No offence, Part I

One of my current missions is to find myself a furry-faced companion (one that won't answer back, stops me looking like a mad lonely witch on countryside hikes, and which will curl up happily at my feet and gaze at me with adoration, etc).

This included a recent visit to an RSPCA shelter, during which I had to try not to cry. Several times. After talking to the nice people there and filling in a form, I've registered as someone who wants to rehome a dog. Coming home, I called the local RSPCA volunteer who would need to come and inspect the cottage, to make sure it was a healthy home for a dog. Fair enough.

The nice man I spoke explained the only obvious problem - why they require any fences to be 4 feet high. In his words, "Even if the dog comes from the worst home in the world, it's the only home he knows. So when he comes to you, he's in a strange place, with a strange person. And as nice as you might be, the first chance he gets, he'll try and get back to his home. And the last thing we want is for doggie to jump out onto the road and get run over."

I can't disagree with this at all.

Luckily, my landlords are doglovers too, and gave me the go ahead to improve the fencing to meet these requirements. (The fact they left me a dogbasket 'In case you want to get one' kind of helps.)

What we first thought to be a simple job of elevating the height of the gate turned into a somewhat bigger job when my landlady reminded me about the fencing around the back of the garden and garage. Definitely not 4 feet high, especially the bits that had fallen over.

So I called my (now) long suffering ex-flatmate. I believe my words were along the lines of 'Could you come and help me build a fence? It'll just be banging a few posts in, and a bit of wire, no trouble." G, bless his socks, came up the next day. We bought lots of posts, and lots of dogproof wire. Then darkness settled, so we settled down to a cosy evening catching up, thinking we'd get it all sorted the next day.

Can you spot the bit where this turns into a story? It's about now.

After removing the old fence (G's genius plan - tie it to the back of the Jeep, then hit the accelerator - worked a treat), he kept himself busy finding excuses to charge around with a chainsaw chopping offending things down. Well, anything down really. We (i.e. he) started to dig holes for the posts. (I was tasked with building a bonfire to burn evidence of the chainsaw massacre, probably to keep me out of the way more than anything else, wise plan).

*Dig, dig, clunk*

Oh bollox, hit a stone.

Move places.

*Dig, dig, clunk*

Bugger - another rock.

*Dig, dig, clunk*

Hang on a minute...

Yes, it turns out, after much more digging, that about 6 inches under the soil all around the back of the cottage garden is one huge solid lump of stone, rock, builders rubble, and possibly a subterranean motorway.

Darkness descended again. We resettled by the fire to consider the options.

To be continued...