sound

Darius may have packed up his stuff, tucked his English cultural treasures – Mockney CD and FIFA2012 XBox game – into his case and gone back to Germany but, in the interests of inter-country exchange, he left his dust allergy. With Lolly.
She has not stopped sneezing since - she only does it to annoy - and, when not sneezing, she is otherwise attention-seeking in a deeply unpleasing way: shaking her collar dramatically, squeaking, running like a loon on acid round the house (without, I may point out, going back shame-facedly later and straightening all the rugs). Standing oppressively close with a resentful cast to her eye. Breathing. Christ it’s annoying. Perhaps she needs Ritalin?
“Makes you wish for the good old days when she was just ... there,” I said.
“Makes you wish for the good old days when she … wasn’t there,” said E, “When she was just a twinkle in your eye.”
“My eye!! A twinkle in your eye!” I said, squeaking as if I were about to shake my collar.
The next ten minutes can be glossed over, covering as they do the tedious and familiar ground of blame: who actually wanted the dog in the first place.

On the plus side, I finally have a valid reason to look pissed off, and am in a position to trade “tiresome noises I endure” stories with E. For, at work, E sits near a man who sniffs every 3 seconds, which E has worked out to be 9,000 times a day …. 45,000 times a week. They’ve worked in the same office 15 years. And when this man is not sniffing, he’s sneezing, like Lolly, over-dramatically, snerffff! Snerfff! SNERRFFF!!!
“Does anyone say Bless You?” I asked. E’s glance told me all I needed to know about bloody stupid comments.

“We should have got a kitten,” said F12, tutting over Lolly’s shenanigans, "Back then, not ..." He can't quite finish but relentlessly makes good on the feline-shaped hole in his childhood by being ever ready to channel “kitten,” while plugging away on the PR for a real one most hours of the day.
We did have a cat once, but Lolly’s inappropriate enthusiasm rather did for her and the kitchen fitter sped her away for his mum, on a cushion in his van. News is that she got the expensive end of cat ownership: the dwindling teeth, the cancer, the headstone. Animals. They break your little heart. And the vet drives around in a Beamer.

And now poor Lolly, rapidly losing her last vestiges of friends.
“Even if we had, that would be some geriatric kitten by now,” I said. “On the way out.”
“No," he mewed.
“Yup, or doing time, I’d heard. In prison, on the chain gangs.” The mythical kitten breaks rocks in my mind.
“How could you,” he whimpered, “Be so mean! To a kitten. Stew and wallow in your shame.”

E and I are rather fed up with stewing and wallowing in our shame. The imprecation is wheeled out frequently, by one currently in disturbing garb. F12’s favoured home clothes were a Poirot-dapper suit, with an Indiana Jones hat and a broken bamboo, for wielding purposes.
Then the hat was switched for a peaked Inspector’s cap (the child, irritatingly, having put in no interim service as a mere constable, drudge beneath a domed, unfetching hat, although one thinks he’d have warmed to the parking ticket issuing).
Tall wellies were dredged from somewhere. This is a resourceful child, a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. Put it down and it will rapidly be considered unconsidered. I picture some random old man in the village, stuck in his slippers, still turning in vague circles, muttering, “Am sure Oi left they somewhere round ‘ere;” his gate banging in the wind, a newly-booted child hot-footing it to the shadows.
The suit jacket was bossily buttoned and a swagger stick appeared. Culled no doubt from someone’s prized tripod or music stand.

So now, a door will slam, doors always slam if a child is one or other side of them, there is no gentle touch, and seconds will pass so you will forget and next thing your heart’s in freefall catching sight, out of the window, of a small determined Nazi Country Gent inventorying the garden in a worrying manner, swagger stick bouncing on a Chino’d thigh.

Later I spoke to him, having been troubled by that dullard: the self-esteem thing, having bumped into Mrs Caring, and being reminded, by unflattering comparison, how very dreadful I am.

We had been at Mrs Lovely’s and I was being disloyal about my darling boy, regaling the dog gang with some witty tale.
“F12 doesn’t really speak like that, does he?” said Mrs Lovely.
“No, not really,” I admitted, do details of realism matter? “But when he goes off on one, we do all rather purse up our lips like this.”
Mrs Lovely and I chortled our horrid little heads off.
“Oh Good!” she said, “When Lulu’s being awful, Mr Lovely and I prance around the kitchen being the Munchkins in Wizard of Oz – like this – you know that face they make when they sing. Their hands! It’s the only thing you can do.”
We laughed the laugh of cruel parents snatching small treats from the wreckage.
“It’ll all come out in therapy,” she said happily.
“It will actually,” said Mrs Caring, not smiling as much as us. Certainly not smiling the smile of the imminently damned.
It sort of put a dampener on things.

