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complexion of our walls this time it was our old kitchen now apparently a utility room that was getting a make over then blow me down with a full tank of petrol and a second mortgage just as i thought we should be hunkering down for the autumn in front of my log burners we were on the move again burning rubber on the a1 all the way to hertfordshire after 7 hours on the road i was somewhat concerned about the empty state of my tummy but give them their due the first items out of my car were a substantial container of my wainwrights c o pets at home along with our very best dining crockery well i thought so with that priority attended to i had a quick tour of the new place sampling the quality of the soft furnishings and then with my seal of approval we got the other pretty unimportant baggage in it was an odd few days really we adhered to our old routine but just in another place up late eat walk play ball sleep up eat walk play ball sleep sleep sleep and dream admittedly david did lots of that clicking thing with the little box that i have to look into when i bark cheese and lick my lips the unusual thing was during three whole days the box was never pointed at me for a photogenic egotistical dog this was a tad disconcerting i did put in a guest appearance from my car but you d need and awfully strong magnifying glass to spot my best side the word work entered the lexicon but sounding much like hut i kept my head down and pretended i didn t hear thankfully nothing bad came of it and in a flash we were back on the a1 heading north after i had supervised the packing of my essential belongings balls bowls and blankets back at home i watched the dogs from our neighbouring farm hard at work and counted my blessings i was home i was happy i loved my old people that is until the next round of chaos hit early in december then yet more tradesmen materialised doing even more unfathomable things with shelves and tiles and worst of all floorboards life with tradesmen is such strange existence no sooner are they in then i m escorted out can t think why in the middle of this particular round of chaos we complimented the upheaval the dust and the grime with with a cornucopia of festive bits and pieces many of them lit by the warm glow of very cheap lighting in shades of red green and gold we are nothing if not traditional in our house quite how mince pies and sundry other delights made their way from fantasy to table amid all the comings goings banging and drilling is something of a mystery the full assembly of a christmas cake remains a complete enigma why after all this effort we had to go to our caravan and deck those halls too i ll never know but we did and what a lovely time we had i m pretty used to the routine when christmas day arrives and it became v v v difficult to be remain composed as corks popped glasses clinked with ice and i was given tasty morsels then the time came and mayhem visited our little home as i opened all my presents this was quickly followed by total exhaustion and oh my golly gosh what aromas visited my headspace i thought i was floating on an astral plane so there we have it the rotation of another blissful year i think i ve acquitted myself reasonably well in the ethics of dog behaviour as a mature dog sporting an inner puppy that is if we gloss over the curious incident of two missing sausages in the afternoon think i ll rest on my laurels for a bit and so to bed love ben xx share this email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on whatsapp opens in new window whatsapp like loading 1 comment ben s year 2021 staying put february 9 2022 february 13 2022 ben munro buddy and budding dog poet adventure christmas dogs fundraising hill walking mountains munros outdoors scotland friends collies latter day puppies a big hello to anyone new to my blog i m ben a handsome border collie on a v v v adventurous challenge you can read all about it by clicking here my blogs tell the whole story paw by paw i do so hope you will like them and want to follow my adventures it had taken me a bit of time to complete my review of the year because not a lot had happened or so it had seemed at the time i was a stay at home ben for most of the year indeed my lack of new adventures was reflected in the paucity of the posts i had written for my blog over a whole long year nevertheless a year is a huge long time in the life of a border collie with each one needing it s due tribute and so the year began as a yawning replica of how we had spent much of 2020 and the fast spreading covid mutation responsible for cancelling christmas 2020 had caused nicola our big chief to drawn down the hatches and put up the barricades we were all locked up again we could travel the big distance of 5 miles but that was only for exercise we were also allowed to go to pets at home for my bit of dinner but only if we hadn t caught that nasty virus thing those who had needed to do something called self isolating and it s a good job i haven t needed to do that because although i m big on the self bit i m not good at anything that reeks of discipline as a result of this latest lock down i missed out on my romps with oscar in mabie forest yet again and it was just me and my people all day everyday we settled comfortably into a different daily routine with excursions to ae forest becoming the norm here i alighted upon a new sport which was born out of necessity rather than desire just before 2020 became 2021 we had a deluge of the white stuff which unlike most years froze over and refroze every night it covered my shrunken world for a long time well over a month and that is equivalent to more than a year for you bipeds pro rata as they say anyway back in ae forest i was on the skids and all my paths became a playground for not so much dancing on ice but ball chasing on ice now this is an awfully tricky game and is if i may say so rather unnerving at times it required me to go on a steep learning curve first of all i had to find out about aerodynamics just to stay on all fours then i needed a grounding in velocity to work out how quickly i needed to do this skating business in order to arrest a ball also travelling at speed on thin ice none of this was easy not even for a border collie quite apart from anything else my ball s tempo varied according to how much loose snow it picked up along the way i can t tell you how many times i waved goodbye to it as i sped past quite unable to apply brakes on the impossible surface clearly lifting a paw to wave goodbye hadn t been such a bright idea because all the laws of physics in the world couldn t keep me upright when balanced on three legs instead of four thus my ball became a distant spec while i completed my my journey as a rather undignified totally helpless hound travelling downhill at speed flat on my back and to add insult to injury my perilous plight became the stage for comic entertainment when watched by my people it s just possible that i may have become a little more competent over time but in all honesty i can t say i m waiting for a call from team gb asking me to join them at the winter olympics slide the photo to see whose playing ball january slid pardon the pun into february with very little change in the weather or to our routine and the second big lock down of my short life became rather tiresome limiting my horizons i am a sensitive