I noticed the other night that we now have silent nights (except for an extremely loud and annoying insect in the street, whose chirrup reverberated around the house). I was drawn to this fact by noticing that I was aware that Queenie was barking and grumbling during the night and I realised this was something she hadn’t done for a while. We’d actually turned the light in the hall off that we leave on for her and it seems that she still needs the light on for her to find her way round at night. I also noticed that Bobbins no longer gets ‘stuck’ outside. I am sure that it was only a couple of weeks ago that she barked during the night to be rescued from the top of a step, however she has got the hang of jumping (as much as a dog of her physique) up and down steps with aplomb. She has even managed to climb onto the sofa which was quite a surprise.
Classes have started again. I have three new little girls, one new adult and the two new students who joined during the summer are continuing – one adult, one teenager (cousins). I think that I’m currently at 21 hours of classes, and I hope not to take on any more. The new adult is a lady from Usagre, and she is a lady shepherd! She took over the sheep/olive farm from her father. She works for the cooperative in Usagre which is responsible for processing and selling their products. She learned Italian a few years ago and was responsible for selling the sheep wool to another cooperative in Italy, and she’s learning English because she wants to try selling the olive oil to England – obviously she couldn’t sell the olive oil to Italy as this would be like coals to Newcastle.
Plans are still progressing, albeit slowly, on the Modme front. I am waiting for an European VAT number which means we can buy things from other European countries net of VAT which will obviously be tremendously helpful. It’s taking a long time, and we’re sort of at am empass, as I don’t want to progress with buying things like boxes or actual Modmes until we have this number.
Annoyingly, the 3d print company I was going to use adjusted their prices. They said they went down by 75% for over half of their clients. Needless to say I was in the other half and found the prices went up by 300%! They have changed their charging method to the amount of machine space you use, so by better preparing the files I could reduce the cost. However, I also found another company in Belgium whose prices were significantly lower. So what started off as a mini disaster, ended with an upside. Which is both nice and unusual for us.
We are both continuing to miss Petal – and so is Tinkerbelle. Poor Tinks can’t decide who is going to be her buddy now. She has tried snuggling up to most of the others, but doesn’t seem to have found a favourite yet.