Hot diggity dog

12th May 2024

What can I say about the start of the week? That Harry and I saw the (or a?) snake again on our lunchtime walk on Monday as it slithered into the channel at the side of the path (Bella wasn’t with us, most times she decides to miss out on the midday excursion these days) and that Tuesday morning Stephen discovered when he went to the chemist to get more Altadol pain killers for her that the prescription was only good for one purchase.

If you think we ran through these pretty quickly, you’d be right. With thirty tablets in a packet, they should have lasted two months – if we had read the instructions correctly. What we thought was one tablet twice a day was actually half a tablet twice a day, so no wonder she was kicking up a fuss. As for camouflaging them in hot dog sausages, she was wise to that by the middle of the week, eating the meat and spitting out the tablet. For a day or two it took a couple of goes before we were able to get them down, but by Friday morning it was taking more than that – and there seemed to be some sort of irony to the fact that we were giving her the BeSame to help with her liver while plying her with shedloads of wurstel.

Ever resourceful, Stephen decided that if reconstituted and processed meat wasn’t enough, then he needed to bring something else into play to mask the smell of the medication. He found that mustard did a good job, and also tartare sauce, and Bella is again wolfing things down in one go, so fingers crossed she won’t get wise to this as well or we’ll be really stuck.

Wednesday was our wedding anniversary and we began the day by exchanging presents over the breakfast table. I gave Stephen a remarkably tasteful indoor watering can, the finest that money can buy, and an equally sophisticated card. He gave me… well, when I said we exchanged presents it was only half true, but he did do a good job fooling me with an imitation of a man who had forgotten our special day, and I’m sure it had always been his intention to surprise me at lunchtime, arriving as he did with a glorious double orchid, a double chocolate semifreddo cake and a selection of chocolate dipped biscuits.

The not so good news before he headed to work in the morning was that a row of courgettes had gone. So much for all our anti-slug measures. The natural way once again doesn’t seem to be cutting it, which is why, when he bought tomato plants on his way home on Friday, he also invested in some slug pellets. He has always tried to avoid resorting to these, but faced with the prospect of another year of disappointment it was a case of needs must. Let’s see if this works.

Friday night we went to the pub for dinner, so just the usual there. Stephen set up more canes yesterday and bedded in the tomato plants. As for today, it was time for one of our visits to Corridomnia to stock up on household items, though we also managed to squeeze in buying a new outside bed for Bella and Harry as well as a summer t-shirt and a short-sleeved shirt for me. These were, of course, just a precursor to the real reason for the trip, the all-you-can eat lunch menu at DiverXo (did I really need to tell you that?). What you may want to know, though, is, after our second visit to Sushi Koi the other week, if we have decided which of the two is better.

I think I can speak for us both when I say that DiverXo has the edge, especially where speed of service is concerned given the two long waits we had for food at Sushi Koi. Mind you, we were getting slightly concerned with the Corridomnia contender when our caffè hadn’t arrived after twenty minutes. Just as well we’re not in a rush, we thought, but then I checked the tablet and found that Stephen had put the order into the basket but not sent it – which, I guess, just goes to prove that no system is infallible because a chain is only as strong as its weakest link (mentioning no names).