The weekend - Saturday

Leonora was pleased with her purchases. She surveyed all the goodies she had ordered from the supermarket with glee. They had arrived early Saturday morning, as she had been too late for same day delivery on Friday.

She had never done this before but considered the delivery charge was well worth it.

No fighting with people who couldn't drive their trollies properly or double-parked them in the middle of the aisle to stop for a chat with half a dozen kids all milling around as well, no staggering around with heavy bags, no driving/bussing there, and no time wasting. Yes. An experience to be repeated.

Of course, because it needed to be carefully planned, she felt very organised. Not that she was an impulse buyer, but she didn't usually take a list, remembering the essentials in her head, and then just buying a few organic veg if there was anything decent.

Leonora and the little crutches carefully put everything away tidily. She had another coffee, and then they all went into the sitting room for Leonora to lie on the sofa and read, and the little crutches to lie on the floor and chatter and snooze.

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Leonard, on the other hand, was not so easily pleased. He got up glumly on Saturday morning realising there would be no Leonora that weekend. Still, at least he had a full day's shooting to look forward to on Sunday without her cantankerous comments.

He decided that he and Tata would go geocaching as originally planned while Mrs Leonard cleaned the house and went shopping.

"Come on Tata, let's go bag a few caches, there is a fine one near a river, so you can go running through the water crazily," he said.

"Grrrr ruff ruff," barked Tata and bounded around happily.

"Ruff ruff?" she asked.

"No, Leonora is not coming. She's decided to stay home this weekend," he replied.

"Grrrrrrr," barked Tata accusingly.

"No, it is not my fault that she isn't coming back. I rang and asked her, and I told her that you missed her," he said.

"Ruff," she barked in disbelief. Of course Leonora would have come back if she knew that she, Tata, was missing her. "Ruff, ruff."

"Look, don't you start. You'll just have to run in the river on your own. Leonora wouldn't have been able to run in the river anyway, she's struggling to limp and hobble around as it is."

Tata shut up. It wasn't often that Leonard spoke sharply to her so she had clearly barked the wrong thing, although she wasn't sure what.

Leonard had printed off his instructions, and he took the fine new GPS unit that he had ordered when Leonora was still staying with them. He was sure that Leonora would have enjoyed learning how to use it. How could she not? It was a fine gadget with a rather good specification. He caressed it lovingly.

They climbed into Tata's Land Rover and off they went. It wasn't a bad day and Leonard's spirits lifted. He leaned towards the CD player waiting for Tata's stern gruff. Nothing. She had been so surprised at his sharp tone earlier that she was keeping uncharacteristically quiet. He decided to risk it and put in a CD, although not as loudly as usual.

Tata gave a very quiet sigh. Mostly she thought Leonard was OK, if slightly eccentric, but she really could not bear his taste in music. It was terrible.

First they went to the reservoir. Tata was not impressed. A reservoir was not a river and she could not run up and down in it. She refused to look at the camera.



"Please look at the camera Tata. I want to send some photos to Leonora, so she realises what she is missing and it will encourage her to come back," said Leonard.

Tata decided to co-operate and chose what she thought was a rather nice spot where she looked exceptionally gorgeous. Leonora could not possibly resist her winning expression. After all, she was the most beautiful dog in the world because everyone kept telling her so.



They did a few more caches and took lots more photographs. Tata got so carried away with her role as photographer's model that she forgot about running in rivers. They finished off with one where Tata put on her best pleading face.



When they got home, Leonard uploaded the photos to the geocaching site, and then composed his email to Leonora.

..........................

Leonora, of course, was lying on the sofa when the email came through. She hobbled over to read it and was perplexed. Why was Leonard sending some boring details of his geocaching trip to her? Did she care how wonderful the new GPS unit was? Or that it had been quite a nice day? Or whether he had first learned to windsurf some 20+ years ago at the reservoir?

Really. Leonard was losing it. She decided not to reply and hobbled back to her sofa and her book.