Walkin'

Walkin’ the dog…

…I’m just walkin’ the dog

If you don’t know how to do it

I’ll show you how to walk the dog

Bank Holiday Monday. The bad news is getting up at 06:00. The good news is that:

1. D the Dog has been good for a whole twenty four hours now. Just some minor misdemeanours and routine naughtiness. He’s gone a day without a major incident.
2. The sun’s out.
3. The woods are beautiful.
4. We’re back by 07:30, long walk done, all before it gets too hot for them. Bless.
5. The woods are almost deserted.
6. The Pharcyde, Labcabincalifornia, are on the iPod.

 

The cellphone mast. Not the most scenic of starts, is it? The users of the M23 have one disguised as a tree. Us dog-walkers don’t qualify for that sort of expenditure. This is why we have the absurd situation where I can make a phone call while walking the dogs in the middle of nowhere, yet can’t get a signal sitting at the kitchen table.

A local guy described our mobile network coverage thus:

“I can get a signal. Intermittently. If I’m hangin’ out me bedroom window. With a coathanger up me arse.”

Sun. Trees. Green stuff. To put things in context, I’m not much of a lover of green stuff. It brings me out in a rash, and gardening hurts my back and ruins my temper. So this has got to break through some degree of initial resistance.

Just after six in the morning, and the sun is low, and bright.

If I was better with Photoshop, there would be a miniature Loch Ness monster, some periscopes, and all sorts on the pond.

Sunlight and shadows.

The camera never lies. That’s actually the murkiest black gunge known to mankind. It doesn’t wash off your clothes. I think it’s about two days away from being useable solid fuel.

Orbs, those blobs of lights are called. I had to look it up. I’m not a camera-techie.

The Forestry Commission send their mates specially chosen contractors in every so often to churn the place up, earn loads of taxpayers wonga, and cut down trees that they can sell undertake essential works.

These woods were here before us and will outlast us, unless we interfere and kill them off. Strike ‘essential’. Replace with unnecessary, meddlesome, disruptive.

I like those rays of light coming through the trees. We did an extra bit this morning, about an hour and a half. The new kid’s knackered, the old girl’s probably going to sleep most of the rest of the day (until we go out again later), and me knees, dem’s killin’ me.