Only 10 days until Christmas, yippee. That is 8 normal shopping days but probably 10 if you are in England and America and 3 and a half if you are in Belgium, but then you have to guess which 3 and a half! Oh the joys of not understanding what is going on around you. It will be odd living in England and not having my mistress scratching her head about bills for odd taxes that she has no idea what they are. The last one was a medical thing, nobody could quite explain to us what it was but simply told us we had to pay it. I don’t actually think that Belgian people really know how it all works either!
Most people keep their gate ‘on the latch’, using the bolt to keep it in place. In winter we have ours ‘on the hedgehog’. This overcomes the problem of being faced with a choice of vaulting the gate or remaining in the garden. We have a boot and paw cleaning device that looks like a hedgehog with a brush for prickles that my mistress uses to wedge the gate shut when it would freeze up otherwise. It means you can close the gate from the inside but it becomes a complicated process from the outside. If I time it carefully and keep an eye open, there may well be the opportunity for a little Christmas escape outing for Alfie. Don’t say I didn’t warn her!
I need to get some Christmas presents for everyone but I’m certainly not joining the scrum. I was thinking more along the lines of dragging back a tree branch or two from my walks, but I’m not sure how I’m going to wrap them. I wonder if it will be more appropriate to bring back oak or cedar?