Life under canvas

'oscopies and trains under the sea and 500 mile drives completed, when we arrive at our most favourite summer retreat we spend most of the first week falling asleep at any and every opportunity

But when we have slept enough, we unzip our front door and greet the day

and just a short walk from our canvas home we find this

Actually, when we live under canvas everything is a short walk: toilets, taps, showers, washing up, rinsing vegetables, new elephants for the coolbox...

But if that wasn't enough exercise, there is an awful lot of this to run about on and chase whippets

and a lot of this to paddle in

and play the role of "embarrassing Mother" by sketching seaweed whilst standing knee deep in icy salty water

and some of us also swim in it,

while others only go as deep as the ankles

some of us probably have more inbuilt layers of insulation than others...

When we've warmed up again after our paddlings and swimmings (note to self: take sheepskin boots and/or mohair socks for the cold toes) we potter about on bicycles and find little lanes that we'd like to live down

or buy icecreams from the nice people in the office

and maybe do a bit of paint flinging and paper sticking

or some of us may stay in our cage crate all day, depressed because we were bitten when having a lovely chasing game on the beach and it is sore and we're not allowed to lick it and we cost our owners quite a few euros in out-of-hours vet's bills...

but never mind, we've discovered a new doggy chew

and at the end of the day

we go back to bed in our canvas sanctuary and sleep for hours and hours, all over again

and only wake up to walk to the loo in the dark, stargaze, and count the flashes on the different lighthouses and buoys.

We miss it.