NotSheep

Scratchy left very early this morning to drive straight to work; Barney had slept in the living-room but was a bit cold by morning so came in to warm up in the warm spot left by Scratchy. He snuggled up with Toby, lay there with a very contented smile on his face and told me, “I think this is the best feeling in the world.” A while later he said he couldn’t decide what he liked more: playing with Toby when he was awake or cuddling with Toby when he was asleep

The boys were all awake and looking for breakfast shortly after 7 a.m. We all got fed, cleaned, tidied up and went down to the beach. There were a couple of people down there with dogs: the early crowd - the people who walk their dogs before they go to work. By about 8.30, we were the only people left. It was windy down there, but dry and not at all unpleasant. After 9, the not-quite-so-early crowd - the people who walk their dogs after leaving their children at school - started to arrive. I say “crowd”; I really mean three or four people along the whole beach (about a kilometre stretch), so it wasn’t exactly heaving. There was a woman with a black dog who ran straight into the water and was followed - part-way - by our dogs; I’ve been trying to get them into the water since June, but they’re scaredy-dogs so I was happy to see this. I got chatting to the woman; it turned out her family had just recently moved to the area, and before that she’d lived near the town where we used to live. In fact it turned out she’d lived right where I used to lead Beavers - and her youngest son had been in Cubs with Barney

After leaving the beach we walked up to the shop in town - by which I do mean “the shop in town” - there’s only one. There’s a chippy and a take-away, plus a small hotel and a hairdresser; I think that’s about it. Oh, there’s a butcher and what might be the world’s smallest bakery too. But if you want to buy milk and toilet-paper, there’s only one place to go, so that’s where we went On the way back, Freddy, grumpy about something (who knows what - he seems to be doing Kevin the Teenager these days, despite being eight years old), dragged the bag with the milk in it along the ground and burst the bottle - so he had to carry it upside-down the rest of the way, and then I had to search out containers to pour it into. Great stuff.

Toby is now riding about on his tricycle, supervised by Barney, who is also pretending the old-fashioned telephone box next to the playground is a Tardis. The others are all out on their bikes or in the playground (which is about thirty metres from the caravan). The dogs are asleep on the deck, wiped out from charging up and down the beach this morning. The sun is shining and there’s nobody else around. This is the life