What a day today, whizzing around madly from pillar to post and back again. Work was restful by comparason.

One of my appointments was with Calum, my lovely dentist. Over the years his skill and clean pinkness have completely cured my phobia about dentists. I can almost relax in his chair, knowing he'll only hurt me a little bit. Today I had a root canal filling -- he'd cleaned it out and dressed it last week and finished it properly this time. No anaesthetic because the nerve was dead, so no rubber lips and no painful reawakening of nerve endings. Plenty of pain in the old wallet though -- £115, ka-ching!

It's raining. It's cold. Sigh. Saves the effort of watering the garden I guess. Sigh. We never did get that heatwave ...

Terrible words to hear while filling my trolley at Tesco:

"Would the owner of the white greyhound please come to the customer service desk."

I whisked down to the front of the shop where sure enough, through the plate-glass window, I saw Bertie -- collarless -- run past looking anxious. I parked my trolley and dashed out. People were looking on in amazement as Bertie ran back and forth in front of the windows, scanning for a familiar face or a way in. He came to me quite meekly though, and I tied him up, fastening his collar with an eye-bulging tightness.

At least he didn't try and head for home -- traffic was pretty heavy yesterday afternoon.

He's never backed out of his collar before, though I've been aware that it's getting looser as the leather stretches. They have such tiny heads for their neck size it's hard to get the collar tight enough without making it uncomfortable. One thing I'm going to do for sure though is to get a thin, looser collar for him to wear his tags on. That way if he does escape from the leash he'll still have ID (apart from the microchip).

This week is going to be madly busy workwise and I only have Wednesday off. Tomorrow is used up with appointments so I won't get to tackle my computer grief until Tuesday at the earliest.

We're supposed to be having a heatwave. It's blistering everywhere else in the country, but here it's just ... warm. Right now (11pm) I'm actually cold, I've got a T-shirt on and wish I'd brought a sweatshirt or something with me. Some heatwave. Huh.

OK, so quickly: Monday I trailed all the way to the Post Office with all the documentation needed to pay the road tax only to find I'd taken the wrong MOT certificate with me. Grinding of teeth. After that, I don't know ... I think I took Bertie to Blackness for a run and cooked a nice ratatouille for dinner. I'm sure I must have done something else ... oh yes, I remember, I broke my computer.

Tuesday: Lunch with Anthea, followed by a trip to the dentist for a root canal filling. Lunch was delicious -- warm squid salad at Sweet Melinda's in Marchmont, and the dentist wasn't too bad. The nerve was dead anyway, so I didn't need an injection and my jaw wasn't aching afterwards.

On the way home I stopped at Homebase and bought a strimmer. Got home and foolishly didn't change my clothes before trying it out. I had no idea strimming leaves you plastered head to toe with shredded weeds and bits of whatever gunk is lurking amongst them. What a cool piece of equipment though! Vroom! Zing! After strimming I mowed, so the lawn looks almost decent now. Next I have to strim the front of the house. Yee haw.

So that was that. Not very exciting, eh. But I love it. I'm soooo sad. Sigh.

Week after next I've decided Bertie is ready for another trip up the learning curve. We're going to the farm. This is my friend Andrew's parents' farm, up near Nairn. They have 12 cats and 100 cattle. Yes indeedy, he's in for a few surprises up there.

I won't have time to update tonight, maybe tomorrow. Tsk, I'm really falling behind.

Well I have busted my new computer! That didn't take long, did it? It's not completely busted, just the modem doesn't work any more. I suspect a software glitch rather than physical meltdown, but it's a bugger either way. It means no online work at home, so I have to do it all at work. It's expensive too -- it forced me to spend an hour on the phone today talking to Pinky, 10,000 miles away.

I won't have time to even talk to the techies at the shop until next week, so I'll have to be disciplined until then.

