Swings and roundabouts

Oh how life turns so quickly. Only last night I was commenting on the dogs, the garden and other stuff in general. This morning, I was playing with Connie in the garden when we went over to the fence (her favourite viewing point) which looks out over the river and the walking path, only to see nine, ten, eleven dogs sunning themselves on our river frontage and easily making their way in and out of the wretched tunnel that they like to call home. 

I called Husband's secretary to tell her that frankly the dog catchers had been rubbish and I was looking at 11 dogs once again enjoying our newly-cleared river side and sunshine and asked her to phone Grisha and give him some hassle in Russian. So I am now waiting for shifty old Grisha to re-appear with his wire noose thing and try and catch these stupid animals. 

Then the gardener ordered by our landlady appeared. He was very competent looking. In fact I recognised him from somewhere, but I am not sure where. He appeared with a guy in a suit, and a dark-haired looking labourer, a lawnmower and some tools. Fantastic, I thought, until I found out that the 15,000 tenge fee was a daily fee, and for the month it would cost 50000 ($350 US). 

This country is unbelievable for always costing more money. Everything we do, every way we seem to turn, there is always a fairly significant cost associated with everything.  So it looks like we will have to buy  lawnmower after all, and Baktiyar says he can probably find a friend who will do a lot of the gardening for much less than 15,000 a day. I hope so. So much for local rates.