An earthquake, that’s what.

At about half past seven tonight.  Here.  In the back of beyond.

I was at my laptop, my daughter was doing something nearby (she presses buttons a lot and laughs to herself, that’s all I know), and everyone else was playing football outside.  Then . . . the glass doors rattled, the ground shook, and it was hard to process what was going on.  We both looked at each other, realised we were wimps, and refused to go outside.

Twitter and Facebook kicked in, and it all got very odd.  Was it an earthquake?

I think so.

How to describe it?  Well, I tried and got ridiculed for it but to me it sounded like a giant alien washing machine which had been stuffed beyond belief (as all washing machines are in my life), and then started cranking and groaning before turning up at my front door with a posse of lorries and tractors.  The noise was incredible.  Then there were aftershocks.  Then, three hours later, there were little rumbles.

Some people are sticking to the earthquake theory (me).  Some say it was a sonic boom.  Some say that it has happened before and that it gets hushed up because if we are officially prone to earthquakes, our insurance will go up hugely.

Which is it?  I’m too scared to think.

Oh look – there’s summer.  It was here for a week in March (I know these things now because I have a blog to remind me), but then it packed up and went elsewhere.   It’s nice to see it again, even if it won’t be for long.  This is Scotland after all.

Coco doesn’t quite know what to do.  I took her a walk today – the one we call the circle.  We went down the hill, along the shore, up past the yellow fields, across to my favourite tree lined path, along the top hills and fields, and back down to home.  She managed halfway before just lying down and refusing to move. I’ve never seen her do that before.  She will sometimes have a wee rest if it’s warm, but she soon belts after you if you’re more than an inch ahead of her.  Today, she was almost laughing at me.  I gave up too.  I sat down beside her and we did nothing for a while.  I had no book or notepad in my bag which is rare in real life, although not on dog walks obviously.  I didn’t quite know what to do for a while, then I realised nothing was a fine thing to spend my time on.

I feel quite happy.

Then I feel guilty that I feel quite happy given all that’s happened in the past few days.

It’s very confusing.

Last year, I wrote a book with someone which will be out next month. The book is called ‘The Angel Whisperer’ and, funnily, enough, it’s about someone who communicates with angels. Yes, of course you may pause reading this for a moment to pre-order on Amazon – off you pop . . .

Hello again.

So, the person whose story is told in the book it is jolly nice. He also, I suspect, has taken possession of almost all of the world’s positivity. I have never met anyone so happy, so content, or so up. He’s the antithesis of me really.

This person (Kyle – I can name him as I have nothing bad to say), often gives me little bits of advice. I grunt at them and make some sarky comments, and we both go on our merry ways (his being much merrier than mine).

When we first met, he asked me about my angels. I told him I didn’t have any, and he told me that I definitely did. ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘if I do, they’re right evil buggers who have it in for me.’

Kyle gave me a bit of a talking to and we wrote the book. Now, I’m not someone who automatically believes things – anything. Despite writing books for psychics, I don’t sit there oooh-ing and aaah-ing at every story and writing it down verbatim. I’d be a pretty rubbish ghost writer if I did that. I have to ask all of the tricky questions, just as I would no matter the subject matter of the project, and I have to make the person who does believe really work to answer everything. Do I believe in the angels and ghosts and spirits they then tell me about? I don’t not. I’m not a closed door, but I would prefer it to get a great big shove for me to accept things.

However, today I realised that it probably doesn’t matter. Last night, Kyle told me some stuff which made sense. It made sense because, actually, it was just based on good advice. It may have had an angelic layer on top, but that was just the icing on the cake; the ingredients themselves were solid.

I watch Kyle and I see what is happening in his life – he is going to be hugely successful and he knows this, not from any position of misplaced pride or vanity, but because he’s so happy and so, yes, positive. When he told me to surround myself with positive people and thoughts, it may not have been earth-shattering, but it was spot on. I’m going through something just now (which I don’t want to blog about) that is really opening my eyes to the people around me. When I talk about the thing that is happening, the response of others is lifting me up or dragging me down immediately. I don’t want the latter, and if I have to listen to someone half my age tell me that, it’s fine by me. Today has been different. I’m repeating what he told me to repeat whenever I’m scared or worried. I’m concentrating on the people who add things to my life. And, it’s working, it’s working.

