Sushi + Smurf

Rianne had been busy for hours preparing her own sushi for her birthday guests. Her 2 young nieces were more interested in the Smurf village, one of the inhabitants of which I've just spotted in this picture I took of the food.

Pillock on a phone

As I was happily making my way round the Rondweg (priority road) in Houten a pillock in a brand new Audi Q5 (think huge 4-wheel drive) pulled out in front of me. I'd spotted him behaving oddly, half pulling out and then stopping so had already started to brake and thought I could manage to steer round him, but when he just kept on pulling out onto my road I couldn't stop a collision no matter how hard I braked. My ancient Opel Combo (my Wee Blue Van!) now has a big dent in the bonnet, bumper and bit-behind-bumper. It's probably an insurance write-off but ach, it still goes and no-one was hurt. Pillock admitted immediately he'd been on the phone ('to someone who usually never answers so I was confused and not paying attention'). He picked up the bit of his bumper that had fallen off into the road, popped it back into place and has no visible damage. It was like hitting a very solid object - thank goodness it was just me and the dogs in a fairly solid wee van and not some young inexperienced driver in a biscuit tin with a baby or, even worse, a motorbike. He was phoning handsfree but still wasn't paying attention to the fact that he was on the road in a small tank-like vehicle. He said that he phones all the time and has never had an accident before and that 'if I'd been having the same conversation with someone sitting next to me it could have happened as well'. Eh, no - because the person sitting beside you would have seen that you were being a pillock-in-charge-of-a-tank about to do something stupid and would have been able to shout at you to stop before you mowed into me.

Marmite XO

The other day I finally collected the box of goodies one of my messageboard pals recently brought back from the UK for me. Including (drum roll...) The New Extra Old (huh?) edition of Marmite. As I suspected it is simply the old recipe resurrected. Thicker and blacker than the puny brown runny stuff we've had to make do with for years. The smell is pure nostalgia.

One packet of Marmite cashews didn't survive the car journey home but the remaining one and the oatcakes and crisps are going to be saved for a suitable moment when I have time to savour them properly.

An Empty Beach

A not-so-very warm Wednesday morning in July and we had the whole beach more or less to ourselves. The dogs had a lot of high speed galloping to do. Rimmer apparantly doesn't understand that salt water is not good to drink and lapped a fair bit of it up and then threw it up shortly afterwards. I was in Carin's car as I'd taken her and her friend to Schiphol at 8 and decided to drive on to the beach from there.

Brenda's Babies

Visited these pups, which are from Dusty's sister.









Everywhere you look in the house there are images of greyhounds...

Summerlodgerdog #3

Sil and I had a walk round the Pyramide van Austerlitz this morning, where I'd arranged to meet Rimmer and his owners. Sil was a wee bit put out at having to share 'her' car with yet another strange dog but after a bit of initial snippiness they both calmed down and accepted the situation easily enough.
























I picked up some shopping on the way home and didn't want to leave them in the car (with a full sack of dog food...) so tied them up outside. Afterwards a short walk round the block by the maize field and then they were both ready for a good sleep.

Hup Holland Hondjes

Summer Lodgerdog #2

Collected Sil from her family on my way home from Utrecht. Sproet is still here till Monday so arranged for them to meet each other in a nearby park where they were free to run. Sproet looked pretty amazed at the idea of having to share the car with her but then he does spend most of his time looking fairly astonished at the world in general. Sil is lying in the garden with her orange bow looking very glamorous against her jetblack coat. The neighbour-with-lab-pup just came along to admire her.

Traffic Jam Art

Stuck in traffic for a short while today I noticed this beautifully painted van.