Our spaniel was - not jumping up but quietly intrigued by his toys, hung out to dry after being washed. When they had been taken down and returned to him, I don't think he thought the fresh clean smell was nearly as good as how they were before they were popped into the machine (without him noticing)!
A lot of spiders in the house this year. Don't know why. I have the feeling that there have't been this many since 2001 but I might have forgotten another year when there were masses of them.
This one has taken up residence in the sitting-room.
A week ago, I walked to the next village, Aston, and to the hamlet of Cote beyond to pick up my bike, which had been repaired.
I'd walked back home after dropping it off too.
While we've visited friends in Aston and bought things from the shop and pottery, I suddenly realised that in over twenty years of living in west Oxfordshire, I'd never walked the village before. I've been through it hundreds of times, if not thousands - by bus, car, bike. But never had I travelled it at pavement level. Suddenly the perspective and sense of scale changed. From the road, at different heights, moving forward, at various speeds, the village backdrop slips by, without real appreciation or understanding.
Not that I know Aston from two walks but my perception of it has altered completely. That sight-line of that thatched cottage, with the stone houses beyond; that closeness to the allotment field and its crops - and bare land; those panels of the modern school against the Victorian church.
At Cote it was the same thing and I stopped for a while to admire the Baptist Chapel and its simple high-browed symmetrical beauty.
Still some water in the Highmoor Brook and other streams in and around the village. Plants thriving here, where the brook flows through the old water meadows.
As I type, a few days after the photo was taken, there has been rain overnight and a decent shower or two now, this afternoon. Hooray.
Though there's not much more forecast for the coming fortnight.
Photo was taken on one the last walks before I collected my bike, which was being repaired in the weeks following my op, when I couldn't do anything too strenuous.
Op btw a success. Amazing to be able to see again. The brightness! The clarity!
It was great to walk along the Thames and canal to north Oxford from Osney Bridge. Fortunately, the temperatures were moderating by then.
Btw I've created a new page, opposite, entitled Occasional Poems, which does what it says on the tin.
First one's Within reason.
