What I should be doing Right Now is getting my papers ready for the accountant.  Yes, we’ve got an appointment first thing tomorrow.  Yes, for stuff that needs to be filed and the bill paid by the end of January next year.  And yeah, it’s a pain whenever you do it.

My difficulty is remembering what year it applies to and therefore being sure to claim expenses.  These are genuine ones (I have a couple of flats that are let, which is what keeps me from the breadline), actual out-of-pocket expenses, and there have been new boilers and new washing machines in the past three years.  I was all with it last year, but it was the big effort then, I seem to have moved on.  So I need to check the dates of when we’re dealing with and JFDI, as Weeza would rightly say.

Ro phoned and asked about the new blog set-up.  I mentioned a few minor matters and he’ll have a look some time.  Mainly – because I’m always thinking about you, darlings – it’s about registering.  I said it was off-putting, having a profile page pop up, so he removed it.  But now, there isn’t an obvious place to put in the URL of your blog.  So he’ll see if he can add it to the sign-in page.  I’m considering, otherwise, having a blogroll on the sidebar, just for people who comment.  I’ve got over 300 blogs in my feedreader and can’t possibly put them all up, but it wouldn’t be appropriate to.  Some of them are bloggers who’ve died but I can’t bear to remove – Kaz and Murph being obvious examples.  Others are bloggers who don’t blog any more, but might, and two of those have bobbed up after a long time recently, though one of those was just for an update.

Today, I went to a funeral at the Cathedral.  My friend Florence died a few days short of her 102nd birthday.  I’ll remember her with great affection – very much with-it until the end, she belonged to various societies, played Scrabble regularly, kept up with current affairs, never said a bad word about anyone and always had a smile on her face, in public at any rate.  And I approved the hymns she’d chosen too.  Funeral hymns occupy a certain amount of my thoughts, I chose one years ago but have an ever-changing shortlist of the other or others – inclined to keep it short, on the whole, but I’ve been to very brief funerals and they’re strangely unsatisfying.

Not so long ago, Russell, Weeza and I were talking about our own deaths – well, we’re not people who shy away from that sort of thing – and what we’d like to happen if not fit to say.  Unsurprisingly, Weeza and I said that, in extremis, we’d prefer no or minimal treatment and to shuffle off, whilst Russell would opt to hang on to life whatever happened.  He’d prefer vegetable status to death.  And indeed, while there’s life there’s hope and similar clichés, who’s to say he’s not right?

Ro and Dora are looking after a rather adorable white cat – oh crikey, don’t remember how to insert a link using HTML.  I used to know but Blogger made it too easy.  http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=white+british+shorthair+cats&FORM=HDRSC2 – hang on, I’ll be back.  Pfft. I can’t remember, darlings, I’ll update when I can but in the meantime, copy’n’paste if you want to see cats that are nearly as cute as Wilson.  I might be able to pinch his image off Google Plus for you.  He looks like a cuddly toy, he’s so sweet.

Must get ready for the accountant before I discuss matters with HTML and come to a rational compromise, in which I give it the oxygen of publicity in return for it reminding me of its secrets.  As I said to Ronan, it’s like translating a book in an unfamiliar language word by word. You may know what every word means, but that doesn’t indicate that you have a clue how to translate the language.

We’ve had a mother hen and her two little Marys in a coop on the lawn for the last three weeks – I’d suggested it would be a good idea to move them into the kitchen garden while we had two dogs here and it was agreed in principle but didn’t quite happen – anyway, Ben had learned that they were not to be bothered and it all seemed fine.  But today, going out for a walk, he saw a black chicken that had flown over the wall and I had to tell him firmly not to chase her, and that seemed fine too.  On the way home, as we were nearly back at the house, he saw her again and jumped forward.  I could manage him and it would have been fine if mother hen hadn’t been startled and clucked and fluttered, so that he couldn’t resist leaping towards the coop.  I didn’t let go, nor even lose control, quite – but ended up grabbing him and falling on top of him to pin him to the ground.  And there we lay.

We were under a fir tree, so it was a bit prickly, but okay otherwise, but I couldn’t get up because every time I tried, he made it clear he would aim for the chooks again and I wasn’t at all confident of my strength to stop him frightening them.  So there we lay.  I did all I could, darlings, I shouted at him, I growled like a veritable mother (in the bitchy sense) and also (again in a totally bitchy sense) I bit his ear, because that’s the sort of thing dogs do to each other and behaving like a human wasn’t helping.  Sadly, nor did behaving like a dog, he was completely unbothered (I had no thought of drawing blood, obv) and I just had to spit out hairs, which wasn’t at all pleasant.

Luckily, I had my trusty iPhone and I phoned home – this was perhaps 30 feet away.  It took Russell a few minutes to get here because he was on his own iPhone to the other woman in his life, but he held Ben for long enough for me to get up and after he was indoors we moved the coop.