tyke and i do know that my inconveniences were small fry indeed because this pernicious coronavirus was having very unpleasant consequences for lots of people by comparison me and my people were so very lucky counting my blessings included all those long mornings in bed that we all go in for in the dark mornings and then of course there were all my lovely lovely christmas treats that i was still working my way through the reassuring roll of the seasons meant that before long my movements in the garden weren t being traced by one of those big white beams then as snowdrops gave way to daffodils the sun with his hat off radiated just enough warmth to penetrate my fur still we couldn t go beyond our five mile radius except when we took off on jaunts known as house hunting which is brilliant fun the rules are we drive miles and miles so that i can have a jolly good romp and sniff around someone else s garden to see if i like it or not but i have to say how lovely it is even if it isn t which is a tad confusing we went to the highest village in scotland a pathetic little hovel in moffat and a lodge near nowhere in particular with very little to recommend it however after all this cavorting around outside my five mile zone i decided our garden is best of all and so the bloody house will just have to do not my words following all this frantic activity i found out that staying put meant sitting in all day making lots of phone calls then in the wake of a very big phone bill tons of tradesmen were coming but not very soon getting to work but disappearing for days and then causing the need for other tradesmen to come after them but not very soon staying to work but sadly i don t think they ve finished yet on the days when they did come stay at home ben was put in the car just in case my ankle nipping tendencies got in the way of a productive days work from my lonely exile i heard it all head splitting banging thunderous hammering and rounded off by ear bursting drilling for heavens sake i tried to implore them don t you know my sensory equipment is thousands of times more sensitive than yours and no one has given me ear defenders to make matters worse when they left and i got back in my own home it was chaos nothing was where it should be golden flames came from a new room but were contained in a black cupboard with a glass door it wasn t at all like my old hearth albeit one that used to spit at me a lot where i wondered am i meant to lie down for an evenings snooze now new carpets had also been put down in my absence smelling of horrid chemicals instead of well maybe i shouldn t mention that worst of all my bed kept moving from place to place and i was getting so dizzy nonetheless i can t tell a lie i did get my game of ball everyday and my dinner bang on time every night small comfort though they were while all this was going on newton s bit of a theory was having it s way with the covid figures and so the infection rates that had gone up were now coming down this allowed our world to expand a bit even when not taking a turn around other people s gardens in the early days of freedom we spent an idyllic week at our caravan in the lake district eating lots walking loads and generally giving our ears a bit of a rest although i thought i was living the dream i had in fact been labouring under a massive misapprehension i believed we were getting fit ready for some munro bagging after a winter of sloth like every other year however i was destined for more of that staying put business while b kept coming and going driving my van away without me it turned out that 2021 was to be the big munro year and every trip away would include at least one walk with either extremely narrow ridges or lots of scrambling neither of which can for health and safety reasons accommodate a dog with ankle nipping tendencies then there was the need for my presence at base now i was the only pet left making all the difference between a barren house and a loving home unfortunately i hadn t quite worked out how to do that when said property was being ripped apart before my very eyes so it continued all summer long b going away and bang bang bang at home then blow me down with a tuft of highland heather we were on the move at summers very last knockings david drove me such a long long way i thought he must be taking me to check out the grounds of some stately home therefore i was a little perplexed when we drew up outside a remarkably average bungalow with a pocket handkerchief garden but that was before my sensory equipment had got to work as familiar scents started travelling around my nose there was that glorious peaty smell of the trodden earth on walking boot followed by a vaguely nauseous aroma of mould from a rucksack that was never washed and finally concluding my suspicion my nose alighted on sweaty waterproofs boy oh boy did i know that sweat now omg there was no doubt and the residence became a palace my b was in there i hadn t seen her for three whole weeks released from my harness i reached the speed of lightening as i made for the door inside we did loads and loads of cuddles and then we did them all over again and again and again i ll swear i ve never been so excited in all my born years we had never been apart that long before we stayed at our new abode for ages and i wasn t bothered about not knowing where i was or which bed was mine i found a weird looking thing a bit like me actually except that it lay in front of a doors instead of a fire so i played a bit of wrestling with it and b then i found a stray tennis ball so i had a game with that too it seemed like i was a little puppy all over again everyday anytime of day i played tuggy with whatever was knocking about though for some reason socks and slippers didn t seem to go down so well in those halcyon days of september we had new walks with my old ball and the three of us stuck together like glue my pack was complete of course in the end newton was proved right again and what went up north had to come down south and so we began the long journey sad to be leaving paradise once home i became b s tour guide though no one ever gave me a nice coat with a name badge showing her all the changes and telling her where she could sleep and where to get warm and about not to get mud on the new carpets i did get a bit bored with it though so took off with a bit of kindling at the earliest opportunity having retained my new found playfulness our return went paw in paw with the next round of upset and upheaval so that my metal equilibrium was once more torn to shreds the next big project was converting david s study into our bedroom this involved b taking an awful lot of junk up to that mysterious cavernous place upstairs after that every bit of furniture went walk about and none of us could find a thing our bed had come to rest in the middle of a spartan room and i didn t like it one bit also strangely around this time david adopted a peculiar fashion statement where his clothes were colour co ordinated with the transformation of our walls eventually we moved our furniture back and my bed changed place again even more of my old smells had gone and i still kept going to the wrong room at bedtime i didn t seem to have fixed roots any more evenings were odd too because we went out in the garden to a completely new building called a hobbit house which had miraculously appeared out of nowhere during the early mont...