Down to Basics

This morning we startled a huge stag and doe which were sheltering in the uncut rape field. They leapt across the field, jumping high to clear the scratchy rape. Sasha was beside herself, and pulled so much on the lead that we had to turn back. It was an amazing sight, the great antlers disappearing and reappearing in agitated haste followed by the gentler bounces of the doe's soft head. It's lovely to think they are all out there doing their theng, though their world is shrinking as the harvesting continues.

Helen had invited both of us down to her place in Saxmundham in the afternoon, I thought for a cup of tea. Two hours later a bottle of prosecco had been drained, and Sasha had her head in an extra large size empty packet of Waitrose crisps. Somehow in eleven minutes I drove like a crazy thing to the vets in Fram to get the puppy checked over. In my unbalanced state I quite forgot to get him to clip her nails, and now I'm going to have to do it myself. The good news is that she is very healthy, a good weight and size, and with a confident temperament, as if I didn't know.

On our final walk through the old man's garden, the woods, the wheat fields, the plantation of young trees and the lane Sasha managed to eat a poo which she then threw up along with an assortment of pebbles, or they might have been sloe stones. But not before I'd wrestled most of it from her mouth, and despite scrubbing with "all the perfumes of Arabia" the smell lingers. Poor Lady Macbeth. She had death on her hands, but what I had on mine was much worse.