Motorway driving

This is getting to be a bit of a habit.
I feel rather like an American on a tour of Europe - "If it's Thursday, it must be Venice." Only in my case, "If it's Thursday, I must be en route for Bristol again." The novelty of bombing up and down between North Wales and Bristol is, I must confess, beginning to pall now. Last week, I drove back with a nail in my rear, nearside tyre, although I didn't realise that until it went into the garage yesterday to be looked at.
This week, I drove down in the company of idiots. There were the usual ones who are sure the road belongs to them and can't understand why anyone should have the temerity to be in front of them and then there was 'Super-Idiot'. This clown was so incensed that there was a car in front of him in the outside lane, that he switched straight from outside to inside lane, undertook a car in the middle lane and then shot back into the outside lane and continued his journey at 10,000 miles an hour.
However, you can bet your last month's salary that he will get away with his behaviour scot free while, in another place, some hapless motorist trundling along an urban road at two miles over the speed limit, will be speedgunned and ticketed before you can say Jack Robinson.
(Who is he, anyway?)

Sponsors required please

OK, I know I have been silent for some time but I've been busy - OK??

However, Elder Daughter's partner, Mark, and his friend are planning to take part in The Mongolian Rally.

"On Saturday 18th July 2009, around 500 teams will set forth from the historic Goodwood Circuit in Chichester. Their goal is to reach Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia, some 10,000 km away. With no support crews, no set route & in cars that struggle with the weekly shopping trip, this is the Mongol Rally 2009.
Young and foolish, yes, maybe, but it is for a good cause, the Christina Noble Foundation, which raises money to help children in Vietnam and Mongolia.

Click on the links to find out more about it and to sponsor Mark and Adrian, just click here or on the link on my sidebar.

Every little helps...

Off again

Dad had a hip replacement last month. Because he had had osteomyelitis as a young man, the NHS consultant could not guarrantee that the operation wouldn't interfere with the area of bone lower down where the osteomyelitis had been, so Dad decided that, in that case, he couldn't go ahead with it. He was recorded as 'having refused treatment'.
That was six years ago. Fast forward to this year, when the hip was giving him far more trouble and he decided to see another consultant privately. This time, the risk was assessed as being extremely slight and so he went ahead and had it done privately and all went well. He was fully expecting to be out digging the garden by now (well, maybe not quite yet) but, as he couldn't go home to an empty house for the recovery period, he went to stay with my sister, where, within two hours, he had fallen and was taken back to hospital for a further week. Luckily, the joint was fine but he needed the clips replacing in the wound. Last week I went to stay with him for a few days and then, when I needed to come back home, he went to my sister's again, where, within a few hours, he was feeling ill with the beginnings of a cold, which could have been a chest infection. (You see a pattern here?)
As it turned out, it was only a cold, so tomorrow, I am off to Bristol again so that he can spend a few more days at home. I have managed to book my clients into Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, so I can only stay until Sunday again, but at least it means that he gets to spend a few days of the week in his own house, which is what he wants, and soon, with a bit of luck, he will be out in the garden, although maybe not digging it - not yet, anyway.
You can't keep a good man down!
And Paddy? Yes, he'll be staying here with Keith again for more male bonding, but hopefully, not more strangling.

A close shave

I'm down in Bristol visiting Dad for a few days and Paddy has stayed at home with Keith. There could be a bit of male bonding going on there! Yesterday afternoon I rang Keith to see how things were and he had just been out on a call to a motorist who was having key problems. So far, so good. He had taken Paddy with him on the passenger seat, using the special clip to attach him to the seat belt, but by his collar instead of the accompanying harness. After a while, he noticed that it was getting a bit warm in the van, so he wound down the window to give Paddy some air.
Just as he was finishing the job, he looked up to see said dog hanging helplessly by his collar, having tried the Great Escape but failing to realise that he was still attached at the other end! Luckily, it had only just happened and he was able to rescue the silly mutt and no harm was done.
However, had Paddy been a cat, he would definitely have used up one of his nine lives.
You see! You can't leave 'em alone for five minutes!

Alyn Waters Country Park

I am ashamed to say that, despite having lived in this area for six years, I have never ventured into Alyn Waters Country Park , which is only two miles away - until today, that is, when I decided to take Paddy there for his walk for a change of scenery. No camera with me today, I'm afraid, but I will definitely go back. The sun was peeping out and making a brave effort to shine, Paddy had lots of interesting scents to investigate and we had a very pleasant, relaxing walk.

But I'm not going to take the risk of expressing the hope that the worst of winter is over; no, that would be tempting fate.... but it would be nice to think that Spring is finally just around the corner.

The Great Escape

It had to happen sooner or later.
Paddy's daily routine is as follows:
A walk with me in the morning, followed by cat duty, which involves staring fixedly through the window and, on spotting the Enemy, frantically pawing at the window, alternating with running agitatedly round the room and back to the window, all the time moaning plaintively. (Barks are few and far between and blessedly low in volume.)
At the approach of dusk, it is clocking off time and the rest of the evening is spent in a comatose state until bedtime. When in this state, a cat could come and sit on his head and he would barely notice...possibly.
This afternoon, the prowling and agitation became too annoying, so I opened the living room door to banish him to the hall to cool down. Unfortunately, Keith was working in his van and had a lead plugged into the hall socket and the front door had blown open.
The people who live opposite us, had they been at home, would have been entertained by the sight of a dog hurtling through said door at the speed of light in close pursuit of a very surprised black and white cat, whose thought bubble, had it been visible, would have read something along the lines of "Oh, s**t! He's OFF the lead this time!"
As it happened, the chase only lead to the garden next door and both cat and Paddy effortlessly scaled the five foot high side gate into their back garden. Keith went to politely ask the neighbour if he could please retrieve our dog, while I streaked through our house into our back garden in the hope that Paddy would find his way back that way.
I don't know why I thought he would manage to get himself over the six foot garden fence, even if he wanted to, but he did. Neatly avoiding me, he shot back through our house to do a repeat performance. Luckily, Keith was standing in his way and managed to grab him, leaving a bemused neighbour wondering if the last couple of minutes had really happened.
The best bit was glancing out of the kitchen window a couple of minutes later and seeing the neighbour's large ginger cat perched half way up a tree and glaring furiously into our garden.

A new duck?

On one of our recent walks, Paddy and I spotted a couple of ducks in among the mallards on the lake. Paddy wasn't very interested as they weren't cats, but I was curious to know what they were.

Prolonged investigation did not solve the problem until a friend suggested that they were probably " male mallard variant plumage probably caused by crossing with escaped domesticated mallard breed; this variant seems to crop up everywhere spasmodically, probably a recessive gene that exhibits in phenotype every few generations. "

So that's that, then. Pity really, as I was getting quite excited at the thought of being the discoverer of a new species and having it named after me. "Jenny's Duck" - has a certain ring to it, don't you think?