SPRING FEVER

It’s 7 degrees outside with a wind-chill factor of 4. I should be cosily hammering out 2000 words, but my antiquated central heating has finally given up trying and it feels like -2. To add insult to injury my fan heater (extracted from shed after two years inattention) is merely circulating cold air! I am writing at my kitchen table wrapped in numerous jumpers and fingerless gloves, stopping every twenty minutes to brew tea.

However, I am heroically bashing on, despite the icicle I suspect is forming on the end of my nose, consoling myself with the prospect of sun and beaches next month.

Speaking of holidays, we have had a house guest:

With dubious personal habits, such as wallowing in muddy puddles, and gorging on pigs’ ears (even to the extent of stealing them under cover of darkness), my friend’s chocolate Labrador, Mr Bingley, recently came to stay for the weekend. He’s a happy, gregarious sort, greeting everyone with a beating tail and a blanket between his teeth (by way of a gift, I assume), but something of a liability in the Tiniest Cottage in Berkshire, inadvertently treading on everyone’s feet and bumping into furniture.

We took him for a walk in the woods where we discovered his penchant for swimming in brackish ponds and dashing up to strangers with all the control and velocity of a meteor. Whilst we grew redder and hoarser with every attempt to call him to heel, Bing happily snuffled other dog walkers’ pockets for treats and rolled in the mud. If we thought him more water buffalo than dog, it proved to be a completely different case when we got him home. Despite several inducements, he refused to come out from under a hedge until we’d thrown away the bath water and put the doggy shampoo back in the cupboard.

He dried (eventually), scoffed his tea with porcine abandon, and collapsed in his bed, blissfully snoring while we collected up his toys, swept and mopped the floor, and pretended to his owner, when she came to collect him, that ‘he’d been no trouble at all’. When he went home, we waved goodbye in the kind of exhausted stupor I have only experienced after hosting toddler play-dates. Of course we love him dearly really and would doggy-sit again at the drop of a conjurer’s hat.

Before my fingers drop off (remember the lack of heating) I must quickly mention that the voting has closed for my new book cover, and I’ll be announcing the winner this week. Must dash now, off to borrow an electric heater…