Somehow last night I managed not to organise getting my diary on to Facebook.
I wrote it and got it online, but either through technical lack of wizardry or just plain simpletondom, did not upload it to the glitzy world of social media.
If you are one of the people who just find it on Google you will have missed the small fuss that some Facebook users made, and thus the superbly funny post that my friend Tim added, which made me laugh so much I have included it above.
It is supposed to be my excuse for not doing it, as composed by Tim, who remembers me from school.
I do recall I said this sometimes, especially in maths, although we didn’t have a dog then. Of course nobody believed it, it was considered to be a sort of speaking in metaphor, a euphemism for idleness.
I wouldn’t have dreamed of saying it in an English lesson…
Now I have got a dog I know that actually they are not interested in iPads or homework, their best things are people’s shoes. The last time we went away in the camper van I discovered that they had eaten the left flip flop out of both of Oliver’s pairs: and I had failed to notice and just packed up the two remaining ones, much to his surprise when he wanted a paddle.
At the farm the dogs like almost anything that we want to use. They slope off with screwdrivers and paintbrushes and bits of pipe, and once they have chewed them satisfactorily, they deposit them in their little dog nest at the side of the drive, which is where they store their treasures.
We look here first whenever we have lost anything useful, and every now and again Mark’s sister gets grumpy about her tidy million pound saleable drive being strewn with old rubber gloves and chewed up lids for things and shredded tissues: and puts everything in the dustbin. She does not say anything about this, which is restrained of her, but it always makes us feel horribly guilty about being messy, and worried about summary eviction, even though her dogs do it as well.
It was quite clear when we were at the farm today that the autumn is here.
We can smell it all the time now. The air is earthy and acid, and in Windermere it is heavy with the scent of the burnt sugar trees.
We have been warm in the sunshine at the farm all day, listening to the robins squeaking at each other, but a sharp chill descended within minutes of sunset, and when we got back home tonight we lit the fire, even though we were going to be out at work.
We had a little worry then because we have not yet got enough wood for this winter. We have been doing things to the camper van and not harvesting or storing timber.
We must do this very soon now, because time has run out. We have got a very little put away, but if we don’t organise our lives soon it is going to be a hard winter. Number Two Daughter rang today and said that it is snowing in Canada.
We will have to get on with it in the next couple of weeks. Once October is here we will need the fire lit all the time, and it is not very far off now. I am wearing my extra-warm sheepskin boots now, the winter ones, not the summer ones. It is cold.
We lit our own little fire in the camper van today. Pictured below is the lovely new oil burner that we bought in Blackpool. I think it is splendid, and it filled the camper van with the scent of roses.
I am going to go now and make sure that I get the Facebook bit right.
If I don’t you could always look it up on Google.
