Parents

Spent two days with parents at the beach. Overall quite well, with only minimal amount of snipeage (none about the hair, oddly) and fairly pleasant conversation.

My father was reading a book by Mungo McCallum and asking my mother questions about it:

"So, he's related to the Wentworths?"
"Oh, honestly! He talks about that at great length in the first chapter! You really are hopeless!*"
"Well, I haven't got up to that bit yet."
"It's *very* early in the book."

And so on. This got much funnier, and made much more sense, when it turned out that they'd been given two different books by the same author, and were talking at cross purposes.

Dog-Or behaved admirably, with a perfect housetraining record throughout - better than some of the family members who'd recently visited. (Don't ask.) He travels very well in the car, apart from leaving drool and noseprints on the window, which is to be expected of a dog. He ran around on the rocks chasing birds and discovering that seaweed floating on the surface of a pond will not actually support a dog's weight.

Afterwards, we tried to get him to swim. He put on his brave face and started to walk out towards us, only to turn and run in terror every time a wave approached. He gradually got used to them, though, and he did briefly enter swimmable depths of his own accord, before another wave went briefly over his head. A bit more practice and I think we'll have him swimming happily enough. He is a water dog by breeding, after all.

Parents visiting New House tomorrow. As long as they can cope with boxes everywhere, should be OK...

And a happy new year to you all!

Edit: And this wasn't what I expected to see when I visited that site, but it's no less welcome for that...