Righty ho, then.  The very first challenge for our fledgling book group was Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight. 

First off, I would say that this is not my usual reading material, which tends to be either cookery books or nasty, grisly Mark Billingham-esque murder mysteries.  Having said that, the whole point of a book club is to challenge oneself to read books outside one’s ‘comfort zone’ shall we say.  I suppose I enjoyed this book; I liked Fuller’s honest, nostalgia-free style of writing and found her descriptions of her childhood Africa highly evocative.  I found the way she wrote of the loss of two of her siblings incredibly moving.  I didn’t, however, find it a page-turner and felt that I was forcing myself through it.  I also found some of the language and opinions unpalatable (well, we’re talking white settlers in 1970s Rhodesia with the inevitable black household staff, to be fair).  She relates all this, however uncomfortable, without judgment or criticism, and I like the fact that the reader is left to draw their own conclusions.

So.  If you read it, what did you think?  And any views on our next foray into the heady world of literature?  Nutty reckons we should go with something lighter and, dare we say, girlie, seeing as it’s the summer.  Anyone want to suggest something they fancy reading?

So phase… er… three?  (I’ve lost count) of English Towers’ race for self sufficiency began last week after lovely C (the one with the boat) and Hubby came to some drunken, pub-induced agreement that we could have the greenhouse that he’d purchased for his wife, the lovely K, but that she didn’t really want.  Hmm.  Have you ever seen a greenhouse in bits?  It looks like some enormous and very dangerous meccano kit.

Still, not to be put off by the prospect of losing a limb, Hubby set to work putting the bloody thing together.  The first thing I’d say is that you need time, an endless supply of patience, and some kind of technical/engineering type background.  Well, he’s okay with the technical stuff, but the patience?  Dearest reader, the air was several shades of blue.

Then, it transpired that several of the panes of glass were broken, prompting a extremely bad-tempered drive up to a glazier in Cavan town.  And then it transpired that some of said panes didn’t fit, prompting much more swearing and an even more bad-tempered return trip to the now terribly apologetic glazier in Cavan town.  And as for fitting 40+ panes of razor-sharp 3mm glass with fiddly little clips whilst holding them above your head? Sheesh.  I spent the entire time hopping around going ‘ooh, be careful!’…’ooh..mind your fingers…don’t drop it…’ and various other bits of worry-mongering until I was finally sent indoors in disgrace (in a not very pleasant way, I can tell you).

And of course, all through this bad-tempered couple of days, it rained, and it rained, and it rained a bit more.  And then (still with me?  Good) it transpired that a 6′ x 8′ greenhouse isn’t actually 6′ x 8′, it’s more like 6′3 x 8′3 and wouldn’t fit in our 8′2″ wide kitchen garden, and so had to be turned round the other way.  Well.  I learned a few, incredibly creative, new expletives.  By this stage, D had been roped in, so we got a couple of Scottish ones too.  Bonus.

Anyhoo, it’s up now.  Hubby has a few fingertips left unsullied and I’m sure we’ll be talking again in a couple of days.  Probably.

Edit:

And here, especially for Roy (Irish Taxi) is the finished article, complete with some ominously dark clouds.  Ah well, half a day of sunshine should see me through until Christmas, I guess:

So I’ve had a few people say to me ‘ooh, I wanted to leave a comment on something you said, but couldn’t work out how to do it’.  So here’s a step by step for all you ‘lurkers’.  Come on now, speak up!

1. At the end of each ‘post’ (or article) you’ll see the word comments underlined, followed by a number in brackets.  This is the number of people who have already left a comment.
2. If you hover your mouse over comments, you will see that it prompts you to comment (handy eh?).
3. Click on comments and you’ll see that all the comments will appear in a new box underneath the original post.
4. Scroll down to the bottom of the list and there you will see a little form entitled ‘leave a comment’.
5. So first, fill in your name (doesn’t have to be your real name - you can call yourself whatever you like, see if I care).
6. In the next box, fill in your email address (don’t worry, it won’t show up on the website).
7. And lastly, if you have a website address, you can fill it in the last box (mind you, if you’ve got your own website you should bloody well know how to comment by now).
8. Then, in the last box, feel free to let rip and leave a comment.  When you’re happy with what you’ve written, click on the pink ’submit comment’ box, and hey presto, you’ve commented.
9. Do bear in mind that if it’s the first time you’ve commented, your comment won’t appear on the website straight away as it will be sent to me via email for moderation (just to check you’re not a complete psycho - mind you, you’ll fit in quite well if you are).
10. And that’s it!  Now you can comment whenever you like.  Oh and remember - be nice, I’m sensitive.

