Seasalter

Bank Holiday Monday, and Dad only has to work till 10 am. Then we are FREE to go an enormous walk. Mum drops us of at the Old Sportsman pub in Seasalter, and we walk back home along the sea wall. 2 and a half hours nice and flat to suit poor aul' Meggie's tired old legs. She ambles along with a rolling gait, like a slow rolling run which she's favoured, I gather, since she went through the Cushings episode and her hips got a bit weak. She's Ok now on the daily Vetoryl, but never got back into that loping dog-trot that the rest of us use.

Dad took the binoculars to see what sea birds we could see, and watched 4 marsh harriers wheeling and soaring over the fields in the thermals, 2 pairs apparently squabbling over territory. Nice

Back at the ranch our old friend Cyril the Squirrel is back. He (or possibly she) sneaks up the fence line and launches himself into the Albertine rose growing all over the back of our house. We go mad at the scritching and scratching noises but to no avail. He's 10 feet off the deck and well surrounded by Albertine's wicked thorns. Megan can wheedle and plead all she likes but he will not come down for a game of chase.

He tends to stay there, once cornered till it's nearly dark, and then scurry off back to the old railway bank and the thick tangled sycamore woods. he's almost stopped coming once the building work started out the back of us, presumably put off by the diggers and cleared ground, but now he's back. The humans sometimes see him first, and whisper to each other "The "squ**" (pronounced "skwuh") is here", but we suss it fairly quickly anyway

We have foxes too, out the back, screaming their yowling-yappy bark at 2 in the morning and sending us racing downstairs to be let out to repel boarders.

Hope you had a good Easter

Deefer