So ... my days off. Saturday: Went to the auction, which was lots of fun. I didn't buy anything, though I had to sit on my hands to stop myself bidding for crates of useless stuff, just because it was so cheap. Hundreds of beer glasses going for a song! (The hitch there was you didn't get to pick them up until Sunday, after the big closing-down party. You could conceivably end up paying £10 not for hundreds of beer glasses but for six chipped sherry glasses.) They had a big screen set up and showed slides of the various lots as they came up.

The varied list of stuff on sale attracted a very mixed crowd -- locals, dealers of every stripe, gawpers, collectors, all sorts. We were not big spenders, however, and the auctioneer got quite ratty. "Fifty pound to start. Forty. Thirty." Long pause. "Ten pound! Come on! Ten to start." Another pause. "What's the matter with ye? Five pound then, who'll give me five? No-one? Surely... come on, this is a bargain." I like the eccentric ways a bid can develop -- it starts out like that, with the auctioneer working back from £50 and finally getting a £5 opener. Then someone else raises it to £10, and there's a little rush of bidding and suddenly the price is back up to £50.

The pictures I wanted turned out to be prints rather than oil paintings, but still went for quite a high price. I wouldn't have minded paying what they went for, but if I'd joined the bidding they would have gone higher; bidding was brisk. The ship prints were more complicated: there were several lots of a pair each, and the winner of the first lot had an option of buying through, of buying the rest at the same price. They didn't want them all, so there was renewed bidding for the next lot, and the bloke who got that pair did take the rest. The model ship: well, I looked the name up on the internet and found you could get a new one for $29.99. It sold at the auction for £30, plus 10% buyer's premium, plus VAT. Not a bargain. The carpet in the ladies loo went for £10.

After just two hours at the auction (not even halfway through) I staggered out faint from the heat and airlessness of the room, collected Bertie and zoomed off to Blackness for a romp. It was high tide, a very high high tide, water was sloshing and crashing up on the sea wall.

Bertie again showed why we humans are in charge. See the water at the top of the wall, I think "Boy, that must be quite deep." Bertie thinks "This water is only a couple of inches deep" and plunges in. He was so surprised. And then of course he had real trouble getting out. On a dry day he's free with a single mighty bound, but with water up to his chest it took him a few clumsy, lurching goes to jump back out on to the grass.

Watching all this was a female greyhound, on a lead. Shaking himself off, Bertie hurried up to say hi. And HELLO, baby! "She's still a little bit in heat," explained her owner as Bertie investigated delicious smells. Sadly she wasn't interested AT ALL and told him so with a snarl. He took off at a full sprint, presumably to show her what she was missing. He's such a dorky teenager sometimes.

Sunday: Spent most of the day in the front garden, weeding, weeding, weeding. There's some ghastly weed taking over the front garden and lawn and I don't even know what it is. It's feathery, a bit like an asparagus fern but juicier, and the whole thing's segmented, so when you grab hold of it, it falls apart. Every last little bit that falls on the ground grows into a new plant. The roots are segmented too, so you can't dig it out without sieving all the soil. It's everywhere. Meanwhile on the other bed, along the wall, the convolvulus was regaining a foothold. Its alternative name is "devil's guts", because of the root system. Again, almost impossible to get rid of.

Hey, it's time to go home! I'll have to finish this tomorrow. If I get time ...

Amusing incident from this morning's walk: I was walking along the pathway that cuts through the meadow and heard the drumming of Bertie's feet behind me. Knowing he likes to sprint right past, I sidestepped to let him by.

I sidestepped the wrong way and he slammed into the back of my legs at full speed. We were both pretty surprised, but there were no injuries.

I went down to Hawes Inn[warning: link has irritating popup advert] today to the auction viewing. It was quite odd -- the bar was still open, but they had been running the stock down for so long there was almost nothing left. "A Becks then." "No, sorry, there's none left." "Coke?" "No." And so on.

And everything had a little numbered sticker on it.

