No more ticks!

Autumn is here at last and I for one am well pleased. I was so tired of the flies and ticks not to mention coming back home sweating. The ticks attempted to attack my dog, not me! but I got bitten by midgies and other assorted flying insects quite often. We used an antic-tick collar to protect her and though we had to remove perhaps 3 ticks over the season, they proved to be dead on removal so the yellow  collar that smells so beautiful did its job. Nala is much more lively out on walks now the days are cooler, so she is benefitting too.

Last night the forecast said the temperature would drop to 2 degrees C, so I changed the beds over to duvets in anticipation of chilly weather but I don't think it really got that cold. Anything under 3 is likely to produce frost here in the north east. I was toasty warm, and I had been chilly the previous night, so it was a good decision regardless of temperature.

My new novel is progressing. 48,150 word count now but moving awfully slowly.

I have never known a story grow, word-count-wise, so slowly. I am beginning to doubt it will ever be finished!

The picture seemed suitably autumnal - it was taken last year about this time when we went to Gamrie in Aberdeenshire for a week. Nala is just about to fall asleep, dreaming no doubt of her runs along the beach chasing the seagulls.

It was an expensive struggle

 For the sum of £225 we are now proud owners of an Animal Health Certificate.

All ten pages of it, every page with multiple red stamps and signatures.

There are strict time limits. We are now on a timetable to get Perla into France before said document  becomes invalid. A similar time limit operates when we want to come home, too. A bit like Cinderella, really.

If we decided we wanted to come back home for a week and then return to France, we will have to ask our vet to complete another form and pay another £225. I thought  the AHC would be valid for at least a year, but no; one trip only, then we start all over again. 

If everything that leaves this country has to undergo similar formalities, then it is understandable why the roads around Folkstone are clogged with vehicles. and why people are so incensed about queues and waiting times Pre Brexit, it was all so simple, easy and and hassle-free. 

It is a staggering thought that it has actually cost more to get Perla to France than to get me, dh and the car to France. 

France and Brexit

My blog has recorded holidays in France over the last few years and judging by the visitor numbers to the site, many of you like reading about them. But now we are in a quandary, because if Brexit goes through, how will the travel rules change?

If we have to pay more to get there, I'm not  worried much; I'll save a bit harder before hand. But what if all the nice rules about taking your dog on holiday (or your cat, mouse, hedgehog, whatever) suddenly stop and go into reverse?

So far there is no information about this.
There's no way any pet lover would put their pet through weeks of quarantine just for a few weeks holiday. Certainly I would not. So if the worst comes to the worst scenario, we won't be going to France again. Tim doesn't know there is any problem, but he loves the open spaces there, jumping in and out of the stream, hurtling through the woods.

What will I miss? The absolute freedom to do as we wish. The sunshine, the wonderful walks, the sightings of deer, foxes, ducks, fish and the occasional farm dog. Oh, and those big, big cattle in the next field, with their delightful calves. The kites that fly over the valley, the mice that escape the farmer's hay cutting, the lizards that run up and down the walls and even the occasional snake.

Come to think of it we've seen several snakes over the years: a small black one dropped out of the bolly roof and vanished down the nearby drain; we found a similar one in the balcony room and watched it wiggle its way out onto the balcony proper and then vanish. A small adder  near the stream, wiggling through tree roots, another on the wall where the old pound wall used to be and one year a much bigger snake we never identified, but about four feet long; it came to rest  at the top of the bolly steps at the side of the house, and I took a picture of it over the bolly rail before it slid off across to where the walnut tree hung over the grassy bank.  Then there was the time Tim jumped on a snake in the ditch beside the road; the snake retaliated and bit Bill in the calf before scuttlinng away back into  the ditch. Bill, I am happy to say, suffered no ill effects and we assumed it was a grass snake. Then there was the time we found two of those very large, muscular cattle in the field with us, ambling up to the house...but that is a story for another day!

