

We lay towels on the floor close to the exterior doors to dry paws and shoes after forays outside. This precaution keeps to a minimum the trail of damp prints that so often drives Jones to distraction, especially after she has newly mopped the tiles. Worse news are the yellow puddles that decorate the south patio floor, evidence that a dog couldn’t get out or chose not to. Jones is very good at mopping them up, muttering as she does so.
The fact is that the beasts, as much as we love them, spend their lives dropping hairs and crumbs, especially on our tiled floors. Aiding and abetting them is the long chimney stack that rises above the fire; for all that it warms the house, it distributes a steady flow of soot particles. No amount of vacuum-cleaning brings more than a brief respite.
Yes, we have been to see Avatar. Jones was frankly unimpressed. She’d been hoping to see the film in 3-D and it failed to live up to her expectations.

If there’s an irony in this, it was watching Cameron’s former wife, Kathryn Bigelow, clean up at the Bafta Awards in London with her relatively low budget production, The Hurt Locker. Cameron had to look on as his ex-partner made visit after visit to the stage of the opera house to receive the film’s accolades. He had the consolation of taking the awards for production design and visual effects. I wonder what this portends for the Oscars.
Apart from the film and the inevitable walks, we have managed the odd inter-pluvial venture into the garden, mainly to rip out the huge wild celery plants that everywhere spring up at this time of year.

Mature specimens can easily occupy a square metre. Jones has cut back the vines and taken several buckets of dandelions across to Maria’s hens, which fall hungrily upon them. Mostly, however, we’ve limited ourselves to peering at the sodden greenery or trying to figure out whether the apple and fig saplings that we replanted a few months ago are dead or merely dormant.
Last Sunday evening we joined the expats at the Coral for a closing-down supper. The closure is for three weeks only while the interior of the snack-bar undergoes a revamp. In the meanwhile we are taking morning coffee at home. The Dutch ladies took us to lunch at the Hamburgo to thank Jonesy for looking after Ermie during their absence. (Ermie, they insisted, not Herme; they read the blog.)
The fates willing, we are going to Berlin next weekend. (The fates, in this case, are represented mainly by BA, the airline bringing our house-sitters; its intractable cabin crews have yet to announce their strike dates.) We return home on Wednesday 17.
I have arranged to give additional English lessons to my class at the Senior University to compensate them for my absences during our planned trips this spring.
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