Nature

Don't know about you but I'm a bit depressed by the rain this summer. Nearly everything I like doing requires me to be outside (apart from drinking gin, reading and having a boogie - although these can be sun drenched activities too...) and being outside has meant one thing so far this summer - getting drenched.

That's not drenched in a 50ShadesofPurpleProse sort of way, thats drenched in a "Went outside for 2 seconds can I please have a bath towel and a hairdryer now?" sort of a way.

This means my dog walks have been perfunctory at best and delivered in a head-down-get-this-bloody-over-with fashion. There haven't been many photos.

Then there was last weekend. Sunday afternoon. The sun shone for me and I went a bit photographically mad.....

Come with me next weekend?.....

Tests

Today was.....interesting.

Friday morning I cuddled the Minis extra hard and long and wished them a wonderful week with their Father. I went to work, handed in my notice (that's a whole new post!) and spent the afternoon in the sunshine. Saturday and Sunday were uneventful but lovely - wine, sunshine and friends featured heavily.

Monday, today, I got up early. At 7.30am there was a knock at the door. Standing on the doorstep was VeryPregnantFriend, ready to take me off to hospital.

Now don't panic, nothing is seriously wrong. I just had tests to see what exactly is causing me pain when I eat. It's called a Gastroscopy. They sedate you, push a camera down your throat, you try not to claw off their faces and then when you come round they feed you tea and digestive biscuits.

Easy really.

They didn't tell me the sedative would be quite so strong.

Beach

I had a day off today. It was sunny and warm and I was looking forward to spending the day in the garden.

Of course, the neighbours decided that today was therefore the perfect day to finally start mending the fence which blew down in the storm FOUR FECKING MONTHS AGO.

Crash! Bang! Wallop! LOUD DRILLING NOISES! Crash! Bang! Wallop! MORE LOUD DRILLING NOISES!

And then the cement mixer started up.

That was enough. HairyGodlessDaughter was fresh out of hospital and recovering from her recent bout of meningitis by sitting on my sofa scoffing biscuits with her mum (NeatFreakFriend); lovely SingleGirl neighbour on the other side was in a foul mood and needed distracting - so off we went. To the SEASIDE.

I love the seaside. I love it during the winter months right up until the time the summer season starts and you can't walk dogs along the shoreline. Then I hate it. All squawking families, gritty sandwiches and shouting Dads.

Today there were very few squawkers or shouters, and no one pressed a sandwich on me. Instead HGD, Dawg and I paddled and collected shells from the sand while SingleGirl and NFF sashayed along the prom in the sunshine. They caused much more mayhem than we did, traffic slowed so men could shout at them from vans, an elderly gentleman told them they'd reminded him to take his blood pressure medicine, and a lady propositioned SG as she was coming out of Marks and Spencers.

We stuck to shells, sand and barking at the sea.

It was aces. Roll on summer.