To make up for the fact that today has been rather grey and dull, other than tasty last-minute dinner in a nice local pub, here is an interesting pair of facts, from a Speccie review of two books about WWI.

Firstly, that a Lord objected to the introduction of Daylight Savings on the grounds that a woman giving birth to twins might generate a confusion in the succession if the second-born was older than the first.

Second, that there was a town (Bridport) whose rope-making tradition was so important, particularly for making horse-related stuff, that the women were exempted from the land army. Unfortunately, German submarines disrupted hemp supplies, so the had to switch to manila. Which the horses found delicious....

Oh, right, yes, photo:

That's our house, that is. In the drizzle.

(Actually, I took this on the way back from a lovely hack. Mike had gone all "oh, your horse is so slow and old, please let me go out on my own to experience the thundering power and vast speeds of my horse," so I did. And had a much longer ride on account of how my horse doesn't have a hissy fit and turn back after five minutes.

But then, if Mike had come with me he would also have had trouble: there was a small tree mostly down over the path I took, and I felt it scrape over my back as GB went under it. And the Baby's taller....)

This afternoon, having foolishly believed the weather forecasts, we took the pooch to the beach. It was mostly dry, other than when we were within a few hundred meters of the car.

(On the way back, we should have realised--and started walking faster--when Dungeness vanished into the haze....)

It was a new-to-us beach, at Dymchurch. It's an enormous big flat expanse of sand, and Jodie thought it was tremendously fun, much better than the stony beach at The Warren where we've taken her before.

It even had seagulls to chase!

I suspect it's a bit of a nightmare in summer, as the town's very small with narrow streets. I also suspect it's unpleasant in a storm, as there's an enormous sea wall .

Today has mostly been soggy. Every time Jodie was on the verge of being dry, we took her back outside again.... She seems much perkier today, though, and was full of beans on her walk, so I suspect she'd just scoffed something the disagreed with her, or got a bit of a bug from one of the other dogs. Fingers remain slightly crossed.

Our veg box today included fractal cauliflower:

It's very pretty, so it's just a shame that neither of us is that keen on cauli....

Not that I can post this just now: our internet connection's gone down again. Ho hum.

Oh, and Is It Just Me or is the new version of the iPhone Reminder app (since iOS7) really horribly crap? Or is it just that no one else uses it, or does so with intermittent data? You can't go through the list and tick off more than one thing, because when you tick the first one it slowly and non-obviously syncs with The Cloud, then moves the ticked item to the top of the list, *then* registers the fraction-of-a-second-later second finger tap. So by the time it registers the second ticking off, the list has re-ordered and you've just marked something completely random as done. Magic. This is my current default excuse for not doing things. Which would be a funny if not for the fact that I'm fairly sure I have in fact not done things because of it.

This morning, I set myself a reminder to do thingie, with the default setting if 9am that day. When I went to tick it off, the 9am one was there but also a 6pm one, repeating fortnightly. My fortnightly reminder to put the bins out, on the other hand, had vanished. I may have to go back to the app I used before Reminders was put in.

And you (well, I) can't unlock the phone one handed with the new unlock screen. My thumb doesn't seem able to swipe far enough. Bah. Humbug.

Still, at least Mike fixed my phone, so it's no longer alarmingly covered in broken glass.

First proper frost of the year, but it burnt off very quickly in the sun.

Neck/back better than it was but still sore.

Bit worried about the pooch: she's been very subdued for a couple of days, and she was sick this morning. Am not yet at the point of a vet trip, quite. (And, of course, it's tricky to keep track of how often your dog is sick if she spends large chunks of the day pootling around in fields....)

I got a nasty shock this morning when I went to groom GB:

But then I realised that he'd just been rubbing his bum on his salt lick!

Today, I have mostly been in pain. I think I must have Done Something to my back yesterday, moving fallen tree bits, because my upper back / neck is horribly painful whenever I move my head. Luckily for Mike, I did manage, rather slowly, to muck out....

Well, after much frantic putting away of things yesterday afternoon we actually seemed to get away better than I feared with the weather last night and this morning. We had hoped for dramatic photos of downed trees from our walk in the woods, but there was nothing worse than a few branches on one of the paths.

The boys are delighted, as we took the electric fence down and haven't yet put it back up, so they're resolutely in the other part of the field where the grass is tastier.

This morning, I gave GB a hair cut. Doesn't he look smart?

Well, ok, maybe 'silly' is a better word.... I'll give him a few day like that and see how he gets on but, given how sweaty he's been getting, I think he might need more off his neck.

We also had a little go with Jonny. He was much better than he has been, and I even managed to do a little patch on his belly before he started flailing around with his legs. I wouldn't have minded, but one of the flails connected with my thigh. Fortunately for the bank balance, my iPhone screen was against my leg, so it's only the back glass that needs replacing.... At this rate, he'll be clipped by spring.

A few minutes ago, our power and phones died. They came back after ten minutes, though, so hopefully we'll be ok!