Sickness and Celebrity!

Well last week was pretty much a complete write off. I had booked wednesday afternoon off as holiday as well as Thursday & Friday and the plan was my daughter came up on Thursday with my grandson to stay the weekend, going home on Monday. That was the plan anyway - on Tuesday morning I woke up feeling fine. 5 minutes later I wasn't feeling fine at all! I spent the next couple of days in the bathroom - need I say more? Tues & Wed were pretty ghastly and Thurs & Fri weren't much better, though by Friday afternoon at least I was able to get to the doctors for a certificate, which will enable me to rebook my holiday dates.

Pepsi and Max were as good as gold while I was incapacitated, it was as though they both new something wasn't right with me. Pepsi had seen me throwing up the first time, watched me with some interest and then retreated into the dining room and stayed there!

Sam came up with Kieran on Thursday as planned but I wasn't fit to do much with them until Friday evening. She has a new boyfriend and spent most of the time on the mobile, either talking or texting, which was a little frustrating as she would disappear out to the car for ages at a time! Apparently he is 41, which I think is a bit on the old side considering she is only 24! Ho hum! We shall see where it goes - if anywhere!

We have been having fun watching I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! for the last couple of weeks and have enjoyed the antics of the OAP's (Old Aggressive People) as they have been dubbed. We watched John Burton Races's 2 TV series when they were on and had dinner at his restaurant, the New Angel in Dartmouth, Devon as a special treat for my birthday a couple of years ago. It was very nice but very expensive!

I have also seen Janice Dickinson on America's Top Model and have been fascinated with her antics, she seems to veer from one extreme to the other, but seems rather lost now that all the other OAP's have left. The young ones seem determined to freeze her out. I have a feeling she may be next to go.

As for the big story - the Marc Bannerman/Cerys Matthews 'romance', I can't wait to see how that develops once she is out. He seems to have been getting some very bad press since he came out and is not what he seems at all. For one thing it turns out he is Irish, born in Dublin and apparently told the Eastenders producers he was Italian when he went for the part of Gianni. His now ex girlfriend has been telling the papers he beat her up and she had to put her arm through a glass window to stop him (seems a bit drastic to me!)and of course the requisite barmaid has put in an appearance & sold her story as well! Cerys comes across as very sweet and seems to have really fallen for him so I hope it doesn't turn into a disaster for her. I shall watch developments with interest!

Not a Good Start!

Today did not start well! Hubby left at 6.30am to get down to London, which meant I had to get a taxi to work for 8am, so rang & ordered one for 7.45. I'm downstairs getting the dogs their breakfast when the doorbell rings at 7.15. I'm wearing nothing but a pair of knickers (having figured its too early for the postman - not that I was expecting anything anyway) so have to scrabble to find something to wear in a hurry (cant go back up stairs as the front door is glass!) Find a pair of hubbys jog pants in the tumble dryer & a fleecy I've left on the sofa, so go to the door fairly presentable.

Open the front door & porch door (forgetting I've not closed the lounge door behind me) and lean out to shout over to the taxi driver that he's too early. This is the moment Pepsi, my west highland white terrier (Westie) decides to make a bolt for it and I see him dash past me, out the drive and disappear round the corner! Now on past experience I know he's not stopping but I go after him anyway. Not easy in slip on soft slippers! By the time I turn the corner into Middlemore Road, he's off & running and I can see him disappearing into the distance, but fortunately he's sticking to the pavement & not sidetracking into the gardens. By now I'm in a state of collapse as I have really over exerted myself and all I can do is stand and watch him. Fortunately by now the taxi driver has realised I'm not coming back & there must be a problem, so he drives after Pepsi and is able to catch up with him and brings him back to the house, drops him off & goes off on his next call.

All this means I have no time to wash my hair or put my make up on and just manage to get dressed before the taxi is back. So I arrive at work looking a right dogs dinner & feeling pretty much the same as well as being very much on the shaky side still. So Not a good start to the day!

