we're off on hols for a week!

we're off on hols for a week!
Originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

oh hell....

a rather fetching little number
Originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

i had forgotten about this. i was made to wear this on a march to protest when they planned to close my boy's school. not the one he is at now but where he was before. on the side of this creation it said "save our school!". well it was all in a good cause. although if i had known he was going to go to a different school nothing would have got me into this garment...

off on our hols...

its seems we are off camping tomorrow. no-one tells me anything. i only worked it out from the fact that last night herself made a huge song and dance about cleaning himself's car. he has an estate car which we need for holidays so i can fit in the back - albeit crushed by tents and odd-shaped bags containing sleeping bags, campbeds and things. anyway his car is not cleaned very often. in fact it is only cleaned when we go on holiday. herself refuses to go on long journeys with bits of dog hair (well a chap can't help moulting a bit now and then) dust and sweet wrappers blowing in her face. silly woman just doesn't have a sense of humour. since no-one else minds the aforementioned detritus, it is down to her to clean it up.

anyway, she spends an hour or so hoovering, wiping with industrial strength cleaner and pulling out vast amounts of rubbish after which she is in a foul temper. seems she thinks himself and my boy ought to a) clean the car occasionally and b) not make such a mess in the first place. my boy is in the habit of turning the car into a spaceship for the journeys to school which, as he goes to a special school for special children some way away, is obviously necessary. warp factor five is the only way to cover such distances. so the car is full of additional wires, odd bits of electronic equipment and so on to assist with navigation. how we will find our way to our destination now she has take it all out i have no idea.

then there is the whole business of packing things into the car. the tent is quite big as they refuse to rough it any more but at least it gave me the clue that camping was on the cards. i have a rather neat little coat that i wear at night when we are camping. as i am rather svelt i get a bit chilly at night in a tent. as a joke herself bought me a rather nifty hat but i don't really like it. flattens down the tufts on my head a bit. can't imagine why a dog would want a hat. wouldn't be seen dead out and about in a coat come to that but no-one sees it in the tent. unless she finds a photo of it and puts it on the web...

told you...

follow that car...

much calmer breakfast this morning. yesterday herself had the presence of mind to go out and purchase weetabix. for those listeners in countries which don't sell weetabix, this is breakfast cereal made of stuff that looks like sawdust, formed into little bricks. my boy loves it! he loves it so much he has been known to get through 12 of these little blocks in one day. so no chance of the house going up in flames. himself is not wildly keen on weetabix due to the amount of sugar that finds its way onto the floor but a bit of sugar has to be better than your house burning down, as i often tell him.

herself showed one of her odder pictures to my boy this morning. she had been stuck in traffic and took loads of shots out of the car window ( i know, but it keeps her happy). this was one of a car going past and he immediately said "ah, that's a vauxhall". when you see this picture you will be as amazed at his vehicle recognition powers as i was. it probably is a vauxhall. this is the boy who went into the shoe shop in the village for the first time in a year and said he could see they had changed the tube in the fluorescent light. "however did you know?" said the lady "the old one melted about 6 months ago." mind you, this same boy will go into the bathroom to brush his teeth and forget why he went in. as i told you before, he has a very special brain.

i'm off for a walk with himself and herself in a minute. my boy has a sitter who comes once a week so they can go out for a couple of hours. i expect there'll be a whole lot of stopping to take photos of mud and stuff but still. at least they get some fresh air in their lungs.

this story tickled me...

plus ca change...

today's breakfast took a new turn. no bread to burn! all that was in the bread bin was the dreaded wholemeal and a packet of pitta bread. as already mentioned, my boy won't touch the healthy stuff so herself suggests pitta bread with marmalade. well, my boy is very set in his ways. something to do with having asperger syndrome, or beefburger syndrome or something. basically his head is wired up in a very interesting way which makes him a sheer genius at some things and totally unable to cope with other things.

