Stubbylee Blog

Newark Showground on a glorious summers day doesn’t make it into my top 10 favourite show venues, on a freezing cold January day its a place to avoid. Even so we attended the Boston & DCS Championship show where they’d scheduled Borzoi classes and with a breed specialist in Gary Peskett. Its the first time we’ve been to this show but I’ve got to say that despite the weather it was an enjoyable day. The show had a nice, relaxed atmosphere with a friendly welcoming committee; the free coffee and mince pies at the end were much appreciated.

Let’s hope they schedule the breed again next year - its one I’d recommend more borzoi people attend.

Happy New Year to everyone; let’s hope its a more positive year than 2008.

For us the run up to Christmas was chaos. Firstly Liz was involved in the rescue of 2 borzoi, a long drawn out saga that culminated in her driving to Scotland for 10 o’clock at night to collect 2 dogs. Fortunately these are now rehomed and settling in, she will add something to the NBA website later on. Then on the Monday before Christmas we were hit by the power failure in East Lancashire losing gas & electricity, the electric going off when Liz was halfway through clipping a dog - she had to drive to a friends house with her gear and a dog looking like a before & after commercial - one half shaggy one half neat & tidy to finish it off. Electricity was restored at around 5pm ( just after we’d bought some candles) but no gas. Many of you will have heard about the power failure on the BBC News and how National Grid had to visit every home to switch the gas back on. Sorry but its a load of rubbish they never visited our house - someone was in all the time, nor was there a note through the door to say someone had called. Even now no-one has been, in the end we just turned the gas back on ourselves late on Christmas Eve. We were not the only ones, I know of several other people who never had a visit. I suppose we were lucky as all we lost was the heating, we still had hot water and cooking. Earlier this year our bolier was replaced; the first plumber to give us an estimate insisted he would remove the immersion heater as it was unnecessary as the gas never fails - we insisted we must retain our hot water cistern which as it turns out was a wise decision so yah boo sucks to that arrogant, ignorant, smart alec plumber who was so full of his own self importance.

Christmas was pretty well a non event, for the first time ever we didn’t even have a Christmas tree. No one was particularly bothered about presents - and you know with less stress and hassle we had quite an enjoyable Christmas & New Year. It was certainly less eventful than last year when we had puppies popping out on the day itself - so Happy Birthday to Magic.

Its been a while since my last blog update, since then I seem to have been spending a lot of time driving up & down motorways, sleeping in hotels and just generally being very busy with work. Whenever I’ve had some free time I just haven’t felt inclined to sit down at a PC to write a blog, it’s been more a case of disengage brain & flop.

Just back from my latest London trip and a stay in the Holiday Inn hotel next to the M4 Junction 4, works standard hotel to use for visitis to head office. My room was upgraded to one of the executive rooms but one with a difference it was fitted out for disabled occupation. At first sight this meant that the room was similar to all other executive rooms but with less furniture - no sofa and a smaller desk. The bathroom was enormous - I’ve stayed in smaller hotel rooms, you needed binoculars to see from one side to the other. Then you noticed other things - the wardrobe rail was half height so my shirts dangled on the floor, alarm pulls all over the room - I spent half the night worrying that I’d pull the one next to the bedside light by mistake; the air conditioning control was at waist height so I had to kneel on the floor to read the temperature on the screen. Finally there was the sink this was set below waist height ideal for wheelchair users. It was concave with a mixer tap. Problem - turn on the tap too hard the water would hit the sink and shoot forward right at groin height.

Travelling back from West London is always a drag M25, M40, M42 and then the crawl up the M6 to the M62. Miss the traffic at one point you’ll hit it at another or on bad days you seem to hit it everywhere. The slightest breakdown or accident and everything grinds to a halt as people stop to stare. Why?? just get on with it. And while I’m at it why do Volkswagen Passat drivers seem to think they mst stay in the outside lane even if there’s nothing in the other lanes.

