Airedale!

The character in today's picture is a local Airedale, who does not like other dogs much, but is a total ham when he sees a camera. I caught him out walking, and even at a distance, he saw me, saw the camera, screeched to a halt, dragging the owner backwards, as you see from the taut leash, and posed! after he saw I'd done something with the camera, he proceeded on his way.

This is so typical of Airedales, the actors of the dog world, always ready to perform, with or without an audience. And I like them because they remind me of a particularly useless piece of general knowledge, with this mnemonic: SUNWACD.

It's: Swale, Ure, Nidd, Wharf, AIRE, Calder, Don. The tributaries of the River Ouse in England. I told you it was useless. And it's also an excuse to say mnemonic, a favorite word in itself. There was a reason I learned Greek, to trot out esoteric bits of info like this!

This frivolity is coming to you from a shining clean house, courtesy of the new Team, who showed up bang on time, said good morning, then said, we upstairs now, and I heard the sounds of extreme cleaning going on on all three floors. They even vacuumed the studio, a truly heroic feat. And made short work of all the various other bathrooms, even polished the front of the kitchen cabinets, gosh, I was impressed.

The brand new floor about which I was a bit nervous, they swept, then damp mopped, then POLISHED with cloths on their feet! the man of the team ran out to their van partway through the proceedings to find furniture polish, an item never used in this house! actually there's a practical reason for that: when Andy was still able to walk, he would grasp any piece of furniture to steady himself, and if it was polished, his slippery hands would skid and he'd have a terrible fall. But now that's sadly not an issue.

Anyway, this hiring of cleaners was a good decision I think, such a ton of work. But it was a team of two, which was a good thing. I'd rather have a team, particularly of young strong workers, than a single frail elderly lady, which a lot of cleaners around here are. I'd feel bad having someone older do this heavy work. I'd probably end up feeling I should really help her!

Anyway, it went very well and they will be back in two weeks to do it again, yay.

Last night was the first meeting of the Recorder Society, great fun playing early music and reuniting with friends I haven't seen for months and months, and I haven't forgotten how to play after all. I used my bass, tenor and alto over the course of the evening. HS came over early from work to sit with HP for the evening, and improved the time by replacing a doorknob for me while he was there.

So singing and playing my way out with a rousing chorus of Airedale, Airedale, Airedale, to the tune of Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel.....