Doing Double Time

-

Down in Aldina a tired old dog needed someone to feed him while his owners went gallivanting around the globe, and Team WhileNotWorking put up their hands for the job.   Unfortunately Tired Old Dog's owners left before our current cat's owners came back, resulting in some serious to-and-fro about who got to go to the beach to hang out with TOD and who stayed back in Adelaide to brush the cat.  In the end we split the difference and off Roger went for the first shift with TOD who was fast asleep in the laundry, his owners having left at 3 in the morning.

TOD was deaf as a post and did not awaken to Roger clattering into the house and calling his name.  Indeed, TOD didn't wake up until Roger, fearing the worst, tapped him on the head and waved breakfast in front of his nose. TOD was not in the least perturbed to be awoken by a complete stranger, breakfast being the most important thing in his life, and his doggy logic dictated that the whole house could be burgled as long as Roger fed him first.

Roger didn't have to burgle the house.  He texted me with glee: the owners left chocolate, biscuits, and wine for the perusal of the house sitters.

Leave some for me please.

Roger promptly went out to explore the area, aided and abetted by some beautiful winter weather.  Not wanting to keep the experience to himself he happily sent photos to me as I slaved away, winning bread in my pokey little office while regularly having to remove a needy cat from my keyboard.


"Oh dear! The rain comes as I wander along this beautiful beach! "

"Oh look!  If you weren't working you could be exploring these compelling cliffs too!"

"Well look at that!  The sun is out and it's a beautiful day to go beach walking!"

"Mmm... and the coffee is nice too!  Isn't the water a brilliant blue?"

Hmph!

The sun better be shining when it's my turn at the beach, is all I have to say.









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

23/12/21 The Dinosaurs of Newtown

-
Image
Some time in the months before Christmas, somewhere near Newtown, a shop had a sale of inflatable Christmas dinosaurs. Lots of people thought that a large inflatable dinosaur was just what they needed for their 2021 outdoor festive decor, so they bought the dinosaurs and then discovered that, once inflated, they were very big. Not as big as a real dinosaur would have been, obviously, but certainly big enough to be inconvenient if you happen to live in a trendy little terrace house with a handkerchief of front lawn and second story verandah almost the size of half a vegemite sandwich.   Dinosaur #1: taking up all the available verandah space I imagine that at this stage the dinosaur purchasers may have considered the size of the dinosaur (inflated or otherwise) in relation to their rubbish bin, but were likely prevented from this course of action by children who, enamoured of dinosaurs, had welcomed the creature into the Christmas fold and called it something festive like Rudolph, o...
Read more

Minor Adventures on Quiet Days

-
Image
 Roger took himself off on the train to South Australia for a week, so BD and I decided to have some adventures of our own, albeit not as exciting as riding the interstate train to Adelaide and getting to have an up-close stickybeak at the flooded Murray River. We took ourselves off to the Ormond Lookout to watch the sun set instead. As did rather more people than what we had anticipated. Mobs, in fact. We found a patch of dirt grass and settled in.  "I'm gonna come back here!" declared BD.  She wriggled around a bit: our patch of grass was on quite a slope and she kept sliding out of her shorts.  "With a chair," she added. In between admiring other people's dogs and taking observational lessons in 101 Ways To Take A Selfie, we watched the sun trundle slowly toward the horizon. No sunset is complete without a picnic. There she goes. Further down the beach, a container ship puttered across the horizon under the gaze of a lone beach-sitter.  And us, of course...
Read more

Quiet Life with Cat

-
Image
 After all the excitement of hospital stays, Emergency Department visits, and trying to balance the cost-benefit ratio of hospital cafeteria food, life became a little more settled.  After a week of blessedly boring drug levels BD was given a reprieve from daily blood tests and we, therefore, were released from daily drives to the nearest Melbourne Pathology lab.  We did some laundry and did some cleaning and I hopped on my bicycle and went for a ride or two.  Not that the weather was very conducive to enjoyable and relaxing bike riding, but I went anyway. All was fine at Albert Park, where the swans put on a good show, playing happy families all across the playing fields.  But that didn't last for long. Back at home the new cat let his crazy out to play.  He zoomed up and down the hallway in the middle of the night; scared the bejeebers out of us by jumping on the sound bar and blasting us with high volume TV; hid under chairs and batted at our ankles as w...
Read more