Doggone!

 Saturday. 6.30 a.m. It's really strange, waking up as usual, but not having a small dog to take out. Alfie has been such a central part of my life, and then to suddenly lose him is a shock.

We got Alfie after we went to Crufts. Carol was spontaneous, and we often did things on the spur of the moment. So, we got tickets and went. It was at the NEC near Birmingham (National Exhibition Centre). We watched some agility displays, and one of the dogs was a Yorkshire Terrier, so afterwards, Carol said, 'Shall we get a Yorkshire Terrier?' I said 'Okay.' So we got Alfie from a breeder near March in Cambridgeshire. We already had Poppy, who was a schitzu/Westie cross. Carol had her before we met in 2006. Then we had some rather difficult situations when Alfie was brought home and introduced to Poppy. All went fine for a day or two, but then Poppy was very clear on what Alfie's place was in the house. A lot of growling and 'I'm the boss' type behaviour. But it soon settled down. There were some really amusing situations, usually in the evening. The two dogs would charge around the house, through the kitchen, then the front hall and then into the lounge, and round and round, jumping on the sofa, over our legs if they were in the way. It was just crazy and funny.

Alfie was easy to house train. There really were no problems in that area. We took both dogs out for lots of walks. One of our favourite places was Rushmere Country Park, which is near Leighton Buzzard, a short journey south on the A5. We took Alfie with us during the Autumn and, walking along one of the paths, which were covered with leaves, Alfie got some caught in his coat. He kept stopping to pull them out with his mouth. It was hilarious. On another occasion, we took both dogs for a walk along the Grand Union Canal, which runs through Milton Keynes.. We let them off their leads, and they ran about. There was a low wall, which Alfie decided to jump over, and as a result, he landed in the canal! I had to drag him out, sopping wet, and he looked like a drowned rat!

Tuesday. 8.40 a.m. It's a bright and sunny morning. The digital thermometer currently reads 23ºc. 

I have been tidying the flat. I got around half of the floor mopped. It's a complex process, because I have to move furniture before I can get to some areas. I've had to move the sofa, so I can move my office chair so I can sweep and then mop under the desk. The television had to move to allow me to sweep and mop behind it. I have done the floor in front of the television. I will leave the other half of the room for another day.

11.45 a.m. I have now planted the remaining daffodil bulbs in the garden at Dexter House.

My writing continues. The sequence is not yet complete, but it is getting there.

All About Weather

It's bright and sunny this morning, but there's a cooling breeze. So, I begin my blog posts most days with a mention of the weather. I think most people, when they meet others, will almost always mention the weather. We do tend to spend a great deal of our time in this country discussing the weather. It does have an effect on our lives to a large extent. It gives the British their character. Stoical, long-suffering, uncomplaining. Is this true? A lot of British people moan constantly about the weather, as well as other things, such as politics, those in authority, but they make a living out of moaning, and do nothing much to try to change things. Admittedly you can't change the weather, you just have to 'grin and bear it,' whether it's too hot or too cold. We do have a habit of moaning on and on that it's far too cold in the winter or too hot in the summer, as we seemed to do during the recent heatwave. I have to admit it did get far too hot for me, but you can just keep out of the sun, or, when it's cold, put on more layers of clothes. If it's bright and sunny it does give you an up-lift to your mood, but if it's cold, due to snow and frost, or wet, due to rain, it can tend to make you miserable. I don't like it when the clocks move back in October, long dark days when it begins to get dark at around 4 o'clock in the afternoon. That long haul as we build up to Christmas, getting colder and even more dark doesn't help.

My father was a farmer and weather with important to him. There was a barometer on the wall in the corridor downstairs and he almost always consulted it at some stage of the day and he insisted on watching the television weather to find out how things would turn out, particularly during the corn harvest. If it rained it could effect the moisture content which was vital as to whether a particular batch of wheat, barley or oats was to be harvested. We didn't go on our annual holiday to Frinton-On-Sea until the first fortnight in September. I suppose school realised that most of the pupils were farmer's children and my father wouldn't go away until either the harvest was complete or unless the weather was fine and he could come with us to Frinton. It seems amazing looking back to think we must have missed two weeks of school, but that's what we did.

