Eventually managing some Dog Training with Jim and Martin around St Bennet’s Abbey on a rainy day after meeting up with and entertaining my guests.
Then serving tea for the Sullivan's who had enjoyed their day and then off quickly to see "The Flintstones" at the Cromer Regal where we had booked for the 8.30pm performance
This was the day allocated long ago for a joint dog training day with Jimmy Bird and Martin Sullivan. Martin and family were travelling up to Brancaster (where they have a caravan) to stay for the week and planned on dropping his wife and two girls off to Coltishall at a Brownie camp for the day.
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In fact, his wife had got the week wrong, and the camp was not on this week at all but they still telephoned me to make final arrangements and came up anyway! Jim had his job interview in the morning and so the idea was to all meet up at my place in Horning as soon as they arrived.
After walking Sam and doing a little training as refresher work, I settled down to service the boat mechanics as Diana took the girls shopping to Wroxham. It was quite late by the time Jimmy arrived and I had successfully changed both engine oil filters and the oil as well. This is such a messy and difficult job because of the poor access that it is always a relief to get it done.
I was just putting back the floorboards as he arrived so that the girls could re-occupy it and also so that I could let my guests aboard. Jim had done quite well at his interview but was up against stiff opposition and was not too optimistic of getting the job estimating for customer changes and installations.
After all the hot and dry weather, it absolutely poured down with rain this morning and this did not clear up until mid-afternoon and was spitting even then. Martin was very late with his family and, with Jimmy having planned to be back for a tea with friends, this meant that we were quite short of time.
There was also the need to organise some entertainment and activity for Martin's family and Diana ended up by taking them to the roller-skating rink in Norwich with our girls between her housework and weekly shop at Tesco. I took my friends off to the St Bennet's Abbey and we ran our dogs in the surrounding fields.
There were plenty of geese and hares to interest the dogs and we did some retrieves, hunting and water work. Sam was all too familiar with the geese to bother pointing them but did his retrieves well. The problem was the usual one of bad behaviour with the other dogs; grumbling in particular at the wire-haired dog which was a pity.
Back for a cup of tea and chat in time for the girls to arrive and then tea with the Sullivan's who had enjoyed their day. Off quickly to see "The Flintstones" at the Cromer Regal where we had booked for the 8.30pm performance. We did not like it as much as some others we had seen recently; the late performance not being to our taste and the seats in the larger auditorium being quite cramped but even so we enjoyed the evening out. Home late and then the girls back to the boat where they enjoy the novelty of sleeping in their usual cabin.