The Late Lady and the Artist

This is Puppy-Heaven! Portmarnock beach, now I've seen it in daylight is massive - acres of flat sand backed by sand dunes and walked on by dozens of nice people and their friendly dogs! (Well, so far anyway, I've not got into any arguments, but I guess there's still plenty of time!).

All that night driving and ferry stuff left us all a bit tired, so we crashed out and slept till mid morning, before venturing out onto the beach. Dad has some pics on the camera which we'll put up if we can suss out this strange PC. We walked out from the Portmarnock town end, all along the sand spit towards Baldoyle and Howth, and we met a labrador cross pup with eyes different colours, various terriers, spaniels, greyhounds and cross breeds and said nice hello's to all of them. We ran in and out of the sea and we three westies charged about occasionally play-attacking each other or chasing through the waves (We don't do proper swimming, but everyone likes a paddle!)

We've also been to see Mum's longest standing friend, the "Late-Lady" and hubby "The Artist". Don't worry, she's only "late" in the sense of having a very relaxed attitude to dead-lines. She always gets there at the last minute (or soon after) but drives everyone crazy in the process. They say, never to rely on her for a lift to the airport - she'll get you there in time to sprint on board, but your nerves will be frazzled. In one story, she actually took the family on holiday with a dustbin liner of wet clothes in her luggage, where she'd not got organised soon enough to dry and iron them by the departure minute!.

The LL and the A (he paints in oils - Mum and Dad have a couple of his pics up in our house) have a lovely old Cocker Spaniel called Jack. Jack's feet are about 4 inches across, like human hands, and he has big floppy-down ears and doleful eyes. He is 10, same age as Megan, and they've known each other since puppy-days. Jack generally doesn't tolerate other dogs on his turf, but he's always made an exception for Meg, and then for Haggis, and not (to everyone's amazement) for me. So we had a great time playing and charging round the house

More soon
Deefer