I can't stand the rain

Twelfth Night. The decorations, such as they are, come down today. I’m going to miss my little Christmas tree. It lights up a dark corner on the dank, miserable days.

It rained virtually the whole of yesterday. Chris did at least manage to get Jez out for a 20 minute walk (or, rather, a 20 minute Staffy stomp) round the block last night. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been out all day. As it was she slept virtually the whole day. We awoke to heavy rain again today, which persisted until just after lunch. Jez was going stir crazy: poor Max was getting beaten up every 10 minutes. So when the rain eased I grabbed my chance, wrapped myself up well in waterproof clothes, and set off over Upton Heath.

For the first half of our walk we didn’t see anyone. The Heath was sodden. Little streams had sprung up everywhere and were cascading across the paths, and the centre of the Heath was underwater. The dogs loved it, though, and so I put in an extra loop to give them a bit better run out. Then about three-quarters of the way into our walk we met Jess, a young and very lively black Labrador that we know. So the dogs ran round together until we bumped into Wilbur, another black Lab, when all four of them had a good game of chase. Poor old Wilbur kept getting well and truly beaten up by Jess and Jez though. But it’s worn them out, which is a good thing.

What I was not happy about was the fact that one of my expensive, Gore-Tex lined walking boots that I bought earlier in the summer has sprung a leak. I’ll have to dig out the receipt and see about taking them back to the shop.

Back onto the subject of the new TV: I wasn’t very happy with it last night. I had watched Best in Show late in the afternoon (I just love that film, especially the commentary of the dog show by Buck Laughlin and Trevor Beckwith), and was intending to catch up some programmes on BBC iPlayer in the evening while Chris watched the football. But the TV lost the internet content (although it still had the wi-fi connection) and couldn’t find it again. I suppose it’s possible it had something to do with Chris streaming Sky to my iPhone, but we have 16-17Mb actual broadband speed, so it should have coped. In the end I had to watch Indiana Jones and the Raider of the Lost Ark (again!).

I’ve been getting on with my reading of teenage fiction. The first book I read was ‘Underworld’ by Cathy Macphail. I have to say that at first I wasn’t very keen on it. It’s about a group of schoolchildren and their teacher who get trapped in some caves in Scotland which supposedly house a giant worm. The story was ok, but the dialogue and characterisation were not good. I was particularly annoyed by her continual use of the euphemisms ‘zonk’ and ‘zonking’. The least she could have done was go with the American ‘freaking’. I persisted though, and once I got into it found the story line quite gripping. I finished it this morning and am now reading Neil Gaiman’s Stardust. I have the film on DVD, but thought it would be nice to read the book. I also picked up a couple of the books on my reading list at Tesco yesterday as they were on one of their BOGOF offers. And then, I found that Kindle (which I have on the iPhone) are doing some books for £1, including one of the books I was looking for, so I bought a further 3 from there. I’ve certainly got a lot of reading to do.