Three interesting days when I had no time at all to think about work. Hoorah!

On our way to the UKA show the van, or more precisely the van clutch, sort of packed up. Iain had to reverse with the caravan on the back uphill along a narrow road to make way for a large truck. There was the acrid smell of clutch going crazy and absolutely no oomph when accelerating. A friend's father very kindly came out and towed the caravan back to the store place for us, the van limped home with me driving it very carefully - it goes to be investigated tommorow - and I had the choice either to forego agility or drive the 1.5 hours each way in our Golf. On top of this shoulder problem for which I am having on-going physio since Easter weekend and fitting in two sessions of swimming per week I go and get a head cold so the sensible thing would be to stay at home. But the Golf is automatic (yay) and therefore easier on the shoulder and so armed with a packet of ibuprofen and olbas oil the dogs and I set off each day. Well apart from Sunday when I slept in and went up later - only making the Champ Gamblers for Maxi with two toy dogs to go.....Only wanted to train anyway.... I could write about the agility which was good on lots of levels and Nellie is looking fabulous but I won't. I really can't type much - already I can feel the effects of this little bit. Instead, here is a pic of Arch slumming it in the back seat of the Golf today. The other days he travelled on the passenger seat - in his crate bed no less. But with Iain coming along today he was relegated. Not only that but Nellie's crate took up the rest of the seat!! Bless him. At least he had a hot water bottle to make up for it.

Here are some very sweet pics of 'Auntie' Nellie with her new mate - Flops - a 12 week old j.r x spaniel something (from Dorset Dog rescue) owned by a friend - Nellie lets pups hang from her ears and jump on her nose. This little moppet thinks she's her new mom.

Lorna - I will do an EO update sometime soon :-) Thank you for asking! And thank you to everyone who said 'Well done' to Nellie and me. Starts to make it all seem more real.

Walk on Studland beach

So the National Trust is due to impose its summer shutdown on dogs off lead from today. Sunday, even with the prospect of rain - actually I love beaches in the wind and rain - was a great day to make the most of the beach until October. As it was I think we had the only two dry hours in the whole of Dorset (anywhere in the south??) for our time down there. For the record, I don't mind the restriction. On a busy hot day in summer it is the last place I'd want to take my dogs. Give me autumn, winter and spring down there anytime. Always take a ball and we love our games of football!!

And as you can see we had the whole length of the beach to ourselves for almost the whole time. Must have been the rain thing!

The Miracle of Seeds

..never fails to amaze me. Using a computer/sitting at a desk for too long is painful at present and I am using the time I can do it to get work essentials done. So here are the pictures to 'tell the story':

Even more incredible is the fact that this little plant I have nurtured in our kitchen and dining room will go on to produce lots of lovely green courgettes that we will eat. Food!

On becoming Pop........

I am probably quite dumb but it wasn't until fairly recently I realised that Nellie has been very carefully grooming me into a Pop substitute. I thought she was becoming Pop by way of her wanting to play sticks, chase 'shoe' and generally wanting to interact with me more on walks as opposed to coming back to me to check in but most often up ahead investigating the world. Pop would be the one who offered sticks, as did Henry. Nellie would try to get the sticks from Pop - and never succeed. Even the weekend before we had to let Pop go on the operating table she was quite clear sticks were hers. Nellie and Pop were close and I knew Nellie missed her but over this winter it has became clear to me she has been quietly and persistently shaping me to play with her like Pop used to on walks as well as the other play stuff we do. I find that quite sweet and touching. In her own little way she has been making me look forward. Archie meanwhile has discovered the joy of our bed which he has discovered gets the sun on the end of it in the middle of the day! Here he is snoozing on the quilting patch called 'The Log Cabin'. It is my favourite quilting pattern.