We've been out this morning. Carol had seen an advertisement in a magazine for a shop in Leighton Buzzard. They sell crafting materials. I'm not sure whether they have a website, but most likely they do. We drove there, via the A5 and then off towards Aylesbury along the by-pass. Some of the route is being resurfaced, the opposite lane. We got to Leighton Buzzard and parked in a Morrison's carpark but had no real idea where the shop was, but it's in a side-street off Lake Street, which means nothing to either of us. We visited the town a few years ago, but, frankly, the place has nothing much to recommend it. I think that time we parked near the theatre, but that's about all I remember. It's somewhat depressing, just looks rundown. Very bleak. Is it just me or is this how most towns look these days? Lots of boarded-up properties. No end of charity shops, pubs, banks and building societies. We eventually discovered the shop, which is down a rather seedy alleyway, which you wouldn't want to venture into at night. The shop is small and rather depressing and even more rundown than all the others. We have a browse and then return to Morrison's. Unfortunately you could buy everything they sold in that shop in large barn-like retail outlets such as Hobbycraft or on-line. We went into Morrison's and bought sandwiches, crisps and drinks to have for lunch. We were undecided where we should stop to eat our picnic, not really having an idea about the immediate vicinity. We drove away from the town towards Dunstable and the A5 because the alternative route back along the by-pass would be closed off due to the resurfacing. It seems incredible that such a recently opened stretch of road should require resurfacing. It is remarkably poorly constructed, no doubt as a way to cut costs when it was originally built only a few years ago. We reach the A5 at the roundabout we know well because we come this way when we visit Whipsnade, and go left and then meet a traffic jam. It creeps along at no more than walking pace. It goes on towards Hockliffe. No sign at all as to what caused the traffic hold-up. I imagined it might have been further roadworks, resurfacing perhaps, but absolutely nothing. Not even a road traffic accident. The jam just disappears and we move on at a higher speed. We decide to come off the A5 where the road meets a roundabout, to the left going off towards Stockgrove Park, which we visit on occasion with the dogs. But we go off right towards Woburn. There must be somewhere to stop nearby to have our improvised picnic. We drive through the deer park, doing the loop we usually do and come back through the park. We eventually find a rather pleasant bypass in the wooded area going back towards the A5. We sit in the car and eat our picnic and then return home via the A5 towards Milton Keynes.

Friday, later. The weather has changed considerably. The day started off sunny bit windy, but as I write this (at 6.55) it's been raining and we had a clap or two of thunder. It went quite dark as we were about to have our evening meal and I shut the curtains to keep the weather out.

Visit to Leighton Buzzard

Yesterday was yet another one of those days when the weather can't really make it's mind up. Warm one minute, with blazing sunshine, and then it clouds over and the rain starts. Or it just clouds over and it just goes really dull. We'd been shopping really early, and by late afternoon we had nothing else to do. It's really not like us to sit around indoors in the Summer. We're usually visiting somewhere or other, usually a National Trust property, which we did a few weeks ago when we went to Ickworth. We have recently renewed our membership, so we're ready for a further year of visits, and have planned to perhaps visit one more before Carol goes back to work in a little over a week's time and may visit Biddulph Grange in Staffordshire. It's not far if we go up the M1, and just past Stoke-On-Trent and wouldn't take much over 90 minutes or so.

We needed to get out of the house (our neighbour not making any sort of noise, but certainly likely to start up at any moment) so we decided to go to Leighton Buzzard, a short drive down the A5 towards Aylesbury and along the relatively-new by-pass. Not somewhere I'd immediately think of visiting, but we have a number of really interesting small market towns around Milton Keynes, such as Wolverton, Stony Stratford, Newport Pagnell and Olney, all with a lot of history and some quirky independent shops to browse in. It's one of those places you go past but there's no need to visiti as there really isn't a lot to go there for. We got to Leighton Buzzard and eventually parked near the library. I think I recall in the past doing a job working for Bedford Libraries, driving a library van, and I think we might have gone to this library. We walked into the centre of the town, and were surprised how run-down and uncared-for it looked. Particularly the branch of W.H. Smith which had tatty carpeting on the floor which was in desperate need of replacing and a really jumbled-up set of display shelves. Then into a bookshop. It was nearly 4.30 and the sun was shining, and the shopkeeper/owner was fixing posters on the windows. We have a habit of chatting to everyone we meet, if we can strike up a conversation, but she was just plain miserable and seemed far more interested in getting us out of the shop so she could shut the place up. We had intended having a coffee and went into the local branch of Costa's, but there were no free seats, so we bought cold drinks and went back to the carpark to leave for home. The place is really nice, but they could have made more effort to be more welcoming and it was really run down. A real shame and rather a disappointment, to say the least.

It took some time to get out of the town centre. Another town with a complex one-way system and poor signage didn't help us much.
We got onto the A5 heading back to Milton Keynes. It was by now really clouding over, and then the rain began, slowly at first, with a few drops, but by the time we reached the outskirts of Milton Keynes, the heavens opened and there was a deluge. Carol was driving, and she decided to pull into a layby. There was a really fast-flowing stream of water running along the side of the layby, and visability had been really poor as we drove along the road, which meant it was really hard seeing the road clearly and the windscreen wipers couldn't go fast enough to shift the falling water. After barely two minutes it stopped and we continued on our way, coming off the A5 near the football stadium. We noticed that the road was dry, which was a real surprise, considering that no more than a mile earlier it was flowing with water, so that rainstorm must have been incredibly local.