The variety is mind-boggling. Some samples of what's on offer:

Lot 36: 2 X REPLICA FLINT LOCK PISTOLS
Lot 52: 9 LITRE H20 FIRE EXTINGUISHER
Lot 186: DARTBOARD, CABINET & SPOTLIGHT
Lot195: 1 X LARGE SHIPS WHEEL
Lot 209: APPROX 21' OF BRASS FOOTBAR
Lot 465: CURTAIN IN ROOM 19
Lot 599: LENGTH OF STEEL CHAIN AT FRONT OF BUILDING

Things I'm interested in:
Lot 311: FRAGATO SIGLO XVIII MODEL SHIP
Lot 313: 4 OIL PAINTINGS OF HIGHLAND SCENES
Lots 441-447 PR OF NAVAL PRINTS

The oil paintings are lovely -- small, romantic Victorian views of lochs and glens and bens, with sheep and long-horned cattle dotted picturesquely about. The naval prints aren't ships-at-sea paintings, but line drawings as if for a technical manual, showing all the rigging and specs. Most are sailing ships, but some are WWI warships, the Dreadnought and such. Very nice. They're all bunched together though. I think whoever buys the first lot gets the rest at the same price.

Registering didn't cost anything so I went ahead, and I've got a number to flash at the auctioneer. I doubt I'll end up buying anything -- there were a lot of dealers there today making copious notes, I don't think us amateurs stand much chance against them. It'll be interesting though.

Things you would have to be mad to buy:
Lot 19: CARPET IN LADIES TOILET
Lot 453: 7 PRS OF BURGUNDY CURTAINS IN PUBLIC BAR

And finally, from the STORE ROOM AND BACK OFFICE:
Lot 551: REALISTIC KAREOKI MACHINE

This is the Hawes Inn, right at the foot of the Forth Bridge in South Queensferry. Robert Louis Stevenson stayed there. It features in his novel Kidnapped, in fact I think he might have written some of it there. The inn -- pub, restaurant and hotel -- milks the connection for all it's worth. For example the tables have glass tops covering montages of pages from Kidnapped, pictures of RLS and other mementos, and there are big portraits outside of characters from Kidnapped.

It's historic, right?

Well apparently the new owners, Bass, are going to revamp it and make it a theme pub. Uh, I'm sorry? What theme is that? Oh, a "Vintage Inns" theme.

The Evening News says: "Within months, the pub's Victorian graffiti will be erased and Stevenson quotes on the walls will vanish, making it a mirror image of other Vintage Inns around the UK - which are all decorated with fake antiques and new wood distressed to look old."

On Saturday they're auctioning off all the furniture and fittings, so I'm going down there tomorrow for the viewing, see if there's anything worth bidding for. Happily the local museum got wind of all this early and managed to persuade Bass to donate a bit of history: a collection of mariners' badges given to the pub by sailors over the years.

The pub also features a collection of foreign money -- notes from all countries imaginable are stapled to the walls all around the bar. I wonder if they'll auction that. Can you auction money?

Frustrating sort of day

Just as it got hot and sunny, I was called in to work early. But by the time I got there the panic was over and I needn't have been early at all. Hmm.

Anyway I spent a bit of time shifting my stereo to a better spot, in the course of which I discovered that the radiator in the corner of the living room had been leaking quietly on the new floorboards. Yes, the boards that were only recently relaid after the Great Day-Before-Hogmanay Flood of 2000. They are slightly buckled in the corner, but you can only really notice it if you're crouched down with your head in the corner. And the beading is all soggy too. My solution -- based on a hazy notion garnered from something a gas fitter said once about the heating system in my old flat -- was to turn on the bathroom radiator. And I'll call in the gas people next week -- I've got a service contract.

How I noticed the leak was that I picked up the trailing end of the extension cord to unplug the stereo and it was all wet. No, there was no explosion. Phew.

