Lively Oh So

At Christmas I always feel overly generous, so I donate to Wateraid – a charity that puts all its proceeds in to building pumps that supply clean water to villages. If I had a million I’d donate it to them. But would a million pounds ever be enough? I have no gauge of what life is like out there – no clue. So maybe a million wouldn’t even be enough. But it’s a cheap price if it saves even one life. I think Wateraid are doing more to help than most.

I’ve been trying to get the right size collar for my dog Lady for two years. She weighs 9lbs., and apparently has an in between size neck. I’ve taken her with me to several pet stores. She patiently let’s me try dog collars on her. They never exactly fit. I always have to make a hole between the holes. This may not sound like much, but if the collar is leather the hole stretches, if it’s cloth or that fiber webbing it gets frayed. It’s become like the search for the perfect pair of jeans, or the perfect black purse. Looking for the perfect dog collars has become a new pastime for me. It may seem trivial but it is what it is. I want her to look cute, but mostly I want her to be safe. She’s slipped collars, or at times they’ve been too tight. She has really thick fur around her neck. Sometimes the collar is on top and at other times it slips underneath.

My car, affectionately named, ‘Stevie’ (the feminine equivalent of ‘Steve’) is my pride and joy. A burnt red VW golf that drives like a dream and looks like a movie star. Well maybe that’s taking things too far; she does have seagull droppings on her roof after all. Nevertheless she does all that I need her to, when I need her to. My only slight protest, is her fuel consumption. For a dainty vehicle, she drinks A LOT. But then I suppose it would be stupid of me to expect nothing less; after all, cars need fuel.

Perhaps I just have some kind of obsession with vehicles, but I think that trains are awesome. Not in the train spotting kind of way, but in the way that you can sleep as comfortably as you like in cabins with actual beds, whilst travelling hundreds of miles an hour, to some foreign destination with 7 syllables in its name. In fact, if I could live anyway, should money be no option I would like to live on the trans-siberian railway; assuming of course it was warm and there were beds. And good food.