Nelly The Elephant

....packed her trunk and said goodbye to the circus, off she went with a trumpety trump.....do you remember that tune? :) So I guess that's how I'm feeling, the circus has moved out of town.  And when I mean the circus, I mean the Open Golf Championship, last hosted by the Royal Lytham Golf Course in 2001.  This year, it's back. The organisers of the event (the Royal & Ancient) where do they think up these names? stipulated that if the Royal Lytham wanted to host the Championship again, they would need to make some modifications to the course, one of those modifications was to fell approx 90 mature Poplar Trees along the Western perimeter of the golf course, I know this, because my house overlooks the Western perimeter.  I remember coming home from work one day approx 5 years ago to see the first tree being felled.  I felt sick to the stomach as I watched it come down.  I thought this was a single exercise, but I was wrong.  The golf course had managed to get a felling licence from the Forestry Commission to take down all of the Poplars. For a tree hugger like me, this was not good news.  Were the residents informed of this?...no.  Why?...because the Golf Committee took a decision not to let residents know of this activity.  Anyway, it's a long story with a lot of history, but, as a result, the course was modified and as a result a new 2nd Tee was created in the place where the trees once stood. I overlook this Tee from my house. And so, since approx March this year, the Golf Course has been a hive of activity, erecting Grandstands, tents etc...everything that is needed to accommodate this Championship, which I was told by my neighbour is the Golfing World's equivalent of Wimbledon - OK, this put it into some kind of perspective being a tennis fan.

Our town has had a make-over to prepare for the thousands of visitors, roads and pavements re-surfaced, the town centre has had loads of improvements, anyone would think Royalty was coming to visit (well, Prince Andrew did turn up for a round of Golf during the week).

A selection of images taken from my house which overlooks the Golf Course

There is something un-nerving coming downstairs to your kitchen, looking out of the kitchen window to see a Grand-stand full of people seemingly being able to look straight back at you!

And, amidst all of this Golfing hysteria, we have been adopted by a stray cat, she turned up just over a week ago.  I spent nearly a full day last week contacting various cat rescue centres asking if anyone has reported a black and white cat missing, but no-one has. A trip to the local Vet confirmed she wasn't chipped so I have been feeding her and letting her sleep in the porch.  Now she has integrated herself into the home with our two dogs and our cat - not that we mind this as she is a lovely cat.  So, we are not sure if we we will be able to reunite her with her owners, but she is registered on mymoggy.com and various other cat rescue sites.  In the meantime we have become quite fond of her.

Introducing Bella, the latest addition to our family

I can't say that our Cat Dibble is impressed, this is a photo of him taken earlier today, he is at the top of the stairs:

Hmm.....when is that Cat going?

And this is Bella, sat a few feet away from Dibble on the stairs:

I'm not going anywhere!

So, I will round off this post as I started on an Elephant theme, if you haven't already been made aware of the free Mali campaign organised by Peta, then please click on this link. http://action.peta.org.uk/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=5&ea.campaign.id=15645