We’ll prevail, Ben will be fine, it’ll take a few more months, perhaps another year.

And later, while we were moving oak planks and measuring them, we had a phone call from friends I’d asked to visit, whose own beautiful floor had been provided by Russell – or rather, the wood for it had – and we phoned Weeza to say they were happy for them to come and see it.  Gill was the very first friend I made when I moved here and I know others could say the same thing, and that she’s a very good friend to have.  We haven’t seen her and A much of late, so it was lovely to have a reason to call.  And we were very pleased to hear that their first grandchild is on the way, and they were very interested to see pictures of Phil and Weeza’s house.

We don’t have quite enough oak planks, but we’re not far short, we’ll have to buy some more wood.  But it’s a massive room – can’t help dreaming about the fabulous parties that could be held there.

Dilly phoned this morning to say that her car was due to be serviced and could they call in, for Al to fetch them after work – he finishes around lunchtime on a Saturday.  Of course, it was a great pleasure.  We hadn’t seen them for a few weeks, what with holidays and so on.  And after a while, Dilly went with the boys round the village to inspect what was on offer in the village garage/car boot sale – which seemed to be well supported, both by participants and buyers – and Squiffany and I went shopping for lunch.  Pizza was decided upon, with salad, raspberries and ice cream and, after lunch, they all went on to the front field to play golf with the set of clubs they’d just bought.

I took these photos before dead-heading, though I haven’t done it all, a bit too boring.  I’ll have another go tomorrow.  Gentle gardening isn’t for me, I like a project.  Anyway, the lilies are gorgeously scented and there are others, taller ones, that aren’t in flower yet.  The rose is a David Austen one called … oh, can’t remember, Jubilee Celebration or something similar.  I was taking Ben for a walk when we surprised a young bunny, which ran all of ten yards before deciding it was safe and it stayed by the bed for several minutes while we waited patiently.  Ben moved while I was taking the picture so it isn’t very well focussed.

And now Russell has gone for fish and chips.

I suppose it’s the change in the weather – we had some rain today and it felt quite muggy – but I’ve been quite headachy today and haven’t got a lot done.  I changed my bedclothes and washed the sheets and I’ve done the watering and cleaned kitchen and bathroom, but those last three are done daily, to some extent at least, so there’s nothing to be boasted about.  We’ve been catching up on the week’s leftovers, so there hasn’t even been much cooking.  I went into the town and bought some shoes – cheap end-of-season sandals and canvas shoes, nothing special – and mostly mooched about boringly.  I’m in need of deadlines again.

I’ve been using Facebook more than ever before, simply because Hannah wanted news updates of Rupert while she was away.  I’ve never really got into it, nor Twitter, though I read them both reasonably regularly, usually catching up when I’ve just woken up and am gathering myself together before getting out of bed.  This is often a rather slow process, if I have the luxury of time.  Quite a number of people post the same things on both, but it’s always seemed to me that they serve different purposes for me.  Twitter is more what blogging was at the start, when I had a thought I quite often blogged it, sometimes quite briefly.  If it had been around eight or nine years ago, I wonder if I’d have started blogging at all (I read blogs for quite a while before I started writing one).

Facebook – well, I mostly use it for Scrabble and so on, I don’t write that many posts normally.  I use both to comment on others’ posts.  I don’t tend to follow well-known people on Twitter, mostly people I know.  There are a couple of education ones I follow, one being a fairly local Headteacher who writes quite a lot, for newspapers mostly, also on his own blog.  He links to interesting articles and current topics.  I followed another educationalist for a while, but he courted controversy and republished antagonistic or rude replies to his tweets and I didn’t care for it.  I’ve nothing against being opinionated, but it was unpleasant, like being in a room with people who are quarrelling on a matter you’ve nothing to do with.  So I unfollowed him.

Fortunately, Twitter and Facebook seem to have taken a lot of the people who used to write pretty poor blogs and most of those I look at are well worth reading – not that I search around for more blogs to read very often.  I still drop on a few more though, usually through other bloggers’ comments or when someone comments here – which I suppose is because they’ve spotted one of my comments on another blog.

It’s become apparent, as I’ve been writing, that it’s all about the comments, isn’t it?  So if you do read this and want to leave one, please fill in your URL if you have a blog, because I’d like to visit you in return.

Hannah and Sam were at the airport by 4 o’clock this morning  and back in this country by 9.  So it was time to get ready for Rupert to leave.  Russell took him for a walk while I packed up his things and hoovered the carpet (because he barks at the hoover).  The light showed red and I thought it had clogged because it wasn’t long ago that I emptied it, but the bag was full of blond Ben-hair.

Then I took both dogs for a last walk round the village.  I hadn’t asked Russell to take Ben because there was a bit of a to-do yesterday – he put them both on leads and was just turning to shut the door behind him when Ben spotted one of the hens wandering across the garden and lunged forward.  Russell was dragged against the doorframe, spun round and crashed onto the paving, landing on his hip and bashing both elbows.  Remarkably, he didn’t let go of either lead and I took the dogs (poor Rupert was quite alarmed to hear me shout so angrily at Ben) and shut them in while I went to help Russell.

