moving on

As many of you will already know, our dog, Kez, died at 9 pm on Sunday 6 May, aged 14. He had been failing for a long time, with recurrent bouts of inflammation in his gut, and went into a swift decline over the weekend: his refusing food – an unprecedented occurence – told us he was on his way.

K-Paws in his sleek, plump prime, complete with ginger eyebrows

And of course we were both heartbroken, each in our way, but even in the middle of that (or, to be more geographically precise about it, the middle of the beginning of it), we were both aware of pressure lifted: not just the background worry of a sickly animal in the house, but also of the various strictures he put on our day, in terms of feeding, pilling and walking him, of trying not to step on or fall over him (he had a lifelong penchant for plonking himself down next to people's feet), of having our walks curtailed because he didn't want to go or was simply Not Allowed.

So, in line with General Policy, we made points of getting the yellow book so we could visit some local gardens over the summer, going for walks with each other (or on our own) rather than with old, tired dog, and C surprised us both by booking a holiday – three days at the end of next week – in a hotel looking west over the sea in the quaintly-named Hope Cove. When we first got K in 2003, when he was five, he was chock full of Mainwaringish bristling bluster and hair-trigger barks, and couldn't be taken anywhere near a hotel because of his vigorous attempts to repel, with bleeding eardrums, all who dared to come within ten feet of our room. We could have taken him in recent years, I guess, as deafness has been his friend in the repelling-boarders line of his doggy duties, but we got out of the habit. Anyway, the three days end on 27 May, our 30th anniversary, which is nice.

Anyway, here's my darling looking gorgeous and feeling hugged in cashmere, enjoying the local walk:

C thinks she looks like her mother here, but I have to squint a whole lot harder to see her, rather than the lovely woman for whom I fell so hard 30 years ago

The way home. Every now and then, everything's right about a snap

The loss of Kez meant that C was without a pet of any kind for the first time since she was in her 20s. And then we noticed that a wren had built a nest in the broken-down brick 'shed' at the top of the garden, or at least we assumed so, because it would fly in and out of holes in the wall (one just under the eaves, the other at ground level) carrying grubs and insects in, and faecal sacs out. It seemed completely unfazed by our presence on the new, extended patio/rockery/thingy I've been making, and we watched it for ages. It was not long before C began to refer to it as 'our' wren.

Our new pet

new, extended patio/rockery/thingy