Belated Christmas greetings!

So there we were, all ready to broadcast our Christmas message to the nation, and then the Madwoman in true Grinch style said she wasn't going to turn the interweb on during Christmas day.

So we are sorry it is late, but here it is now:

Have fun.

Be kind to everyone.

(Actually we nicked it from John Finnemore's ultimate bucket list,

but it is so good we thought we'd steal and then repeat it)

And now we are off to watch the Madwoman swabbing down the kitchen.

We could have told her it wasn't a good idea to turn the half-full bottle of Bucks Fizz upside down to mix up the contents.

No matter how gently it was done.

But who would have thought it would be quite that lively?

Very few parts of the kitchen have escaped.

We're thinking it is maybe karma for not letting us

do our Christmas broadcast yesterday.

Wrapping tips

We have been picking up tips on how to wrap

awkwardly shaped presents while on our walks at

Chiltern Open Air Museum, and thought we'd pass on some of them ...

If you run out of paper, it's amazing what you can do

with a tarpaulin.

And rope is perfectly acceptable as a substitute for sellotape.

Use ladders to hold your tarpaulin down while you tie it into place.

Always leave the head sticking out if you gift wrap a horse.

Getting ready!

We have been a bit busy getting ready for Christmas,

which has made us a little late posting our blog.

Exercising the Madwoman too ...

First of all there has been practicing the working-up-of-an-appetite

ready for our turkey dinner.

Then there has been the eating-of-the-Advent-calendar biscuits.

These have not always been arriving on the right days, 

so that sometimes we have had to force ourselves to eat two gravy bones.

The Madwoman is not very good at keeping track of the days of the week it appears.

We will be adding it to the already lengthy list of her faults.

Soon it will be time for us to help put up the Christmas decorations

- which we do, of course, need to prepare ourselves for, by taking a little nap.

  

zzzzzzz....

 

 

Feeling festive!

It was all looking very festive this weekend at Chiltern Open Air Museum.

Typically, the Madwoman's usual incompetence meant that

she got the opening times mixed up and we arrived an hour early.

However, that didn't stop us mooching around and annoying people

as they rushed round trying to finish setting up.

There were Victorians everywhere,doing festive things ...

there were some really lovely craft gifts ...

 

Not to mention a stand-in for Rudolph, being decorated by a reluctant elf. 

We rushed the Madwoman off to the woods before she got any ideas about

garlanding us with tinsel, paused for a quick kiss

under the mistletoe and then, feeling suitably Christmassy, 

went home to write out our present list for Santa.

Window shopping

We went on a visit to the garden centre today.

We thought this velociraptor would look good in the front garden

And it had such a cute smile ...

but the Madwoman said we didn't get many visitors as it is,

and a welcome from this would probably

reduce the number to zero, and anyway, look at the price tag.

Alright then, we said, how about a nice cuddly teddy bear?

Singing ringing tree?

The Madwoman said how about doing something affordable?

And took us off to see a windmill instead.

Looking at it was completely free.

And we saw a mouse.

Yes, right there on the stair.

Although the Madwoman said it was our shadows.

Pffft.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Feeling short changed ...

We had a parcel the other day.



When we opened it we found it

was full of a bulk order of Betty Miller's biscuits

 We did a bit of quality control,

and then the Madwoman said we'd had enough,

(how can two biscuits each be enough?) and put them away.

All 25 packs.

What, we'd like to know, is the point of having

25 packs of biccies - low calorie ones at that - if

you can't have a bit of a binge?

The Madwoman is such a spoilsport.

Pfffft.

Out and about again

We're very happy to be out and about again!

We've done a bit of exploring new please-keep-dogs-on-leads walks

but today we had a quick stroll round one of our favourite destinations, 

Chiltern Open Air Museum.

We admired Leagrave Cottages, which someone seems to have 

beautifully gift wrapped ready for Christmas

... they seem to have got a bit carried away though as one of the horses 

appears to have been gift wrapped too.

Bet they'll have trouble fitting that under the tree on Christmas Eve ...

The we admired all the blacksmithery going on in the forge ...

and were dazzled by the newly repainted Maidenhead Pavilion.

Then the Madwoman trod on Angel's toe, making her squeak

and hop around on three legs:

injured and exhausted by all that admiring,

we decided to go home for restorative elevenses.

 

 

 

 

Bleeah

Angel has been poorly again ... you don't even want to know

about all the blood and slime, or the Madwoman's hystericals ...

Hopefully on the mend now.

Here's Angel with Head Nurse and all-round superhero Archie ...

And here's Angel doing convalescing this morning with Stick Rat ...

 

Dressed to thrill

After much patient hanging around,

the Madwoman finally got herself organised

and we headed off for a walk.

 

We helpfully provided instructions along the way,

and occasionally enquired whether we were there yet.



When we did arrive (at Chiltern Open Air Museum - where else on a

sunny Saturday morning? Or on a wet one, come to that)

we found the giant pumpkin was still there, although it appeared to have

magically moved itself off the pumpkin patch.

