"er indoors TM" woke me in the small hours when she and Treacle had something of a contretemps. I'm not sure what it was about, but I wish they wouldn't fall out in the middle of the night quite so often.
I nodded off, and slept through until the alarm went off. That rarely happens.
I came downstairs. When I come downstairs I do so in the dark and turn the light on when I get to the living room. Some people might say it was a sixth sense that prompted me to turn the light on before I got to the bottom of the stairs; I would say it was my sense of smell. I came downstairs to find a turd bonanza. Having been out in the small hours, EI thought Sid could be trusted out of the non-carpeted areas of the house. That was a mistake. There was a trail of twelve turds scattered from the front door, through the hallway, through the living room and the kitchen, culminating in a rather spectacular dump by the back door. Ranging in size from pea to (splattered) cricket ball, it all took some clearing up. And it was rather disconcerting to end up hoping that I'd got it all rather than being certain.
Over a bowl of disappointing muesli I watched another episode of "The Duchess" in which the main characters "did the dirty deed" whilst fully clothed. This seems to happen quite a lot on telly; I can't help but wonder if that is how "the dirty deed" is supposed to be done (it's been a while...)
Just as I was about to leave for work, Pogo appeared and wanted to "go" outside (as thankfully the majority of dogs in our house do). However he does have to "go outside" on the shingle. Another garden project will be fencing off the shingled areas. Dung is much easier harvested from a lawn than it is from stones.
Having had a (quite literally) crappy start to the day I set off to work through a rather wet and foggy morning. Pausing only briefly to stick a bar code to a lamp post and capture a Trojan unicorn (it’s a Munzee thing) I was soon driving up the motorway. The pundits on the motorway were talking about the state of professional football. Despite lockdown and no matches having live crowds watching, the top-notch players are still commanding ridiculous wages even though the smaller clubs are struggling. Apparently Macclesfield football club is being wound up over debts of half a million quid, whilst footballer Gareth Bale is being paid over half a million quid a week.
It was suggested that the clubs that can afford to pay players millions of pounds might subsidise the struggling clubs. Some of the clubs that can afford to pay players millions of pounds have made the observation that you don't see Amazon bailing out the corner shops. They might have a point - it's called "captialism" (or screw-you-mate-I'm-all-right), but that is a rant I've done to death.
There was then all sorts of drivel about the Brexit negotiations, but I laughed out loud when some COVID-denier came on the radio. Incensed about pubs having to close early he admitted that his views were in a minority. But he insisted that a fundamental principle of democracy was that society must respect the views of the minorities.
I wonder where he got that idea from?
I got to work; I did my bit. there was cake, so the day wasn't a bad one. Once home, with a little time on my hands I took the dogs to Orlestone Woods where things soon went pear-shaped. As we walked along a path we use several times every week Pogo and Treacle were chasing each other and ran past a couple of people who were walking along the path toward us. I’d seen them coming and had thought nothing of it until one started screaming and started kicking out at the dogs even though neither dog came within five yards of them. Needless to say Pogo started barking, and before I could get my whistle from my pocket the non-screaming one had yanked up a length of bramble and was trying to whip the dogs with it. I had the dogs with me within seconds, and made the observation that if either of them hurt my dogs then I would hurt them. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said this, but I’m a bit soppy where my dogs are concerned. The older of the two screeched that the younger was autistic, and so that (apparently) gives him carte blanche to kick out at anyone and anything he cares to kick out at (dogs are a favourite target of his). He then screeched that my dogs should be on leads (even though the autistic one would have kicked at a dog on a lead). He said he was going to report me for having dangerous dogs that had attacked him (even though it was him and his autistic associate that had done the attacking). And he finished off by threatening me with physical violence. All of which was interspersed with the f-word between every other word.
I would have thought that picking a fight with someone twice your size who has three (supposedly) dangerous dogs wasn’t the cleverest thing to do, but what do I know?
The rest of the walk was rather dull after that.
Once home I posted to the local Facebook dog walking page to warn others about these two, then posted out some birthday wishes. I’d not had time this morning. As the evening wore on I received a message from a friend of the family of the people with whom I’d had the earlier altercation asking me to remove the photo I’d posted on the local Facebook dog walking page. Hopefully they’ve seen the error of their ways.
And then the admin of the local Facebook dog walking page posted saying that he himself was autistic and that I was supposed to allow an autistic person to hit my dogs. And one or two others agreed with him.
Funny old world… I thought I was providing a public service by warning the dog-walking community. Oh well… no good deed ever goes unpunished.
We had a rather good bit of dinner (washed down with a mediocre bottle of plonk) while watching today’s episode of “Bake Off”. Last week some American friends mentioned that Matt Lucas hadn’t gone down well with the American viewers. Last week I wrote “I wondered how Matt Lucas would fare in the show; so far he’s doing OK…” And he is doing OK… but only “OK”. He’s not brilliant…