Bones in the field

Wednesday 12^th July

No editing for a couple of days. Not a deliberate decision, but it just did not happen. Other things have got in the way, that’s all. On Sunday we noticed that Tim kept disappearing into the hedge that borders the field side of the mill stream at every opportunity, and when I say disappeared, I really mean it. The “hedge” is taller than me and who knows how wide? To follow the small tunnels made by foxes and the like, I’d need a machete to slash through the bramble spikes and thorn bushes, and a plastic suit to prevent the poison ivy stings. Then there’s the stream in the middle – how deep? Deeper than wellies? Or just mud and sludge where the reeds have taken over?

A day or two before this I walked Tim around the wilderness corner of the garden near the bonfire. It is the other side of the hedge I have just described, and because two streams meet there it is often too wet and muddy to risk bogging the tractor down when the rest of the grass gets cut. So he stood there in the long grass like a pointer, staring into the far corner where the streams meet. Then he barked. Long and hard. He wouldn’t go near, so being me, discretion took over and we retreated.

So to Monday afternoon and our walk around the lake. Coming back to the house, Tim suddenly races off and does a right turn into the farmer’s field which is greening up nicely after the hay has been cut. Races alongside the hedge and then turns sharp left and out into the middle of the field,  flops down and all I can see is his head and the line of his back. I whistled. I called, he ignored me. Was he hurt, injured? Had a snake bitten him? (There are snakes. Tim disturbed one in a ditch once and it lashed out and bit Bill in the calf, but with no dire results.) Thinking an adder might have bitten him, or he’d broken his leg in a mouse hole, I set off across the field in my wellies.

Two hundred yards later, when I was within ten yards of him, he looked up, a bone dangling from his jaws. Then he leapt up and danced away from me, flopped down again. I followed him. Same thing repeated. Again and again, he ran ten yards and went back to eating. 

Furious calls of "Tim!" brought Bill, who approached from the other side but with the same result. What looked like the leg of a bird – duck, chicken, heron? – had evidently been killed, possibly inside the hedge and now foxes were carrying the bones onto the field to eat them. Tim was scooping up the still bloody left overs. We couldn’t catch him, and there's nothing more annoying than a normally obedient dog who comes when you call than a dog who wilfully disobeys you; we got so annoyed and frustrated we abandoned him and went back to the house. Within two minutes of our disappearing from view, I heard the tinkle tinkle of his name tags as he raced back across the field towards home.

We kept him on the lead for the rest of the day, because he has figured out that he can escape from the enclosed garden by going up the steps, along the garden strip above the pool and down and out through the gap at the other end. Then he’s free to explore all of France if he fancies it.

Squeals and shuttles

Another holiday over. It is the strangest thing but six weeks can begin to seem like normal life in a different location and then once back home, the whole thing might never have happened - those six weeks have gone in a flash. 

We take two days to travel back. France is a surprisingly big country and from Bergerac to Abbeville, our overnight stop, it is a long way. Particularly for Tim, who cried the whole of the first two hours of the journey. He wasn’t so bad for the rest of the day, but  on Le Shuttle sous le Manche everyone in the same carriage as us must have been ready to throttle him as he squealed and cried. He has a particularly shrill squeal he employs when he's distressed or displeased with something. Trouble is the cars are packed so tight that we couldn't get the rear door open to comfort him, and I couldn't reached him through the safety gate, which keeps him from rampaging over into the back seat, without being in severe danger of wrecking my back after ten minutes. He continued to cry at intervals all the way home and drove us very nearly demented. Will we go again? At this point, I’m not sure. The memory of him squealing is too raw. By next summer, who knows?

So now I'm home with a garden that's gone berserk, piles of washing  awaiting attention and a fridge that is empty. What to do first? Catch up on e-mails! See how my books are doing! Get back to my blog! We crashed the internet allowance in France - mostly because dh has a phone that constantly sends him BBC news updates, which gobbled up the allowance. Our fault!

Contrary to expectations I did not romp through a new romance, but spent a lot of time doing a final edit on Queen's Courier. I know, I've said this before and really the darn thing should be done, but I still find things to improve, or change or tweak. I have a few chapters of a new book started, so I didn't come back empty handed. I really must send QC to Amazon and be done with it. It is time to move on.

Kippers, anyone?

I'm pretty close to releasing another book and wondering how many checks I'm willing to do on the text to make sure it is perfect! Once the plunge has been taken, I'm going to concentrate on PR and Marketing my list because I have ignored the need for it for so long. Most of this year, in fact. I am writing a second draft of a sequel to Abduction of the Scots Queen, but that will take some time and I don't envisage publication until next year at the earliest.

I'm also investigating the possibility of a week's holiday in a cottage on the Northumbrian coast in the autumn. It seems such a long time since we came back from France, and change of scene would be nice. The weather can be really good in the autumn, too - bright, cheerful days full of colour. I have to check carefully  before I book, because not only do we want somewhere nicely furnished and not too Spartan, but we want to take Tim. Some places won't take dogs at all; some charge for them. Some say they must be comfortable on the lead because of livestock and wandering cats and hens which is fair enough but not for us. Tim still pulls like an express train on the lead. What we want is wide open spaces where he can run to his heart's content. Then there's the internet/wi-fi situation to consider, I'd want to take my laptop and keep up with writing and all its attendant responsibilities, and dh will want to be in contact with the off-spring in Australia plus his interests. So, the coast seems a better option for us than the countryside with all its cows and sheep, and I'm looking at the area around Craster and Embleton. Craster is famous for kippers and not far from Dunstanbrough Castle and there are some gorgeous beaches along the Heritage coast. Might be windy, but it certainly won't be crowded!

Tim and 10,000 steps

All the health pundits say we should walk 10,000 steps every day. Today we're only halfway through the day and Tim and I have walked  6,337.  By the end of the day we might have cracked it. Yesterday was 7,000 or so and the day before I forgot to wear the pedometer. One day I inadvertently set it to record kilometres rather than footsteps, and we did something like 6 k. It takes time to walk so many steps, but I have the time. Whether I have the stamina in this long hot summer of ours is another matter. I find I'm now thinking rather fondly of the autumn to come. Already the blackberries are ripening, and what a bumper crop we have in our hedgerows this year. Think of all those blackberry and apple crumbles we can have in the winter!

This morning we set off early, and walked across the river and up the hill towards the Roman Wall. After an hour, I phoned home and got dh to come and pick us up so we didn't have to face the long drag back uphill on the other side of the river when Tim and I were tired. Cheating, perhaps, but it makes it so pleasurable. The only other people we passed were two cyclists and for most of the route Tim ran off-lead, which he loves. We have lots of walks around here, and pretty countryside to do it is. (Cocks a snook at Lord Howells and his desolate north-east!) At puppy school I was told Tim should walk five minutes for every month of age, so right now he can do forty minutes. Given that the breed is noted for stamina, I've added in another third to that, otherwise after a couple of hours he'll be up and raring t go again.

In our early days together I walked him too far, remembering the long walks I used to do with my other Dalmatian so long ago. Tim began refusing to go out. He would sit on his backside on the lawn and just not go.  I was puzzled. Who knew of a dog that didn't want to go walkies? So I mentioned it at puppy school, which was where I learned that he'd walked too far and made his joints ache - associated the walks with pain. I felt so guilty! So now I'm more careful with him.

As a sideline of all this walking, I'm much fitter, but I wouldn't claim I've lost any weight. Possibly if I gave up the red wine, that would do more good! On the other hand, I can get into all my clothes - or nearly all of them. One pair of grey jeans to go and I'm home dry.

Sam and reviews

Sam has returned home to the valley in the picture opposite and only just in time before we were totally exhausted, and got accustomed to having a dog in the house again. He was a delightful guest, and delighted to see his owners return. Anyone who thinks dogs don't miss their people should think again!

Seems there's a problem with the link to my first review so I'll try again: click here and I hope it comes up for you. It is in the Hexham Courant 22nd January in the Review section.

The last few days have been glorious dog walking weather, with blue skies and a hard frost firming the ground underfoot. Cold enough to make the eyes water on first stepping out, but warm enough as long as I kept walking and didn't pause for too long in one spot. I know you don't need to know this, but I am now an expert with poopy bags - one quick grab, a flick of the wrist and the neck tied off quickly before the odour escapes....told you, you didn't want to know. But I wish more dog owners would do the same.