Hello Mamma's readers, this is Holly Bobbins, yes it's me, I've had to let Mamma do the writing because my paws can't operate the Macbook too well and I very inconveniently haven't got any thumbs although Mamma says this is a good thing because otherwise, I would be dangerous, I'm not really sure what she means by that but I can just imagine the possibilities!

I should also say that Mamma is translating this post for me because I speak in Beaglease and Mamma says if I wrote in my native tongue that the Grammar Police would be crying in their tea-cups and I'd probably be arrested for crimes against English!

So, anyway, there I was just sniffing out some new "swucculent swocks" off the clothes horse and Mamma said "Holly, it's the second anniversary of your gotcha day today and I think you should tell the world your story" So I left the tasty freshly washed garments and I came upstairs to tell Mamma my story and of course you, Mammas readers, I do not really understand what Blogging is but my Mamma is pretty good at it apparently, at least that's what she says, my mamma says a lot of things...

So lets go back to 2 years ago and I can't remember much before I was taken from the sad home of the people who couldn't keep me to spend a night with the lovely people at Beagle Welfare, those people work so hard looking after all of the unloved and lonely beagles and they try to find them new homes filled with love.  I was very lucky because I was 5 months old and quite frankly I was adorable and completely irresistible.  

On the day I came to live with Mamma and my human brothers and sisters I had to travel in the back of a van for 6 hours, 6 hours, can you imagine that?  Now when I travel with Mamma I usually go in first class, it's well known that I am a V.I.B. that's Very Important Beagle just in case you were wondering.

Anyway, once I got to Mammas I walked into her kitchen and she looked at me and said "Hello Holly, I love you" Now I was called Popcorn until that point so I did wonder if there was another beagle hiding around the corner but no, she changed my name and I was on a path to becoming Holly Bobbins, the celebrity beagle.

Since I came to live with Mamma we have been on so many adventures, I have reviewed hotels and luxury accommodations befitting of the best beagles and I have been on buses, trains, and boats, I love going out in Auntie Hawwiets car because we always go on adventures and sometimes (well more often than Mamma would like to admit) we go to my favourite pub The Northumberland Hussar where I always seem to see Auntie Hawwiet and Auntie Kelly, they are my favourite aunties and I get very excited and wag my tail a lot every time I see them.

I can't imagine living with anyone else other than Mamma, I might have eaten through all of her floor tiles and most of her wooden furniture but she still loves me the most in the whole wide universe and of course she has to because I am the best beagle.  I do however have a couple of strange habits, those being eating pieces of wood, stealing "swocks" and sometimes I'll pinch anything I can get my paws on, I love an open handbag and I'm very good at putting my nose in to get out the treasure.

Every night I sleep on Mamma's bed and do you know that the last couple of nights I have had to share with some naughty cats, I don't like those cats, they're always stalking me and swiping at me and eating my dinner before me, Mamma always tells me "Cats are friends not food" I'm not sure they are friends, though, they're a sinister bunch.

At the moment I don't have a daddy but that's ok, Mamma says one day she's going to find someone who will love her and someone who will give me pats and strokes and then I can sit in the middle of them on the sofa while they give me extra tummy rubs, my mamma has the biggest heart in the world you know, I have offered to find the perfect daddy for me because I can sniff him out, I like hairy men best of all because the ones with shiny heads make me bark, people without any hair are scary, especially the big ones, my mamma says the same thing and she must be right because she's quite clever for a human.  Mamma, however, says she's taking care of the dating because it's rude to just go and sniff random hairy men, I've tried it in the past and Mamma did not approve!

I don't know what is going to happen in the future but Mamma is always telling me that it's very exciting and next year is going to be the most brilliant year but, to be honest, she says things like that a lot and I don't care, as long as there are pats and cuddles and "swossidges" and "swocks" I'll always be a happy beagle.

I think I might have a future in writing, maybe I could get a job at the "Wuffington Post"...

Moving onwards

The first thing I need to do is thank so many of you for getting in touch after yesterdays blog post, the sheer amount of support from people who've been through similar things and some who are still going through it, it seems to me that it's something that we're just not talking about, maybe we need to have more open conversations about control and passive aggressiveness so that people know how wrong it is and how much damage it can actually do to someone.  I was heartened to hear from so many who were much further on in this turbulent journey, people who have been able to find themselves again and move on, many in wonderful new relationships which actually came as a shock or surprise because they didn't contain the same behaviours.

Well for now for me I can see what lies ahead and that is time spent with my children, hopefully a new forever dog (Beagle Welfare home check on Saturday afternoon) and of course my beloved kitties.

One of the things I am building up slowly to do is going out more and not being so scared by that prospect, I definitely seem to have lost the ability to be socially confident, even in recent weeks with Slimming World I find myself going, getting weighed and then coming straight home again. but I do know there's a sparkle burning in there somewhere and once it's at it's brightest no one is ever going to take it away from me again.

Day off today and Tuesdays are my favourite day, my cleaner is coming, my groceries are arriving and later we're moving about 20 bags of junk downstairs for collection by a charity tomorrow, the council are coming to take lots of wood and more rubbish on Thursday and by the end of the week I'm hoping Abigails room will be finished, Iain's room is getting there, yesterday he got black curtains which are far superior to the pink spotted ones he was using, they're not really befitting of an 18 year old teenager you know.

I've been sneaking odd bits and bobs out of the Christmas collection so I hung up a fabric wreath on the inside of the front door and I got down a china ornament from the top of the cupboards in the kitchen, it's like if I do it slowly no one will notice and before you know it we'll be in Christmas land! It is of course only a month until Santa pops down the chimney now so the rest of my week is mainly taken up with photo shoots and the editing that goes with all of that, those 2 weeks off at Christmas though are firmly in sight and I can't wait!  I might just have actually finished my Christmas shopping by the end of the week, well I should have at least cleared the Amazon wish lists with any luck, oh and if you're an Amazon fan, remember that it's Black Friday deals week on Amazon and there are bargains amongst the various effluvia on offer but you have to be quick!

And so off into Tuesday I go and I hope it's terrific, not just for me but for you too dear reader, may it be the best day of your week so far!