And as for the day off. Well, I've enjoyed better Saturdays. Why is it that every time I do a dump run to Ballingdon I arrive just as they are closing the household waste site as full metal containers are moved ready for being taken away?

Saturday was the second time in fairly quick succession I've sat outside the site with my car full of junk, thinking positive thoughts as I admire the skill of the guy manoeuvering the full and empty containers into place.

And I followed that by getting lost in Tesco – again. My fault really. I'd been sent out with a list, and one of the items on it was a mop head, which I foolishly expected to be with other cleaning materials. I should have known it would be at the other end of the store next to the DVDs.

I am, however, comforted by the fact that I'm not the only one who is dazed and confused in the new store, judging from the comments I overheard from other shoppers, several of whom I bumped into a number of times as we wandered around in despair at our failure to find things. Just when you think you have cracked it, more Christmas stuff comes in, things get moved, signs at the end of aisles get taken down, and many of the staff remain as mystified as the rest of us.



For years Hamish – who I had to walk in the pouring rain on my super Saturday, but he enjoyed it – has played second fiddle to Bluebell, particularly when it comes to food. She hoovers up anything put in front of her at high speed – a characteristic of ginger dachshunds we have observed before – and then hovers near his dish just waiting for the opportunity to push him off it. But I think the worm has finally turned. As he gets older, he gets bolder, and he's no longer a pushover when there's food in front of him.

The other night we came to the end of a tub of ice cream and, as usual, put the lid and the container down for the dogs to lick. Yes, we spoil them. Bluebell got the lid.

And, having finished first, she predictably made a bee-line for Hamish. But he was having none of it. Taking a firm grip on the container, he hared off out of the kitchen with it in his mouth, leaving Miss Piggy trailing in his wake.



Having visited Keswick a few weeks ago, naturally I took an interest in the Mountain Marathon hit by bad weather there recently. I rang my daughter to see if the town had been washed away. After assuring me that Keswick was still standing, Sue said the weather that weekend was simply typical of the summer they had enjoyed in the Lake District, and that all the fuss on television and radio suggested it had been a slow weekend for news.

That girl has no respect for journalists…