Teeming Tuesday

The weather changed just as predicted.  It is more like late October or early November.  Dark, cold, wet and extremely windy.  On Saturday I took a photo from our sunlounge window showing a lovely sunny garden with the parasol up and ready for me to sit under.  Here is the same view taken a little while ago.  The rain had eased but you can see it on the windows.

Jesse got jealous of all the attention that Jack was receiving at the "exhibition" so we have now had to make sure his picture is there as well!

I have a few more photos to share with you.  Taken on Sunday when the weather was good.  Him indoors does not often get a look in on my journal so here are two shots of him

Jesse and Jack go mad when you get the hosepipe out.  They just love "hose" games and leap around trying to catch the jets. In this first picture, Jack's tail is like a fluffy white cloud.

Finally one of Jesse on his own

They are all the latest photos that I have. On Sunday night we sat up late to watch the Perseid showers. Well, to us they were more of a slow drip than a shower but we did manage to spot at least ten of the meteors, two of them very bright -  one with a flaming green trail and one with red.  They are so fast that you dare not blink.  Anyway, they were nice to see.

I am getting so sickened by the ever increasing violence in this country.  Yet another man has died after being kicked in the head by a group of teenagers.  They were damaging his car and he went out to stop them.  Apparently the street where he lived has been the target of trouble for eighteen months. I have to ask why have the police done nothing before?  Why does it always take someone to die before things are taken in hand.  My heart goes out to his family.  The letter his 12 year old daughter wrote to him is absolutely heartbreaking.

The wind is now howling around the house and I do mean howling.  It is hard to believe that this is August.  It has brought most of my aches and pains back and even Mike is complaining of them.

I think I shall lie on the bed this afternoon and continue with my book.  Mike knows I like historical non-fiction so he chose it for me.  It is called "Love & Dirt."  It is the story of the marriage between Arthur Munby (no, I had not heard of him either) and Hannah Cullwick.  Munby was a friend of R.D. Blackmore and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  What a fascinating read. 

He was besotted with working girls, the dirtier the better (I mean dirt in the grimy way) and he liked them to look masculine with brawny arms and red coarse hands.  He liked Hannah  to "black up" for him by covering herself in chimney soot, she wore a slave collar to which only he had the key.  She addressed him as "Massa" (master) and he had several nicknames for her.  He had various pictures taken of her licking his feet, polishing his shoes, doing her housework (she was a domestic servant) even one dressed as a man. Hannah revelled in it all and adored being his "slave".  She had to write him daily letters detailing all the work she had done and how dirty she had got! 

He collected photographs of working girls in their working attire, women who toiled inside the coal mines, mudlarks, dustpickers and the girls all seemed happy to oblige with having their photos taken and the shilling he gave them for their trouble. But he had a genuine love for these women, he often helped them financially if they had fallen on hard times.  He arranged for one hideously disfigured girl to get treatment at a London hospital, paid for her lodgings and tried to find her employment.    He adored Hannah, literally adored her but their relationship had to be kept a strict secret because of the class distinctions.   I have not yet got to the part where they actually married (forbidden in those times to marry outside of your class). Their relationship lasted fifty years.  It is a very interesting book indeed.

Well, time for a cup of tea and I am going to put something warmer on.  I really do not want to turn the heating on this early in the year.

Have a good day dear friends and readers.