The dog house

Rightly or wrongly we acquired a new dog at the weekend. After our beloved Tilly died in the winter last year it has taken me a long time to think I could enter into relationship with another dog, though we talked about it for some time.

Our new dog Alto is a beagle puppy; so, highly intelligent and crazy. Not necessarily a good combination! I am surprised how anxious I have been that he is OK through the night (Yes a he...so he could have been mor aotly called Counter Tenor ...but this doesn't really trip off the tongue, so we decided that he is a male alto instead!)

Fun days ahead. watch this space for The Adventures of Alto

Should just mention

For those of you who know her, I need to mention that we had a death in the family this week.
Tilly died on Monday night. She had not been well for a couple of weeks and just didn't seem to come good.
She does appear to have died peacefully.
She was a lovely dog, gentle and quiet. And has given us such pleasure
Today they tried to persuade me to get another dog...but it is too soon.

Waving not drowning

The current heat wave (see here)has everyone here in SA gathered around the TV weather every evening, only to feel a wave of deflation pass over them when the week long forecast is shown and gives a range of temperatures from 37-40.

This has now gone on for 8 days and we have a full week (at least) ahead of us. While I have blogged before about how this is not something out of the blue, but at least within the range of our South Australian experience (remember those long February-March school days back in the 60s, those hot old Uni orientation weeks in the un-airconditioned St Mark's College, and at least one very hot week at Goolwa when we used to go down to the beach at the dead of night because it was the only cool place) nevertheless it is a bit of a worry.

I feel as though the  struggle with the garden at Port Elliot is at least as significant as the advance of the Kalahari...will we simply have desert there in 5 years. I don't think so, maybe there was always going to be a stuggle to creat garden on a sand dune! I have realised in the last few weeks that the native bushland parts of that garden are actually looking quite good. And, oh, the smell of eucalyptus and native bushland when the temperature soars! What else might we expect?

It would be nice for this to end soon, we took a quarter off the front lawn by covering it with gravel on Saturday....should have done it a long time ago, Tilly takes it in her stride but it wears her down. And each day you meet at least two people who have not slept well.

It is a heat wave. But weare waving not drowning.

The eremitical

I went down to Port Elliot by myself yesterday, bein annoyed that I couldn't go down on Thursday night.

It was so beautiful, I thought our little house could be called The Hermitage, though I don't think the other family members are quite as keen on becoming Hermits as Tilly, the dog, and I might be.

I had three swims on three different beaches, Boomer (pictured) Bassham's and of course this morning at Horseshoe Bay.

I was pretty cross about having to come back!

It's a bit like dying and having to go back to earth to fix up your mistakes!!

The first law of hols

With holidays being imminent the first law of holidays came into play. And that is that the annual unblocking of the plumbing is demanding to be done. With a day of fiddly things to be done the system has backed up and needs to be whizzed with the snakey thing.
No doubt the second law will also be evident: (the plumber being called Murphy this is hardly surprising)....the plumber will no doubt be on holiday himself.
These laws actually came into play yesterday. The certificate of vaccination for Tilly, necessary for her to get into the kennel, fell off the notice board into a spill of water and became unreadable. When I rang our friendly vet to get a replacement...she was indeed on holidays. Hopefully she done been return today.

Maudlin, magdalen, mawdlin'

Can't help but feel that my recent entries have been a little maudlin.
I am feeling faint rushes of panic about whether or not everything has been done for Christmas, the end of the year, going away in January, preparations for study that has to be done in January so I can have 6 weeks off in May-June (for which the ticket is now booked).
I have attended one discussion with some colleagues about ongoing concerns about work conditions and changed work circumstances, lack of consultation and what on earth can be done about it. (precious little seemingly). We are required to sign a series of documents the basic thrust of which I agree with but some specific details of which seem positively Orwellian ( what a prescient genius that man was...see here for an eclectic Wikipedian collection ). We are required to give consent to information being collected which we don't even know exists, to that information being shared, even though we don't know what it is, where it came from or whether it is accurate. On top of that we indemnify (so it would seem) absolutely everyone so that if process abuse (or emotional and / or psychological abuse) transpires then no one is to blame other than ourselves!! It would make a good novel, I can think of a good title 2084 but someone told me that something like that has already been taken. What about Kafka meets George? If for a moment I knew enough about either then I would be so moved.
In the meantime (maudlin coming up) I am trying to coalesce a good Christmas poem, so lots of phraselets are buzzing around unrelatedly in my head, "Swoop birds flicking from tree to bush".
And this morning as I was reflecting on Luke 1:39-35 (When Mary meets Elizabeth ) I was sitting in the garden and witnessed "When Maggy meets Tilly"---and it seemed to echo. The magpie came and picked at the dog's bowl and they seemed to be at peace, and to delight in each other's company. You see quite nice, but all so maudlin.

Needy

I guess the difference between dogs and cats is that ultimately dogs are very needy.
Our pet pooch is a quiet and affectionate animal and likes attention. Of course in this warmer weather you need to make sure that there is plenty of water as inevitably the older dog tends to get stressed pretty quickly.
This morning she had run out of water so I filled both her bowls as soon as I got up. She was glad of the relief.
Then a dilemma for her, because while she was drinking I stroked her back.
What should she do? She was very thirsty but here was I giving her affection.
Despite the fact that we are told that it is thirst which most strongly demands our attention, she gave into the need for affection.
So the need for affection would seem to be the strongest motivator. A lot like humans really!!