My Loyal Readers will no doubt have been on tenterhooks to know if there’s any news on the search for an Inky replacement. Well, you can rest easy because JR Whippet Rescue produced Molly four weeks ago. Not that she knows her name…completely clueless though to be fair she was only given it the day before we got her. She’s a saluki lurcher…very gentle but with a puppy’s boisterousness and a very strong will, demanding to be fed first and to occupy the most comfortable sofa. Poor Taz has yet to be totally convinced that she’s his ideal companion but, as they say, it’s early days. But with her looks, she’s difficult to resist.
All we know about Molly is that she was rescued from the streets of Nottingham along with three or four other strays. She’s obviously not feral because somewhere along the line has had some sort of domestic life. But not enough. She has yet to learn to come when she’s called and because she runs at the speed of light we dare not let her free-range so she walks at the end of a long lead, frustrating for her and dead boring for us.
Since we’ve had her the weather’s been all over the place: rain, mud, frost, ice, more rain, floods and latterly, just to encourage us, a touch of sun. And we could do with a bit of cheering up as Forest England have been churning up the forest with their heavy machines, felling the stricken Ash dieback trees and in the process obliterating the paths and tracks through the woods and quite dramatically altering the familiar landscape. No sign yet of them picking up the logs which are strewn everywhere, though when they do it will add even more to the look of desolation.
I’ll finish with a landscape of a more floriferous hue: this is the plateau of Omalos in Crete, taken in Spring 2018.
Sheep, goats and bees abound there as well and for reasons that escape me we have, over the years, picked up the skulls of several of them (not the bees of course, too small). We went there last again last September with son Sebastian and wife Gemma…the flowers were over but animal remains were visible here and there. Gem’s latest linocut creation may or may not owe something to dem dry bones.
