Never mind fixing boats, I thought I’d fix my dog last week so I took her to the vets, menopausal old mutt that she is.

Lots of blood, pus and horror and sickly slurping with the doggy tongue so we gave her some antibiotics and she picked up nicely but a week later she was down again so it was off to see the doctor.

Nothing we didn’t know already, a stinking, open Pyo’ and an emergency…

I got a great email after the last diary. It said something like; tell whoever writes the diary to be less ‘verbose’. What a wonderful word, but verbosity is sort of the point. The format is long established in that there’s a rant first that hopefully raises a smile and occasionally goes viral. How I wish I could find Mrs. Dog Coat again, for example, to thank her for such good material, and the…

Ever since Athelred the Angry picked up a rock and bashed his enemy’s head in with it rather than break a fingernail mankind has been using tools to make life easier, simpler and more efficient; and so one of the multitudinous tributaries of this process ultimately led to Alexander Graham Bell inventing the telephone – or nicking someone else’s patent application, depending on who you believe.

Even…