I often don’t see much difference between how I respond to my children and how I respond to Coco. Before I had a dog, I was still pretty animal-oriented, hated any cruelty towards them, and indulged any cats we’ve ever had, and with Coco that has just continued. However, when we meet other dogs, I am just ridiculously pleased with her in that obsessive parent way that annoys people so much (me included). I have no idea whether I’m deluded. I have no idea whether she is actually a nightmare. That’s how delusion works.

She has calmed down so much now that she is almost two (not that she ever conformed to the Weimaraner clichés anyway), and there is very little about her that I would change. She could smell a bit better I guess.

The main problem in the past was that she was useless on the lead. She would pull and get distracted by what she was sniffing, and both of us would forget how strong she was. I got round that by rarely taking her anywhere she needed to be on the lead, but even that isn’t an issue any more. Recently, I’ve noticed that if I walk to school to collect Son 2, she’s very calm when I get there. I thought for a while that it was because she’s tired after the walk along the shore, but, actually, it’s because she’s fine on the lead now too anyway.

So, what were the other problems? She rarely jumps up at people any more. She’s good at recall (apart from where rabbits are involved, but, as we’re on our own up a hill when that happens, I just really need to wait five minutes and she reappears, grinning and blood stained). She hardly ever asks to be let out of her crate for the toilet in the middle of the night, and still goes to bed very early of her own choice. She is loyal, protective and gentle.

I think most dog owners probably feel the same way about their dogs, even when others see snarling devil creatures. It’s just the canine equivalent of mums and dads who think that little Johnny is an angel as he climbs all over your sofa in muddy shoes and draws on the walls in chocolate each visit, but I don’t care. I have a perfect dog. Well, perfect for me anyway.

Technically, smallvillagebidog is over. My year is up. However, as I’m such a slacker, I didn’t do anywhere near 365 entries so I will probably still add here and there – actually, there are lots that I never even got around to posting, so there’s a chance I could get up to the full whack through doing very little work at all.

However, today, I have a bee in my bonnet hence the blog. Since we moved here, I have planned to go to Crathes Castle. It’s not that close to us, but, as I’ve said before, your sense of distance changes when you live in the back of beyond and anything under an hour is somewhere you ‘pop’ to. So, today, we finally popped.

It reminded me of all that is wrong with Scottish tourism and I won’t be popping back in a hurry. I have complained about this before. In fact, I remember writing a column about it when I worked at ‘The Scotsman.’ Readers agreed in their droves (which was a novel experience for me), and I was sent horror stories which knocked mine into a cocked hat. Of course, the Scottish Tourist Board got in touch too. They said that I was completely wrong, and that they’d be delighted to prove it. I think they tried – it didn’t work. They said that everyone who had written in was wrong too – I tend to think not.

So, today, for twenty eight quid on entry alone (which I think is quite a lot), we did the Crathes Castle experience. It involved going into a cold, damp ‘castle’ which really looked like a miserable few rooms with manky rugs which had been subject to a dodgy 1960s plaster job. On the tables were unengaging, ancient (but not in a good way) laminated sheets which could not have been of interest to anyone, apart from, perhaps the family who owned the place and who seemed to think we wanted nothing more than to ooh and aah at tatty, recent memorabilia of the forelock-tugging variety. About two thirds of the staff looked as if they would rather be anywhere else, and the remainder were of the ‘say a quick spiel and move them on while hoping they don’t ask questions’ variety. The cafe had precisely one member of staff who smiled, the rest looked as if they would kill you if you dared ask for anything more exotic than a Scotch pie. The food was overpriced and unimaginative. The ‘children’s activities’ had been thought of for five seconds thirty years ago, photocopied and never given another moment’s consideration again. The only bright spot was when we heard snippets of a conversation in which direct debits for National Trust membership were being punted as if it was a new invention just shipped in from Mars.

