A little self-indulgence for a Friday night. Warning: dog-heavy ~ Murraymakes

There are some advantages to running late. I have been running late all day. I went on a journey I calculated would take half a day; it took until tea-time. I have not answered the emails that needed answering, nor responded to the vital calls on the telephonic device. I missed a deadline, which is not usual for me. And I have not sat down to write this blog until way past everyone’s bed-time.

The advantage is that, by this stage, you will all be out, doing Friday night things. You will be eating dinner and drinking cocktails and talking of the state of the nation and making bad jokes and thinking of almost anything else except for a tiny space on the internet. I attempt, in a paltry way, to avoid the excesses of self-indulgence that blogging is heir to, but tonight I cave in, hopelessly. My secret joy is that hardly anyone will see, not at this time on a Friday night.

Today was a day of vivid light and shade. I drove over roads which were like rivers, past sodden fields, where the water sat, still as a looking glass, after the wild weather that roared in from the west. At Beanacre, one of those tiny villages that only the English could have named, the meadows ran out from the road like lakes, not a blade of grass visible under the deluge. The sun glittered and joked over the mirrored surface; on the radio, the weather forecasters were stern about the possibility of more floods.

In all the light, there was sadness too; memories of my departed girls, and another departure too, sudden, and melancholy. But against that was the great kindness of strangers, which you know I put great store by, and the faint, yearning possibility of something new. I don’t want to talk about this yet, because forms must be filled, hoops must be leapt through, all possibilities must be explored; but the hopeful gentleman was met, and instantly loved, and oh, oh, if I am good and proper, may be kept. Emphasis on the may. No chickens are counted, not in this house.

But in the meantime, here is the self-indulgence, which I am sneaking in under the wire. Here are my glorious ladies, in all their pomp. Here is what I miss. As the wonderful Miss Nancy Mitford, the voice of my formative years, would have said: do admit.

And the stern voice in my own head, which does not care for whimsical indulgence says: if you have no interest in canines, really do look away NOW: