Busy Sunday

Sally says she’s too weary to blog again today, so you’ll have to put up with me, I’m afraid. Indeed, I’m pleased to have the chance to record our appreciation of our first tenants in the lodge, who moved out yesterday.

Despite enduring a series of problems with the renovation of their own home, they were invariably accommodating and friendly towards us and took such great care of the lodge that the cleaners had very little to do every week at the mid-let clean. Thank you, Pam and Jeff, I hope all our tenants are as good as you.

We’ve got the use of the place ourselves for a couple of weeks, though we don’t plan to be in there after a week on Wednesday, to give the cleaning team a choice of days to prepare it for our next tenant, who’s occupying it over Christmas week. We’ll probably spend a few nights sleeping there; we still have some minor finishing off jobs to do.

Today’s big adventure was the litter picking session along the towpath and in the copses between the canal and the railway line. We took Sally along who, frankly, was a good deal more ornament than use. She certainly enjoyed being let off in the woodland; she had one of her complete fruit loop fits as Elanor calls them, charging around with her ears out sideways, rushing up to people, gazing at them with a manic grin and then rushing away again.

Jo tried to get her to stay still with a stick in her mouth in order to get a photo of her “helping”. {Sal's mouth, obviously; it’s quite hard to use a Canon EOS 7D with a stick in your mouth}. Anyway, all that happened was that Sal adopted an enormous piece of fallen tree as her own and tried to pick it up. Since it must have weighed at least a hundredweight, this defeated even her mania-enhanced strength, so she set out to chew it up, another endeavour doomed to failure.

Jo's just sent me some photos; here's one that illustrates what I mean:

This is just some of her "stick"

Meanwhile, Sheila managed to collect a couple of bags full of litter, and the team as a whole made a good job of tidying the area. All this effort is having an effect; there was far less litter about than this time last year, with the inevitable exception of the dog poo bags dangling from the trees, tucked on top of the bridge abutments and half buried in the grass.

Dog owners, if you are going to throw your animal’s poo into the hedge, don’t bother to bag it up first. Please. Both the National Trust and the Forestry Commission positively encourage the stick and flick approach to dog waste disposal so it’s not like it’s the wrong thing to do. Just make sure it’s safely out of the way of wandering feet and hands, in the base of a hedge.

We got back to the boat in nice time for lunch and a bit of a post prandial doze, after which we took another walk round the marina to blow the cobwebs away and to take some stuff to the lodge.

As I intimated at the start, Sal is now head down and muzzle tucked under paws. Elanor is expected around six; she’s stopping for dinner, which is very nice and I’m sure will be just about OK with the pooch, as long as she’s allowed to go on kipping. (Sally, that is, not Elanor. Sigh.)