2 January 2012 (Monday) - Folkestone Warren

The plan for today was to go for a walk along the warren. About an hour or so before we were due to set off I found out that not everyone had received the message about these plans. This is something which worries me from time to time: ensuring everyone is kept in the loop isn't easy. Facebook messages, email, text messages - somehow or other, no matter what form of communication you try, there's always people who never get the message. Sometimes it's me, and I understand that it's not good to feel left out. What was actually an honest oversight can hurt.

I wish I knew an effective form of communication.

And then, having collected Fudge, we set off to Folkestone Warren for a walk. Eight of us wandered along the beach to the hut, and then wandered back again. It's probably only three years since the first time I ever visited Folkestone Warren, but in that time it's become one of my favourite places to be. It's a wonderful place for a stroll - today the tide was out: further out than I've ever seen it. And the rocks were rather slippery with "er indoors ^TM" winding up on her bum. Fudge seemed to like the walk; he managed to go through every puddle he could find. As always, there are photos of the outing on-line.

Since we were in the area, we then went round to the Admiralty to visit; only to find no one home. We knocked and rang to no avail, only to get a phone call when we were half way up the motorway to say they'd been in the garden. Didn't I whinge about failures of communication? Oh well - next time.

And then I reminded myself why we don't have dogs any more. We'd agreed to look after Fudge until late afternoon. On the way home it was suggested that we went out for lunch. I was quite keen on the idea until we realised that we had a dog with us. There are very few places to eat that allow dogs in. So we went home. Between getting home and dropping Fudge off, we had the dog for three hours. And in that time he did not stop once. He was running round the room, up the walls, over the furniture, he was everywhere. It was fun to begin with, but the novelty very soon wore off. Much as I like having grand-dogs, I like handing them back far more.

There are those of my loyal readers who might take umbrage with me for sounding so anti-dog. I apologize for my sentiment: dogs are fine *if* you are a dog person. But over the years I have found out from experience that (try as I might) I'm not actually a dog person. Does that make me a bad person? I hope not.

In between Fudge bouncing all over the place I attempted to watch some telly. "Carry On Girls" was on: it was probably rather risqué when it was made; nowadays it's either lame or classic, depending on your personal perspective. I spent most of the film trying to decide whether the seaside scenes had been filmed in Eastbourne or Herne Bay. I then looked it up on the Internet only to find that it was filmed in Brighton. Oh well: I knew I recognised it from somewhere.

And then the Watch channel was having a Pride-and-Prejudice-a-thon. I watched a few episodes of that as Fudge went berserk and then we had a text to say to take Fudge home. Much as having had a dog for a day was an experience, it's not one I'd like to repeat for a while.

We dropped Fudge back to the Fudgery. Whilst there Lacey showed us her new guppies, and then we came home again. We'd had a lovely walk in the sunshine earlier: as the night had fallen it had become quite cold. So we didn't muck about: and went back home as quickly as we could. Rather than carrying on with the antics of Mr Darcy we decided to get more programmes watched and taken off of the Sky-Plus box. It's all very well recording stuff: we need to watch it too. We watched last week's episode of "Charlie's Angels". I'm still undecided about this show. Even the most all-action program needs some reason for the gun battles and the fast cars and the explosions.

We then watched a few more episodes of "Come Dine With Me": for a show I only discovered a few weeks ago, I've got quite seriously into this program. Tonight's episodes were filmed (relatively) locally in Margate. And then an episode of Ab-Fab: not my favourite show, but entertaining enough.

There's talk of sparking up the Wii later.....