*************************************************************************************************************** I haven't had time or inclination to write here for a little while. Lots of things in my head but never a quiet enough space sat in front of the computer to sort them in. Always work pushing in and demanding attention when I wanted to write this. Had a sickness bug last month in the week of Crufts that meant I couldn't keep food in for almost a week. I lost weight!! Work has been even more stressful since the autumn - first two members of our faculty went off with stress. Then at Christmas we lost another one and then in the month before Easter, another one on top of the other three. Two of these are 'post holders' (ie people who co-ordinate KS3/4/5/Head of Fac) - and the repercussions of that have been adding extra strain to those of us left. Added to which we had an OFSTED two weeks before Easter when everyone is knackered and all the aforementioned staff are still unwell. Almost certainly the pressure of this hanging over the school has not helped the situation. I'd say 'You can imagine' but you probably can't. No offence but never in the 23 years I have been a teacher of 13-18 year olds has anyone ever said to me 'Oh you lucky thing I'd love your job'. Most shudder with horror. I told one of my Year 9 classes this once and they were outraged. Why don't people want to teach us? I asked them to think about why, and they went a bit quiet. Briefly. I wonder if I have come to the end of my teaching road after this long, I am pretty sure I do not want another year like this one has been. This is the first holiday this year I haven't felt ill or exhausted, although my neck and shoulder seized up last week necessitating a trip to the chiropractor, and it isn't over yet. I really fancy taking a different path but whatever I decide will not be an easy decision. *************************************************************************************************************** I escape with the dogs - walking mostly - also forcing my brain to switch off by doing little bits of fine tuning and tweaking with Nellie as we prepare for the season ahead. We have even managed a few lessons with Lesley to give me handling things to think about. I am looking forward to Easter Celebration having not competed regularly since Chippenham and only a couple of day things since then. Yes we went to the UKA finals early December four months ago. I do think Nellie and I are even more in tune now after a rather disjointed season last year and I think we will go from strength to strength this year. I actually feel quite excited about it all and I haven't felt that really since before Henry died. *************************************************************************************************************** I escape to the garden where the veg patch needs attention. The year charges forwards and it is too easy to be left behind so things must be done or we will have no home grown veg to eat. Iain has completed the compost bays, built me two more raised beds and rebuilt all the others with thick larch planks (oak was going to be silly money for so many beds) so now I have 10 in total, each 9ft by 3ft so that is quite a large area for veg (270 square feet!). I also have big whicker baskets for tomatoes (in the greenhouse) and another couple for assorted cut and come again salad leaves (Italian, French, Greek, rocket..)to go outside. At the moment I have leeks, runner beans, sugar snap peas and sweetpeas as seedlings coming up in empty loo roll tubes, and some winter salad leaves in the greenhouse that we have been able to eat for a little while. And outside: rows of radish, spring onion, other cut and come again lettuce, land cress and carrots are either seedlings now or just waiting to emerge. White onions and garlic are well on their way. Potatoes (two types) are in. Cabbage and kale will go into the greenhouse soon in coir pots, while courgette and squash all await being germinated later this month in the warmth of the kitchen before their progression to dining room window sill as seedlings, on to the green house and then, finally, the beds in June. There are raspberry canes in one corner and red currant bushes in another. Periodically my eyes rove over the asparagus bed eagerly waiting for the first signs that in this its fourth year there will be a plentiful supply.....Maybe even enough for soup? Have planted two more clematis down there too. There's now two Nelly-Moser (of course!), one Macropettelar type clematis, lupins and the honeysuckles I planted in the hedge along one side of the patch which are all getting going so, combined with the wisteria we inherited in that part of the garden and of course the sweetpeas, it should be productive, fragrant and full of colour down there all through the summer. It gives me a lot of pleasure and the bees seem to appreciate it! There are a few lovely pink tulips down there at the moment,

and some stunning red, as well as pale creamy, ones at the top of the garden. Combined with hyacinths, narcissi and other Spring flowers they are a welcome splash of colour that never fails to lift my mood especially when the sun is shining on them.

The pond - my trough pond - has given me another focus too. Apart from the Pygmae Rubra lily (not as rampant as the standard lilies, and ideal for small ponds) all the plants I have introduced are British natives. Giles the blacksmith was here this afternoon fixing bars from one arch, he'd made us last year, to another to encourage the witeria to make a bid for freedom between the two. He was amazed by the trough pond! I'd asked his opinion last summer about buying an antique galvanised trough and been warned off by him as the rust would leave holes or weaken the structure at the very least if it was shot blasted. I'd already dismissed the stone trough idea (way, way too expensive), and had to dismiss the antique galvanised idea too, so in the end I spent £120 inc delivery buying a modern one - 6ftx2ftx2ft - saved myself a huge sum of money and got a trough that should outlast me. These are old estate/farm worker cottages so a farm trough is not out of place I feel. The shine on the metal is yet to fade off but it will in time.