It’s raining.  It rains and it pours and it buckets.  It plops from the gutters, rattles off the (newly completed) greenhouse roof and hammers the skylights.

Bert, who has eaten nothing since Taz arrived, save half a slice of toast and a lick at some milk, languishes on my bed.  He now refuses to come downstairs at all, even though Taz is shut in the kitchen.  At least before he would sit on his bed beside me in the office.  In desperation, I open another tin of sardines (his favourite thing) and hold them up to his mouth.  He turns his head away.

Now I’m really worried.  And still it rains.

So we’re driving through farmland, and all of a sudden our nostrils are assaulted by the dreadful smell of a pig farm that we pass.

‘Ew’, smirks Hubby, ‘who dropped one?’

#2 (he’ll never learn): ‘Well it wasn’t me!!!’

‘Are you sure?’, chimes in #1, ‘you’re not talking crap are you?

‘Yes’, adds Hubby, ‘we need to get to the bottom of this story’

Cue stifled giggles as #2 gets crosser and crosser.  ‘IT WASN’T ME!’.

‘There’s no need to get cross’, says Hubby, ‘we were only arse-king’

‘Yes, just ignore them’, says I, ‘they’re just blowing off steam’.

We’re all now clutching our stomachs in hysterics…

‘Hmmm…’, says Hubby, ‘I wonder if we still have fart to go?’

‘STOP IT!’, wails #2, ‘it really wasn’t me!’

We’re all chastised, and there’s a couple of minutes silence.

‘Nearly home’ says Hubby, ‘ahh, I love a chat with you guys…you’re such a gas‘

We all collapse again while #2 shakes his head.

‘Meh’, says I, ’sure is windy out’

‘Jeez’, says #2, I wonder sometimes who the adults are in this family.

He has a point.

A clever person once said that the best way to housetrain a puppy was to get yourself a nice, firm, rolled-up newspaper.  Then every time the puppy messes in the house, you smack yourself very hard on the head with the newspaper whilst repeating ‘I must watch my puppy, I must watch my puppy’.

So listen, we’ve taken on a very new puppy, one that probably shouldn’t even have left her Mum yet.  Ergo, we’ve resigned ourselves to living in a sea of piddle for a good few weeks yet (’Jeez’, says Hubby, ‘I might have to invest in some scuba gear’).  We realised pretty quickly that there was no point in scooping her up every time she attempted to pee and rushing her outside.  The reasons being:

1. It’s raining
2. By the time she’s ‘assumed the position’ she’s already started and therefore you’re just allowing her to leave a big trail of wee between wherever she decides to go and the back door.
3. She’s already peed by the time you lift her up, and even though she always manages to do another one outside, she’ll still always have another ‘in the barrel’ ready to go again when you get back in.

So we decided to adopt an ‘on the hour every hour’ routine, where if she pees in the house it’s just cleaned up (ignore the bad, praise the good), and then she’s taken out regularly (as well as after meals, and before bed etc) just to get her used to doing her business in the right place, where she gets tons of praise and cuddles for doing the do.  Eventually she’ll get the picture.

This morning, then, saw me trying to clean up two puddles of pee, plus a long line of piddly footprints leading away from said wee, whilst supervising #2 making pancakes for breakfast, washing Bert’s bed (yep, she peed on that too), and trying not to step on her.  Then, bringing his plate back from the table, #2 fell over a strategically placed laundry basket (oops, my bad) and fell sprawling to the floor, whacking his arm on a box of Stella (also left strategically on the floor, this time by Hubby) and smashing his plate.  Bert fled trembling into the utility room, everybody else suddenly found somewhere else they really had to be, and I was left trying to pick up shards of china, whilst simultaneously pushing the puppy away with one leg, clearing up the mess left from #2’s culinary efforts and mopping up her earlier emissions.  While all this was going on, she sauntered to the middle of the kitchen and calmly left a fresh puddle for me to clear up.