After shifting the stereo I couldn't listen to it to see if it sounds better over there by the TV, because the shelves have a solid back and the stereo's cord isn't long enough to reach the extension cord's outlet from the front. The tidiest solution is to cut holes in the backboard of the set of shelves for all the equipment -- stereo & video power cords, speaker cords, aerial cable in and out. This will involve taking the whole kit and kaboodle down, marking the holes required carefully, drilling them, taking plugs off the power cords, poking the cords through the holes and rewiring. Unless of course I drill holes big enough for the plugs as well. How? Erm.... dunno. A trip to Homebase threatens. I should do it properly, because I know how satisfying that would be. No More Ugly Trailing Wires.

While I'm at it I could also tack the TV aerial cable up around the french doors rather than leave it trailing across the doorway.

Why do we have to have wires and cables anyway? Why isn't everything space-age?

All the modern age has brought us is a squillion more devices that need plugging in. Most of the rooms in my home have one of those four-gang extension cords, full. The computer and peripherals use a six-gang board. Even the phone has a power cord (as well as the phone jack), ditto the answering machine, and of course then there's the modem upstairs with its miles of cable to the jack point in the bedroom. And it's still not enough -- I've got an electric lawnmower that requires a great long extension reel, which I also use for the iron.

There is no plug at all in the bathroom, so electric-shaving visitors have to depilate elsewhere. (There are a couple of mystery switches in there, one near the ceiling and another outside the door. I have no idea what they're for.)

What I should do is bite the bullet and call in the experts, get an electrician to put in a couple more circuits, pepper the walls with outlets.

What I really want though is infra-red linking and cold fusion, a fuss-free power source that shrinks electrical equipment down and no messy wires. Then you could have a antique-looking house, lush and comfortable, with the hi-tech toys tucked discreetly away. I'd like a TV that was like a swivelling door panel, for example. Computer in my handbag.

All this stuff I expected to be here by now, we were promised it in the 60s. Mind you, a lot of it I don't want -- I don't even want a microwave, let alone one of those ghastly Star Trek replicators, burping out Telaxian dainties, and filthy as I am I don't want a robot cleaning my house. I certainly don't want a fridge that orders your food for you. Some of it I thought I didn't want but now I do -- a watchphone, yes please.

Went to the movies last night, saw Together, which I highly recommend. It's set in a hippie commune in the 70s, and is excruciatingly accurate -- I was amazed to see how like 70s NZ hippie communes the Swedish one was! Some of it was funny, sad and painful all at once. One of the things I liked about it was that it showed most children as being naturally "straight" -- they hate being embarrassed by "wacky" adults; they like routine and to fit in with their school friends. The communards seemed much more immature by contrast, sleeping around and bickering pointlessly.

A sample scene: the new boy in the commune has a box of Lego. Tet (named after the Tet Offensive) sees him playing with it. "Is that real Lego?" "Yes." "My father was going to carve me a Lego set, but he only made two blocks."

We also had a slap-up meal at Black Bo's, a wonderful vegetarian restaurant. Everything was delicious. I've never had a duff meal there, it's always superb, and last night was no exception. Yum.

The weather seems to be clearing up a bit ... there was quite a bit of blue sky this afternoon and it wasn't raining too hard this morning. I really need to get out into the garden this week so I hope I get some fine mornings.

Busy busy busy. The weather is so crap that even I'm bugged by it. I honestly don't mind the Scottish climate at all, I prefer a summer that's not too hot. But this morning as I was walking the dog, parka fully zipped, hood up, hands in pockets, I thought -- this is not good. This is bad. In May I was enjoying eating breakfast outdoors; now the sandal tan lines on my feet are fading. It's cold. It's wrong.

Bertie loves it though, he likes braking hard from a full sprint on wet grass -- wheeeee!

And the garden of course is doing well with the regular downpours. The alleged blackcurrant bushes have fruited -- and tada! they are raspberries. Big fat ones. I have to race the birds for them. I also found wild strawberries up under the bridge, they are delicious. Tiny, like fairy fruit, and intensely flavoured. My own strawberry plant has flowered, so have the tomatoes. The weeds are growing like weeds, and the lawn's becoming a lush meadow, too wet to mow.

