WHOEVER gets in, I hope they give me broadband!

LAST WEEK, hawthorn bushes covered in white flowers lined the bye-roads of West Cork, and the woods were bathed in deep purple with very few shafts of sunlight penetrating the thick canopy of the trees. Those beams that broke through spotlighted thick carpets of bluebells and mats of white ramsons on the forest floor.

Magpies, evidently, are given to feeding on the thick coat of a horse, along with their jackdaw flying companions.

FOLLOWING the publication of my column about the mystery of our missing dog, 14 readers were good enough to phone the Irish Examiner or to email me to offer advice or help.

OUR BELOVED old dog disappeared the other day: I believe she was dog-napped.

THE joys of spring 2007 go on and on.

I WAS obliged to leave our perch in the Sierra Nevada in south-east Spain and return to Ireland again for the pleasure of family celebration and the onus of family business.

THIS MORNING I woke to find light filtering into the bedroom and when I opened the shutters, I did so cautiously. Outside, the sunlight was almost blinding.

RAIN in the mountains of Andalucia while it was glorious weather in Ireland.

THE DARK figure trudging along the river bed straight into the dust storm turned out to be a woman, bent almost double against the wind, barely staying on her feet.