It’s Been Fur Too Hot for Oli

A bit of early bloggage this week, as I don’t want to be writing this thing at the normal time today as I will be watching the golf.

In the on-going soap opera that is the Williams way, it has been a fairly uneventful week to be honest, with the major events being as exciting as me being away with work for a couple of days, and Oli having a haircut.

With the weather as it has been for while now, what you don’t want to be is an Old English Sheepdog. As cute as he looks with a fuller plume, by the time he had kept Louise awake for three nights panting the hair had to go. I suffered a similar fate back in the late nineties and have never been the same since.

A few months ago, we invested in some decent clippers for Oli, as we were fed up of paying enormous fees to dog groomers. Having now shaved him twice, we understand that they are probably underpaid!

The right kit probably helps, as he is a wriggly bugger, and has some real issues with you shaving his legs. So after doing the easy bits on his body he then spends a couple of hours looking like he’s wearing wooly chaps. I can say there end the similarities between Oli and myself. My chaps are leather.

So it took both Louise and I all of Saturday morning to get him to an acceptable state.  We then had more hair on us than Oli ever did.

Of course now he’s all ready for the heatwave, today it has been overcast and cool and he’s been snuggling up to anything with a temperature to keep warm.  I suspect we are not in his good books.

I’d like to do the same to both cats.  Not because they are hot, I’d just like to.

I timed my night away from home well.  It was officially the hottest day of the year, and to compound matters I was down south in Marlow, where everyone knows it is always at least five degrees hotter then the frozen north.

As I arrived at my hotel on Wednesday evening, it was very hot outside.  However as I opened my door it took me back to that first blast of Florida heat as you first leave the airport.  It appears that the central heating was on, and had been for some time.  With the outside temperature being over thirty degrees, inside it must have been knocking forty.

I wrestled with the radiators for a while to get them off, opened the windows, and stripped down to my undies.  Imagine a sumo wrestler on a single bed watching the telly.

With no breeze coming through the window I had to eventually leave the room and go for a walk as the outside temperature was refreshing compared to my room.  I did a good hours walk, worked up a nice sweat and went back to my room to find the place no better.  I stood in a cold shower for twenty minutes before going to bed where I enjoyed a good half hour or so of uninterrupted sleep.

My walk did allow me to discover a lot more of Marlow than I ever have before, which has pretty much been the office, my hotel room and Pizza Express, and it really is a beautiful place.  I couldn’t however even afford to look in the estate agent’s window.

I was back home Thursday evening, and we’ve been planning Emily’s birthday celebrations since.  We’re all out for a meal on Friday evening (about fifteen of us) once everyone has finished work, and then it will be a “gathering” back at our house for her to open her presents.

No doubt next week’s blog shall share the details with you, plus a few photos.

Right, time for golf.

Till the next time…..