"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…
