Not about a dog

Well, there are other things in my life, not just cats and dogs, you know. No, really. There are.

Like getting a recycled container, once filled with industrial quantities of glucose and now intended for gathering and storing rainwater on our waterless plots, delivered to the allotment this morning, and paid for with the grant we applied for so very long ago. The delivery man deposited two of them at the gate. The gate that isn't wide enough to take them through....

Earlier examples had been removed easily from their metal frames with a screwdriver, making them lighter to manoeuvre over the fence, and people came prepared. But these two required an allan key, and no one had such a thing with them.

There was some scratching of heads, some larking about (by Elizabeth the Secretary, below), and the usual know-everything suspect telling us that we only needed a screwdriver until he saw for himself that we didn't.

Then The Blokes rose to the challenge. Those containers were manhandled through the trees, my ladder and a length of timber were propped against the fence, and some physical effort applied. Brains, brawn and teamwork won the day. I took photos, as no one was looking. The nettles and the spiny shrubs did their worst, but The Blokes didn't notice.

Then I went home, got changed, and (well, of course there has to be a doggy bit in this post!) drove out of town to meet Florence and Fran at the home of our mutual friends, to have lunch and introduce Florence to them.

Floss also got to meet their lovely Harvey, another Fran graduate. He and Fran were thrilled to see each other again.

Everything went rather well..... How nice when friends' dogs become friends too!

Of course, it was all another training opportunity for Flossie and I. Mostly, I learned how excruciating it is to have a lesson in front of friends who own a superbly-trained dog when my own dog clamps her rag toy firmly in her jaws and won't 'leave' it - for what seems like hours. She got it right in the end though. I suspect Fran thinks I'm a softie. I think I've just been trained by cats, and know that in a battle of wills, it's never me who wins....

But Flossie learned to sit quietly while we had our meal. Harvey set a good example. Praise was heaped; I burst my buttons with pride.

They posed for their photo, romped about in the garden, and then it was time to go home to Tosca - the worst car-traveller in the world, which, in case you wondered, is why she gets taken nowhere - and the cats. Only 6 more sleeps (during part of which time I will be in Somerset) till Flossie joins us. Only 6!!