Filled with winter rain water caught in buckets off the thatch, and a good supply of oxygenating plants like hornwort, myriophyllum spicatum and water violet before the Spring weather began, it bubbled into an algae-rich broth as soon as the sun shone on it. I had created a sloping shallow end with rubble, bricks, pond socks, marginal plants (water forget me not, marsh marigold, bogbean and alisma plantago-aquatica) and gravel, and then introduced some frog spawn from a chap in the hamlet whose pond was pulsating with the sounds of mating frogs one day as I passed. Securing a promise from him that if he had a glut of spawn I could have some, I went off quite excited at the prospect of rearing some froglets. And so it came to pass that I walked back from his place one evening two weeks later with a wobbly cargo in a bucket of water and two curious dogs :-) Tipped into the pond they disappeared and I wondered, as the algae continued to brew, turning the water an even deeper soupy green, if that would be it for this year. But no - one fine day I spotted a couple of tadpoles and then within a couple of days there were masses.

Around 200 I estimate and the water has cleared so I can see them dozing on the bottom and in amongst the plants. They are doing an excellent job clearing the algae, so much so that I have begun to feed them goldfish food in case they run out of things to eat! I took another bucket to a deep clayey puddle on a nearby footpath, filled it with oozing mud and puddle water and chucked that in too. Now I have daphnia and the odd tiny black beetle. And I bought some ramshorn snails. Here are two next to a fossilised 'snail'!

The bogbean came with a jelly sac attached to it and today I spotted a tiny horn shaped snail on a flat stone so I hope I will see more of those as time passes. The water smells fresh and clean so I know the balance is right at the moment. Chris Baines 'How to create a Wildlife Garden' book has been my inspiration for years. I want to add frogbit and water soldier later in the season, which he would approve of I am sure. And yes, on the other side of the shallow area are ramps made of rocks and flat stone to enable the froglets to leave the pond when the time comes. I tested this out with a toad that is living somewhere nearby. He was out the other night so I scooped him up, popped him onto the rock in the corner and then waited for him to make his way down my 'frog/toad exit route' which he very easily did :-). *************************************************************************************************************** Nellie will come to find me as I am staring into the 2ft depth entirely absorbed by the life within. Politely curious initially (she too peers in to the depths )her expression grows more puzzled, then becomes resigned, like Roger in 'My Family and Other Animals'. She lies nearby waiting patiently for me to stare at whatever it is that so intrigues me, in the hope that maybe we will get on with something far more exciting very soon! She is funny. *************************************************************************************************************** The pond is helping other wildlife too - the early bees drink from it as are black birds and robins. Talking of birds, the dogs will be bald soon - as quickly as I can groom them and put the hair in tufts into the hedge, the birds take it off in beak-fulls for nest lining. Today a swallow shot past my ear in the doorway of our north store. They are back!! ***************************************************************************************************************

The chickens chase after flies and bugs, eat all the fresh young leaves of the climbing rose in their part of the garden (only the leaves at the height they can jump into the air - my mother suggested I put weights on their ankles...tempting..) and ensure that Iain does not yet have to cut the lawn area they regard as theirs. Edna has made daring rushes over the fence into the top part of the garden only to face a prolonged spray from the hose. This deterrent has worked thus far but they have a short memory so the hose remains poised for another rebuttal any time soon...The veg patch has signs telling them to keep out but I forgot one for the top area! I fully expect the carrot seeds to grow in odd places after Tilly hopped into the veg patch and had a happy few moments digging where I'd planted some only the day before......My shriek probably frightened the neighbours and her too just a bit (hopefully - Tilly that is, not the neighbours!))

