The joy of leather

 Time doesn't allow a full description of the action packed day we have had which included a trip over to see the boys at boarding school. Will.I.Am and Apollo were very well behaved during our visit and as a reward for not chucking me off they are being allowed parole this weekend and will return to the chaos of HQ.

 In the short time it took me to reacquaint myself with my little pony, my big action dog was left to entertain himself in Renatta my everso cheap Rx4 dog carrier. He was told not to play with switches, only play music quietly, and above all else, don't make a mess.

 At some stage he got bored with the back seats

so tried the front and by the looks of the paw prints on the steering wheel had a good attempt at driving.

A quiet night in

 Its not like there wasn't anything on the telly, or a jobs list longer than a letter of apology from a Canadian politician,

 in fact there were a myriad of things

 I needed to do

 tonight, not least of which read bedtime stories

 or practice running moves in a Lion costume.

So thankfully nothing happened to divert my attention tonight from my principle tasks and I was able to have a quiet night in.

The Ugly Tree

This poor creature has fallen out of the fabled Ugly Tree and hit every branch on the descent. This is a Kune Kune Boar called Jerome who has a face only a mother could love. This was supposed to be posted yesterday but gremloids prevented any upload (except on the dog blog) so you will have missed why I spent part of my day off looking at farm animals that were not mine and that I had to pay for to see. Bit like a busman's holiday I suppose. The reason I was there and not at the arboretum renowned for its autumn collection of spectacular colours which would have been particularly vivid given the unexpected gloriously sunny day,  was that it was closed for...erm..autumn.

The great outdoors

As our last two sheep still refuse to succumb to the allure of the blue bucket, and as we have better things to do than chase after naughty sheep, my beautiful and oh so patient wife and yours truly decided to take the apprentice smallholder and MkII Rugrat for a stroll.

It was a couple of firsts, the first time the latest members of the Dolyhir clan had been for a walk in their domain, and the first time MkII Rugrat had been for a walk in his carrier rather than all terrain buggy.

We wanted to show him one of our favourite autumn spots

which wasn't at its best but getting close, the colours are pretty spectacular.

We think MkII Rugrat thought so too.

Calendar girl

Had I paid closer attention to the calendar we might not be sat waiting to see when Pam drops the next litter. As it is I didn't and we wait.

Renatta rides again

Its been a long time but finally the right planets aligned, the correct documents were in the same place at the same time and placed in the hands of a tax official who had a sense of humour and waived the £25 fine for failing to have correct document but a copy doodled on by small child and  a correctly filled out form requesting the original and the debit card worked without the Bank Manager phoning up to see if yours truly knew how much he was pruning the money tree, and so without too much ado the final legal requirement to allow Renatta on the road was obtained, a shiny new vehicle excise license.
Renatta, purchased last April for less money than your average racing bike, used only as a mobile disco since then is now back in action. Yesterday she managed 4.7 miles without breaking down and just as I was thinking hurrah, money well spent she faltered.
Panic stricken I persuaded the misfiring Rx4 to the nice man at the garage who agreed she was indeed misfiring and in need of some professional TLC.
As it was raining for a change he lent me a hatchback which is the first small car I have driven in years and felt less safe than a bike in traffic. I got home and explained to my beautiful and oh so patient wife that Renatta was poorly and perhaps a waste of money. Full of self loathing I made a cuppa and pondered car crushers, the merit of cars as chicken shacks or pig arcs and trade ins.
Phone rings.
Alls fixed you can get her shes going great.
Good news, and I've not even managed to drink my tea.
Set off back to do battle in the hatchback, survived and handed not so hatchback back.
 Explanation for faltering Rx4.
 Heavy rainfall, cars stood unused for months, water collected in spark plug recesses, one collected quite a bit, a lot in fact, so much it shorted out  the spark and so created a misfire.
Short term solution, dry out water from recess, back to 100% power which from a 16 valve 2 litre engine is quite a bit.
Long term solution, move somewhere with less rainfall.

Do not feed the bears

 Christmas comes earlier every year and our local hyperbigsupershop has gone all festive and created a Christmas grotto complete with wishing well, fake bears and confused toddlers.

Man down

The last of our sheep stayed just out of reach today, not that I could have caught her as I am man down. Yes the dreaded man flu struck in the early hours, first I thought the cramp and pain was a left over from 4 bouts wrestling Levi but other symptoms surfaced forcing me to spend the day in bed trying to ignore the world. Epic fail.