Wine and Cheese Garden Party - Admit Two

The Dog and I have just partaken of a jolly good dejeuner sur l'herbe.  In his case quite literally.  For instance, my nibbles of Mature Cheddar were in a little eathernware bowl, his were straight off the grass, just like he likes it. I had some Californian Shiraz, but he wasn't fussed.  I sat in a rocking deck chair with my face in the sun.  He mooched about the garden sniffing for evidence of intruders.  I wore my best PJs. He had on a collar with jangly tags.  Oh, we know how to dress to impress, The Dog & I.

I had all sorts of ambitious plans for today. Shampoo carpets, redesign my blog to accept photos as illustrations, make a Roman-style oxtail stew from scratch, and hang out The Lodger's washing for him  He has a full-time day job, quite demanding enough in itself, and an evening job doing barwork in a local gastropub where they are - quite frankly - taking the piss on his allegedly "part-time" hours and working him damned near into the ground.  And he will, for his pains, be vastly underpaid on an emergency tax code, until he has any surplus energy to request and fill out a form for the Inland Revenue.  Yet still he turns up evenings and weekends and does his shifts like a trouper.  In recognition of which I am doing his washing this week, as he has seriously underslept these past few days.

So I have done that, as it is a commitment to another person who's overstretched at the minute.  But the carpets, being inanimate, insentient and (not capable of being self-cleaning,) are lifting not a finger to help themselves, can remain unshampooed yet awhile because this afternoon it's in the mid 20degreesC, our back lawn is in half sun, half shade.  In June it was awash with warmth and light, sigh, for most of the day, and like this at nine in the morning....

It's a case of Carpe Diem over Carpets. Who among you, Dear Readers, would have done any different?

Today is tolling the Last Orders bell of the autumn equinox.  Which means - bbrrrrr - it's but three darkling months to the winter solstice.  Catch it while you can, all this must go. Summer 2010 bargain-basement sunny days at 70% off original price (because 70% off original length).  Offer extends until, well, the end of tomorrow.  At which point the carpets will still be patchily grubby with trodden-in grime, that stuff ain't going anywhere.

Unlike our summer.  Which is going, going, GONE...!  

I did add a photo to yesterday's blog, BTW, of The Husband and The Dog in Ludlow.  Three very handsome sights, in my eyes. Enjoy.  And the oxtail and accompaniments are simmering low and slow.  Three out of four ain't bad.