It was history and tourism at its most dreary, and it really ticks me off that we squander so many opportunities to engage and entertain, to make history and heritage come alive, to exploit what there is no shame in exploiting. Disney has seen the potential, and when the droves of tourists start swarming here in even greater numbers once ‘Brave’ is released, they’re in for a rude awakening. We have it all, and we have no idea what to do with it.

A dog + some flowers = free blog post.

I know this is cheating but the field is so lovely that we went back to it today and, this time, Coco was willing to pose prettily beside the daffodils.  I think I can get away with it given that people look at things which are a lot more rubbish than this on the Internet.

When I picked up Son 2 today, I started crying immediately.  His tooth has been wobbly for some time, and he is seven, so the loss of the first one should probably have happened some time ago – but, when he saw me at half past three, and he smiled, and it wasn’t there, I had to hug him pretty darned tightly in order for him to not see me blubbing like a baby.

I know I’m lucky.  I know that there are far too many parents who would do anything to get these milestones because they’ve had it all snatched away from them long before now.  But I know that, as I watch my last one grow, it’s all much more painful than I ever imagined.

Isn’t this beautiful?  The field down from my house is covered in daffodils.  I thought that they had been planted for Mother’s Day, but said day has been and gone, yet the flowers are still there with no sign of any being picked and no sign that they will be.  They are uplifting and cheering.  Perhaps the best thing of all is that they are just left there, untouched, glorious and inducing happiness.

This has nothing to do with dogs or villages, but I need to get it off my chest, so to speak.

There are fewer experiences which can be more humiliating than getting measured for a (hush now) bra (I apologise for using such a word, but there are no euphemisms which suit).  I tend to avoid the experience, for, just like trying to buy jeans or singing in public, it can never end well.  But, today I was bored.  I had been in the hell which is Union Street for two hours and not managed to buy a single thing I needed, so thought I would be rather daring.  On top of that, while venturing through a department store, I saw underwear with horses on it.  That sort of thing needs to be rewarded with immediate purchase so off I toddled with various ill-fitting sizes.

‘Could I have this in a (I am not going to say the size) size, please?’ I asked, peeking out from behind the curtain.

‘Let me see!’ said the lovely shop assistant.  She then snorted and refused to give me the (I am not going to say the size) size.

‘You’re never that,’ she said.  ‘You’re wearing the wrong size.’

Now, every woman reading that line will know this trick.  We’re pretty much all brainwashed to believe that while wearing 44JJ bras, we’re actually 28AA once the bra ladies give us the once over.  It’s a lie.  We can measure our own ribs after all, so should be able to get the number part right, even if the letter part (which involves Real Actual Algebra and possibly hieroglyphics) is beyond us.

She then told me:

You have no concept of bras.

This is a lie too.  I know they’re to cover my norks and get ruined in the wash.

Bras are supposed to hurt.

This is SURELY another lie.  The business end of my chest may hurt without one, but I don’t want it to hurt with one too.

You are two numbers smaller and three sizes bigger than you think.

This is DEFINITELY a lie.  While I am on the portly side, I am not Bella Emberg (go Google that if you had to also Google Johnny Morris t’other day).  Plus, if I bought that size, not only would people laugh at me, I would have strayed in Granny territory immediately.

She popped off to bring me back some hammocks in my new pretend size.  And – they fitted.  Of course they did.  So, she felt superior and I felt ashamed.

‘Can I have it in the horse bra, please?’ I whispered.

‘No.  That only goes up to normal-women size and you are now a blubbery mess who can only wear industrial strength undergarments,’ she said (silently with her eyes, although she did say the ‘no’ part.)

She brought me back some more HIDEOUS articles – that fitted – and I begged for pretty things.

‘But THESE are gorgeous!’ she hissed.  ‘It says so on the label!  The brand is ‘Gorgeous’.’

Well. You can put a massive sateen bra on a pig and call it a unicorn, but it’s still a pig.

I will probably delete this post soon – make the most of it.

I’m not a creative person.  I can write, but I don’t see that as being creative not like someone who can draw or paint or make something.  So, when I notice that certain colours are stunning, it’s actually quite rare – but look at this!  The textures, the contrasts, the blue of the sea in the background, the sky, the branches, all of it – perhaps it was put there for people just like me who really have to have Nature shoved in their faces before they see anything?