I've been avoiding shopping at Amazon, since they seem to be so peculiarly unpleasant to their staff and after all, one can buy the same things easily enough from much smaller businesses online -- but yesterday I was checking a wishlist, and the site showed me a  kayak for 59 quid including delivery from a local manufacturer.   I'm pretty sure that ( Read more... )

Weasel Hair Brushes ( Read more... )

I bought two new dog beds today.   After much agonising over online options, I decided to actually take the dogs to choose beds, so that I could check they would fit.  So, I got the beds off the shelf, and I made the dogs sit in the beds to check that they were the right size.  And I swear, in the shop they WERE the right size ( Read more... )

Someone tell me I don't need to buy six Chilean Guava bushes.  I am such a sucker for exotic fruits!   And six for a tenner ( Read more... )

( I only wish I had invented it... )

I have finally managed to find a copy of Sutcliff's "The Rider of the White Horse" about Thomas Fairfax (a man who I am delighted to discover, is also called Black Tom. I bet Sutcliff will give him a dog. Black Tom's Dog! For £2.50! There are second hand copies floating around still but most of them seem to be at least twenty quid and often ( Read more... )

We went to Bere Alston today, in search of a second hand bookshop.   Bere Alston is a large village in the middle of the Bere Peninsula, which is an oddity in that it is a sort of fully-retracted peninsula in the middle of a land mass.  It is separated from Cornwall and the rest of Devon by rivers that bend round to make it almost an island.   So ( Read more... )

This morning as I walked the dogs along the pavement-less lanes, Az wandered in his vague, old-dog manner, towards the middle of the road, as a van was approaching.  I leapt to retrieve him, fearing that it might be the Tesco delivery van, which is driven by a man who feels that White Van Men are wusses and Tesco groceries must be delivered at a ( Read more... )

On Saturday,we popped to Liskeard, a local market town.  I've not been to Liskeard in a couple of years, probably, and it was a shock to see how many shops were standing empty.  Liskeard is a small town relatively recently blessed by the addition of an extended out of town large supermarket, and a small retail park.  Together, these really seem to ( Read more... )

Back in March I asked you all for your opinion about how and where I should buy walking boots. Your opinions, were, unsurprisingly, inconclusive, and fearful of acquiring The Wrong Boots Grommit,  I decided to go to a walking boot shop instead.  But alas; the walking shop not only had no boots of that particular style in stock, they had no similar ( Read more... )