It’s been another hard day. We’ve come home from work dirty and tired and still had to cope with “life”, by which I mean ironing, exercising dogs, cooking, making the fire etc etc. Forgive me then for a grab shot of my poppet. The girl who puts a twinkle in my eye. Funnily enough, there is one in hers in this pic even though there is no starburst filter in sight.

Lola is such a sweetheart. She is tormented half to death by the rat-dog next door and yet she almost always turns the other cheek and takes herself away from the hostility. Every once in a blue moon though, she snaps and gets a fit of the red mist. On those occasions, she gives the rat-dog something to bark and snarl at then she skips off with a smile on her face. In a way, you could say the same about her Mum – she turns the other cheek over and over again until that red mist descends, covering her world with rage and she snaps. It’s never pretty and it’s never clever but sometimes, for the briefest of moments, it’s great to feel that for once the boot is on the other foot. Is that so very wrong? Of course it is simply an illusion but one instant when the balance shifts for a millisecond in our favour felt very good yesterday. Was it enough to put the twinkle back into my own eye? No, in fact when the dust settled, I just felt shabby.