Happily I am back at my grandparents. I am being spoilt rotten and it is great to find that the toys I left here last time are still waiting to be played with. There is nothing quite like finding you have a rubber chicken to fling around and generally try to kill. I have promised not to do it with a real one if I ever get close enough, even I can tell the difference between rubber and feathers. I did have a bit of a funny moment the other day with the donkey puppet that my mistress brought back from Greece. I knew it was only a puppet, I could see the strings. Then when my mistress made it walk up to me and nuzzle me, and then sit down next to me and cuddle up, I started to have my doubts. So I did the only thing a dog can do to check these things. I sniffed his bottom. There was half a moment when I thought he really might have been real but I have to say the bottom proved it conclusively, I have never found a live animal that smells of stuffing and cotton thread. At least I am now certain that my first instinct was right. If something has strings attached there is probably a good reason. It is a bit like the lesson my mistress and master were trying to teach James, if an offer seems to good to be true it usually is. The whole thing started with the offer of ‘free gifts’ for the children if the adults would attend a 90 minute presentation where they could be subjected to the hard sell of timeshare. Of course the man inviting them denied it was timeshare but they weren’t fooled. The message hadn’t quite gone home when James bought himself some ‘authentic’ aftershave that normally costs about €50 for just €3. “What a bargain,” he said. That was until his arm came out in a rash, when he started to get the point.