Life as I know it.

Les Alpilles

I was born in a barn in Wales and from there was picked up one day and taken to a small hamlet in Shropshire.  Life was pretty good.  Plenty of fields to roam around in and a pack of Sheepdogs that lived next door, if I fancied a flirt or joining in a game of sheep round-up.
However, the Sheepdogs weren't good enough for me when it came to find me a mate.

They were the wrong breed!

So one day I was taken off to meet Gordon.  Not much happened, and I got bored and sat down and he got bored and sat down.  

Next time we met, things got a bit more serious!  There was a professional woman there, who 

knew how to get things done  

I won't go into the details here, but the outcome was seven little baby Scotties six weeks later.

They were born early one summer's morning,  The Artist took one look at what was going on and went straight back to bed!  The Writer came down later, she wasn't much better.  Luckily they were all healthy and I knew exactly what to do and didn't need anybody's help.  

They were all given Scottish names and we kept one called Nessie, (after the monster) but she kept running away and so we had to give Nessie away as well.

Life was pretty quiet and uneventful after all that, until one day Ralph arrived!  He was Nessie's puppy, she had mated with a Champion Dog, which meant that Ralph was very handsome

But there wasn't much between the ears.....

Anyway, I soon showed him who was boss and how it was going to be if we were going to share the same living space and slowly he started to grow up and pay attention to me.

Everything was just fine, until one day when it was announced that we were going to move to Provence.  They told us all about Provence; it was somewhere in France where lavender, wine and olive oil comes from, somewhere hot where everything is cooked in garlic and herbs and tomatoes.

Well, I thought, I'll give it a go.  Actually I didn't have a choice, Ralph and I were packed into the car, along with various household objects, (for some reason, Ginger the cat was allowed to stay behind,) and off we went early one morning, seems everything happens early in the morning for me!

When they had described Provence, I'd seen pictures of large houses with olive groves, so obviously that is how I pictured where we would be living, but when we arrived at what was 

our new house

I was confused.  There was one room on the street level with a small kitchen, but nothing beyond.  OK, I thought, this is OK for me and Ralph to live in, but where's everyone else going to be and why isn't there a door leading to the garden?

I soon learnt that in fact there was no garden and that the one room was it!  The Artist and The Writer could go upstairs to other rooms, but we were stuck down below (having short legs, I'm not very good at going up stairs at the best of time, let alone, stone spiral ones!)

Well imagine my horror, when we were taken to a little square patch of grass where we were expected to perform our toilet requirements, right out in the open in front of any tom, dick, or harry mongrel that happened to be passing by!  We were also taken for a walk alongside the river once a day, at least that afforded us some privacy in the guise of bushes and undergrowth; but things were not what I had been brought up to expect, there were a lot of strange dogs, dogs that Ralph, bless his little heart, did his best to see off.

Occasionally we are taken to somebody's house with a large garden and pool with vineyards beyond and open views; on these occasions, I always say to Ralph that this is how I imagined our life in Provence would be.  Not living in one room in a street full of children who call us Chippies and repeatedly ask if we were twins!

Life as we thought it might be

Well we did eventually move into a bigger house with a courtyard, but still no garden.  We spend most of the day sleeping in our beds, listening out for sounds of food preparation and walking under people's feet in an attempt to be there when something falls off a table top.

Despite Ralph getting older, he never got any brighter.  I have to keep showing him the ropes and often he gets me into trouble, but we've grown to love each other and even though we are granny and grandson, we are quite like an old married couple.

Life as it is