Sunday 13th August 2006

Personally, (or should it be dogally?) I am rather concerned. One of the wedding presents is a Flemish cookbook. Apparently there is a tradition in this part of Belgium that when a girl gets married her mother gives her this particular cookery book that has been updated over many many years. Well a friend of my mistress bought it for her. A lovely idea you might think, so why am I so concerned? Well it is not just Flemish recipes but it is all written in Flemish too. Ok, so my mistress does know a fair few words but what happens when she steams something that should have been roasted or sautés something that should have been frozen? I suppose on the bright side I might stand to benefit if some of the dishes go wrong, but if they go very wrong even I might refuse to eat them. In fairness they would have to turn out very inedible before my master would turn them away. My mistress has promised to refer to her dictionary for any of the words she doesn’t know but I am still a little anxious. In fairness I think the friends in question realise there may be some mistakes as they also gave them some fairly large bottles of strong Belgian beer which I can only assume are to be consumed on those occasions that the taste of the cooking needs to be ‘overwhelmed’.

Ok, so mole hills are so ‘last year’. Ours seem to be moving into the realms of building ‘mole mountains’! So much for not making a mountain out of a mole hill. They just keep digging. I tried to surprise them by knocking the top off one of their earthworks, thinking I would see the mole’s little nose. I can only conclude that the moles move very quickly when they hear me coming or they are very strong and are pushing earth up from very deep down. The only other possible explanation is that the mole is from the McCavity family and manages to mysteriously flee from the scene of the crime. I have to say as a dog reading books about cats is really a bit of a masochistic tendency but ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’ does rather fascinate me.

This decorating thing is getting out of hand. I sniffed at the open pot and came out with a yellow nose. It seems James is going to need to sleep wearing sun glasses or wake up with an awful shock in the mornings. His room is ‘sunlight yellow’ and I for one will be keeping my eyes closed whilst I am in there and from now on I will not be sticking my nose in any paint pots.