This is me holding Scrapper – the first and only dog I was ever given – like I suspect many of my age (what am I 10??) the idea of having a puppy (the playing and the loyal friend) was more interesting than the reality (the walking on cold mornings and the cleaning up poo) – eventually Scrapper was given a more cat-like life, wandering around the village at his leisure and terrorizing the local farm life.
After threats from a local farmer Scrapper was “given to the laundry man” which Helen and I assumed was a euphemism for being put down and it was only many years later that we discovered that he really had been given to a laundry man!
Yesterday we visited Ju and Mary to meet the kitten that would become our new family member in a few weeks time. Penny will have a cat-like existence by default and Hanwell doesn’t have too many farm animals to terrorize.

