Dream house

Hello everyone. I am feeling rather tentative about blogging today, as I see the threatened 'new look' has arrived on my dashboard! Untechnical at the best of times, I am not quite used to it all yet. How are you finding it?

This week brought good news about the sale of another story to People's Friend magazine. It's always exciting to see how they present it on the page, and I know they will have a lovely illustration to go with it when it is published. In the meantime, I would like to show you the picture that inspired me to write it.

I bought this print in an antique shop a few months ago. The minute I saw it I thought that this would be my dream house, with the overflowing garden and the sea in the background. I also knew that if I looked at it for long enough I would find a story to set there. I will use the money I earned from the story towards seeing new places in the summer. Those are sure to provide me with more stories too. Don't they say you must speculate to accumulate? Oh well, any excuse to spend money, really.



Harvey's sunshine award

Wotcha! Harvey here. It's been a while since Mrs Boss let me do a blog post. But last week she went through the end of her finger with the secateurs. Since then her typing has been even wonkier than normal. And that's saying something.

If you visit this blog often, you'll have guessed Mrs Boss is the kind of person who spends forever thinking about a thing before she does it. Her blog friends Patsy and Teresa both gave her awards a few weeks ago. Has she posted them to the blog? No!

So while she's off plastering up her finger again, I thought I'd grab Patsy's sunshine award for myself. I deserve it, don't I?

As recipient of this award I now have to tell you about what makes me happy.

1. Food. Mr and Mrs Boss are far too picky. They yank me away from all kinds of eating opportunities. Chips on the pavement. Bread by the duckpond. Nice bits of old wood, bursting with fibre. Just what a dog needs, I say. Bad for me, they say. And apparently the person beginning with V told them I was overweight. I don't know how he figures that out. Every time they try to put me on the scales, I lie on the floor, making myself as flat as a bearskin rug. So how do they know I'm overweight if I don't get on the nasty scales?

2. Digging. Mr and Mrs Boss don't understand that all the really interesting things in the garden are beneath the lawn. How am I supposed to retrieve them if I don't dig? Of course when Mrs Boss digs, she calls it something fancy, like 'dividing the hostas'. When I dig, she calls it 'ruining the grass'. What's grass anyway? Just a load of boring green stuff. And underneath there are things to eat.

3. Meeting people. Most people, anyway. You find the odd one who doesn't like dribble or doghair on their clothes. But most people appreciate me making a big fuss of them. Take the man who visited last week, for instance, to help Mr and Mrs Boss write something called a will. How boring it would all have been if I'd just ignored the will man. The will man loves dogs. I left extra doghair on his pinstripe suit, to show I love him too.

4. Barking. Some days you're just in the mood to let rip. You know what I mean? Bin day, for instance. When Mrs Boss is writing, she says my barking makes her jump. Wouldn't you think she'd be used to it after four and a half years?

5. Sleeping. You can't beat a nice snooze, even though there is an ongoing dispute with Mrs Boss about my favourite chair. I know I've won the battle really. She just likes to pretend she's in charge sometimes.

6. Playing. Chewing up tennis balls is the best sort of playing. But what a lot of people don't realise is that when you're a golden retriever, everything in life is a game. Humans take themselves far too seriously, in my opinion. Chill out! Would you rather be a wiggly worm, under the boring grass, living in the dark? Or up here in the sunshine, eating, greeting, and sniffing out fun? Mrs Boss says doing a will makes you think about these things.

Mrs Boss says I have to pass the sunshine award on to other blogging friends. Of course, she's taken so long thinking about it that most of them have it already! So I will just list the following three. If they would like to accept, all they have to do is paste the award to their own blogs, tell us what makes them happy, and pass it on. I would say "simples!". But I'm a retriever, not a meerkat.

Biddy Fraser at The Bluebell Blog

Joanna Campbell at Brightwriter60

Hayley N Jones at Writing, Reading and Waffling

Have a barking good Easter. Harvey xxx