I must go down to the sea again...

“The Bank Holiday” is a great English tradition. Generations of children have been packed into cars, buried alive under the great mounds of household flotsam and jetsam deemed necessary to spend a few days in the country and driven, groaning and complaining all the way, at interminably slow speed along overloaded highways, to some damp destination that their parents think is ‘interesting’.

Not to be outdone I threw my ‘children’ into the car along with the tent and camping paraphernalia and drove for six hours to the coast. They deserve it you see, they’re dogs, they shouldn’t be cooped up indoors, no, they should be cooped up in the back of the car. So many, many hours after we set out we, found our pitch. It’s just as well really as I had absolutely no view out of the rear screen by then as they’d rimed it with half an inch of dog’s nose splufter. I’m glad we were in a field, I don’t think we smelt very nice.

So, all in all we’ve had a refreshing few days beach coming, reading, cooking bizarre meals on the primus stove and drinking lots of local beer with local people with one big eye in the middle of their forehead, (“Oo aar, av’ you met moi sister-wife?”).

Charlie’s little plastic bonnet came off so he could play on the beach. It was a practical measure as he was doing a good impersonation of a bucket dredger. I’ll offer you one piece of advice if I may, never throw a tennis ball in to the sea for your spaniel, if your terrier is wearing a plastic bucket on his head. The results might look hilarious but I’m pretty sure it’s less funny to your dog who is currently doing a head stand in a foot of salt water. Ah well, you live and learn?

On the Charlie front, we’ve discussed a few options with the vet. One is to surgically pull down a membrane from inside his eye lid and effectively sew his eye shut to give the cornea a chance to heal. The other, less palatable option is simply to remove the eye. But they’ll have to fight me for it – at least convince me that it is absolutely the best thing for him, because I’m going to kick up a hell of a fucking stink (excuse my French) before I let that happen.

For my part, well I’m fine. It’s nothing I need worry about any longer.

It was a pretty unpleasant experience though, conducted under local anaesthetic. It’s a very peculiar feeling, chatting to the nurse while some other faceless creature hacks away (I’m sure I do him a disservice by describing the surgeon’s handiwork as “hacking”, he certainly did neat stitches) at your bits.

And it must be a good sign that I’ve started to pick at the stitches?

Do you think that if I pull the wrong one the whole bloody mission will fall apart and I’ll lose the other two?