Is this spring? I dare hope.

As I walked home from work I saw this enormous bumble bee buzzing around, very nearly flying straight into a man coming towards me. For the first time in — FOREVER — which is a damned long time, I was not wearing my big, black parkas/fur-coat-in-reverse. The buds on the trees are so big they [...]

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My Baby is gone

Yesterday I returned Mischa to his home.
He knew something was going on from the morning. Though we had our usual walk — Schwarzenbergplatz — Karlsplatz — home, with meetings with other dogs and play wrestling thrown in, my heart wasn’t quite in it and Mischa noticed. I took a long lunch break to walk him [...]

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“Swan Lake provides by far the best role models for the traffic police”

I always suspected this: there is more to Swan Lake than meets the eye.

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Last few morning walks

On today’s morning walk Mischa was accosted by this enormous French Mastiff. Wrong. Mischa was run over by this enormous French Mastiff. Several times. As he was about to take a dump when the other dog arrived he was less than hearty, but stayed admirably calm. That is, until the over-enthusiastic giant had run him [...]

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It’s a dog’s life — about all the stuff Mischa is having to put up with while in our care

… or mainly in my care this weekend.

I loathe leaving Mischa on his own during the day while I’m working. Not because he’s not fine with it, he is. Totally fine. He sleeps. And never utters a word. I have yet to hear him bark as much as once. He doesn’t even bark when meeting [...]

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A favourite has no friend

When I studied English at the University of Oslo (UiO), the text I was given for my thesis was : ‘Compare Gray and Collins with Pope and Swift as writers of short poetry’. I had three weeks to complete the paper. I spent the first week crying. Then I blubbered to my supervisor ‘but Pope [...]

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Iraq

I normally stay as far away from commenting on what goes on in the world as I can. But sometimes the news gets to me. Last week I was shaken by the news that Terry Pratchett, my favourite author, has been diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer. Alzheimer runs in my family as well, [...]

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I’m a Hot Wife!

Last night Mischa and I met Kevin at Molly’s after the show. We now know why Alex (or any other guy with a cute dog) takes his dog to the pub… Within minutes Mischa was surrounded by very attractive young women gushing over him and his lovely, sad eyes — a look I am convinced [...]

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Because of all this extra time we suddenly have

I hope you got the ice-cold irony in that heading.
Kevin came back from London a while ago, all fired up about this great idea he had. On the phone he’d said, with suppressed pride and as if I should be almost wetting myself with the anticipation of it all, that he had a surprise for [...]

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Introducing Mischa

We’re dogsitting for two weeks. For Mischa. We have no idea what Mischa really is. Alsatian? Husky? Labrador? Wolf? All of the above? No idea. But he is what we refer to as a ’soft lump’; large and good-natured. So when we were asked to look after him for two weeks we jumped at the [...]

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