We felt right at home mingling with it, since - as the more observant

among you may have spotted - we have donned our

special Halloween collars.  

Catching up

We were going to blog yesterday, we really were.

Unfortunately, after a stroll around Chiltern Open Air Museum, 

we were overtaken by indolence ...

But here's what we saw there as we caught up on all

the happenings that had been happening since Angel was ill.

 Thatching has started at Leagrave Cottages.

We are looking forward to seeing a straw whippet running

along the top when it is completed.

We did a quick Health & Safety check and were pleased to see

that someone has thoughtfully placed  padding round the scaffolding

at whippet head height.

 

And then we looked at the giant pumpkin, and entered the competition

to guess how much it weighed.

We reckoned about two and a half wippitt-weight.

Unfortunately guesses had to be in metric so we made

the Madwoman sit down in the wet grass and remove her boots and socks

so she could do the calculations on fingers and toes, and convert that into kilos. 

As we seem to be playing catch-up, here is a pic of when Angel was poorly,

with Archie acting as Head Nurse and assistant Worrier.

(The Madwoman was the Head Worrier and Wielder of the Thermometer)

And here is Angel with the card kindly sent by Penny Dolan ...

Tomorrow it is Angel's 11th birthday, and we have been promised a special

elevenses for her elevenses.

Back soon!

We are planning our blogging come back - Angel has been very poorly and is now convalescing, so blogging hasn't been uppermost on our minds recently. We both have birthdays coming up - Angel next week and Archie the week after, so need to concentrate on being up to full strength for that. Our Madwoman thinks we don't know about the presents she has 'hidden' on top of the fridge. Ha! Not much gets past us ...

Practising

You know the way people have lists at John Lewis and places like that

for wedding and baby shower gifts and stuff like that?

Well, we thought that maybe we could do something similar for our birthdays

(coming up in October in case you weren't sure)

We shall instruct the Madwoman to set up a list

for us at once with the local butcher.

In the meantime, Archie has been practising hard for when

he becomes a tearaway teenager.

The Shape of Things to Come ...

So today, in lieu of zoomies at the paddocks (see yesterday's post) we did leash walking ... not as exciting or fulfilling as zoomies or vole watching, but lots of new sniffs to sniff ...

The Madwoman cleverly found a field full of pregnant sheep - meaning that there was a big sign posted on the gate leading into it asking people to please keep their dogs on leads. Hurrah we thought!

A nice safe place for us to do our sniffs as any other dogs we meet will be safely contained on leads. We really should have known better. We'd only gone a dozen yards when racing towards us came two very-off-leash terriers.

We removed ourselves to the church in Missenden instead.

Roald Dahl was buried there.

Apparently he was a Famous Writer, although the Madwoman only has one of his books, and that only because it was given to her as a school prize back in the Dark Ages.

Either he is not as Famous as we have been told,

or the Madwoman is an ill-read Pit of Ignorance.

You decide.

This is the church. It has a lovely woodland cemetery area.

And this, presumably is where they do the cremations.

 

A sad week

 

It's been an odd sort of week.

The secure paddocks which the Madwoman hires for us to use four times a week.

have been sold, so we had our last zoomies there on Friday. It was wet enough for raincoats, but we made the most of it.

We've been lucky enough to have the use of them for ten years,

and have had lots of fun there, but we shall miss them. 

There was another farewell this week too,

as Angel's sister Grace-in-America went to Rainbow Bridge.

This is the candle we lit for her. 

The Madwoman decided we needed some cheering up so we

went to Chiltern Open Air Museum yesterday.

We ate blackberries ...

Then we stared reprovingly at the goats, who we suspect of

eating lots of the blackberries ...

And then we came home for a snooze.

It will be our birthdays soon, so we multi-tasked while napping,

thinking of presents to put on our wish-lists ...

We're thinking that this year, a new paddock will be at the top.

Although sucking pig will come a close second.

On location

It was like something out of the X-Files ...

mysterious super-bright lights shining through the trees at Chiltern Open Air Museum ...

Bravely we tiptoed closer ...

 

... and then an eerie mist started to seep through the undergrowth ...

Well, if Mulder and Scully needed rescuing,

obviously we were the wippitts to do it ...

As we inched cautiously forward, we found it wasn't aliens at all.

No, it was Horrible Histories back filming for a seventh series.

Ah, we remember the halcyon days when they filmed the first one,

and all the actors were a bunch of unknowns who gathered round on the village green

to stroke us, exclaim over the softness of our ears and

exchange wippitt anecdotes ...

 ... we hear they have now broken into films.

Or possibly broken some films.

(We are wippitts, not movie buffs.)

 

Here is a behind the scenes shot of the atmospheric smoke being made.

It smelled really horrible, so we didn't hang around.

Besides, someone had just said 'Turn over' which we believe is the new-fangled

and rather boring way of shouting "Lights! Camera! Action!"