A load of bull

We have our friend Victoria visiting from NZ staying with us.

So I take her for a simple early morning walk on the Longshaw Estate (National Trust property), it's all lovely lovely as it always is. No one around for most of the walk, until we encounter a woman with two greyhounds. We stop, we exchange pleasantries, we sniff (mainly the dogs) we expect to continue our walk, but no. Woman has anxieties related to the bloody great bull hanging out a little further up the track. I bravely say it should be fine, having no actual knowledge of bull behavior, I may have been talking bull. She decides to walk with us  thinking it should be ok as we also have a greyhound???? Can't quite understand the logic myself, can bulls count? "Two greyhounds bad, three, oh that's ok, I'll just continue to eat grass." We all hide behind Victoria (dogs included) whilst we pass the bull without incident. He doesn't even give us a sideways glance, I guess because no-one was wearing a black cape or had a red blanket. Or was it the magic number of hounds. What would woman have done if we owned a whippet? Too small? A poodle? Too curley?

We saw a squirrel on the way back to the car. Victoria said she was satisfied with having seen some native wildlife. Actually I wasn't sure if she meant squirrel or hound owner.


Later we went to Chatsworth. Chatters was lovely, a walk round the house, a good look at vases made of Blue John, a local stone from Castleton. Victoria was a little confused. She thought Blue John was surely a cheese. What is this place - a blue cheese-eating community with intelligent dog-counting bulls?

Bullocks

Guess who likes bananas in our house?

I came down in the morning to make coffee and found Tia, the girl kitten in the fruit bowl, actually in the fruit bowl chewing on the end of a banana. I always thought cats were not keen on fruit and vegetables. We obviously own the exception. Mind you, the dog also likes bananas and I think that's weird.

On the health side, we are cooking with less salt these days. We did have a little pot of salt on the windowsill, but the kitten's kindly knocked it over, spilt it all over the sink area and cooker, and rolled the pot into an unreachable area at the back of the cooker. How thoughtful. Who's idea was it to get kittens? Stupid.

A moving tail

The more perceptive of you will have noticed that there were kittens in the photo with Chess. Yes kittens. Little bundles of joy. And yes, kittens - plural. A colleague forwarded an article about the Chesterfield RSPCA Kitten Krazy weekend. Being suckers for a sob story, 60 kittens needing new homes in this case, off we go to Chesterfield. Two lesbians with a child must be the stuff of dreams for an RSPCA volunteer. They clocked us coming, had us filling out a form, bundled Maisie into the puppy run where the kittens were stashed, all before I'd done the central locking on the car. When they saw we both worked we were, rather too quickly in my opinion, persuaded to take two kittens ("of course you will want two kittens if you work")

So, we move into the house, take delivery of our treasured possessions, and moments later we collect the kittens, Tia and Weka. They think all their birthdays have come at once, so many places to get lost, so many cupboards to make a dash for, so many curtains, sofas, legs to climb. TOP TIP if you put tin foil on things, cats don't like the feel. So  - the area where all the TV, computer, dvd cables have tended to collect, we covered in tin foil. Kittens hear the noise and think "ooh great, tin foil, jump jump". The kittens don't know that particular tip obviously.

The dog appears to be tolerating these annoying little critters so far. He does get a little excited when they are dashing around playing their kitten games. I'm not sure if he's thinking "How cute, can I join in?" or "Tasty!"

A moving tale

Well, the much-anticipated move has happened. We are now officially residents of Calver. We have had mostly sunshine and good fortune with our move. Minimal breakages, only minor back problems, and have emptied around 80 percent of our boxes. Surprisingly we have had very few "what on earth did we bring this for?" moments. We have had "where's ---?!? I really need it. Oh, yes - we gave it away!"

We have beds to sleep on, a washing machine to wash stuff, a fridge to keep our food fresh - and it's only a short walk to the fridge. Yes - a short walk. Outside, to the garage. We had forgotten how large our fridge is - almost the size of the box room. So large, it has to live in the garage for now and, until we rebuild the house around it, that is where it will stay! Not much of an issue at the moment, with it being summer. When it gets cold and dark it may be a problem. When it's cold and dark, however, we can hang milk out of the window in a bag student-style. That would be in keeping with my born-again just left home status.