much better way to spend a Friday than sat in front of a laptop and drinking far too much coffee.

This morning I had the misfortune to have to go to a supermarket. I needed some essential supplies, namely some beer and some biscuits, along with some vegetables for my tea tonight. The place was rammed with people who were walking round slowly, having conversations with people in the middle of an aisle or simply leaving their trolley in everybody’s way whilst they went to pick up something they forgot. I was in and out in 15 minutes, but saw enough to remind myself why I do not go to a supermarket on a weekend.

The beer was needed for the 12 hours of Sebring, for today is not only the start of the F1 season (boring), but the sports car racing season (very exciting).

Finally, the long winter is over and the racing season has started again.