As I sit here in my shack on the hill, gazing over the surrounding countryside ( even though it is brown ) and lazily fliking my finger to make contact with the forum, I realise when you get to my age many years seem to fly past quickly. As for the above comments if it helps Cleethorpes is a nice holiday location and I'm not sure what happens in Rome but when in Tortosa I do as the Tosa's do. I do try to fit in and understand the local culture but the following incident horrified her indoors and made me think that a wet weekend in Rhyl is not too bad and also left our Catalan neighbour totally confused. Our relaxed lifestyle started one morning with a relaxed stroll around my little empire and ended with me doing a mad dash back to the house with my neighbour's very large and very mean guard dog who had escaped from his pen and had decided to protect the entire mountain in hot pursuit after me. I rang my neighbour at his other house who came up at once and confind the escaped beast and the balance of life was again regained. Later that day my neighbour returned to my property looking like an underfed Rambo, wearing oversized combat gear, carrying a shotgun and two very suprised looking dead thrushes in his other hand. As we both only speak our own language, I thought he was telling me his dog had killed the birds, this my other half agreed with but she couldn't understand why he wanted us to bury them. As instructed by her indoors I dug a hole while the neighbour looked on somewhat mistified. I took the proffered birds trying not to look too miffed ( as I felt I had now added undertaker to my C.V ) and placed them in the hole and started to refill it. At this point he jumped towards the hole and my first thought was should we have said a prayer before filling the grave. It finally transpired after much arm waving and I thought a very good game of charades, that they were a gift to eat in return for phoning him about his dog but as the wife has strong views on hunting insisted the funeral continued he left looking somewhat dazed but as I said to the wife no harm done he thinks its an English custom. He has never returned with anymore dead creatures and we still communicate through charades. Arn't different cultures and customs wonderful, hence the number of wars in the world.
Yours an uncultured and none customed Bulldog.