One man and his dog

After watching Eve and her team mates play valiantly in a close defeat, all the time kicking a ball around with Joe too, I drove off to pick Ruby up from her sleepover.

When we got back in the car I was slightly alarmed to see the tank was empty and so crept gingerly off towards Fort Kinnaird hoping to come across a petrol station. In fact if I hadn't been going so slowly I don't know if I would have missed this statue of a shepherd and his dog which was on top of a plinth of old bricks in front of a half collapsed barn.

Limped along to the garage for petrol and then an hour in the sports shop debating the difference between a catwalk and a gym lesson. We managed to reach some sort of compromise on the new sports kit in the end and I managed to get home in time to see Liverpool get gubbed by the Arse.

Two new recipes then wrestled with and the Moroccan Lamb is simmering away in the oven while Joe helped me with Tiramisu. Looking forward to that in an hour or so.

Should anyone be interested in the statue then here is what I found when I got back home......

An old statue at the side of the road in a once important Barony. The statue is of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd and his dog. The work was created by one of Scotland's most celebrated 19th century sculptors, Sir John Steel who also created the Wellington Statue in front of Register House and Sir Walter Scott's statue at the Scott Monument, both in Edinburgh. The statue was bought at auction by the farmer Mr. Riddell at a farm sale near Corstorphine in the 1940s. More riddles at the farm are the cross on a barn and two gargoyles, they were all saved from the old West Barns Parish Church before it was demolished several years ago.