Our Man in Tirana

So there I was taking Bella for a drag round the streets last night. On Rr. Deshmorit e 4 Shkurtit I passed a young couple, obviously not Albanian, but since I didn't know them I thought no more of it. A few yards further on, outside Serendipity, Bella stopped to sniff various things. As I was waiting for her the guy I had passed came back and approached me. "Are you *** ***?" he asked. "Yes," I replied tentatively. "I'm the Spanish guy who emailed you" he said. And it all fell into place. A few months ago this guy had emailed me before he got to Tirana. He had been reading this blog before coming out here. We had planned to meet up when he arrived but he was so busy at work that we never got round to it. "But how did you know it was me?" I asked, since there are no photographs of me on the blog. "Bella." he said, pointing to the most famous dog in Tirana who, oblivious of her celebrity, was still sniffing the ground. Perhaps it...

Dougal the dog was entertaining himself in the garden a couple of days ago. As I watched from the porch he stopped, picked up something grey, furry and dead and carried it around for a few seconds. Then he dropped it and went to sniff a bush. I had a look and as expected found the stiffening corpse of another rodent foolish enough to cross paths with Dougal, scourge of rats. I had always been under the impression that rats were intelligent creatures, but evidently this one hadn't been paying attention at rat school and was not simply passing through but had chosen to build its nest in the garden. I only discovered this the next day when Dougal, ably assisted by the lovely Bella, started collecting up the mini-rats and dropping them in the grass - five in total. After some tidying up work with the shovel and a plastic bag, it was biscuits and sausages all-round.