The Aeronauts

I don't know what triggered it but a dim memory of a TV series that enthralled me as a child surfaced. Couldn't trace it at all. It was in French, dubbed into English, so I thought it might be Canadian. It was about two air force pilots. The only thing I could only remember was the name of one of them: Tanguy. Well, the power of the internet came to the rescue of my dim memory. It turns out it was a French series called Les Chevaliers du Ciel, made in 1967, dubbed into English and broadcast by the BBC in the early 70s as the Aeronauts. It was remade in 1988 as a new French TV series and finally as a film in 2005.
I think the translators in both case had a tin ear for a title "Knights of the Sky" is a lot more poetic than the Aeronauts or Sky Fighters. The original TV series was based on a series of comics beginning in 1961 created by Uderzo, co-creator of Asterix.

Judi On Holiday

Here, as promised is my sister on holiday in 1989:

Springer Puppies

Here's Arrow again. He's opened his eyes and is trying to walk. Not very successfully, by all accounts.

Here he is with his brother and sisters.

Judi said to say that one of the girls and one of the boys are still for sale. Leave a comment if you are interested.

Arrow is a Week Older

Here he is again, a week older. He's a little bigger. In the last picture he's with his sister whose eyes are just beginning to open.

St Stephen Walbrook

London quite frequently reveals unique temporary views. This church is next to a large building site and the demolition of the old building has revealed a view that has been hidden for years and will be concealed again when the new building goes up. St Stephen,a Wren church is where the Samaritans were founded. The building that was demolished, the Walbrook, had a frieze of statues high on the facade. They represented Agriculture, Industry, Mining and Fisheries. Each was a slightly idealised art-deco style nude figure with an appropriate article to hide his embarassment. A lamb, a cog wheel, a pickaxe and a fish respectively. I felt sorry for the miner as the pick handle was not very large.

Google Maps and Memory Lane

School Close actually. This is where I lived between the ages of 1 and 7 years of age. I spent a few minutes looking at the map reading the names of the streets and lanes around one of my childhood homes. I followed the path I used to take to the infant school when I was old enough to walk to school by myself and dropped in on the junior school I spent a year at before we moved away. I can even pinpoint the house or rather the garden where I first kissed a girl.

Meet Arrow

Here's our dog Arrow. He's only twelve days old. We went to choose him at the weekend. He'll be coming home with us in a couple of months, when he's old enough to leave his mum.

Docked

All the puppies have had their tails docked.
Some people might not agree with this. I'm pretty ambivalent about it really. As they were bred to be working dogs (all except ours that is) they have had most of their tails cut off. This is to avoid having them injured in future when they are out in the field working their way through thickets and suchlike when flushing out game. I read somewhere that Springers have a thick weatherproof and thornproof coat (a bit like a barbour jacket, also designed for shooting). It would appear that their tails are not thornproof and the working Springers with tails spend time at the vet having injuries to their tails treated. You could argue that since our dog is going to be a family pet, it could have kept its tail. But since we haven't chosen our dog yet, all four in the litter have been docked and we'll choose ours when we visit this coming weekend.
There will be photographs after the weekend. Prepare for cute!

Puppies!

The puppies were born yesterday and all doing fine. We're going down to Devon next weekend to get to meet them and choose one.