Sad day.

Just found out that the puppy we were hoping to get unfortunately was dead at birth. Fortunately the mum is ok. I suppose we'll just start looking again. Great shame because the mum was such a lovely natured dog!

Also, on Saturday John fell and broke his thumb badly and had an operation on it yesterday. His thumb contains/and is surrounded by metal work! Obscured by bandages of course. He was doing a good deed by clearing up a lovely patch of land near by where people had been throwing litter everywhere and slipped on a rock. When he came home requesting to be taken to hospital, his thumb looked about 2 cm shorter than it should have done and was pointing the wrong way!

Good thing or not?

Went out for a bike ride with a colleague from work the other night. Lovely weather everything fantastic until we did a short stretch of road where we spotted an injured male pheasant. It was beautiful, but had lost the ability to use it's rear legs. I picked it up and decided that the best thing would be to kill it there and then so it wouldn't suffer and surprised myself by actually breaking its neck. It took about 20 seconds before I was convinced it was dead but it was surprisingly easy. Was tempted to take it back and cook it but in the end left it for the fox. I'm both pleased and horrified that I did it without thinking so much but still can't help thinking that maybe it was something else I should have done to try and save it (like Tata's squirrel baby rescue effort). What do you think?

Puppy and laundry

On Saturday we went to meet the mother of the puppy we hopefully will be getting. She is due to give birth to the puppy (yes apparently the vet says there is only one in there!) in a weeks time. She was the most adorable creature we have ever met. Wonderful combination of gentleness and madness! She absolutely loves having her tummy rubbed! Most of the time she would quietly sit and lean against our legs to be close to us. Strange really since she had just met us! She was also incredibly patient will William and let him play with her giant soft ears (she later got her own back and gave William's ears a good licking which they desperately needed!) Let's hope the birth goes well and that in 8 weeks time we will have a new little addition to the family!




Last week we had lovely warm and sunny weather and I realized putting the washing out to dry while looking at the view must be the nicest kind of housework there is! I did struggle with the clothes pegs just being scattered everywhere so I made this peg holder! If anyone needs one for their pegs let me know as it was very easy and rewarding to make and I'd love to make some more!

In the garden

Spring is definately here! It is quite warm and sunny and things are growing amazingly quickly. I've spent the morning weeding and preparing a flower border at the front of the house. To my great delight the neighbour's horses have produced a huge heap of the finest manure and I'm positivly encouraged to use as much as I can since the heap is growing every year! Here is some pictures of the garden and the outside of the house. It is not only we who enjoy our garden, at the weekend we had 9 boys (all the boys from the whole area I think!) playing hide and seek here. William loves having so many new friends!

My new car!

Today I picked my car up and I'm very excited! It's a 2005 Fiat Panda 4x4 and yes it is very, very tiny! But perfect! I can actually drive up our drive now, which the Volvo couldn't do and also I don't demolish all our neigbour's plants on the way, as I unfortunately did driving John's Landrover Discovery. It feels nice to have a car again, as things such as going to the garden centre or food shopping is considerably easier when you don't have to carry everything on your back and cycle up very steep hills.

Here are some more photos of the new house.

William's school walk

Every morning I walk with William to his school down in the valley. It usually takes about half an hour and it's a wonderful way of starting the day especially when the weather is as nice as it was yesterday. Here are some photos from yesterdays walk to school.

The first one is the view over Manchester from the house. It really looks like the big city it is!



The walk takes us south-east down the hill on some lovely little lanes and halfway is the hamlet called Brookbottom where the pub the Fox Inn is.

Soon after the Fox we head down the rocky path down towards Hague Bar where the school is. The school was built in the 1870s as has only just over 50 children in it.





The last picture is another one looking up from the valley where you can see our house (the white you can see amongst those other stone ones on the hillside a bit to the left.

The wind is blowing and it's raining hard tonight. Nice to be inside with a real log fire. This is the view over Manchester at night from our bedroom window.