Major, major achievement today: I got stuck in and tidied the study. It was a total mess, cluttered with stuff, a ghastly glory hole where important documents had crawled away into corners to die.

One of the important documents turned out to be my car's current MoT. Yes, current! I'd thought it had expired in August last year, but today I found the one that expires later this month. Phew.

Now the study is lovely and tidy, all the important documents stowed away, the CD-ROMs and floppies sorted and stacked, pictures and posters hung. I even cleaned the windows. Fab.

To celebrate (and also because the sun had finally come out) I drove Bertie to Blackness. It was hotching with people and their pets, all rushing out to soak up the sun after all that haar. Bertie disgraced himself thoroughly, barking wildly at little children, even chasing one poor boy. Luckily the boy wasn't freaked out, even when he fell over and Bertie was barking right in his face. I was mortified, because I couldn't catch him -- he was out of control. Something Must Be Done. If it was my kid and someone else's dog I would have been punching the owner, just as well Bertie only monsters children with laid-back parents.

Back to work tomorrow, for two long hard weeks. My boss is away so I've got a few days coming up working in his stead, the end of next week. The rest of the time he's away will be hard because the sub's away too, his mother's critically ill in the US.

Forgot about last night's drama. I let Bertie into the garden at about midnight -- he was whining at the door -- and he rushed up the back and started barking. Not his usual "monster alert" bark, which is a tenor, but a deeper, more urgent tone. It means "gotcha!" and what he'd got was of course a hedgehog. By the time I got there it was almost all over. He was shaking the poor critter ferociously, snarling and growling, and whining too, because of course shaking a hedgehog to death is a painful business.

I managed to get him back into the house and calmed down from his killing frenzy -- he's quite scary in this state, because he uses all his considerable strength, he's pure power. Afterwards he was trembling and gasping, it took him a while to settle. The contrast between this dog and the one that cringes back from an armchair left out in the street is staggering. Real Jeckyll and Hyde stuff.

Big adventure for Bertie today (oh, yesterday ... it's late at night). We walked across the road bridge and up around the top of North Queensferry, and caught the train back.

The fog is still around, getting a bit tiresome now. My tan is fading!

Website update: Bertie has his own page now, lots of pictures and his pedigree. Check it out!

The garage can take my car on Monday, so I just have to be super-careful over the weekend.

The haar is hanging on ... misty moisty and chilly today. Last night it lifted slightly, so that you could see the bottoms of the bridges but not the tops. Very, very strange effect. The road bridge pylons have red flashing lights on top, but you couldn't see them at all or the suspension cables, just the curve of the roadway. Floodlighting combined with the fog make the rail bridge look totally weird, a truncated red basketwork, reflected in the water. The visual effects were enhanced because otherwise it seemed a normal cloudy night -- you couldn't tell there was fog until you looked at the bridges.

As the weather's so dismal I'm going to work on my website today.

Yipes. I finally dredged my car's MoT (roadworthiness) certificate out of my "filing system" and found to my horror that it's 11 months out of date. In other words, if I'd had an accident -- or if I have one before I can get it renewed -- I'm not insured. Faaaaaaark. I'm almost too frightened to drive the car to the garage. I'll have to get on to them tomorrow. The car needs a new exhaust, lubrication, and I still think there's something wrong with the clutch. But apart from that it's ok. I think.

Nothing much to report. Work does take a big chunk out of the day, doesn't it? Bertie was a Bad Dog: dashed at two little girls, barking his head off. The worst part was that he was off the lead and I couldn't catch him -- he danced round in a big circle, yelling like a mad thing. Once I'd pounced on him I called the girls over and showed them that he was actually frightened of them (he cringed convincingly) and assured them he wasn't dangerous. But still. I'm going to try a water pistol, see if that helps. But if he's scared, maybe that would make him more scared ... I don't know.

Maybe I'll try food treats for not barking. He'll be huge but quiet.

Going home now. Housework on the agenda for tomorrow. My house is feeeeelthy.