Right, said I, enough.  Well, actually what I said was ‘OY!  WHERE THE F*CK ARE YOU LOT?!  I’M NOT THE ONLY PERSON IN THIS HOUSE RESPONSIBLE FOR CLEARING F*CKING TABLES, WIPING COOKERS, CLEARING UP DOG PEE AND SUPERVISING THIS BLOODY PUPPY Y’KNOW!!!!’, (what a lady) but you get the gist.

A family conference ensued, where we decided that, for the time being, we need to allocate a ‘toilet corner’ which we can cover in newspaper and encourage her to use.  At the moment, as soon as she wees, it’s instantly cleared up and she’s not getting the message that there’s a particular thing she should be doing, it’s just a ‘pee and go’ kind of thing.  So ‘toilet corner’ has been created in the corner just between the kitchen and the lounge, and we’ll be putting her on there on a regular basis, then when she gets used to it, we can start to move it closer to the door.  In the meantime, I think I need a lie down.

So yesterday, Hubby and I decided to consult our greyhound guru, lovely M the trainer, top greyhound geezer and keeper of that most wondrous of hounds, Irish Sprinter of the Year, Johnny Gatillo. First surprise was that Mrs M (hello L!) reads the blog.  I love it when I hear that people visit me in dotcom land occasionally, but I was especially pleased to hear that Mrs M drops in as she’s very cool (runs her own beauty business from an amazing wooden log-cabin type building on their land) and rather beautiful.  And you know I’m a sucker for the well-groomed.  Anyhoo, digressing.  So M had a look at the pics and was, frankly, undecided.  The colour could be right, but maybe she was a bit broad across the head?  No ear tattoos, but then she looks too young anyway.  He promised to have a look when she’s older and I got feeding/flea (’what do you mean, Head & Shoulders won’t do it?’ ‘Nope, your fleas just won’t have dandruff’)/worm (ew) advice and a good slagging for being a greyhound snob: ‘you’re like Hyacinth Bucket - you should call it Sheridan’.  But look at her (admittedly blurry) head in this pic that #1 took (don’t, by the way, look at me - I’d just got up).  It’s very greyhoundy, isn’t it?

Anyway, the small furry yobbo continues to rule the roost, although after thoroughly pissing Bert off yesterday by using him as a climbing frame, he finally snapped and issued a loud, growly ‘rururur!’ telling-off, which frightened the pants off her and sent her scuttling backwards across the kitchen (see, he really is brave after all).

Puddles of piddle continue to be an occupational hazard (thank Gordon for slate floors) and house-training is somewhat hampered by the fact that all she wants to do is chew her lead, chase flies or fall asleep on the grass.  Still, early days.

Honestly, I don’t know how it happened.  One minute Jen was telling us about the little scrap that a lovely paramedic (hello Willie!!) found wandering alone on the Curragh and brought back to the station house, and next thing, #2 and I are whizzing down to meet Jen at Maynooth (’oops, shit - did that turning say Blanchardstown?  Quick, u-turn!!’) to pick up our new foster baby.

And don’t let that cute little face fool you.  So far, she’s emitted more…er…emissions than you can shake a stick at, vandalised my sofa, dangled from my curtains, dragged several pairs of trainers into her bed and traumatised poor Bert into submission.  She loves, adores and worships Bert, who, for his part, is denying her existence completely - even yesterday when she was hanging happily by her razor sharp puppy teeth from his bottom lip - she’s just not there, okay?

As for the name?  Well, Lou and I quite liked Aussie’s suggestion of Bella, but Hubby and the smalls didn’t.  So then we went round the houses:

‘Lily? ‘

Nah. 

‘Rosie?’

No. 

‘Daisy?’ 

No. 

‘Billie?’ 

Oooh we quite like that. 

