Oh, My Days!

 I know, thought I. When Nell arrives, wouldn’t it be lovely to blog every day about her adventures?! Wouldn’t it be lovely to record for all posterity her puppy journey, marking the milestones, the joys, the hiccups and the (hopefully) forward progress.  And here I am, four days later and thinking, well THAT was a mad idea, wasn’t it?  Here she is, asleep. Meaning I can grab a few minutes to write this… Raising a puppy is like raising a baby. My long-dormant Mum’n’Baby skills have been hauled out of storage and, given my youngest child is 35 years old this week, the skills are somewhat rusty and suffering with the passing of three and a half decades. However, unlike my baby raising days, this time I am unencumbered by having to go to work AND I know that puppyhood vanishes far quicker than childhood, so as long as I remember this, all will be well.  Nell has settled in way better than I expected. Thus far, she is getting used to toileting outside, the piddle pads I ...

  Here she is! After a car journey lasting almost an hour and a half, we arrived safely home suffering only two farts and a tiny bit of sick which narrowly avoided going in my ear. Nell sat on either my lap or my shoulder the whole way. She whined only for a couple of minutes after we set off and after that was generally calm, panting just a bit and having the sickie moment only after we came off the smoothness of the motorway and started on the winding country lane roads home, which, quite frankly, make me feel nauseous and I am a seasoned traveller.  The afternoon has been filled with video conferences with Puppy Sister Heather, Puppy Gran aka my Mum and First Adventures in a Garden. There has been much playing with new toys, chewing cardboard, peeing on the dining room rug and kitchen floor, pooing on the dining room rug, and practice barking at a flashing toy. (The dining room rug has been cleaned, rolled up and put away until toilet training has been achieved. I don’t wan...

 ‘You know the inks you use for your lino printing?’ said I to Himself Lord Malarkey. ‘Are they safe to use on human skin?’ ‘I don’t know,’ respondeth His Malarkeyship. ‘Why do you ask?’ ‘Well,’ spake I (I don’t know why I’ve gone all ye olde Englishe - just seems right when discussing printing inks, know what I mean?) ‘I was scooting around ye website of the College of Psychic Studies and mine eye was caughteth by an article about palmistry. And ye gentleman who was doing a demonstration used a roller and ink to take a palm print because you get a better view of the lines from a print than you do looking at them with one’s bare and wonky eyes.’  Immediately, and despite the fact I was up to my armpits cooking Sunday lunch, Andy was purloining one of my baking trays and a wodge of kitchen roll in order to test out the palm printing ink hypothesis. ‘I’ll do my palm print,’ said he, ‘as you are rather busy at the moment.’  ‘There’s no rush,’ said I.  ‘There is,’ said A...

 Excitement levels are ramping up chez Damson Cottage, because it is now EXACTLY one week until ‘Nell Day’ when we shall travel to Derbyshire to spring this little pup from her prison… I know, it’s not a prison. And I also know she spends a lot of time romping around outside the prison. We received a video this week of Nell and her siblings having a very boisterous puppy playtime! She’s not hard done by at all. No, this is a puppy crate and puppy crates are a VERY important part of training a baby dog into good, sociable habits. And giving them a safe space to sleep because puppies need a lot of sleep and sometimes, like toddlers, they don’t realise this. But look at that little face! Isn’t that little face saying, ‘Let me out! Let me get at the World!!’?  I’ve been watching loads of videos about crate training, and one in particular made me snort with laughter. It’s a dog training bloke from Essex (accent: think slightly less Cockney, but only slightly) and he was saying that...

 My daily Tarot card pull this morning was ‘The Tower.’ It’s the 16th card of the Major Arcana and, along with ‘The Devil’, ‘Death’, the Eight, Nine and Ten of Swords and the Nine and Ten of Wands, it tends to make people recoil and shudder, to come over all doom and gloom when it appears in a reading.  Maybe you can see what I mean? These are the various representations from my five Tarot decks. Lots of destruction, figures falling to the ground, fire, thunder bolts and lightning, very, very frightening me, Galileo Galileo, Galileo Figaro magnificooooo…oops, sorry - went a bit Queen Bohemian Rhapsody there… It fascinates me how the meaning of a Tarot card can be presented according to the different decks. And this means that interpretations can vary, albeit ever so slightly, according to the deck designer’s intentions. For example, the original Ryder Waite Smith deck: The Tower itself has been struck and is on fire, but the structure is mainly intact. Is the Tower set on an i...