Slide Show of Skibbereen

In September we went to Co.Cork in Ireland and visited Skibbereen, my ancestral home on my paternal side. My Grandfather was born there, although he moved to Dublin in later life. But my Great Grandparents and all those before them were Skibbereen people. My Great Grandfather Daniel Coughlan was a shoe & boot maker and had a shop on Bridge Street (no 25, now a gift shop) which can be seen in the slide show below. I was able to trace the family through the 1901 Census which listed many brothers & sisters of my grandfather of whom I was not aware, so that was exciting. Any one visiting Skibbereen should vist the Heritage Centre on Upper Bridge Street, which has an incredibly moving exhibition on the Great Famine. They will also try and find your ancestors in the 1901 census for you. Below is a slide show of some of the pics I took while in Skibbereen.

Another Update!

Just to bring anyone that's interested up to speed on what's been happening with our new house (Can't believe we'll have been here for 2 years in August!). We finished the bathroom & cloakroom OK - they look fantastic (I'll be posting some before & after photos soon). We've now got the hall, stairs & landing recarpeted & redecorated. We had to get someone in to do all the wallpapering, there was no way we could have done it ourselves! But it was money well spent and we're delighted with the result.

A lot of people prefer neutral colours such as creams, beiges or oatmeals, but not us. We've gone for Fireglow carpets in 3 of the bedrooms and down the stairs to the hall, The wallpaper has a white textured background in a sort of woven effect with a square & flower motif in the same colour as the carpet with gold highlights. If I'm honest we thought the motifs would be more spread out when we bought the wallpaper and it wasn't until it was actually on the wall we realised how much of them there is! But we like the overall effect which gives a lovely warm, cosy effect (We're really into Warm & Cosy - you can keep your cold bland minimimalist look!). Not to everyone's taste I know but we like it :-).

This year we are concentrating on the garden. Ian has really got the bit between his teeth and has been beavering away clearing out several of the old flower beds, which were badly in need of a makeover. I've planted petunias in the little stone wall along the patio which are starting to take off now I have defeated the slugs & snails (the torrential rain we've had lately has helped as well, although its been terrible for the rose bushes which are really looking beaten down and sad!). We have a new back fence and gate now as well so we can walk straight out into the riverside parkland behind us, which is great when we want to take the dogs for a walk. We have also started digging out the raised bed so we can put in a pond, which is proving to be a huge undertaking, particularly with the heavy clay soil we have here. But we are progressing nicely and hope to finish it when we have a week off in July so we can get the benefit of it for the rest of the summer. We have plans to include a waterfall & fountain with lights so it should be super - thats the hope & dream anyway.

Pepsi & Max are doing well. Pepsi just celebrated his 3rd birthday and had a nice cake with candles which he enjoyed. There have been no more escape scares thank goodness! The last one scared us so much we have got the garden as secure as is possible now with wire netting all round and hooked into the grou nd so he cant dig under it. We have given them the run of the garden and its great fun watching them charging up and down at breakneck speed or round and round the table & chairs. They can run the length of the garden, into the house, down the lounge & into the dining room, round the table & then back out to the top of the garden in what seems just a couple of seconds! Great fun!

Our New Web Pages

I can't believe its so long since I posted on here! I've had my trip to Ireland which was fantastic. I'll have to do a post on this alone. Spent Christmas & New Year in the caravan in Devon - that was fun! This is the caravan we bought on eBay, a two berth tourer about 10 yrs old but in great condition and a real bargain!We also spent a week in Wales in it. The dogs love going away in it, they always know when we start packing for a trip and get really excited.

This Blog seems to be getting less and less about the dogs and more about me, probably because, lets face it, all the dogs do mainly is eat, sleep and pee & poo! I don't know if its because they are getting older (Pepsi is now 3 and Max is not far behind) but they are getting into far less scrapes these days and are much less destructive than previously (I'm probably tempting fate here!). I've now got pages for them on YouTube and MySpace as well as an album of photos on Webshots (This has been getting between 500 & 600 hits a week!).

The links are
http://www.youtube.com/pepsiandmax
http://www.myspace.com/pepsiandmax
Click on the pic below to be taken to Webshots

by charmainezoe

Hope you take the time to have a look and enjoy seeing the videos and pictures of the boys that are now available on them.

I've also rediscovered PhotoBucket.com which I hadn't used for a couple of years and was very impressed with all the new bells & whistles. One of my interests on the internet is collecting graphics, particularly fractal art & glitter tags (I also collect 3D images), I have quite good collections built up now and have uploaded them all to PhotoBucket for storage and accessability. I have also been playing around with their slideshow & video creation facilities and have put together a very nice vid of some of the best fractal art I have collected, complete with music track.

