Tuesday 27th January 2009

If you ask a hotel concierge to look up details of a museum and they find it on the internet for you together with directions and a phone number, you would like to think the museum was actually there when you arrived. It can’t be possible that a museum can change hands and disappear within the time it takes for a forty mile drive, except that is what seemed to happen to my Master on Saturday. He confidently arrived with the boys to look at old cars and racing cars, only to find a sports centre where the museum should have been. Given that it was my master rather than the boys that was excited about seeing some cars, it was all rather sad. They were quite happy with a sea life centre alternative, but when all’s said and done, there isn’t much a comparison between a formula one car and an octopus.

My Mistress had an interesting discussion with the local council. We aren’t living in our new house yet because we are going to get the building work first. If a house is empty it can be exempt from Council Tax for six months. If a house is in the middle of building work it can be exempt from Council Tax for up to twelve months. If it is after the six months and the only reason you can’t start the building work is because you are waiting for that same council to give you planning permission, then you have to pay Council Tax. Something in all that seems to be illogical, but then I’m only a dog. What we are waiting to find out, is just how many walls you need to knock out for the exemption to be given. I wonder what the council would consider inhabitable.