Friday

Another lovely day, I'm sitting in my office, feigning work - whilst the sun shines, my neighbours cut the grass, and a pile of brown envelopes gently collect dust in the corner.

I went over to see the work in progress at the Ship in Winchelsea Beach last night - I've helped them out a bit with the branding, the building work is coming along really well - but the gardens are AMAZING - It's like someone decided to replace a pub garden with all the best bits from Kew. Huge terraces, lots of mature trees and paths - shrubbery, borders, a couple of old boats left lying about to fade into the new planting - really great. The picked up a lot of architectural salvage in a ship breakers in Dorset - includi9ng a large number of torpedoes ( obviously diffused WW2 numbers ). They will be open by the summer - can't wait.

I was walking home last night over the west hill and heard screaming. A small boy aged about 7 had been playing with two white staffie bitches, quite young dogs. he had obviously got them over excited and they were both jumping up and grabbing his shirt. The dogs themselves were not doing any actual harm - just playing - but the child did not see the joke and was screaming hysterically and obviously in real distress. The 'mother' was about 100 yards away talking to someone else. This scene did not bother her - in the end after about 4 mins of really quite terrible screaming - she slowly walked over, obviously annoyed with the boy.

I was about 200 yards away - if the dogs were in any way harming the boy or I thought their behaviour made me nervous - I would have intervened - the child was just spooked - the mother couldn't give a toss, but I was livid. I can tell you from experience that it's the kind of experience that stays with you. I was 'this close' to going over and punching the mother in the face - she looked like the kind who would, if I had gone over to calm the dogs down - would have called me a pedo and started giving me a hard time, even though it was her lack of parental skills and complete disregard for her child that was at question - in fact she was the type of scumbag who would have set the dogs on me - been there before.

Loads to do today - mostly I am checking my email every 5 mins to see if I have had the BACS payment that will save me from doom...