‘Onion?’ (everyone turns to #1 with a ‘don’t be silly’ expression)

Nope. 

‘Pinot?  Merlot? Moet!’

Nope. 

‘Ow! F*cker!’

Er…we certainly can’t call her that.

‘Morgan? Stella?’ (Hubby and I are getting into the alcoholic names now)

Nah.

‘Butter?’ (#1 again).

No. 

‘Marge?’ 

Too Simpsons. 

‘AJ?’

Too Disreputable.

So anyway, she’s ‘Thing’ or ‘The Puppy’ at the moment.  Watch this space.

So, my house is slowly filling up with guitars.  In the office/music room/throw-any-old-shit-that-you-can’t-be-arsed-to-put-away room there are guitar stands everywhere; the bedrooms are littered with guitars, there are amps, wires and foot pedals all over the bloody place, and yet they come.

Last Saturday, then, found us once again in our spiritual home: our local guitar shop.  They’re always terribly welcoming and friendly in there (nothing to do with the fact that we’ve probably paid their mortgage in there for the last two years).  #2 has been saving hard for a guitar for rather a surprisingly long time.  It’s been tough going: he’s lusted after Xbox games, drooled over flat screen TVs, coveted sparkly white Adidas trainers, but no.  His determination has seen him through.  So we’d annoyed the lovely people there to death, plugged in various amps, played 17 million gazillion different riffs (’Stairway to Heaven’, anyone?), twiddled with buttons and even had a sneaky play on a couple of drum kits… and then it happened: nestling quietly in the corner is nothing other than (queue angelic choral music) THE GUITAR OF HIS DREAMS!!!! The Fender Stratocaster in cream!!!  Just like on Wayne’s World (remember the scene when he ogles it on the stand in the guitar shop?: ‘It will be mine. Oh, yes — It will be mine’).  Okay it’s second hand, but it’s perfect and tantalisingly close to little #2’s budget and I can feel his hands sweating as he finally gets his mitts on the object of his affections.  Trouble is, it’s still too much money.  ‘Ah’, says Smiley Friendly Guitar Bloke, ‘but we’ve got a sale on next week, and if you’re one of the first fifty in the queue, you get put in a draw for this Gibson Les Paul too’.

And so it came to pass that we were out of bed and away from English Towers before the bloody rabbits  (note to self: must get a gun) this morning to get down there to join the line of other hopefuls (we were twelfth - not bad eh?).  It’s been a tense week - what if it’s sold before I get there?  What if I still can’t afford it?  But happily, opening time finally came, and stomachs rumbling (damn you, McDonalds - not opening until 9am on a Saturday?) we rushed upstairs to the guitar section to find #2’s beautiful Strat not only still there but IN THE SALE!

Long story short then, the Strat is ours, #2 is immensely happy, and yes, we got in the draw for the Les Paul.  Fingers crossed, then, and as Mad Uncle A would say: ‘rock and roll!’.

So today’s FP is dedicated to that most wondrously lazy and patchily hirsute of individuals, the Bertmeister, aka Burpy, the Biffer, Biff Sniff, Sir Biffington Sniffington, Bishous, Mumma’s bubby (sorry), the fella, the geezer, yer wan, that f*cking dog!!!, and any number of other stupid nicknames depending on how loved up we’re all feeling and whether he’s nicked one of your trainers and you really, really need to go out in a hurry.

‘Tis a glorious thing for a greyhound to be retired to a comfy sofa rather than being, er, retired in a completely different, somewhat euphemistic way.  I’m a realist, and let’s face it, people aren’t exactly queuing up to adopt a retired greyhound, and there’s a serious glut, which is a shame as they’re rather good company.  And for a greyhound quite as utterly, totally, completely, thoroughly, uselessly rubbish at racing as Bert was to have lived to have seen his fourth birthday is practically a miracle.  Thanks, Jen.

Once, when we were at the races, I remember #1 asking someone how long greyhounds live.  ‘Hmmm’, came the answer, ‘depends how good they are’.

So here’s wishing the gangling, clumsy great duffer a happy fourth birthday.  He might be shite at racing, but he always seems to get to the sofa first.  Bless.