Coco is no more

Our beautiful 14 year old maltese died this morning.
She was the cutest little doggy.
Well actually she wasn't always.
When Barney, her brother was alive, she used to bark at everything and snip at people.
I spent my life saying, "Oh my God, she's never bitten anyone before". Lying through my teeth.
When Barney carked it we thought we were left with the crap dog.  So wrong.
Obviously Barney was a bully and made Coco do all the bad things.
Finally she was out of Barney's shadow and she was top dog, sweet, no barking, only a very little nipping.
She was elitist and hated the cleaners and workmen.
When the cleaners were last here Mark attached her lead to an outside chair and as they were leaving she ran after them snarling with the chair in tow.  Pretty funny really she was only about 14" tall.
Don't think they will be that devastated about her demise.
We're ratshit.
Since Mark has been working from home, she has sat at his feet every day.  He's heartbroken.
She took up so much space and she was so little.
Here's to Coco

Somme where out there

Our adventure began with The Skipper and Gilligan in the front seat, (shades of the 50's and the Sunday drive). We're off to the Western Front. Doug did say "Well, we don't know where we are going but we're travelling at 110ks to get there". We only had to reverse about 3 times and once we went in the wrong direction for about an hour. There sure is a lot of french countryside.

We did manage to get ourselves locked inside an open field. It's easier than you think. It was actually the Commonwealth War Commission grave site. Some poor french yokel came with a key to let the boom gate up.  The next morning we managed to turn up too early and were locked out of everything. Typical.

Off to Brugge for lunch. Fabby. Unfortunately Helen and Mark had the chicken which really looked like churkey, could have been something that survived the Somme, but not in a good way.
We loved those Dutch words, found a place called St. Jan Waggelwater, and Diksmudde. that kept us giggling.

Back home that night. We were in three countries in one day. France - Belgium - France. Back home in time for our favourite TV show, QI. Thank god!

Hels and I are really over the garden full of flowers, apparently dead heading is de rigeur for gardeners. i.e. cut off flowers cause they grow so quickly and put in vases, the cutting then encourages new blooms, are you seeing where this is going?  So we have several vases full of dying flowers with smelly water and we have to keep on replacing them. I've solved it. I just cut off the flowers and put them straight into the compost heap. Saves all that emptying of yucky water and the compost heap looks really pretty.

Not annoying any of the locals today, well Hels and I are at home but Mark and Doug have gone out for their weekly Thursday lunch. 

Will keep you posted.

Up the Allies,

Memories from Honfleur

Bon jour,

Yesterday we went on a road trip to Etretat (we called it ere's-your-hat), it's on the coast and about 1 hour drive from home. Well it is unless Mark (now known as Gilligan) is directing. Hels looked up another map and after 2 hours we realised we were nearly in Belgium, oops. We all said how lovely the trip was and we would never have seen such lovely country side without that fabulous detour.  Yeah right! 

He then took us to the ugliest seaside town in Normandy, didn't think that was possible, Helen thought it was the mort hoik (dead spit - frenchy talk) of Blackpool. The photos lie. All the restaurants were closed and we got cheese on toast, very French, NOT. 

Finally arrived at Here's your hat, got lost again getting there, it was gorgeous. By this time we had been in the car for 5 hours, Helen was busting to go to the loo but they were too tricky to use so we came home. Two hours later she was first out of the car and bolted for the front door.

Another great day.

Mark is mugged by Bambi.

All my decorations are up.
Santa in a hotrod, skiing moose, really scary santa, evil angel, dog with the flapping ears, groovy singing santa, little snow man, the tree with 400 lights, reindeer, Bambi.
They are all sound activated, so when the phone rings, the toys all start singing and the dog goes berko.
Unfortunately, Mark tripped over the fairy lights, fell into the tree, knocked off the reindeers' antlers, landed on Bambi and bled all over the santa snow, my Christmas tree scene looks like a massacre, and he totally stuffed his face, which he sensibly used to land on.
I clocked him checking out his face in the mirror and heard something I never thought he would say "Gee, I hope my nose grows back".

Mum the dog whisperer

Mum and dad have always had unusual pets.
Katy, the beagle, nicked dad's false teeth from the glass jar by the bed. She ran around the house with them in her gob, flashing a very rakish smile.
Dad caught her, reefed them off her and put them straight back in his mouth. Yicky.
We had orange shag pile carpet in the rumpus room when we were growing up, our very intelligent dogs used to try to bury their bones in it. So, every time we had people over someone had to rake the carpet so guests wouldn't hurt their feet.
Benny and Harry, their last dogs used to go berko when the phone rang,  they'd jump up and bite you on the bottom when you answered it. So mum would try to out run the dogs to the phone, yelling and screaming "Ow, ow, stop it, stop it!"
Harry was a most unfortunate looking shitzu/maltese. His lower  jaw stuck out with one big tooth that shot up over his upper lip.  I thought it looked like he'd had a stroke. I used to worry about him in the rain, thought he might drown. He also refused to walk, so mum and dad's great idea was to carry him around the block.

Fred Astair

When Sam was a little fella he used to go around the house tap dancing.
I asked him, "Darling would you like some lessons?"
He replied "You mean I'm not doing it right?"

The French Invasion

Last year we spent a month in Honfleur France with our great friends, Doug and Helen, and had a few interesting moments.
This was our first experience with the locals.
Mark and Doug were walking to the bread shop early and they noticed a whole group of gypsies had moved in on the side of the street out the front of the house.
Three caravans, 12 horses (they pull the vans), 8 dogs and one cute little piggy. Only spotted him once, makes you wonder.  They did look a tad dodgy. 
So Helen rang the owners of the property and they asked us to tell the police just so they could keep an eye on things.

No prob! Mark and Doug dropped Helen and me into the local gendarmery and we told them the story.

We thought we were going great guns but the police were giggling and looked a bit confused. One actually had a coughing fit and left the room.

So Helen rang her friends who speak fluent French and they explained the situation, the police said we could go and thanked us. Actually it was more like they asked us to leave with shooing motions.

We were feeling very smug about out language skills. Mark picked us up and said 'there must be a story in that'  We explained that we had handled it perfectly and the police were lovely.  Then we related what we had said.

Unfortunately the word for horse in French is not hippo, Doug told us it was. Our pronounciation of gitan (gypsy) translated to 'smoking'. 

So we figured out what we basically said was there are 12 smoking hippos in our street, hauling 3 caravans.   Straight out of 'ello 'ello. Can you believe what the police must have thought?

Wait for further installments.