Well, put some spot lights on the front and give James a large gun and we have become a piggin' family by god - even Woody looks the part (except if you look closely he has a little divot in his bum where a real pig dog showed him how it was really done). That's right, we are a 2 car family with enough 4 wheel drives to give a London greenie a stroke. In negotiations that rivalled anything that has ever contribued to world peace James held his cool (while I played 'good cop' and looked frustrated), until finally they caved in. Our choice of ute was based solely on a series of Top Gear where Jeremy and the team attempted to break a Toyota Hilux without success, even after dropping it off the top of a building. This we felt was good enough for us. Emily and I drove the 'truck' (her words) home and on the way stopped and bought a potting table (that's right...I'm getting serious - well okay, I'm trying hard and that involves looking the part surely) to practice throwing it in the back and driving off rattling and banging around like everyone else does.
Woody has taken to being in the back like a duck to water as you can see, Felix quite likes it too, however for obvious reasons we are not encouraging it. Coco, who is of a somewhat more sensitive disposition, managed within 2 minutes to completely entangle herself in her lead and was lying on the bottom of the tray looking very put out. We have decided that she can stay in the cabin for her own safety.
Day 3 of Dora watch continues to be painful - yesterday I tried tethering her out of sight of the kids, which kind of worked for them, but she pitifully called for the entire day and wouldn't eat. Today I have left her in with food and them on the other side of the fence. They have gone 3 days without a feed from her. My latest thinking is that if I can take all the milk off her in the morning they won't get anything from her once her evening milk dries off and we can run them together again.
In the lead up to the launch yesterday we invited a house full of volunteers to trial our sausage recipes. We have managed to stop giggling while making the sausages by now and can undertake the process with maturity and only a little bit of innuendo. All were eaten, as was my fig chutney, and the reactions seemed good. A little bit of over-enthusiasm with the pestle and mortar meant that the pepper spiced them up more than we would have chosen but nevertheless it seemed to be a success. I think the recipe is almost completed, but obviously it is back to the taste test again - I just hope I am not sick of sausages by the time we have finalised this recipe, as I guess after that it is on to the next one.