It's the nights that are the worst!

It was a dank, cold night in Sydney on Tuesday night. Our house, and indeed the whole street, is built on the site of an old sandstone quarry, so the garden consists of a thin layer of topsoil and a ledge of solid rock, with the result that when it pours continually for days the water doesn’t so much as seep, as pool. The ground is currently so wet that the dog has developed a hackney pony type gait when picking its way across the front lawn. Despite the drizzle I nobly set off for dogtraining that night, after all let’s get real, Sydney bad weather shouldn’t really deter someone who spent their teenage years in Glasgow. It was a trifle unfortunate that the council had closed the oval where the training is held, as it was so waterlogged, and even more importantly had failed to turn on the floodlights. Dog training is run by a very hardy group of volunteers who in true Dad's Army style, brushed aside the problem of training a group of twenty odd dogs in the almost pitch dark. I have to say Pluto has never had such a successful class, mainly because as a black dog on a dark night the instructor couldn't see him up to his usual antics, let alone me giving him a sly nudge with my foot whenever he failed to perform.

As Simon is away, Drama Queen No. 3 has spotted her opportunity and quicker than an excited ferret shoots into my bed at 2am most nights. At that hour my resistance is low and apart from an odd growl, I can’t force myself up to return her to her own bed. However I pay for my parental laxness big time. The experience is how I would imagine it must be sleeping with a half grown bush pig. She grunts and snuffles and works her way up and down the bed, but worst of all she grinds her teeth as if she’s accepted a large bet about how soon it will be before she can wear them down to a stump. Short of blackboard nail scraping I don’t know a worse noise and it isn’t just sly nudges with my foot that I give her in an effort to make her stop.

My latest classic time wasting activity is a 1,000 piece jigsaw full of dogs that we rather overambitiously bought before the long weekend. A month later, it is residing on the dinning room table with various family members having a go at it every time they pass. It is completely addictive and the Drama Queens and I carry on late into the night convinced that another 10 minutes will sort out the Golden Retriever that appears to have three heads, rivalled only by the legless Boxer puppy. Hopefully it will be finished by the time Simon gets back but I do know in my heart of hearts that once we get down to the final 10 pieces we’ll discover the dog has eaten at least three of them.

The fire alarm went off with earshrilling drama last night. Usually it is activated by the gentle charring of supper, this time it transpired it had been set off by the clouds of steam generated by DQ no.3's showering/beautifying/purifying and I strongly suspect hair bleaching activity.

So there we have it, the week’s exciting night time activities of a temporarily single parent; dogtraining in the dark, bush pig in the bed; jigsaw and fire duty. It’ll be cocoa, curlers and slippers before I know it!