I went out and there were Dory and her two kids slurping up juice from the two big bath tubs where Maryanne soaks the beet pulp. Figgy was looking so much better today – many of the abscesses have started to shrink, and there isn't as much of a blockage around his windpipe. His muscles also were much more relaxed. His condition is now listed as serious, not critical thank goodness – it was such a relief to Maryanne to see him looking so well that she decided it was time to go swimming. As we were about to leave, Figgy and Dory were grazing on the front lawn :)We hopped in Mohamed's Volkswagen Beetle, and headed to Babsi's for a swim in the pool. We took the VW because Mohamed was running around Cairo doing all these errands in the Jeep.
Now this is a special VW. I hopped in the car and Maryanne told me to turn on the airconditioning before we got started, which involved winding down the windows. As we were driving out, the glove box kept falling open also – it may be an oldie, but it is a goodie and it keeps running and running.
The last time I was visiting Maryanne's we had stopped briefly at Babsi's, but just at the stables. The last time I saw the house and pool area was about seven years ago, when the house was only a shell. I think they may have just started digging out the pool as well. The place is just beautiful – lovely landscaped lawns with amazing trees, and the pool is huge.
After getting changed, it was lovely to hop into the pool, it made the stinking hot day (though the temperature was lower than the last three days) very very bearable.
There were a lot of birds around too, sparrows, swallows and crows mainly. Any bird that flew low over the pool looked like they had blue breasts with the reflection of the bottom of the pool. It kept throwing me
We got out at one stage and talked to Babsi, and then I got a phonecall from Mona who had turned up at the farm and was wondering where we were, so she came out and joined us.
We spent a long time soaking, so much so that fingers resembled raisins more than anything else when we finally got out and headed back to Maryanne's for some food (conversation in the pool had kept going back to food, which made both Mona and I hungry). We had a lovely chicken salad for dinner, sitting outside in the shade, with a breeze blowing which made it quite pleasant (well relatively speaking for that heat). The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing, and then when Mona left, Disney, the dizzy dalmation jumped up from behind the bushes beside the gate and ran out the gate, followed closely by Bella – darn dogs! Eventually got Bella back, though I cheated and after she came up to me I carried her to the gate (she is fortunately a medium sized desert dog). Disney however was playing hard to get. Eventually Magda and I gave up on her and went back inside, and Maryanne went out to the garden to call her, to no effect. Maryanne then realised that with the new fence that had been put up across the field, there was no easy way for her to loop round and come back, without heading out to the main road, so I grabbed my keys and headed out to the back gate to see if she was there. As I was walking along the edge of the large paddock I could see her between the fence and the corn field, so I called her and unlocked the gate. There were baladi dogs out there that Finn, Bella and Buffy who had come with me were barking at, and I don't think Disney wanted to come out onto the road with them around. Instead she found a hole in the fence (or exploited a weakness, I'm not sure which) and made her own way back into the place. After closing and locking the gate, I headed back with the dogs to the house to let Maryanne know that Disney was home, and about the hole in the fence, and then it was over to the guest house to head off to bed!
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