Exciting Sunday

We were expecting a quiet one this weekend. Perhaps we should have better understood the portent of what we found when we returned from having tea out on Friday evening. Our "darling little puppy" had managed to escape her cage and then had rampaged around our living room, knocking over just about everything and making a fine old mess. Fortunately, she had been most occupied by "recycling" a pile of newspapers so the damage looked far greater than it actually was and the clear-up operation took only a few minutes.

A good dose of man-flu saw me stay at home on Saturday for some recuperative time while the rest of the family headed over to visit my in-laws. Unfortunately, Bellezepup stayed at home with me and seemed to be possessed for all but ten minutes of the day. By evening I was exhausted, as was the supply of plasters and ointment needed to patch up my shredded hands, arms and feet.

On Sunday, fifteen week old Belle attended her third puppy training class. At least she's made some good friends from her fellow students over the last couple of weeks. Sadly, academic progress has been somewhat less of a priority for her and we're going to have to change her collar to something that will cause her to listen just a little more. As the tuition takes place on a show ground, the equine, bovine and other animal smells seem to prove far too distracting for our beast.

After bacon sandwiches, the boy and I headed over to Sheffield with our bikes (in the back of the car) to join some friends for a ride out in the forest. Although reasonably fine as we set off, the sky got increasingly dark and angry and as we arrived the heavens opened. Whilst we don't mind getting wet, and it certainly wasn't cold, we weren't prepared with a change of clothes and accordingly we had to wimp out. We headed back down towards civilisation.

As we travelled to our friend's house, a full size, saddled and riderless horse came straight across our bow. She was clearly very frightened, easily outrunning her pedestrian pursuers. We followed for over a mile along country lanes, trying as best we could to warn oncoming traffic. After a few scares at major road junctions, she eventually took a wrong turn and was arrested around the back of a barn. We drove back to where the pursuit had started and flagged down the local constabulary to tell them where she was.

By the time we got to a kettle for a much-need brew, the sky was absolutely beautiful with not a cloud to be seen, it's true what they say about Sheffield's weather. We had a sit down and relaxed further by following the password recovery procedure of a misbehaving appliance while we recanted our adventures.

Then, on the motorway travelling back, just as we reported our anticipated ETA using a non-distracting phone car kit(!), a folding caravan that was being towed by a car about 200yds ahead of us decided it would be a great time to rear-up and scatter itself across all three lanes of the carriageway. We managed to avoid running over any of the debris and were glad to finally return to the safety of home. Phew!