Big breakfasts, narky dogs and unpacking boxes!

I went to my first Coastwatch training session last Wednesday; charts and plotting! Of course I didn’t understand a bloody word but it was still cool and I definitely learnt a thing or two. I have much more to learn, but that will come ‘on the job’. This was just an introduction. I also have a Tides course, Weather course and Radio course coming up…

Getting to Polruan was a little, shall we say, exciting? Torrential rain, freezing fog and a lot of unmarked, track-type roads that were as black as the inside of a witch’s hat… I was hunched over the wheel and actually praying out loud to whichever deity might take pity on me, to deliver me in one piece…

The people were lovely. I think it’s fair to say that I’m not a typical NCI volunteer! Only about 10% of watchkeepers are female, for example, and I was the youngest by a few years, but I was made to feel welcome and not out of place at all, which was really nice.

Our carpet has now been fitted! I’m now not tripping over a large roll of carpet in our front room and dining room (I’m tripping over dog toys or my wife’s shoes instead but that’s another story). We also managed a lot of sorting this weekend and felt quite pleased with ourselves – the bathroom looks great now and we’ve cleared the dining room table of all sorts of crap! But it wasn’t all hard work. We met our friends for breakfast again on Saturday, which was a lot of fun – and nice also to meet our friend’s niece and brother who are also very lovely so it must be in the genes. And on Sunday we took the dogs to Seaton beach and ran them (and us) ragged, before stopping off in Looe and buying a gorgeous hurricane lamp for the bathroom and a picture of St. Michael’s Mount (where my partner’s great, great grandmother lived), from a small gallery on the harbour. It really is a stunning picture and is going up in the dining room.

We did, however, have a bit of trouble with the dogs this weekend. As was to be expected perhaps, once they both settled down in the new house, hierarchies and boundaries would have to re-established. Consequently Bess gave Pluto a pretty hard time and we had to find a balance between not interfering in what is a necessary and natural process when two or more dogs live together and not letting Pluto be bullied. Of course, we also had to rule out that Bess wasn’t ill either. When dogs act out of character, two reasons might be either because they are frightened, or because they are ill. So this morning, without an appointment, we turned up at the vet practice that we were planning to register the dogs with anyway, and asked whether they could check Bess over. They were amazing and we got to see a vet within 10 minutes of walking in! We knew the vet was highly qualified and very experienced when she told us she thought Bess was absolutely lovely! She established that she wasn’t unwell and that the weekend’s hostilities were almost certainly all about the thorny issue of who wears the dog pants in our family...

Of course after all that fuss and nonsense things are practically back to normal anyway!

I hopefully have another Coastwatch training session this week and my brother in law is down for the weekend. It will be great to see him and he will be our first overnight visitor.

I wonder if he knows that when we said he’ll have to make up the spare bed, we weren’t talking about sheets and pillowcases, he will actually have to put the bed together!?