Morning all, it’s Bertie here today.

Mummy said last night she’d worked out it’s forty days to the winter Solstice, when the day is shortest.  Then the days start getting longer again.  I”m beginning to get the hang of these long and short days.  Short days are winter, and we don’t go out in the garden because it’s cold.  Long days are in summer, and it’s usually warm enough to go out.

The days are certainly short at the moment.  Mummy has been going out for golf as usual, and not getting back until it’s nearly dark.  We have a light above us that she turns on when she comes in, and turns off just after cucumber time, which is a lot later.  Some mornings it’s still pretty dark when she comes down from her sleep.  She opens the curtains and tells us what the sunrise looks like.

sunrise outside our window

Neville and Bertie

Bertie and Neville

Apparently, it’s going to be like this, or even darker, until the end of January.  That’s when Mummy said the days will be back to the length they are now.  Well, I suppose that’s not too bad.  It’ll be another forty days after that before we can start to hope we might go out on the grass again, though.

I have trouble counting to forty.  I only have fourteen toes. I’ll just have to trust Mummy to tell me when things happen. Between us we can count to thirty-four because she has twenty toes. Or are they fingers?  Perhaps it’s a mixture.  Humans are funny like that.

This week we celebrate Percy’s Gotcha Day on  Thursday (because he didn’t have a birthday and that’s when he first came to live here, three years ago).  We also celebrate seven years since Fred’s Passing on Sunday.  I’ll have to have a look at his photographs to remember who he is. I never met him.

Have a nice week!