The Power of the Dog

I see, to my shame, that I have not written anything here for far too long. Although I regularly sell my life to gazillions of Daily Mail readers, I find myself surprisingly bad at sharing personal anecdotes in a blog read by two and a half people. Hmm.

However, I did write a blog post some while ago about dogs. And today, we went to visit the puppy that we will be bringing home in three weeks’ time…

The Power of the Dog
by 
Rudyard Kipling

There is sorrow enough in the natural way 
From men and women to fill our day; 
And when we are certain of sorrow in store, 
Why do we always arrange for more? 
Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware 
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy 
Love unflinching that cannot lie– 
Perfect passsion and worship fed 
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head. 
Nevertheless it is hardly fair 
To risk your heart to a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits 
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits, 
And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs 
To lethal chambers or loaded guns, 
Then you will find–it’s your own affair– 
But … you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear. 

When the body that lived at your single will, 
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!) 
When the spirit that answered your every mood 
Is gone–wherever it goes–for good, 
You will discover how much you care, 
And will give your heart to a dog to tear. 

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way, 
When it comes to burying Christian clay. 
Our loves are not given, but only lent, 
At compound interest of cent per cent. 
Though it is not always the case, I believe, 
That the longer we’ve kept ‘em, the more do we grieve: 
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong, 
A short-term loan is as bad as a long– 
So why in–Heaven (before we are there) 
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

You Couldn’t Make It Up

Well, strike me down with a msacara wand.

According to a new survey (don’t you love them? This one’s by a beauty retailer, so it has to be true), the average value of a woman’s make-up bag is £172.

This, apparently, means that the contents of our make-up bag are more valuable than our mobile phones, watches and bags – and should be adequately insured.

All I can say to that is: I am evidently not a woman.

My make-up bag is a M&S plastic bag (one of the free green ones that they offer to put sandwiches in).

Value: £0.00

My make-up consists of one lipstick, one eyeliner and one pot of eyeshadow. Said items were bought for a newspaper photo shoot before Christmas, not for personal use. Though my 8-year-old did enjoy using it for the school Christmas play.

Value: £3 (thanks to Poundland)

As for the other items…

Ho hum. My bag (actually my son’s old school rucksack) is worth less than the average woman’s £5 eyebrow pencil (what on earth is an eyebrow pencil, anyway?). One pot of £27 foundation could buy me three mobile phones (my £9 Tesco Value phone conveniently doubles as a watch).

I somehow don’t think I will be needing to take out insurance.

An Inspector Calls

My daughter’s school has been blessed by a visit from the Inspectors this week. I hope they were suitably impressed with the floor…

Roaming Royalty…

Jubilee fever has hit my seven-year-old.

I’m not quite so sure that her grasp of History is all it should be, though. And I’m not sure, either, where Her Majesty has been doing her roaming. Maybe Buckingham Palace is even bigger than I thought…

Bibbetty, Bobbetty, Boo

I have been reading lots of splendido blog posts (courtesy of KateTakesFive) recently in which parental fairy godmothers (and fathers) conjure up their five top wishes for their children. 

My main wish for mine at the moment is for them to go back to school. We have spent four solid weeks in one another’s company, and I dare say they are just as much in need of a break as I am. I am sure that whoever invented Easter didn’t mean it to last for over a month. 

But if imagine it’s already Wednesday and they are safely incarcerated again, what would I wish for them in adulthood?

 

1. To live near to a John Lewis store. Our nearest one is 40 miles away, and it is no fun. 

2a. To marry a rich man (daughter). I would like to spare her the trauma of having children and washing endless pants whilst simultaneously trying to earn a living. Failing that, I would like her to save us all some money and become a vet.

2b. To marry an organised woman (son). Without a well-organised wife, he will forget that people do things like get dressed before leaving the house. 

3. To live in a house that is not a DIY-renovation project (the rich husband could come in handy here). Though I’m not sure they would know what to do in a house where they didn’t have to pick their way through rubble-sacks.

4. Never to emigrate Down South.

5. To have at least four children each. Because – despite excessive Easter holiday fatigue – nothing beats having children. And if all else fails, children are a good excuse to buy Mini Boden clothes.

Trapped!

As I have arthritis in both hips (proof that I am an old witch), I am currently unable to walk.

As I walk eight miles every day taking the children to school and back, this is not good news.

And so I have invested in a bike.

It is a while since I rode a bike. About 25 years, to be precise.

How glad I am to have rediscovered this! I think as I sail down the hill across the racecourse in the sunshine.

