The balletic trajectory.

The weather heating up again. At seven the mayor is at the front door to borrow the step ladders. Three days of national mourning have been declared and now, for the third time in eighteen months, he's furling the tricolors on the war memorial and wrapping them in black crepe ribbon. To an Anglo-Saxon this seems a very Victorian touch. Rather like wearing black arm bands at a funeral.

In the afternoon we sit under the umbrellas by the side of the pool. 'The Font' has received the new course material for the semester that starts in September. Angus tries to show interest but gets lost at 'gravitational fluxes'. 

Sophie patrols the garden. She chases lizards. One lizard scurries across the white stone surround of the pool. Sophie leaps, in a most amazingly balletic way, on top of it. Except she doesn't. Sophie's sense of distance is found wanting. She misses the lizard . Her trajectory does however take her into the pool. Angus drops his book and leaps in. She's chosen the deep end to fall into. PONs always choose to leap into the deep end of pools, never the shallow end.

We thought there might be a 'diva' moment. Instead we get the cold shoulder. That unmistakable PON '' Call yourself dog lovers ? How could you have let that happen to me ? " treatment.

She is dried out and has almost recovered within twenty minutes. A slice of cold carrot helps. I could swear she glares at me.