Bluefus' first venture outdoors

Bluefus enjoys his first al fresco breakfast in Cornwall. (SP Tiley photo)

For a while--a very long and unfortunate while--I was married to a man who had virtually no discernible sense of humor, little appreciation for the cultural aspects of life, and absolute disdain for those small ceremonies that seem to cement relationships, as large ones cement nations. Thank goodness, that's in the past.

Moving on...I am now married to a man who delights in all the little ceremonies we have, in the six short years to date of our marriage, invented. I thought it was his Britishness; my father once told me that the British are sentimental, and if I didn't want that, don't marry a Brit. (He also told me that the Irish were unreliable, despite the fact that he was half Irish and the most reliable person I've ever known...but then, he was of a generation that tended to generalize facets of a race into the entirety of that race. He can be excused for that. And he would have liked Simon.)

For his birthday, the first year we were married, I gave Simon a spitting fountain made of metal and in the shape of a dog. We named him Rufus, and put him in the gazebo, where he held sway until we moved to England. He was pretty bunged up by then, what with water splashing his little metal feet continuously for about seven hot Maryland months a year. So we buried him, up on the hill behind the house we've since sold, surrounded by the cats, one of whom--Tootsie--existed into my time and whom I loved dearly until he died of great old age.

When we bought this house in Cornwall--or not long after anyway--I saw an advert online for a metal dog sculpture, not a fountain this time, but a planter. Corny. Yes. Corny. But the animal face looked so much like Rufus, the name of our late gazebo fountain. So I ordered him, have filled his planter with lobelia, and given him a shady spot to guard beneath the hedgerow out back. Of course, his name is Rufus II.

Today, he had a visit from another non-canine dog in our house, Bluefus.

Bluefus is a coffee cozy. For a bit more than a year, since we found him in a store in Padstow, Bluefus has been keeping our morning pot of French press coffee warm. Today was the first day it was warm enough to have breakfast on the deck. We hadn't breakfasted outdoors since at least mid-September 2009, a couple of months before we moved to England. While there were days warm enough when we lived in the flat in Devon, and we had a small seating area behind our living room windows, the table was uncomfortably close to the windows of the Gorgon who lived next door, so we simply didn't do it. While I don't mind if people know about our relative nuttiness...or possibly British-style eccentricity--I didn't think she needed to hear our early morning secrets, or natterings as the case may be. So we didn't, simply didn't, use the table more than three or four times for afternoon coffee and a time or two for cocktails.

Bluefus quite liked his excursion. He is hoping for another one tomorrow, and the weather from the Met Office says he will probably get it. And possibly...just possibly...Sunday as well.

And then it appears that March will return. No matter. I'm sure Bluefus is better off for his serving of fresh air, bearing today the scent of new-mown hay from across the Tamar Valley. I suspect we all are.