It is quite a steep hill and involves hefty braking at the end. I heftily brake, skid, and almost fall off.

That was close, I think, settling myself back onto my seat.

Or, rather, trying to. Why can’t I move?

Then I realise. My oh-so-practical coat (calf-length, waterproof, zip-up) is trapped between the rear brake pad and the tyre.

Hmm, I think, giving it a futile tug.

But I was once a Girl Guide, so I have a plan. I will take my coat off, roll it up, trap it on the rear parcel rack, and wheel the bike home.

Undressing while attached to a bike is not easy. Nor is wheeling a bike that has a coat attached to the wheel. In fact, it’s impossible. The coat is so severely trapped that the wheel refuses to turn.

And then it starts to rain.

At this point, I do what all self-respecting women do. I ring my husband.

“I think I need your help,” I say oh-so-casually.

“Humph,” he replies. It is not a good idea to detach a man from his hammer at 9am.

“Yes,” I say. “I seem to be trapped in my bike wheel.”

Silence.

Then laughter. Lots of it.

“And you presumably want me to rescue you – despite what you wrote about me and my jumpers?”

“Ah. That. I do like your old jumpers really. And you I think you might need to bring a tool kit.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

And so I spend ten minutes affecting nonchalance on the racecourse, smiling at the passing dog-walkers. Yes, I make a habit of standing here enjoying the view. Particularly when it’s raining and my coat is huddled up on the ground beside me.

One elderly man realises what has happened, and chortles at me. As he is walking his ferret, I really don’t think he ought to be chortling at anyone. Fortunately the swarming teenagers are so absorbed in themselves and their cans of Red Bull that they don’t even notice a bedraggled middle-aged mother attached to a bike wheel.

Eventually my knight in shining armour (husband in DIY garb) arrives on his white charger (old bike).

“Ho, ho,” he says. “I think I might leave you there all day.”

But, of course, he doesn’t. He dismantles the bike, detaches me, and puts the bike back together again. And as I cycle home with my long coat knotted around my middle, I remember why I keep him after all.

Mr Predictable and the New Jumper

My husband is a man.

Therefore it goes without saying that he does not like change. Particularly not when it comes to buying clothes.

He will buy several identical pairs of cords and wear them until they disintegrate. He will then curse M&S for no longer selling exactly the same cords 20 years later.

So it was with some trepdiation that I ventured into Austin Reed, clutching a £20 voucher (courtesy of the Daily Telegraph). Surely I could get him a nice packet of socks for £20.

I inspected them. No: they were not exactly the same as the M&S ones. Quite apart from anything else, this would lead to panic about mis-matching pairs. Then I look at the voucher’s small print. Excludes socks.

Well, obviously it does as they are the only things under £20.

I turn to skulk away.

But then I see them. Cotton jumpers in a fabulous shade of blue – a snip at £20 with the voucher.

I think of the current Jumper Collection. There is a definite theme: woollen, orangey-grey and patterned. If, that is, the pattern hasn’t been eaten by moths.

Yes, I think. Time for a change!

At home, I put the bag in a prominent position on the kitchen table, where it is ignored.

“I bought you a nice new jumper,” I declare.

He looks suspicious.

“It’s blue,” I say helpfully. “Blue cotton.”

“Cotton?!”

“Yes. Nice cotton.”

He retreats behind his newspaper.

I move the bag upstairs and put it on the bed. He sniffs around it cautiously, but doesn’t open it. My guinea pigs do this too when something new is introduced to their cage. After a bout of suspicious sniffing, they then try to eat it. They are also male. Hmm.

Three days on, the bag is still unopened. But I know him. In a month’s time, he will try it on. Then he will say he is so glad that he thought of buying it. Then he will buy four more identically the same and will wear them for the next 200 years and will be sad when Austin Reed no longer make them.

Not that men are predictable or anything.

Hermann the German

I have a horrible feeling that I am about to commit  murder.

I have a house guest for half term. Hermann only arrived five minutes ago, and he is already dominating my life.

He is sitting on my worktop covered loosely with a tea-towel.

Hermann, lest you wonder, is a German sourdough friendship cake. The idea is that you add to him, then give bits of him to your friends and eat the remainder.

As my daughter has lots of friends and likes cake, I agreed to let Hermann into our kitchen. He comes with instructions, which are always scary.

‘If I stop bubbling then I am afraid I am dead,’ the instructions declare gloomily.

Oh no. I have my family squawking for food. I have my guinea pigs bellowing for veggies. Now I have to remember to feed Hermann as well. I really do not want the death of a sourdough cake on my conscience.