Hurrah! I had a brainwave while in Callander and it's proved fruitful. I thought of seeing whether any of the great B&Bs I've stayed in before take dogs. And I've just checked on one I remembered the name of - the Blue Lobster at Glen Eynort on the Isle of Skye - and it does, "by arrangement". It's not a flash place but it's nice and relaxed.

Work has been ok tonight, though it's not wonderful to be back, I have to say.

I've decided to knuckle down and learn about CSS and XHTML. Rather than fiddle about on the computer -- which hasn't proved very productive so far; it's too easy to get distracted -- I've been sitting down with a stack of books and a notebook, just like school. And it's working! I'm getting a clearer idea of what I can achieve with style sheets and how to go about it. Another couple of sessions and I'll be ready to try it on the computer. One of the books has some CSS2 in it but I think a couple of the others might be a little out of date. I've also got a lot of scanning to do. Stand by for changes -- but don't hold your breath!

I'm back!

The weather was quite bad -- heavy rain, thunder etc -- and the B&B wasn't wonderful, but the sun shone enough in the right places to make it all enjoyable.

Bertie was baffled by all the new concepts. First of all the whole idea of going on holiday. Like, here we were sharing a tiny kennel -- tiny!! -- when we already have a huge many-roomed kennel. He seemed a little worried that this might be a permanent arrangement. There was barely room to swing a hedgehog, let along a large greyhound. At one point he'd finished eating at his bowls under the handbasin and found he couldn't turn round because I was standing next to the bed. So with a heavy sigh he hauled himself up on to the bed and took a shortcut.

Other problems with the B&B: it was cold and damp, the front door opened directly on to a busy main road, the room wasn't en suite. Moan, grizzle. I'm spoilt by having stayed in such top-notch B&Bs previously -- after you've been plied with tea and scones in front of a peat fire, nothing less will do.

Other concepts new to Bertie:

Cattle grids. The first one lulled him (and me) because it was covered by a disinfectant mat (for foot and mouth). The second one he found before I did, and ended up sprawled on the ground with badly bruised knuckles. Poor boy! He also had a scrape on one thigh and a cut, but it didn't faze him for long. And at the third cattle grid he waited for me to open the gate.

Steamboats: We took a cruise on the Sir Walter Scott, a little pleasure steamer on Loch Katrine. The sun shone, the hills were glorious. The boat was packed with sugared-up children who all fell in love with Bertie. He was trapped, so had to get over his fear of little people. As an experience it very nearly blew all his fuses, I think, and he nearly pulled me over getting down the gangplank when it was all over.


The Sir Walter Scott on Loch Katrine

Bats: What is that? A mouse? A bird? Just too weird.


More detail later. Right now I'm heading for a deep hot bath. Hard to believe it's July tomorrow...

Yesterday Anthea and I went to the Gullane Bents -- not a great walk for Bertie due to the extreme heat but nice for the rest of us. On the way home the brakes started playing up, making horrible graunching noises and not feeling entirely trustworthy, so this morning I phoned the garage and I'm taking the car in tomorrow for new pads. Again.

That meant I was without transport today, sigh, no big expeditions. It was boiling hot this morning, then it rained in the afternoon, which was very pleasant for those of us who were thinking "mmm, better water the garden today" and who could then feel non-guilty about lying on the sofa reading. (Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund, highly recommend it.)

After the rain stopped we went for another walk, again chummed round by Sandy & co. The rain had cooled things down & it was very still too. There were a lot of dinghies and yachts out, all gliding very, very slowly up and down the firth, especially those working against the tide.

For dinner I charred a couple of lamb chops on a disposable BBQ -- Bertie crunched up the bones.

It was nice sitting reading with the doors flung open, but unfortunately it upset Bertie. Every little noise from the neighbours (also enjoying the evening cool) had him springing up, barking and whining. I tried shutting him out of the living room, but of course that didn't work. In the end I had to shut the doors to calm him down. Grrr.

I phoned the B&B in Callender and they're getting back to me tomorrow. Wednesday and Thursday I thought. Maybe.