A little bit of this with a little bit of that

Ooh look, here's the digit I've extracted so I can blog again and prove to you all that I'm still alive. *waves finger* Don't worry, I've washed it.

It's funny, I've been very busy but not doing anything that's really noteworthy. Just the usual routine of dog walking and work and housekeeping and sleeping and dog walking and work ... you get the picture. I broke the mould slightly last weekend by taking Beattie down to my mother's house to clear out her derelict caravan so it could be dismantled and removed. She's never liked it - it was a fixture in the garden when she and Dad bought the house nearly 25 years ago. The previous owner used work on building sites and took the caravan as a home rather than use hotels; when he retired he parked it at the end of the garden and there it stayed. When it was sound it made a good play house for my nieces and nephews, and even a reasonable overflow when there were too many guests for the house. It was used as a dumping-ground for garden toys - the croquet set, tennis racquets, deckchairs and, for some reason, empty jamjars. Lots of empty jamjars. My brother and I sorted through piles of junk, had a bonfire with anything woodwormy or generally unwanted and filled his car with jars for recycling, and heaved a sigh of relief. Then we lifted the seats and found that the storage space beneath was also filled with jamjars. He screamed. The other task was to make a start emptying Mother's lofts for when she eventually moves house, so I came back with a car laden with things that I'd been storing there from our last home which was tiny and didn't have a loft. The charity shops have done well, and I've nearly got shot of it all - just a bit of eBaying to do and I'll be ready to start on the second loft.

I took Beattie with me partly because she's not happy being left behind, and partly in the hope that she could her PAT dog stuff and keep Mother occupied while Bro and I disposed of junk cherished belongings and made repairs to bits of the house, and I'd optimistically taken a dogbed with lovely blankets for her (Beattie, not Mother) to sleep in, despite knowing that she'd probably prefer to sleep on Granny's sofa. In the end, however, she decided neither was as good as the foot of my bed. Luckily the bed was against the wall, otherwise, it being a single, she'd have fallen off - and it's a high Victorian cast-iron bed. She's not a big dog, but she takes up a heck of a lot of room! We only had one minor quarrel (at 1.30am) when she decided that my feet were too fidgety (selfishly I kept on trying to restore the circulation to them) so obviously lying on my head would be better. Whenever we take her for an overnight stay we take a dogbed, and the only time she's used it was in the car to and from Cornwall when we were otherwise laden to the gunwales and it saved her some space. But not to sleep in. Oh no no no. Dog beds are for dogs, not for Beatties, and she's a Beattie. The best Beattie in the world, as it happens. But I still take a dogbed. Hope always triumphs over experience.

And today Ned and I put on our Dalmatian Welfare hats to collect a dog from his current owners and transport it to its new owners. A lovely dog - only three years old and now with his third family since he left his breeder. Let's hope he's now found his forever home.