for example, he goes on the internet and finds bits of computer code which he then copies into the program files for his computer games and makes them do weird and wonderful things. he has a great game called hard truck 2 which involves driving lorries all over america. he's pretty mad about lorries so he spends hours driving around and i get to sit in the virtual cab with him on a rather nice red mat which is in his room. you can see a picture of me on it earlier in my blog. very enjoyable way to pass the time i find. anyway he managed to find some code which allowed you to fly the lorries high up in the air. this had the unusual result of being able to see behind the hedges that line the roads. well, blow me away the hedges are two-dimonsional! cheapskates that make the games figure that no-one will be able to fly up there in the lorries so they don't bother to make a world behind the hedges. herself says this presents an existential conundrum whatever one of those is. i just think my boy has been shortchanged but he doesn't seem to mind. he has also learnt to make the lorries burst into flames which is rather less relaxing.

anyway back to breakfast. because of being set in his ways my boy will not have marmalade on pitta bread. "you have marmalade on toast" he says "and you have tzatziki on pitta bread." so there's herself making home-made tzatziki at half past seven in the morning. and she can't remember the recipe. so my boy, who among his other talents has the most amazing memory for certain things, has to tell her to pick some mint, squeeze a lemon, get some greek yoghurt, squish some garlic and grind some pepper and mush it all up. my boy was very happy with this breakfast which as he said "had a lot of love put into it" and also happy that he won't be bothered by vampires all day on account of stinking of garlic.

tonight may prove interesting as himself has had to go out and cook stuff at the school barbecue so herself has to make tea. to put it bluntly, cooking ain't one of her strengths. she is far too easily distracted. turn your back and she's gone off to put up a shelf or lay a patio or something. she's planning rissotto. she has a method of making risotto which doesn't involve stirring it all the time. she says a grain of rice can only absorb the stock at a particular speed regardless of how much stock surrounds it and that rissotto was designed to keep women tied to the stove so she just whacks it all in and puts a lid on. and so long as you catch it in time the end result is pretty much the same as the rissotto made the proper way, according to himself, who knows about these things. not that i ever get to taste it as it is a real hit with everyone, so there are never leftovers. just hope the smoke alarm gets a bit of a rest...

a lady with eyes like myself

Stella's face.
Originally uploaded by Laertes.

in memory of kira who i never met but who looks kind and wise

un cane
Originally uploaded by Tsunami Notes.

they're just ghosts

they're just ghosts
Originally uploaded by ashenzil.

for bernie and jim

toast

today had a much better start. herself and my boy remembered to put the fan on so no smoke alarm today. as you'll see from the picture not an altogether successful toasting session but you can't ask for everything all at once. she really needs to go for lessons but i'm not sure where she'd find the time. she took delivery of a new lens for her camera today so she's been like a dog with a new bone. my boy not overly happy at having the papperazzi around the house. loud complaints about invading his personal space were heard. the youth of today! they're lucky to have personal space. when i was a puppy you were lucky to get a teat of your own and as for your own basket - in your dreams! bring back national service i say. mind you, i'm not sure they'd have him with his argumentative mind. wouldn't follow orders i suspect. he's a nice nipper on the whole though and kind to his dog which is all you can ask for.

A wing and a prayer

A wing and a prayer
Originally uploaded by Just Red.

this will cheer up the most grumpy person!

a lovely pic from flickr

Originally uploaded by Tsunami Notes.

i thought this was really lovely so i'm putting it here for folks to see.

bad carma

ho hum. some days are better than others. some days seem to have a very odd karma from the start. today was an odd karma day. started with herself waking up feeling shattered. nothing to do with her having been sitting in the sun yesterday drinking wine at some party that yours truly wasn't invited to. which meant she was too tired to do her yoga. i always enjoy yoga. great fun trying to make her laugh rather than breathe when she's doing "downward dog" and I copy her. never fails.

anyway, goes downhill from there really. no weetabix for my boy (i don't know how he keeps his angelic patience!) no bread except a rather people-eared white roll and a wholemeal crust. well of course the boy won't eat the brown bread so herself spends ages cutting up the roll so it will fit in the toaster. then my boy explains that it has to go on a little rack on the top (just as well someone in the house has a grip on how the gadgets work is all i can say!) so off they go toasting it. but due to tiredness and confusion they forget to put the fan on. shouldn't really need a fan by the toaster but some bright spark (herself i fear) had the bright idea of situating the toaster bang under the smoke alarm. anyway, you can guess what happened.

