Some delay in posting for a variety of reasons. Firstly, computer has the sulks and the big decision to be made is whether it is terminal. Unfortunately, it looks that way. DH has kindly rigged up a very old laptop, so we are making do with that at the moment. This does allow access to the Net, although many of the bookmarked sites have of course been lost, so am busy trying to re-establish that.

Anyway, what else is happening? Andrew returns from Scotland in about an hour and a half. As I write he should be in the air somewhere over Manchester (Jonathan, I'll hope he waves at the builders at the flat). I'm about to go and put the oven on, to cook some chicken that's been marinading in a red pepper and peri-peri marinade. Free range, natch, nearly a fiver for four thighs, and they were selling whole battery chickens for less than three quid. Also there were only two packets of FR chicken on the shelf, so I didn't feel we had a lot of choice.

I've been working on a quilt now for a few days - I can't say too much about it as the person it will be given to occasionally reads this blog, and it will be a surprise for them. In any case I will do a more detailed posting over on my Silver Nutmeg site, with all the exciting technical details. All I can say is that I am absolutely delighted with it, and I hope the recipient likes it.

Over the weekend, we popped down to visit a fellow greyhound enthusiast who lives on a lovely farm in Carmarthenshire, actually just down the road from my friend Liz. She has two lurchers who were delightful, although one was incredibly shy, owing to some previous bad experiences before being rescued. We also had the pleasure of a tour round her stables and had a nice horsy natter. Andrew (who doesn't share my love of horses) made friends with the stable cats and ended up wearing one as a kind of draped parrot, as he strolled round the yard. Came home wearing lots of sweet little muddy paw prints and sniffed very thoroughly by Andy and Booty who could obviously pick up the aromas of the other dogs.

There isn't really a lot else to write about. Andy has been going through one of his phases of collecting random objects for his nest upstairs, which has been downright surreal at times - may be he is a surrealist? The world's first surrealist greyhound - now there's something to conjure with. Objects I've had to rescue have included the cheese grater, a rug, several very sharp knives, a saucepan, cushions, some quilting batting (the stuffing in the middle), a fish slice, a measuring jug and Andrew's Duke of Edinburgh Award certificate. He also wasn't very happy today that I washed his duvet - I think dogs spend a lot of time working on the patina of fragrance (to them) in their den, and we humans come along and remove it, and replace it with boring old fabric conditioner.