Sorry rant over now, hopefully I’ll be able to keep the blog updated a bit more now, it will provide a welcome break from watching Christmas adverts on the TV

Back home after a week caravanning in Ireland with Andrew and three of the dogs - Star, Magic & Leo. We were incredibly lucky with a week of sunshine; I don’t think we’ve had such nice weather in Ireland before. The first part of the holiday was in Killarney walking the dogs around the National Park and driving round the peninsulas such as Dingle and Iveargh. The dogs had a super time hunting deer around Killarneyand chasing the waves at Derrynane beach, for them it was their first encounter with sea and sand.

On the Friday we drove to Northern Ireland for 2 days at Belfast dog show aiming to stay near Newcastle, finally managing to find a site in the Castlewelan Forest Park. What a journey - only 300 miles but it took around 7 hours - roads in Southern Ireland can be terrible. By the time we got to the side we just couldn’t be bothered pitching properly just drop the legs and connect up the water & electric hook up and leave the rest for Saturday.

Belfast DS seemed a bit lacking in atmosphere an d it was strange on Sunday with Leo, being at a Championship show and not reallyknowing anyone there.

After two hectic days with early starts for the dog shows Monday was a relaxing day touring round the Mourne Mountains before driving back to Dublin for the evening ferry. We were travelling with Irish Ferries or East European ferries as they should be named judging by the majority of their crew. Its a pity those at the port are a bunch of officious jobsworths. Irish Ferries used to be a really friendly relaxing service to travel with but that’s changed over the years. Having said that the journey back was dramatic as we had to divert to rescue a yachtsman in distress with his yacht battered by the strong winds and waves. It was impressive watching them manouver the ferry alongside and then using a rescue launch to bring the sailor on board. With the delay we didn’t get home until 4:30 in the morning ready for a 6:30 start to go to a work’s conference.

I went into our local Morrison’s supermarket on Saturday and there next to the quick checkout were advent calendars

 September 13th and they’ve got advent calendars on display

I haven’t even had my Summer holidays yet and they’ve got bloody advent calendars

Not only that some of the calendars had 32 days - where has that one come from? 30 days hath September, April, June & November all the rest have 31 except February with 28 - oh yes and some advent calendars with 32.

Bloody prodcut merchandising. Why not take it to the logical conclusion; lets have 364 day advent calendars where we can start the countdown to the next Christmas on Boxing Day.

Its been a while since I last did a blog entry, there’s just times when you don’t feel like sitting down in front of a computer to type something. August has been a pretty lousy month with lots of things going wrong - sick dogs & sick cars. Probably the one good time was a short break to Dumfries & Galloway testing out the caravan before we used it for the Munster Circuit. I took Twiggy & Weasel with me, we stayed at a super campsite near Dumfries. It had lots of walks for the dogs either through woods or across farmland Twiggy really enjoyed shambling amongst the trees. The dogs took to the caravan well, it must have been a lot more comfortable for them than the tent - the only problem was waking from a good sleep to find Weasel’s nose two inches from my face - its a bit of a shock.

Dumfries & Galloway is an area we’ve only ever driven through to or from Stranraer but it was an excellent place for a holiday with a bit of everything. Hills, sea cliffs, beaches, castles, beaches, little harbours and even a distillary at Bladnoch. Well worth going back again.

Firstly, in case my Mum reads this Happy Mother’s Day (what’s left of it).

I was out buying cards and presents yesterday - have you noticed how the card manufacturers and supermarkets have stretched and stretched the idea of Mother’s day

Cards to Mother - no problem its the whole idea of the day

Grandmother’s cards - starting to stretch the idea a bit there & anyway didn’t the money mad maniacs create a Grandmother’s day as well

Cards for your wife - a bit of a knock on from Valentine’s day here and definitely milking the day for what its worth

until you come to

          Godmother’s cards

The idea of godparent’s are to provide spiritual and moral guidence as you grow up - probably starting with the advice to not be conned into providing money mad blood sucking leeches your hard earned cash by buying rip off cards for everyone and anyone on Mother’s day.

Rant over

For the start of a new year there’s a new blog