But then I remember the last German house-guest I had. He used the mixing bowl for his cereal. A mega-pack of Shreddies lasted two days.

Compared to that, the cup of flour, sugar and milk that Hermann requires is a doddle. Long live Hermann!

 

Don’t lose your knickers: it’s Christmas

Have you lost your knickers recently?

Then it must be Christmas.

As we all know, Christmas is a time for celebrating with our friends in dodgy watering holes (if, that is, we can find a babysitter).

But that also means that it’s fun-time for the lost property counter of said watering holes. If it’s not your knickers, it’ll be your handcuffs or your set of darts.

We all get into the Lost Property habit at a young age. At school, I was always bewildered by a lost property cupboard filled with cake tins (when we didn’t do cookery), footballers’ jockstraps (at a girls’ school), and carpet slippers. Did girls not notice that they were making their way home with one shoe – and no kilt? Did the girl whose grubby tooth brace ended up in Lost Property never wonder what became of it?

We may like to think we become more careful with age. But we are wrong. And Christmas is prime time for losing far more than our wallets and keys.

“Dresses, skirts, pullovers… you name it, we find it,” chortled Jo, the manageress of my local hostelry. Supermarket uniforms feature large in her Lost Property box – as do travel agents’ uniforms, and even the odd wetsuit. “People come here for Christmas parties, get drunk, and forget their uniforms.” Men are particularly careless with their trousers, she says, although they tend to hang on to their underwear. Unlike women.

So what else is there to lose once you’ve lost your clothes? Plenty – especially if you’re a woman. “Handcuffs, joke underwear, boob-growing cream… our lost property box looks like an Ann Summers shop,” says another local club owner. Penises of the latex and chocolate variety also tend to stray.

Rather worryingly, they don’t tend to end up in the bin. “We try not to get too close to things that look as if they’ve been used,” said Mr Club Owner, “but if anyone wants their sex-aid back, there’s a good chance that we’ll still have it.”

So much for sex toys. Obviously, it’s easy to misplace someone’s thoughtful Secret Santa present of a latex penis. But surely it’s more difficult to lose your crutches? Or a month’s supply of contraceptive pills, as some poor woman (I presume) managed to do at London’s 333 club? Or your false teeth – or your colostomy bag?

However the Dodgy Christmas Clubber prize goes to… Edinburgh. Here, club staff were the lucky finders of a bag. In the bag was a towel – and in the towel was a poo. Nobody ever claimed it.

The one thing to be said for towel-wrapped poos is that they make dandruffy wigs seem positively savoury. “The really weird thing is when someone rings up and says they’ve just realised they lost their wig a month ago,” says Jo.

I know Christmas makes people do odd things – but wouldn’t you think the passengers on the London Underground who mislaid a theatrical coffin and a complete skeleton would have noticed something was missing? Perhaps it’s reassuring to know that there’s always a simple explanation for such bizarre behaviour. After all, the tooth brace that ended up in the school Lost Property got there for the simple reason that its owner, somewhat fed up with it, had tied it to her schoolbag with a hair bobble, and it had dropped off.

How do I know that?

Because it was mine.

And, yes, I did reclaim it.

Happy Christmas.

Seven Secrets…

Well, I have been nominated by the lovely Ordinary Parent (http://ordinary-parent.blogspot.com) for this.

I am most flattered – only I now have to come up with seven secrets. This is harder than I thought it would be, but here goes:

1. I am a complete ignoramus about technology, and it took me about two hours to work out how to insert the little image into this post.

2. I have never watched X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, I’m  A Celebrity, Eastenders or any of the other things that normal people watch. So I feel distinctly old ladyish when I don’t know who people are tweeping about, and keep a correspondingly low profile. I dare not even try to pretend.

3. I eat the icing off party-bag cake (I’m not bothered about the spongey bit) then tell the children that said cake has gone missing/gone mouldy and try to fob them off with a Rich Tea biscuit instead.

4. I won’t eat chicken in restaurants for fear of getting food poisoning. Obviously the whole universe would collapse if Mummy were ill for a day.

5. I iron towels. The house is falling apart around us, but I iron towels. It gives me a feeling of control.

6. My cashmere cardy wasn’t really £5.99 in the sale.

7. I read the Daily Mail in cafes. And online. It’s a bit of a compulsion. Don’t tell anyone.

 

And now I’d like to hear secrets from:

http://viewfromtheloungewindow.blogspot.com/

http://reallymissingsleep.blogspot.com/

http://morethanamumblog.wordpress.com/

http://nikki-stressymummy.blogspot.com/