Expenses and birds and performances

Another quiet day at work. I would much rather be walking dogs. Even though Roxie is a right pain to control when there are other dogs around. I hate it when I see other dogs that aren’t on leads because I know she’ll go for them if they come up to her; she sent a little one flying the other day when she lunged for it and it was so scared, it jumped backwards and rolled along the pavement several times. She won’t hurt it, she’s just far too excited, big and strong for her own good. In the last week I’ve got two blood blisters, a broken bracelet, scratches on my foot, a bruised arm and almost fell over several times just from her getting over excited.

Saying that, though, she’s a lot better than she was when I first started walking her; I’ve managed to teach her to stop at the side of the road about 80% of the time now, so that’s a huge improvement.

Urgh, my car insurance is up for renewal and I’m struggling to find anything under £850, it’s absolutely ridiculous. I think they know it’s the only type of insurace it’s illegal not to have so they can charge what they like as they know we have no choice in the matter. Our house insurance was only about £120 and we can claim up to £100,000 for that.

It’s gone up because they’ve started charging more for women to make it fair on men, my new car is worth more, we’ve moved into a new postcode and that bastard who drove into me and caved in my door because insurance companies also raise your premiums for not-at-fault accidents. I’m livid.

I finally accepted that my zebra finches weren’t going to come back, so I decided the best thing to do was to rescue some from the RSPCA. They had a pair in Coventry, which is a 50 mile round trip, but I felt guilty about letting mine out so I wanted to support a charity. So I went and paid the £30 adoption fee and brought them home. They’re called Jack and Jill but Jay wants to change their names. The male has the funniest little squeaky song ever, it was worth the trip and the fee just to hear that. Here they are in their new home.

And this is where I found them sleeping, squeezed in the gap between their nest and the cage bars. Doesn’t look very comfortable to me!

This weekend me and Jay are performing at a little festival, Chillifields, as we did last year. Only about 40-50 people there and most of them will be performing so it should be fun. We’re doing four songs that Jay wrote and four covers. Last year we got a snide comment about how we didn’t sing any of our own songs, so we made sure we’re doing some this year. (It was only a one off comment, everyone else was complimenting us!) I’m hoping to get some of it on video so I’ll share it next week :o)