*************************************************************************************************************** Despite the heatwave, no swimming in the sea yet. I did paddle recently. Very, very briefly. But not briefly enough as my ankles had time to become numb in the few seconds they were immersed. Ouch. ****************************************************************************************************************

It is definitely Spring now here in Dorset despite the changing weather ( I am sure you feel quite differently about the Spring bit if you are reading this in Scotland!) and the bluebells promise to carpet all the copses, banks and woodland rides in our part of the world. They are so abundant their scent hangs in the air. Beautiful. **************************************************************************************************************** This last Friday to mark the end of a horrid term, we managed to get together with an old school friend and her husband. Jill and I had seen each other in riding lessons run by the truly scarey Miss Cloughs. When she sneezed all the horses in the stables stood to attention. Nobody messed with her. She'll be long gone now but she earned her bread and butter teaching kids like us how to sit in a saddle, rise in the trot and thought nothing of sending us off into the nearby country side on bonkers ponies. Anyway, I'd been at Gillingham School since First year (11) having had to pass the 11 plus exam to go there (I was the only girl in my year group at Primary to do this so I started at 'Big School' knowing no-one, apart from the five boys who had also passed. Not that they counted to me. It was an experience I suppose.) I was one of the tiniest of the year group! I remember standing in a bus queue in the old quad and being ooh-ed and ah-ed over by a bunch of clearly overly maternal Sixth form girls. 'Isn't she cute!' I heard them exclaim. 'I am NOT cute!' I growled back. They stepped smartly away clearly deciding I was better left to my own devices......Jill joined the school from Mere Middle as one of the tallest girls in the cohort and found herself sat behind me in Maths at the start of Third year (now called Year 9). 'I know you from Miss Cloughs', she announced and we became friends from that time on.

I took Nellie in for the first couple of hours and she did her usual charm offensive on everyone - bar staff, other customers, all comers. She doesn't seem to mind being ooh-ed and ah-ed over at all! Then it was Archie's turn and he got to snog the bar maid :-) **************************************************************************************************************** Lastly, 'The Artist'. We went to see it the evening after the OFSTED ended wondering if we were going to find it just a little bit odd but we were entranced. If you haven't seen it, do. You really should.....

“A poacher to his eyelids, as all the lurcher clan, follows silent as a shadow, and clever as a man"

Found this quotation recently (it comes from a poem entitled 'The New Anubis' by Patrick R. Chalmers, written around 1915 I believe):

'All along the moorland road a caravan there comes
Where the piping curlew whistles and the jacksnipe drums;

And a long lean dog
At a sling jig-jog
A poacher to his eyelids as are all the lurcher clan,
Follows silent as a shadow and as clever as a man'

This quotation, combined with a conversation I had with someone who used to come along to my training classes when they needed help with their dog, made me recall that I once jokingly sent a picture of Nellie to Lesley with a request for my money back. My reason? I had asked for a border collie pup and seemed to have a black and white 'lurcher' instead!! At five months old she looked far more like a long legged lurcher-type (some kind of sighthound crossed with a collie) than a pure bred collie and, while she is definitely a collie obviously, this person I met in the week noted, without any prompting from me, that she had a turn of speed and a running style reminiscent of a lurcher.

She certainly has long legs, lean athleticism, beautiful balance, power and ease of motion when she moves on the ground or through the air. If she were a model I think she'd be a cross between Kate Moss (for her lightness) and Cindy Crawford (for her lean, strong athleticism) and

both for their legs, cheekbones (her beautiful head) and beauty. I have lost track of the number of people whose heads she has turned everywhere we go - from tops of mountains to urban streets - collie people, non-collie people and even non-doggy people. She has charisma - she draws people to her. Her litter name wasn't 'Miss World' for nothing :-)

Her hunting instincts compound the lurcher impression for me. Though I am glad to say the recall and focus training I built up with her all through her pup hood and adolescence means that all I have to do if she sees or chases after a hare, deer, cat, squirrel or any exciting situation ....is ask her to Sit, or Down or Leave at a distance or just Recall. If I let her follow her instincts as I do sometimes with the occasional rabbit, pheasant or woodcock (on public footpaths!), it is a meal soon enough....

How else? Well apparently some suggest the word 'lurcher' comes from an old word for 'thief' - hence 'poacher'. She is a thief that's for sure! She regularly takes cooking implements from the sink and licks them clean. Pop would take things too but her tastes were more typical - once she had two prime slices of wildcaught salmon I had carefully put ready to go into the oven for our supper. I put my head out the door that was barely four yards away to tell Iain I was about to put the salmon in the oven and that it would be ten minutes, only to turn back to find Pop smacking her lips together with much relish and the foil that had contained our salmon lying on the floor at her feet....I had to laugh, her expression said it all really. We had an omelette instead! Another time I was going past the fruit bowl that was on a very old gateleg table we have - so it is a bit lower than modern tables -and I noticed that a bite had been taken out of a pear on the top of the fruit pile....Clearly she had sampled it, found it not to her taste and left it for one of us. And yes, of course I ate it. These episodes are making me laugh about her again as I write. Nellie however will have any kind of food from the kitchen worktop if we don't push it right to the very back. And I really do mean anything. Raw mushrooms, my banana, walnut and carrot cake topped with marscapone cheese, almost any kind of fruit or veg, even a whole courgette I'd picked from the garden.....Her tastes are very inclusive! I'm afraid I just laugh at her too when I find she has done it. She has the leg length and the dexterity (damn all those proprioception tricks I have taught her over the last 4.5 years :-) )to get to quite out of the way places on even the