Missing Dogs Scare!

Well we've just had an almighty scare! I'd been at work all day and Ian had gone down to Salisbury to pick up the kids who are staying for the weekend. The boys had been left out the back in their fenced off area on the patio. I got home at 5 o'clock and went straight out to see them, but there was no sign of either of them. The wire fence panels had been forced apart and there was a hole under the wire fencing in front of the hedge where they had obviously squeezed through into one of the adjoining gardens.

After knocking on the doors of all the houses that run along the side of our garden with no luck I traipsed the length of the road down to where the path to the river bends off and tracked round along the riverbank and into the big field behind us, where we have found Pepsi on a number of previous escape attempts, but this time there was no sign.

After checking out the opposite bank, again with no luck, I traipsed home in the rain. I had rung Ian by this stage on the mobile and let him know what had happened, but he was still a good 20 minutes away. As soon as I got home I tried finding the number for the local dog warden, but couldn't find anything in the telephone book and ended up calling Birmingham Council emergency hotline, where they very kindly gave me the number after I explained the situation. But on ringing all I got was a recorded message that the office was closed until Tuesday (as this was Friday and Monday was a bank holiday, this wasn't much help!). So then I rang the police in the hope someone may have reported them and again was given another number to ring for the local station. The officer made a note of the details but couldn't help any further. By this time Ian had arrived home with the kids, who he had told the grim news in the car.

What happened next must have been inspired. After searching through the telephone directory in desperation I came across a number for something called Petsearch and thinking I could at least report them missing rang the number given which was in Solihull, a town in the next county. Almost immediately an elderly ladies voice answered and on my giving the dogs details she told me to ring a Mrs Moore and gave me a number which I assumed was the contact for my area. She then said 'she's got them' it took a few seconds for what she had just said to sink in, but once it did all I could say was 'thank you, thank you' before bursting into tears of relief as I put down the phone. I had to hand the phone to Ian so he could ring the lady as I was in no fit state to talk to anyone. Anyway we found out that they were safe and well and about a mile away, having gone down the length of Middlemore Road and onto a busy crossing, turned left and carried on up the very busy West Heath Rd, where apparently Max seems to have been clipped by a car as they crossed the road. Fortunately he has shown no signs of any harm or damage since then and has certainly not lost his appetite! so we are assuming his bulk saved him and he probably just glanced off it.

It was with great relief that we went and fetched the two errant boys and of course a great fuss was made of them once we got them safely home with lots of treats and hugs. Needless to say we are having to rethink the garden security as I found Max climbing the fence on Sunday and only just managed to grab him as he reached the top and was about to launch himself off to the other side. At least we now know how he has been getting out!

Next!

Our present big project is redecorating & recarpeting the hall, stairs and landing. We have already ripped up the old carpet and underlay, and what a job that was! it was all so old the black rubber underlay (which obviously dated from the 70's) had in large part turned to dust and what hadn't was stuck to the floors and stairs! After getting all that cleared up and thrown out Ian has got on sanding down the door frames and skirtings (fortunately because we have replaced all the doors they only need painting!) and has now nearly finished the painting.

We have chosen a nice pale coloured wallpaper with a terracotta (more flame orange actually) motif to go with the carpets we are getting once all the decorating is finished. These will match the colour we have in all the main bedrooms so the floors wil be thesame throughout. After reviewing the situation a couple of weeks ago we made the decision there was no way we could do the wallpapering ourselves due to the high ceilings above the stairs and long drops required, so we have found a man to do it for us. I wanted him to just stick it up over the existing woodchip, seeing no problem in this method :-), but he has insisted on stripping the woodchip and then wallpapering. I foresee problems ahead because I dont think the condition of the walls is that good and I think this is going to cause more harm than good and turn into another expensive repair job! (like most things we have attempted in this house!). Anyway he starts next month after we get back from our trip to Ireland so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Talking of our trip to Ireland, we are off to County Cork, in the South West, taking the overnight ferry from Swansea to Cork and then driving west to Schull (pronounced Skull). We wanted to stay in the Skibbereen area as that's where my paternal family originated, but couldn't find any rental houses that would accept two dogs. We finally found a brand new detached house (which sleeps eight!) in Schull, a very pretty fishing village not far from Skibbereen. We are off in a couple of weeks and I can't wait.