One month!

That's the longest gap for a while ... but there'll be another one coming up soon so maybe I should try to bridge the gap a little.
By now, all the people who used to check in from time to time will have vanished and I'll need to attract a whole new audience ... or perhaps just write for my own enjoyment.  Taking photographs comes higher up the list ... there are hundreds that could be added ... so there's a need to be selective.
Eliot features in at least one picture every day ... sometimes it's a bit of a task to have him pose more or less where you want ... other times it just happens!

 If you place a sufficient quantity of treats around the subject matter it is possible to make it look as if Eliot is studying a map of Italy!  He might not be ... but I am!
Bologna to Bari from Belfast ...
But that's not just yet.
Meanwhile there are "things" to do and places to go and housework to accomplish!  Eliot looks on with a total lack of concern and manages to sit in very inconvenient places much of the time.

One of the jobs that had to be done immediately was the washing of some scallop shells.  These I use as a baptismal symbol for Christian pilgrimage (maybe I should take a couple to Bari?) and all the young people/children present at a baptism go home with a shell as a reminder.  I use a larger one to scoop up the water during the baptism.
This consignment seems to have come fresh from the ocean and had a kind of sea-smell ... something that, enclosed in a plastic bag, might just have developed!  Seven kilogrammes of scallop shells are sufficient to fill two quite large basins!

Now they smell of bleach!

Since it is now Summer you'd expect to see a bit of colour in the garden ... and here it is!  Just a selection from this year's display.

Of course the more normal summer picture in 2012 is of rain!

It makes for an interesting photograph!