Do YOU have a beloved pet that you take into the office, or factory, every day to gladden the hearts of your co-workers? Most of us do, don't we, although my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I have to hold our hands up and confess that we no longer work - at least not since 2006, would you believe!!!
Local man Kyle Little, by contrast, is firmly in the "I bring my pet into work" camp - so much so, that he featured in a recent article this week in the local Onion News print edition for East Hampshire. Did you "catch it" (the story, I mean, not Kyle's pet haha!).
And, according to the article, what a contribution Kyle and his loveable terrier "Comet" have been making to general office fun and harmony over at Patterson Technologies in nearby Nether Wallop, that's for sure!
Kyle and "Comet" certainly lightened the mood at Patterson Technologies, and, arguably, lightened it even more after the guy got fired (!).
Poor Kyle !!!!!
It was only 3 weeks ago that Lois and I moved to this very rural part of East Hampshire, but we've noticed already how the local pet dogs are all very respectful and polite, even when interacting with the county's newest of newcomers, like little old us!
And according to reports, even the wild animals living over at nearby Buckleberry Farm Safari Park are very well trained, and polite to visitors. Again, Onion News Local has more....
{That's enough Onion News stories! - Ed]
us, a uniquely "dogless" couple, on one of our recent walks in Radford Park
- do the locals think we're a couple of "weirdos"? I wonder......!!!
What do you think? I even suggest to Lois that next time we should take our stuffed toy-on-wheels, "Rover" with us on our next walk - we're currently looking after "Rover" on behalf of our 11-year-old twin granddaughters in Australia, Lily and Jessica.
Together with their mother, our younger daughter Sarah, the family are planning to make annual regular visits to the UK, and we've promised to look after Rover and his friend "Buckles the Unicorn" and give them both some "exercise" now and again, so maybe the answer to our local "weirdo" image is to trundle Rover and Buckles along when we go for walks.
What do YOU think? Send me your thoughts (postcards only!).
What do YOU think? Send me your thoughts (postcards only!).
flashback to October 2024: our twin granddaughters'
stuffed toys, Rover (left) and Buckles, watching their
favourite TV programme at our old house in Malvern.
11:00 All in all, apart from reading our print edition of Onion News (!), it's a pretty routine morning for us.
Remember, unless you absolutely have to, never never never move house - it's just hassles hassles hassles all the way, that's for sure! Lois and I had to do it, because we've been diagnosed as "clinically old", and we need to live nearer to family - our other daughter Alison, husband Ed and their 3 teenage offspring, who live in nearby Headley.
flashback to January 3rd: we move into our new house
in Liphook, and start to unpack our "stuff", helped by our elder
daughter Alison (see above) and her husband Ed (not shown)
This morning we try and "sort" a few more of those house-move hassles, but there's still a mountain left to do. We check in at our new NHS doctor's surgery, and we join the county library. Lois makes an appointment for an eye and hearing test with this small town's only opticians, and in the town's only hardware store we buy a new suede shoe-brush for Lois's lovely suede boots: all the most basic essentials, in other words (!).
booking Lois a sight and hearing test at Liphook Eyecare, and finding her a brush for
her lovely suede boots at the town's only hardware store: all the essentials, in other words (!)
Who knew that Byron tried to keep a bear as a pet during his university days, at Trinity College, Cambridge? Annoyed at not being allowed, by university rules, to keep his beloved pet dog in his room, he went out and bought a bear, arguing that there was "nothing in the rules about keeping bears". It was easy to get hold of bears in those far-off crazy days, because of the then popular (and perfectly legal) practise of bear-hunting,
What madness!
But when the university dug in their heels and insisted on banning Byron's pet bear, he fought back by trying to enlist his bear as a student at his college. Again the university said no, although again Byron countered this by taking his pet bear, which he had housed in the town, on a lead around the campus.
What a crazy world they lived in, back in those far-off days !!!!!
21:00 It's been a day dominated by talk of dogs and bears, so Lois and I decide to go to bed on tonight's episode in BBC2's "Winterwatch" series, which gives a run-down of the state of British wildlife in these cold winter months, with the help of a team of presenters around the UK.
It's the sort of thing we humans might do, isn't it, say, if we know we've dropped something somewhere in a grassy field, trying maybe to mark off parts of the field we've already searched, so that we don't "do that bit twice".
Lois and I had that experience, long ago, before we were married, probably, and we realised I had dropped or mislaid our car-keys somewhere in the field - a potential disaster of humongous proportions, to put it mildly (!).
And tonight we see the rather scary sight of presenter Iolo Williams wearing a pair of glasses that magnify his eyes to the corresponding size for humans.
Yikes!!! Take those glasses off this minute, Iolo, say Lois and I, holding up our hands in horror! What madness !!!!
And who knew how "snow fleas" mate?! Lois and I didn't. Although not true fleas - they're related to scorpions - they take hours to mate, strapped tightly to each other, with the female being lugged around by the male.
Snow fleas have got enormously strong muscular back legs where they store their food, so pairs can "boomerang" together from place to place, like a couple of mating rubber balls, enabling them, during their lengthy mating ritual, for example, to "spring" smartly out of the way of predators like the harvester spider. and just "carry on carrying on".
What a crazy planet we live on !!!!
But the mating habits of the snowflea beg an important question here, don't they. Would that "respectful bear" in the local Buckleberry Farm Safari Park (see Onion story above), have been quite so ready to postpone eating that couple in the tent, if they had been mating like snowfleas, and maybe taking hours to do it.
I wonder......!
Perhaps we should be told, and sooner rather than later, for preference?
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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