Hello Dolly!

Get up at half past seven and make breakfast for myself and Norman, full English for both of us. The morning is bright but cloudy, and as I drink my coffee a text comes in from Sarah asking me to drop Louis' spiderman book, which he left on Tuesday, back at her house. Normy and I call in on our way to Cherry and have a cup of tea with Sarah, Louis has some more spiderman stickers, that he proceeds to transfer into his book with great concentration. Before I leave I find I have consented to baby sit Louis tomorrow evening. When we arrive at Cherry, Pip asks me to take Dolly out as she is going stir crazy, having been kept in since Monday. So the three dogs and I arrive on the Westwood around ten, I let Norman and Teddy off the lead as soon as we are in the wood but keep Dolly tethered, as she is still highly receptive and there are plenty of obliging dogs on the common. She doesn't seem to mind too much and just seems glad to be out again. When we get back, I agree with Pip, to take Dolly to Tickton until her season has passed and leave Norman with her. It is the sensible thing to do, leaving the two boys on their own and taking the girl with me, but I do this with some regret as Normy was settling in so well. I bet he wonders just where he belongs? Still we will see him tomorrow for the morning walk. Before leaving Cherry, I mow the lawns and do a little weeding, finally arriving in Tickton for noon. I spend a quarter of an hour putting some extra chicken wire across the little gate on my back garden, to make certain Dolly can't get out, before locking her up and driving to the leisure centre. It is almost a quarter to one before I enter the water, the wave machine are dancing to music again, and I have to share a lane with two other swimmers. Fortunately they are much younger than me and we are able to maintain our separation, with no one needing to overtake. I warm up with 400m freestyle and then follow this with 400m backstroke, this takes more effort to maintain my position in the lane, as the others are just doing freestyle, which is a quicker stroke. Both of the other swimmers leave at one and I am able to swim 400m butterfly, in sixteen single lengths, taking thirty seconds to each length and thirty seconds rest between repititions. My left hip is playing up a little, so I am keeping breaststroke to a minimum. I experiment on the fly, sometimes doing as many as six pulses underwater before surfacing into my arm pull and sometimes as little as three. This adds an extra stroke or two to the length, but makes no difference to the time. In fairness I am not trying to go quickly, just to swim smoothly and without making a splash. Nevertheless three underwater pulses in exchange for a couple of arm strokes is a good deal, as it is the arm pulls that require the strength and effort in the fly. Consequently when I switch to 4 x 100m individual medley for my final session, I adopt the six pulse underwater start technique. The saved energy leaves more for the other strokes and I feel noticeably fresher on the final freestyle leg. They throw me out of the pool at half past one and after showering and changing, I drink a tea in the cafe, before driving home for two thirty. It begins to rain as I enter the village and I am now glad I didn't have time to hang out a load of whites before I left. When I get in, Dolly is waiting to greet me and I set too to make lunch for us both. Yesterday I knocked up a Bolognaise sauce in the slow cooker, with the intention of having pasta today, but I don't fancy it just yet. So instead, I make a mixture of savoury things, a tin of mussels in esbeche sauce, sliced chorizo with mustard, slices of strong cheddar, some stuffed olives and the roasted peppers I made earlier in the week. A sort of tapas meets ante pasta, but with Ryvita and a large bottle of Bavaria lager, that I bought from Aldi yesterday. Dolly has dog meat, cunningly disguised with Bolognaise sauce. We finish lunch by three thirty and as it is still raining and I am tired after all the butterfly swimming, we lie down and sleep for an hour. We are awoken from a pleasant snooze by someone trying to sell me insurance, my details passed to them by Lloyds Bank because of the loan for Sarah's car. I politely decline, try to regain my place in the pleasant dream I was having and when I fail, get up and have a drink of pop. Since I am up, I do a little admin, write a letter to my insurance company about my life cover, freezing the indexation and my premiums and finding the phone number for Ian Scott, a landscape gardener I know who might be able to help Rosemary. This done I take Dolly for a walk round the fields, as it has stopped raining. Once we get over the little bridge, I take a chance and let her off the lead, having first checked that there are no other dogs around. She bounds off immediately in hunting mode, hopping above the long grass to see if there are any prey and then suddenly dashing down into the drain and splashing in the water. I am having second thoughts about the wisdom of letting her off the leash, but she comes back and maintains a steady position ten paces or so ahead of me. As we turn the corner of the field and walk parallel to "almost straight wood", she once more splashes across the drain and disappears into the only corn field that has yet to be harvested. I can follow her progress, parallel to my own on the opposite side of the drain, by the rippling of the corn. Just before the corner, where I saw the deer last night, she splashes back across the drain and I put her on her lead. The poor girl hasn't had a run for almost a week! We arrive home for half past six, I make a fresh batch of oaties and then slice and salt a couple of huge Dutch aubergines I also bought from Aldi, because they were half the price of Tesco. Once salted, I lay them in layers in a colander and then put them in the sink with a plate over them and balance a two litre bottle of pop on top, in order to press out excess liquid before I fry them to go into a Parmagiana. ( it's a sort of Italian Moussaka, but with Bolognaise, Mozarella and Bechamel sauce. Later I read a few more chapters of Andres Neumann's, excellent book, which I will regretfully finish tomorrow. To bed around eleven thirty.