worktop so we do have to think about this for anything edible. Both she and Henry would nick fresh eggs from the eglus given a chance. Arch? Well he is quite happy to share any spoils Nellie allows him to have....

Another lurcher habit? Creature comforts. They like any big bed with comfortable duvets and quilts (*tick*) and sofas with plump cushions or even a sheepskin (*tick*) and will stretch out over the whole expanse quite luxuriously given the chance (*tick*). Hmm. Can't say she prefers sleeping to 'doing things' - in that she is all collie. But if one is going to sleep one might as well be as comfortable as possible!

So yes, a 'poacher to her eyelids' then, gloriously long legs and a liking for our bed, and she already knows she is as clever as me, cleverer probably :-). Somehow somewhen a colliexsighthound must have got into the mix, but I still don't really want my money back :-)

Wedding bells and babies (not together though!)

Not sure if Samantha wore anything blue for her wedding but if she didn't the sky more than made up for it. What a beautiful day! In a serene little church on the Somerset Levels, my cousin Elizabeth's eldest daughter walked up the aisle, with her sister Amy as her Chief Bridesmaid, looking more beautiful than any bride should be allowed to look. Here are just a few pictures of the wonderful day Samantha and her new husband Jamie shared with us all on Saturday. We wish them the best of times and the happiest of times - at least most of the time :-)

And here are Samantha and Amy at our wedding reception back in 1993 aged 5 and 4 respectively. Iain and I had already married on the Island of Skye (I'll write more about that next year when we celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary!) but we also had a wedding reception a few weeks later in a lovely little pub just for family. Afterwards my mother put on a 'high tea' for everyone in her local village hall. We were quite broke back then paying 15% interest on a 100%

mortgage, it really was quite a tricky time for us financially. But the plus was we got to climb Skye mountains during our 'wedding week' and then it was lovely when Liz, and her husband Dave, came along to the reception meal with their girls dressed as our 'unofficial' bridesmaids. They and the girls came to stay a lot over the ensuing years and we went to them. We had some really happy times together doing really silly things like cycling on coast paths, rowing on lakes, running about on beaches and playing loud and disorderly board games!!! Now I have embarassed them both, back to Samantha's wedding...

Here are Samantha and Jamie having their 'first dance' in the evening. The wedding celebrations took place at Ashton Court house in Bristol. It is a long time since I have been there. I had forgotten how lovely it is as a setting up in the hills above Bristol. An added bonus for us was that the parkland surrounding the house is open to the public and is dog friendly so this made it possible to take Nellie and Arch for relaxed walks during the afternoon and evening. Being such a lovely day there were many people out and about with children, dogs, cycles and many just sitting and reading or strolling or playing ball games. Nellie and Arch love that kind of place too - meeting different people, children and dogs - so we all really enjoyed the vibe.

Can I apologise to Dave - father of the bride - who isn't in any of my pictures here....He is in some of my pictures but I must have had my phone turned upside down when I took them and they are upside down or sideways on the computer. 'Well just use the 'rotate clockwise or anti-clockwise' option' I hear you cry. Well yes, I have, and it doesn't work. Iain even took my pictures to work in a folder on a memory stick to try to find a program that will sort it, and he can't do it. So Dave, sorry.

On Sunday, we made our way to my brother and Clare's house to catch up with Al and Leo who were staying for the weekend and meeting their new baby brother Hugo for the first time since he was born ten days or so ago. I won't put a picture on as little Hugo hasn't changed much really - except he has quite a mop of hair now :-) He is very tiny and very, very sweet. Aw.

