Living with a celebrity!

Rob's photo of Alfie in 'home' magazine

For those of you who are regular readers of my blog, the name 'Alfie' conjours up a picture of a small, almost white dog with scribbly hair and a long tail! Well, fame at last, as our 'pavement special' who is well known in our little village, became a celebrity almost overnight! We have a wonderful magazine in South Africa called 'home' that is produced monthly, and I buy it and read it from cover to cover each month. They have a 'Pets Page' that answers pet related questions and prints a selection of photographs that readers send to them. Rob must have over three hundred photographs of Alfie, (he is very photogenic!) and decided to send one to them a few months ago. They mailed back to say that they loved it, and so, this month, on page 80, our boy can be seen sitting on the garden wall, his ears delicately swept sideways by the prevailing wind!

Several people have seen him, I have had a few text messages and phone calls from friends and neighbours and we have even won a prize, (it hasn't arrived yet, but it hopefully will soon!). We did show Alfie, but he was more interested in chewing the paper than looking at his photograph, so hopefully all the extra attention won't go to his head!

Ready to meet his fans!

He is fussy enough when it comes to his food without him suddenly demanding smoked salmon and chicken and bottled water, all the trimmings that seem to come with a celebrity status! He already has a personal chauffeur!

Alfie plus his chauffeur! Aka Rob!

Hopefully he will be even more of a celebrity soon. A while ago I wrote a children's story about him, (loosely) based on truth, simply called 'Alfie'. Although I sent it off to several publishers, I have had only rejection letters, (nicely worded, positive, but rejection nonetheless!) so, my daughter Catherine is nudging me to self-publish. I have sent it to a few friends, one as far afield as Australia, and I have had very positive feed back from her children! (Thanks Taryn!) Now I am busy doing the illustrations, and Catherine will superimpose the real Alfie onto them. I was going to paint the pictures too, but then I had an idea. I shall leave them uncoloured, so each child who buys the book can stamp their own personality on it by colouring the pictures to suit themselves.

Bedtime story for Alfie!

So, watch this space!