so they put the fan on, make the toast and then splatter jam all over the kitchen spreading it. i have to agree with himself, they are a very messy pair. as if this wasn't bad enough herself then hacks the wholemeal crust up and puts that in the toaster, but forgets to put the fan back on. so himself and i get back from our peaceful walk on the downs to the sound of the smoke alarm shrieking the place down, my boy with his hands over his ears and herself waving a tea towel ineffectually around near the ceiling. well i had to bark a bit with all the commotion. unfortunately the barking didn't result in anyone leaving any food unattended so no toast for me.

this is all before they went off to work and school. so it was no surprise to me that they came home rather grouchy. herself had been called upon to assist with a crash caused by a runaway car belonging to one of her colleagues. you would not believe it but her idea of calming the situation was to shout at the poor bloke whose car was rolled into something along the lines of "stand back, i'm a solicitor!" to which the only possible answer has to be "so what?"

the boy had a very odd story to tell about a helicopter landing on his school playing field and then taking off again with the deputy head teacher. heaven knows what that's all about. he then had to spend all evening going on at length about helicopters before making herself go for a flight in his virtual helicopter over texas. himself had nothing interesting to report apart from tidying the ict cupboard. probably by far the safest place to be today - in a cupboard.

so i think an early night would not go amiss. lets hope tomorrow is less traumatic.

cement works

well, today was a turnup for the books. started off ok with a nice walk along by the river with herself as usual taking pictures of weird things like spider's webs and stinky ditches. bit of a telling off when i made off after a rabbit but otherwise uneventful. i cooled off in the river although rather unpopular with some rather snooty swans. they think they own the place. then we got in the car but instead of going home we headed off in the other direction. then she pulled over into the cement works. they've been closed since 1974. hmm, i think, hope its not more diy projects. then out we get and spend the next half an hour walking round with her taking pictures of the oddest things. lumps of concrete, rusty bits of iron, even a hose. she's really lost it now. worst bit was i had to sit each time she took a photo. she said it was because i'd jog her arm with the lead. the concrete was baking. too hot for the old bot, i can tell you. it hasn't quite recovered since i had to have my dangly bits removed because of that prostate trouble a while back. finally she was through and we could head home. here's one of the pictures she took. it looks a bit gloomy to me. give me a nice snap of a labrador any day.

frying tonight

last night my peeps had a barbecue. here is a picture of my boy frying veggie burgers. himself likes a bit of lamb but herself will only eat fish as she likes furry creatures too much. i'm not averse to the odd furry creature myself but after a rather unfortunate incident involving a deer i am now made to wear a muzzle when i'm out. so my diet is rather dull and comes out of a sack. i have to say, when they first came home with the new cobb cooker i was not impressed. everyone knows the whole point of barbecues is to burn food to a frazzle which results in quite a lot of food finding its way dogwards. so the idea of a cooker which doesn't actually burn the food didn't really rock my boat. but in fact its not too bad at all. you have to put water in a sort of moat round the coals and all the juices from the food drip down into there which makes for a rather nice sauce for my grub once its cooled down. last night it was jus with hints of veggie burger, lamb and mackerel. mmmm!

small saturated frog

small saturated frog
Originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

a frog in a blog! hey i'm a poetic lurcher when all's said and done!

blogged dog

she's getting a bit obsessed with this squared circle thing...
Originally uploaded by Joker the Lurcher.

eartham

well, first post. not sure how this blog thing works. think i'll treat it like a sort of diary. not that i do much to write about. unless you count racing around in the woods. can't even chase deer any more since herself bought me a muzzle. well, i can chase them but i can't catch them so there's not really any point. not my fault i used to belong to a poacher. you can't teach an old dog new tricks, so they say. anyway, on the way back from last nights romp in the woods, herself suddenly shouts "stop the car!" i thought she'd seen a deer and relented. but no. what she'd seen was a field. i ask you, what is the point of leaping out of the car and taking pictures of a field? she gets madder as time goes by. well here's one of the pictures. it wasn't this dark in real life. she plugs the camera into her computer and messes about with all her photos. so not only did i nearly get whiplash for this picture, but it doesn't even look like the field any more.