SATTF

Back in November I'd been looking without success for a production of 'King Lear' for the two Year 12 Literature groups I co-teach. I am teaching 'King Lear' to both so it seemed incredible luck when I found this production advertised in a copy of 'The Big Issue' I bought from Anna - one of the Issue sellers I stop and chat to in town when I am there..

Two minibuses booked, several staff including two who would be happy to drive the 'buses, and 28 students keen to go and I booked tickets, sorted out all the money, permission slips, Risk assessment forms completed, quadruple checked everything at intervals between then and yesterday morning. Last minute reshufflings yesterday when a student pulled out ill and the one reserve had to turn her day upside down (and her mother's too) in order to join us gave me something else to think about.

And then we were off.

I have seen many Shakespeare productions over the years - in London, Stratford and other cities as well as smaller productions. One memorable time years back was seeing Anthony Hopkins in 'Anthony and Cleopatra'. In our cheap as chips student base rate ticket seats 'up in the gods' of the London theatre we sweated buckets throughout the production and, afterwards, four of us stood in a relieved huddle outside at the end cooling off and breathing the night air. We had unknowingly stood next to the stage door where suddenly Anthony Hopkins appeared still wiping the stage make-up from his face. There was a stunned moment of silence on both sides - he clearly wasn't expecting anyone to have got out as soon as we had and we were doing a double take assessing whether it really was the man himself... Clutching our programmes we launched ourselves at him and he gracefully signed them for us, while telling us how hot it had beeen on stage and how he was grateful for the cool night air. Chipper little me, not at all awed by the presence of this great actor, piped up indignantly, 'Hmph, well if you think it was hot on stage, you should have tried being up in the gods where we were!' My companions' jaws dropped and Anthony Hopkins looked at me curiously before agreeing politely, finishing our autographs and heading off into the night. I still have that programme :-)

I have happy memories of dashing into London as a student to see many really good productions and Iain and I have taken ourselves off to Stratford to see the odd production in the past. I was determined that if I was going to take these students to see what would probably be their first experience of proper grown up theatre and almost certainly their first Shakespeare performance and spend so much of my own time organising and taking such a trip (I calculated about three days - in hours - of my own time for all the prep plus the trip itself) then it was going to have to be a good one.

Andrew Hilton is one of our best directors and the Tobacco Factory has a fabulous reputation nationally and internationally. With only around 250 seats and an intimate theatre-in-the-round arrangement, we were drawn in to the magic, power and intelligence of this play. My students were engrossed from start to finish - it got them and kept them transfixed from Act 1 scene 1 through to Act 5 scene 3. Even allowing for the fact Lear is my favourite Tragedy, this is my favourite production of any Shakespeare I have seen. It is the first time theatre has moved me to tears.

I really hope that such a vibrant, 'real' production sits in the students' memories and gives them a desire to see and experience more in the future.

If you recognise John Shrapnel who plays Lear it might be because you saw him play Julia Roberts' agent in 'Notting Hill' or one of his other film roles or maybe you have seen him in one of his many other theatre roles. He was perfect as Lear - bullish, proud, stubborn, fragile and humble.

We didn't see 'Lear' leave the theatre at the end, but we did see 'Cornwall', 'Albany' and we think 'Kent' too cycled off into the night....

Welcome to the world!

Little Hugo Michael arrived last night weighing in at 7lbs and 3 ounces - a new little brother for Alec and Leo, a new nephew for us and a new grandchild for my mum - and my dad!!

Alec will be pleased (as of last night he hadn't been told) as he was dreading a sister :-) He is 12 so this is to be expected and, besides, he knows a thing or two about brothers...

Mother and baby Hugo doing well. My brother Donald is bearing up well! This is Clare's first baby (she looks so serene!!) and of course Donald has Al and Leo from his first marriage.

Congratulations to Donald and Clare!!

A training in the ring day

Just a video clip from last Sunday:

I really wanted to go along to work on the ends of our contacts in a more hype-y environment, and arrived late on that basis knowing that jumping was up first. Anyway, got the chance to run this despite that and I am glad as not having chance to walk either course made me do this flowy one instead of the more handly route. Taking the 'through the gap start' from the harder course and putting it with the rest of the more straightforward course gave me an unforeseen opportunity to see how our other winter project (fine tuning our jumping skills) is shaping up. I am pleased with the results. She looks great.