Saturday 24th June 2006

Well work has now begun on the Woodland Centre. A crew of beavers have been appointed to do most of the work but they cannot start until the moles have dug the foundations. It must be great to get paid for something you do naturally anyway. I am rather hoping that they dig the foundations only in the places they have been asked to dig and not as they have in our garden. There is now one bit by our back gate that my mistress put her foot on and simply disappeared down a hole that was only just below the surface. I have been quite concerned about the lack of consideration for safety issues. I was watching a programme the other day all about the number of serious injuries on construction sites and despite my going and telling the mole foreman all about it they still aren’t even wearing hard hats. I hope the beavers will be more professional.

I have been wondering whether to change my name when my master and mistress get married. I started by thinking I could be Peregrine or Archibold but then when I talked to my mistress about it she explained it was my last name that I would change and that it was normal to change it to the same as the rest of the family. I felt a bit crestfallen, I’m quite attached to the surname Dog, it has been passed down through generations. I feel it says something about me, something I am quite proud of. She said I could always keep it as my professional name and only change it for the purpose of the family. I said I’d think about it. It is all so complicated with having to get my passport changed and the like. You don’t think it would mean that I had to have my jabs all over again do you?

My mistress has been reading a book called ‘A Clockwork Orange’ it seems really odd as it has a lot of made up language in it. She has found it hard work trying to understand what some of it means, it is a bit like talking to teenagers but worse. At least with Dutch when she doesn’t understand a word she can look it up. I was wondering if I could invent my own language. Start a trend by using a completely new word for something to see if it would catch on. I wonder how long it would take for a new word to go full circle. For me to use it and it catch on, how long would it be before someone completely different and unconnected would use that word back to me without knowing I invented it?  The only problem is that I can’t think of a word to invent.