Disaster Strikes!

Froggymeade Stone Circle

Do you ever have times when you feel like there is a cloud of bad luck hanging over you? We seem to have lurched from disaster to disaster this half term. It began on Monday, when we woke up and realised we hadn't seen our little cat Beetle ( short for Beetlejuice) at all the day before. This is unusual, as he is usually such a little homebody. He has a trace of siamese in him, which I hold responsible for the fact that he is quite vocal, and has an insatiable curiosity. If you open a cupboard, Beetle hops in to have a look,if I leave the car door open, Beetle makes himself at home in the car, if he hears a paper bag rustle, he comes running to see what is going on. There are days when I can't take a step without falling over him and swearing at him. Beetle not being there, particularly when the heavens have been throwing icy rain at us for the last few days, is just unheard of.
While reassuring the kids that he was bound to be tucked up in front of somebody else's fire, I secretly feared the worst, and rang all the vets in the area to see if he had been brought in over the weekend, and did a slow drive around the block in case there was a small body on the road. But nothing.

The same morning we found my eldest daughters pony hopping lame in the field, which means a couple of weeks of rest and recuperation for him. We have had one pony after another lame this summer. I go years without having a vet to visit, and then seem to be having to call them on a monthly basis at the moment. Thank goodness they are tolerant about having their bill paid in small dribs and drabs. I never seem to be able to reduce the size of it.
A series of small domestic disasters culminated yesterday in 'The Big One'. Middle daughter had just completed getting ready for a Halloween party. She was dressed as a vampire, and I made up her face to look like one of the undead - pale face, dark hollow eyes, and a dribble of blood running down her chin. Quite effective though I say so myself. In the usual scrum to leave the house, she swung a the carrier bag containing birthday present round her head, and clouted small son on HIS head. This resulted in a nasty cut, and copious amounts of blood, and meant that instead of going to the Halloween party, we had to go off to the surgery and have it cleaned up and stuck together. What a sight we must have looked in the waiting room. Small boy sitting on my lap, blood over him and me, small woebegone creature from the crypt sitting next to me, and my eldest daughter ( my anxious worrier) wringing her hands and looking tearful as she looked at the blood.
Still, it all turned out OK in the end - son cleaned up quite nicely, and got a lollipop from the nurse, the vampire only missed half an hour of her party, and now knows why I spend my time telling her to stop swinging things round her head, and best of all, Beetle turned up! He too, seems none the worse for his time away - he doesn't look as if he has been starving for 4 days,so who knows what he was up to?
I'm hoping for a less eventful end to the week!

On a slightly brighter note, I did manage to take poor Magpie out for a decent walk - there was even a brief break in the rain. I was reminded why Dartmoor is such a magical place - here are a couple of reasons why!