The oldest man in the world

Henry Allingham, veteran of the first World War has, at the age of 113, now become the world's oldest man. He attributes his longevity to 'whisky, cigarettes and wild, wild women.' Maybe those who work in our Nanny state and concern themselves incessantly with nagging us not to drink or smoke will take note.
Meanwhile, for those of us ladies who would also like a long and vigorous life, I assume that the recipe for us would be 'whisky, cigarettes and wild, wild men.'
So where are they then?
The men, I mean - of course...

Note to Paddy

Dear Paddy,
Yes, I have noticed that you have been attempting a bit of sly digging in the corner of my new pebbly bit of the garden. That's why there is an upside down empty clay plantpot strategically placed there - to stop you.
But you didn't stop, did you?
Listen carefully, mutt. I shall say zees only once!
It is physically impossible for you to dig a deep enough hole to get under the fence and through to next door's garden. Long before you have got anywhere near completing the task, I shall have tied your paws together - permanently!
Secondly, even if you did manage it, do you really think the cats would stick around long enough for you to catch them?
Do it again, laddie, and you're a dead dog!
Got it? Good.
Now when I throw the frisbee, if you could bring yourself to run after it, pick it up and bring it back, I would be very impressed. You will find it much more enjoyable than grabbing it in your mouth and then getting one paw stuck in the hole as well.

Love from Jenny xx

Sky!!

Some months ago, we closed our Sky TV package and opted for BT Vision instead, which we are quite happy with. The suspicious ease with which we were able to close the Sky package has proved itself to be just that, suspicious. Since then we have had quite a few calls from Sky, usually asking to speak to the account holder (Keith) about 'your Sky account' which immediately makes me think we still owe them money, which is not the case, of course.
Recently the calls have become more frequent and usually during the day, which means that I answer the phone, if I am around. The problem here is that, although I tell the callers repeatedly that we don't want to subscribe to Sky again, they won't listen to me as I am not the 'account holder'. The fact that, as we have closed the account, there is no account holder as far as they are concerned seems to have passed them by.
Fast forward to Monday when I received a call from a female who insisted on talking over me, reading from her script as I gave my usual answer and asked her not to bother calling again.
"We'll ring again when Mr A is in," she assured me and cut the call.
Tuesday brought another call, this time from a male.
"Ah, I'm glad you've called," I said, "I would like to speak to your supervisor."
He assured me that there was no supervisor present. I decided to ignore his blatant lie and launched into my attack anyway, telling him about Monday's call.
"I object most strongly to someone talking over me when I am trying to explain something," I said, talking over him as he tried to explain to me that it was a question of 'data protection' which dictated that they had to speak to the account holder.
"Well, if it happens again, I shall put in a formal complaint," I said.
"We'll ring this evening when Mr A is in," he said and rang off.
So last night, true to their word, Sky rang again and this time spoke to Keith who told them in no uncertain terms that we do not wish to subscribe to Sky again and not to ring us any more.
We sat back, confident in the certainty that that was the last we would hear from Sky....
This morning, the phone rang, after Keith had gone out of course, which meant that I answered it. Someone wanted to speak to Keith. Who? Sky, of course.
"What? Sky again??" I exploded and launched into a resume of all the recent calls.
"I can only apologise," said the voice at the other end when I finally drew breath. "It has been put down as a 'return call'," and he rang off before I could say another word.
Well, you have to give them marks for not giving up.

Busy!

Not busy with clients, unfortunately. There seems to be a dearth of them at the moment, so I've turned my attention to the garden and done this.
Lots of digging and carrying heavy bags of pebbles - all good exercise.

Our day out

It's been ages since we last took off to roam around north Wales, so on Sunday, we did just that, with Paddy for company this time. You will see from the photos that he had a great time, although he didn't quite cotton on to Keith's attempts to encourage him to dig in the sand, Presumably in his mind, digging is confined to trying to extract cats from the other side of the garden fence. He loved running into the sea and retrieving sticks, which he never does on dry land and was very good off the lead, for the first time since we got him...

Well, he was till he spotted another dog further up the beach and charged off to make his presence felt, completely oblivious to calls to return immediately.

The other dog's owners were not impressed!