usual beagle dynamics x 1000

As Millie is on the mend - the leg is obviously quite itchy but very sensibly when she is restrained from doing anything about it she seems able to put it out of her small but actually quite orderly mind - she is finding it more and more frustrating to be cooped up inside, where she has to be mainly because she has to keep her wound dry so it continues to 'scab up' and crystallise or whatever other gross terms the vet can come up with. She is 10 but she is a pretty lively 10 (I am not thinking about Bo Derek - stop putting your tawdry sex fantasies onto my dogs). It's not that she doesn't love the idea of sleeping most of the day, it's just that when she's awake she wants to be really awake. It suxs. About this time next week she should be fine to do whatever she wants, apart from busting through the fence and being hit by another car. What I would really like to do at the moment is wash her, as she totally stinks.

Charlie meanwhile has ramped up her anxiousness into full-on antisocial behaviour, monster-puppy basically. Frenziedly ripping things up. It's going to be a gruelling week.

I was lucky enough to get a late birthday present from my inestimably talented and marvellous friend Toby. It is a painting of Charlie and I have to say it captures her angst stunningly.



He didn't ask me to and may even find it embarrassing but I want to tell you you can commission Toby to do a portrait of your pet at a very reasonable price. Have a look at some of the others he's done here. I couldn't imagine a better kind of pet painting. They are beautifully composed but spirited, so they're not tacky or maudlin at all, which I am sure is usually the danger.

because i'm worth it

They just paid $287 for a 24-hour stay at the vet's during which he extracted the queen bee of grass seeds from my left nostril, which was presented to them in a small test tube, bloody on a cotton wool pillow. I have put the entire incident out of my mind - why dwell? - and am on to the next thing. I look forward to a renewed and invigorated regime of barking at nothing and sleeping in apparently terribly uncomfortable positions.

kensington nitelighf

Larst night my old lady and I went to Kensington for our cheap frills, and had a very pleasing dinner at Sori Cafe, the well-known Korean-Japanese cafe in, er, Kensington. I can't recall the name of the dish I got but it was kind of baked with rice and vegetables on top. And I had a Cass, Mia had an Asahi. We were too full for dessert but oddly when we went next door to the White Rabbit Record Bar (http://www.whiterabbitrecords.com.au/home.html) we found our cocktail spaces weren't empty. White Rabbit always confused me, unti last night. I used to think it was actually a record shop, then I decided it was a bar, now I appreciate it is actually both. The music they played was excellent; I have no idea what it was. I said to Mia we should come here every Friday PM on our way home (as it is on a train stop on our way home). I couldn't hear her response. When we got home she put her scarf on Millie which looked tres chic.

Speaking of stuff, Asha and Bela are now getting on like a house on fire, with all that that metaphor might entail. I was just saying to Asha how Bela had never had a friend before, because of his personality. I suppose Asha was the same but more due to circumstances.