Last weekend, Matthew and I took a major risk. Matthew had the very rare Sunday off and we had been wanting to get away for the weekend (especially as we wanted to celebrate, like the lame romantics we are, the closing of our first year together). But of course, we have a sweet little puppy (read: destructive monster) who wanted to accompany us. My mom thought it was a great idea. My chiropractor told me she wouldn't dream of taking a puppy on a trip. We decided to take the chance.
We had a lot of places in mind. I wanted to go to the Isle of Wight until I heard someone describe it as the Pile of Shite. We tossed around ideas of Cornwall, Devon, and even Somerset. Ideally, we wanted a beach so we could introduce our Portuguese Water Dog to a proper body of water (instead of the glorified mud puddles in Richmond park). Ultimately, we landed on the beautiful medieval city of Rye, the land of my ancestors.
Yes, the Nichols family, in all its glory, is (allegedly) descended from Rye "pirates." I have told this to many people and am learning that, should this story be true, my ancestors were very unlikely to have been pirates but were probably smugglers instead. Rye was known for its smugglers, and I have been told that many of the houses in Rye actually have connected attics, which would make escape easier for smugglers, should they be found out by the authorities. It is for this reason that for the whole of our time in Rye, I was imagining my ancestors...er, heroically crawling through tiny attic spaces in a panicked attempt to flee the police. Perhaps more than one of those righteous men from whom I descended met their end at the gallows...which is why I didn't bother looking for Nichols headstones in the cemetery. My ancestors were probably not allowed churchyard burial.
Awesome.
Our time in Rye was wet but fantastic. We stayed at a dog-friendly hotel called the Flackley-Ash (incidentally not in Rye but the neighboring village of Peasmarsh). The staff seemed to like our Moose, and didn't seem to mind when we left him in the room (in his travel kennel, of course) while we went to breakfast (a heart-friendly affair consisting of butter-soaked fried mushrooms, fried tomatoes, fried potatoes, fried eggs, beans, and various fried meats and sausages), to float around in the pool, or to sweat out our vices in the steam room.
You might be surprised to find out that Moose was an absolute star on our trip. That's right. He didn't pee in the room, bark at the other guests, or destroy the furniture. His tendency toward carsickness may not have made any move toward improvement, but otherwise he was on his best behavior. I suspect this may have had something to do with the fact that we took him on very long walks every day. We dragged him through Rye, let him run free on Camber Sands (where he became thoroughly wet and sandy), and gave him the historical tour of the battlefield of the Battle of Hastings. We even took him to the museum.
Matthew and I had a nice time as well. For us, life in London can get a little monotonous. Sure, I get to wander off into Richmond Park for an hour every day and Matthew surely has a blast commuting into the city to research stuff. But it was such a nice change of pace for us to escape to the seaside for a weekend. In fact, I have basically decided that we are going to move to Rye. As soon as we have a million pounds or so with which to purchase a house. So any day now, really.
Unfortunately, all good weekends have to come to an end, and ours ended promptly as we walked through our front door and watched as our little weekend angel ran straight for his special corner and peed on Matthew's piano. Three times. Yeah, we are still working on the house training thing but I swear we are making progress. We're hoping for full potty training by the time he is six...years old. I mean six months.
Heh, I'll bet Matthew's family is soooo excited to be hosting little Moose for Christmas, right? And I? Well, I don't feel even a little bit guilty for ditching my two loves to go home for the holidays. Good luck, suckers!
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