A lot of TLC was required, which involved TCP and T and biscuits, but he’s all right, thank goodness.  His bones are in extremely good nick and I suspect that it happened so quickly that there was no time to try to save himself, so he was not braced for the fall which would have done more damage.  He’s stiff and sore today, but he has no limp and he wasn’t badly cut, just bruised and grazed.

This morning, we sat in the garden with both dogs and drank coffee.  Rupert was thrilled to be reunited with his family, though not desperate to leave us, tactful little dog.  Russell and I went out for lunch and are pottering round this afternoon.  Ben is mostly sleeping.

I’m not going to update the old blog any more, having uploaded posts onto both sites for a few days.  If you have any problems with commenting here, hop back to http://razorbladeoflife.blogspot.co.uk/ and drop me an email – click on Z in the top right and it’ll take you to my profile page.

And, if this is your first visit, welcome.

This is our final day with Rupert, our friends’ little spaniel pup.  Sam and Hannah are due to come and pick him up tomorrow morning.  The visit has been an unqualified success – which we expected, no problems were anticipated – and the only slight disappointment has been that we’ve not been able to let the dogs out in the garden unaccompanied, just in case any of the bantams have got out.  But they can go off the lead on the marshes, where they have a brilliant time.  They both love the water and play riotously, but with complete good humour.  Ben is very kind to the smaller dog, although sometimes clumsy, but Rupert is quite unbothered at being trodden on and can hold his own in a play-fight.

Asleep on the bed

Asleep on me

He is also very, very affectionate and cuddly.  Although he woke early this morning and wanted to play, which I could have done without, having been fast asleep at 5.45.

Other news on the home front is that Weeza and Phil’s house purchase seems to have had all problems ironed out and the contract is due to be signed tomorrow, with completion early next month.  There’s a bit of work they want to do before moving and more in due course, but it’s going to be beautiful.

If anyone is having difficulty registering here, do let me know (my email address is on my profile at the Blogger blog, not sure if I’ve got any contact details here yet) and I can do it.  If you want an avatar/photo against your comments, I think it’ll work if you add your own blog to your profile.

I’ve had a few queries about commenting on this site, so have checked with Ro, who builds websites for a living (Senior Interface Developer, he is – I suppose it’s inevitable that at least one of my children should have a job title I don’t really comprehend) and uses WordPress regularly, which he says is excellent.

This is not a wordpress.com blog but a stand-alone site that uses WP tools.  So a WordPress ID doesn’t work to sign in with, you need to enter in your details to register.

Categorically, wordpress.com does not have access to comments on razorbladeoflife.co.uk and there is no crossover.  If you register, your comments won’t appear anywhere else and they won’t be available for marketing or spamming.

If you don’t want to store cookies on your computer, Ro recommends that you let your browser store your password and then, rather than clicking ‘Remember Me,’ which does store a cookie, you just have to click ‘Login.’

I’ll post on both sites for a few more days and then just leave a link there.  Ro has transferred all the posts and pictures and some of the comments, but there are about 28,000 of them and it’s straining the system a bit.

If you read blogs on an iPhone, it’s a lot nicer on this site and the commenting is easier too.

Many, many thanks to Ro for setting this up for me, the site itself wasn’t so much bother (though I kept going back to him with little points, mostly about the commenting set-up) but the transfer of 3,000 posts was and it took him the whole evening.  He has been extremely kind and patient throughout and I appreciate it all very much.

It’s not so much dissatisfaction with Blogger, which has served me pretty well for the last seven and a half years, but – oh go on, let’s face it, it’s overweening ambition.  I wanted a .co.uk of my own.  And I didn’t want to be dictated to any more, particularly in respect of comments.  I think of you at all times, darlings – as I said a week or two ago, making people jump through unnecessary hoops to leave comments or being inundated with spam (and, of course, if you’ve subscribed to comments you’ll get them too, even if they’re not published) is a nuisance and Blogger doesn’t seem interested in solving the problem.  But there, it’s a free service and I wonder how long Google will carry on supporting those of us who don’t put advertisements on their blog anyway.

Ro is kindly setting this up for me and we’re transferring all posts but we’re not entirely sure yet what will happen about photos and comments.  I’ll leave the old blog in place anyway and I’ve downloaded it too because I hold it in very warm affection and would hate to lose it.  Besides, it serves as my memory nowadays, I can check when things happened here at the Zeddary.

Expect a few cock-ups on the posting front while I’m getting used to it though.  The first thing I’ve learnt is that pressing ‘return’ to start a new paragraph automatically gives a double space. So I don’t have to do it twice.

We’re using WordPress, by the way, but Ro assures me that all utterances of ‘Howdy’ have been expunged.