A post of many things

[bunn]

I keep vaguely thinking 'I should do a post about that' and not doing it. So to get back in the swing I shall just do a bulleted list of Things in no order. 

• Today we went to Lawrenny Quay, which is a lovely place some distance up the Cleddau river, looking out onto the resoundingly named Black Mixen Pool. There's a nice cafe, but rather a lot of signs of all kinds — some of them helpful signs about crab sandwiches and toilets, but also so very many 'don't do this!' signs. We watched a man very determinedly attempting to make a verge flatter using a road roller.  It was a fair battle, but I think the verge won.


• Wally the Tenby Walrus has reportedly taken off to Cornwall, and was seen some distance off Padstow. I imagine the Tenby tourist industry is weeping, but at least the pubs are open again so they can weep into their beer. 


• In a desperate attempt to stifle some of the rather ugly concrete driveway here, I have covered it with a sedum carpet, the kind they sell for green roofs. So far this seems to be working pretty well. 


• This garden, or 'concrete and tarmac pad' as you might call it, is very much the opposite of my Cornwall garden. It has practically no soil, is very sunny and extremely windy! 

• I've also bought some enormous recycled plastic planters and have planted some young tamerisk and philadelphus bushes across the drive. I would have preferred stone planters, but this was the best combination of size, economy, and environmental friendliness I could manage. It also gives me something to attach the Theo-fencing to. Theo has no great desire to leave us forever, but he does like to explore, which I am trying to discourage.  His recall is improving, but he has his moments. 


• Still no working boiler or hot water.  We have electric showers, which are better than nothing, but Pp is sadly missing a bath. 


• Have been fighting BT about our broadband connection which kept dropping. We don't get internet from BT, but from Zen, but the local loop belongs to BT, and so Zen chivvied them repeatedly into sending people to fix it.  The engineers came in ones, and then in twos, and finally, last week, mobhanded with many vans and a cherrypicker, led commandingly by the One Competent Man of BT Pembs, whose name is Martin. He completely replaced the entire line into the house from the nearest telegraph pole, reasoning that something was knackered inside the house, and this was the only way to be sure.  We really hope that this has fixed the linedrops, because apparently Martin was having literal nightmares about our internet connection by the time he arrived with the cherrypicker, and also it was quite annoying for us to have the line dropping all the time. 


• Had a *nightmare* walk the other week with the hounds.
     — went to a quiet beach for a peaceful walk,
     — discovered when both hounds were off the lead that there was a stray sheep there too.
    — Hounds ended up driving sheep into water,
    — I had to take skirt off,  fish them out, tie them to a tree,
    — go fish the sheep out (wet sheep are heavy, I can't tell you. And they smell.)
    — let go of the sheep once on sand and run and catch Theo who had eaten his lead and was coming to 'help',
    — reattach Theo,
    — attempt to usher sheep to safe place against strong opposition from sheep, which had apparently enjoyed being waterlogged and kept trying to go back into the sea.
   — let go of sheep to rescue Rosie who had wrapped herself in her lead and was screaming and about to break all her legs
   — reattach Theo again since he had eaten a second lead (luckily I had 4)
   — take both dogs back to car, put in car, return to sea, fish sheep out again, get sheep standing and moving (and eating, though it did that on its own)
   — get sheep up cliff into wood well away from water.
    — go seek help for sheep (still no skirt, I realised when I met an elderly hiker) No farms or sheep anywhere I could find.  Pembrokeshire apparently completely devoid of sheep except for this one vast damp apparently semiaquatic one with an accusing eye.
   — finally put skirt back on, drive home leaving sheep at least in a wood rather than the sea (but for how long??)
  — attempt to summon help for sheep from Pembrokeshire Lifestock person only to find I had failed to record the whole sheep eartag, only the second bit, which doesn't identify the owner. PLP said 'if it was walking and eating, it's probably OK' : hope she was right.  I did go back to look for the sheep the next morning and it wasn't there, but who knows if it had thrown itself off the cliff or not.
   — GAH. 


• Went to Devon, stayed with my mother, sorted out the final arrangements for Pp's dad's house, saw Pp's god-daughter and her parents, bought an apple tree which I managed to get back to Pembrokeshire with us in the car. I think the hounds enjoyed the trip. Pp definitely enjoyed access to a hot bath.  My Mum gave Theo a new blue fluffy crocodile, which he likes very much and insisted on carrying into the house himself when we got back.  Mum seems to have more or less got over her illness at the time when we moved, which is good news, though she is definitely more easily tired than she was, and not sleeping too well. But on the whole, for a person in her 80's could be worse.  


• Nenya and Gothmog are moulting. Pp got them a grooming glove thing which seems very good at removing the hair. 


• I picked up a statue of a sad old lady from a free listing on Facebook, and have given away two pairs of curtains and a pair of bar stools.  We weren't going to change the curtains, but for some reason all the curtains in this house are really difficult to open and close — all for different reasons. Some of them stuck on the curtain poles, other curtain poles weren't properly attached... anyway I gave up on them when one pulled a curtain pole down and almost slew a hound, and ordered new readymade ones. 


• I took Theo for an off lead evening beach walk (on the beach by the house, a loooong way from even the most adventurous sheep) and he started barking his 'found! found! found!' bark, which means I am supposed to come and find the squirrel or whatever it is he has run to ground.  This time I couldnt' work out what he had found, until eventually I worked out that it was the Sea By Night, which is sparkly and moves about intriguingly.  Theo had cunningly trapped it in a narrow place between two large rocks, and I was expected to come and deal with it before it could escape. 


• This post is now long enough.