Thursday 29th June 2006

Well once the decision on the Woodland Centre had been taken I suppose it was only a matter of time before other changes started to take place. I was ok with Harry moving but now I am feeling very sad as Nicole has decided to move to the other wood so that she can help. She came to see me earlier and explained as gently as she could that Harry needed her help and it was fairly easy for her to move at this time of year. I remembered back to the days when it seemed that I wasn’t much bigger that she is and felt sad at how quickly everything can change. One problem that they have identified for the Woodland Centre is who is going to run it when both Harry and Nicole go into hibernation. If the weather is likely to be bad it will make travelling difficult too so I guess they will have to find someone from the far wood, so that they are close by. Maybe I could go and help once in a while.

Oh that’s great isn’t it? Just as I get interested in the football and am trying to learn what it is all about there were no games on yesterday and my mistress says there will be none today either. Why not? I want to watch some football. I have been wondering what they are talking about when they say things like 4-4-2 formation or 3-5-3, or in the case of one England game 2-4-4 which everyone seemed to think was a bit odd. How am I going to teach the other animals if there isn’t any on for me to learn from? I quite fancy being the one that runs up and down the pitch showing yellow and red cards and making people go off. That looks quite a fun job. I like the bits where he writes things in a little book. I wonder if I could practice showing little red and yellow cards to my master and mistress.

Listening to my mistress trying to learn Dutch I can understand where the English expression ‘double Dutch’ comes from. Take time as an example. What time is ‘half two’? Now you would think that was an easy one wouldn’t you! In England that would be 30 minutes after two, but if you arranged to meet a Dutch person at half two you would be an hour late as in Dutch they express it as half before the hour. It’s ok once you remember how it’s done but surely it is easier to call ‘twenty to three’ exactly that rather than ‘ ten over half before three’? It is no wonder that England has such a problem fitting in to Europe!