Inexplicable

The weather is getting warmer and the snow is now ice and slush.  Late in the day, ghostly clouds of frozen fog can be seen rising from the sports fields at the top of the park.  Eerie.

Hopefully I’ve managed to finish the Christmas shopping today as it’s now 5pm on Christmas eve.  Not much hope of getting anything beyond maybe some forecourt flowers at the BP garage on the bypass.

Spent most of the day cooking and cleaning and getting prepared for tomorrow; the usual Christmas palaver that I love.  Oddly, there are no presents for Karen & Nigel but given they are flying back to Australia tomorrow night and they’ve managed to rid themselves of virtually all their belongings in one way or another, it seemed a bit pointless.  Karen said Christmas dinner would be present enough.  And the turkey and cranberry sauce roll she’s ordered for eating on the plane.

Anyway, that’s tomorrow.  This afternoon, something very odd happened.  I took the puppies for a walk in the park.  No, that’s not the odd thing!  We walked along the playing fields then turned to walk along the Queen’s Bottom.  This is the very bottom of a big field which is actually called White’s Bottom.  It is bordered at the top by the Queen’s Hedge.  So, naturally, I call it the Queen’s Bottom.

The very bottom is the result of glacial melt following an ice age.  It’s part of the terracing that is evident all around Farnham.  Each level from different epochs.  Mostly the terracing ends in the River Wey but in the park, it is generally dry and full of alluvial deposits (that’s mixed gravel, basically).  During the Mesolithic, it would have been a wide river where our ancestors fished and swam and generally had fun in the summer months.  I know this because there’s quite a few Mesolithic camps dotted around the area.

The only reason I’ve bothered explaining all that (and I apologise if you’ve nodded off or wandered over to a more interesting blog about The Used Stamps of Sweden) is because it is now flowing again with the meltwater from the recent heavy snowfall.  It’s almost a glimpse into the far distant past, and quite exciting.  However, that’s not really why I’m telling you but it did get me quite excited.

As we wandered down towards the Queen’s Bottom, Carmen suddenly went mad.  She sometimes gets very excited and runs around like a lunatic and I figured this is what she was doing.  She started running in circles and rolling in the remains of the snow (more odd behaviour she’s suddenly developed) then took off at full pelt towards the quick flowing stream at the bottom.  Without slowing she ran into then along it for quite a distance before turning back towards Day-z and me, where she threw herself down into the snow and started rubbing herself in it.  She then repeated this over and over and over again.

Generally when one of the puppies goes for a run, the other isn’t far behind (they hate being left out) but this time, Day-z didn’t move away from me at all.  She was watching Carmen with that wary suspicion she excels at.   It was truly bizarre.  Once we reached the Avenue of Trees which is at the top of the Queen’s Bottom field, Carmen had stopped her lunatic running and rolling and was back to normal.

Something else I should mention.  A bit earlier, Mirinda had told me Carmen had vomited upstairs.  It was bright yellow and didn’t look right.  It seems to me that Carmen had eaten something yellow and it had disagreed with her.  Judging by the fluorescent colour, I understand completely.

Now, what I’m wondering is, are the two things related at all?  Did she find something that sent her on some sort of drug-induced trip?  Was she hallucinating that the stream made her hot so she had to cool off in the snow which made her cold so she had to warm up in the stream and around and around?

She seems to be fine now, lying on her armchair, pretending to be asleep.  It will probably remain a mystery.