“You don’t mind, do you, the teasing about the kittens stuff?” I was tidying his gun, smoothing his cap and propping up the swagger stick – she who would otherwise end up standing on it in bare feet in the dark was me. He sat on his bed and watched the staff at work.
“No,” he said, patting me tenderly as I sank beside him.
“I know you do it for my own good. To brush off my rough edges.”
“They’re quite furry edges, really,” I said kindly.
“Yes,” he said. Then he said, word for word, “Teasing gives life colour, it would be a shell without it, all beige. Shall I tell you about Lenin?” Somewhere in the bowels of the house came a canine sneeze. There was a sound such as of a collar being shook.
“Miaow?” F12 said, hopefully.

chop

Lolly is shorn to a shadow but somehow attracting compliments. I guess it’s pity.
She went in a 14 and came out size zero. But not in a good way. I need canine purdah to take her out in public and a thumping big pair of sunspecs.

We’d met on a walk, complete strangers, the groomer and me, and she fell on Lolly, “Ooh, yarrss! Lurffleee derrgg. Cudd Oi grumm urrr? Hef juss lurrrned? Durrn twenny arrrze kurrss.” (Brenda’s Dutch.)

£20 she said (I think), so what could I say but yes. Besides I’d be spared the normal embarrassment of apologising for the state of her fur since Brenda’d seen Lolly at her worst. And volunteered. Lolly adores jumping in rivers and emerging with her coat a dense trapping of damp cotton wool, with side order of badger and a dollop of dead crow. One learns the knack of shallow breathing.
I did, however, still have to phone her normal groomer who’d messed us about a bit but who loves Lolly to the extent of holding several photos of her on her mobile. She bit back metaphorical tears and I nearly bunged Lolly down the phone as a guilty consolation prize to recompense. E will want to know what stopped me.

So I took Lolly in, sensing dread that I was dumping her at the gas chambers. Were twenny arrrze tuition enough for my little Lolly?
This was at about 10 and Brenda said she’d phone in a couple of hours. So I skipped off air-punching my freedom, all guilt forgot. Bye Lolly! Missing you already. Not. Careful with that gas now. Freedom til noon. Yes!

I got me to the garden and ponced around primping and preening with plans for my yellow and blue border (segueing onto purple and orange). Such a pleasure to do without the inevitability of Lolly escaping in pursuit of cats, me a shuffling bundle of apology and rage huffing and puffing in her wake.

Brenda then phoned at half past one, I laid down my secateurs to hear the grunt of, "Heese gohne-a be layyy. Heese toikeen lerrnngg toime. Emm juss cummin up furr a breeedurrr. Hurr. Hurr. Hurr."
It was what could only be called a mirthless laugh and guilt washed around me, trespassing on my well-being. Bloody dog.
I returned pronto to my Pat Austin rose, my Euphorbia and my Cotinus Grace and shunted the brute from my mind.

At four, I rang. Well I felt I had to, and my fingers were buzzing with recalcitrant nettles. I was a little bit bored of gardening and hay fever was kicking in but it was as nothing to the exchange of phlegm chez Brenda. The line throttled with a coughing and a spluttering and I could all but feel the fur in the air. I sneezed sympathetically.
“Wurrr gohne avter curl ee a doi,” wheezed the groomer, tragically.
“Yes, yes,” I cooed. “Of course. I’ll be right over.”
“Tayke yurr toime,” came her death rattle of determination, these Europeans are made of stern stuff. “Hevv smurrl beets er feenerssh. Vunna du err gud jerbb.” Her voice dragged bravely along the gravel pavement of her throat.

I took F12 with me. We entered the back room and he fell about laughing, a gurgling drain of pure hilarity. I could see a market opening for Tena Lad. I had dropped off a noxious bag of fur and was collecting a pornographic pipe cleaner reeking of cheap scent. The transformation was startling. With burly chest, cheerful beard and hair-pin legs it’s not a good look, but Lolly doesn’t know and is a happy little thing. She turned liquid eyes on me. “Hoii!”

“She looks lovely,” I quavered – there was no way I could be seen out with her –handing over an extra tenner: blood money. Lolly bounced eagerly on the floor, most pleased with things taking advantage of the surprised atmosphere in the room to try to shag my leg. We took her home and she collapsed on her bed, knackered, slurping at bees and drooling. Small yaps punctuated small sleeps.

E walked in, “Christ!” he said, and flinched.

Each day the fur grows a little more, returning Lolly to some sort of social acceptability. She bounds in buttercup fields and romps through poppies, delighting in her summer frock. Before long, I’ll be able to drop the comedy moustache and trench coat.

“Had a stroke of luck today,” I told E last night. “The dog ran away …”
He perked up.
Lolly staggered to her feet, shook her collar loudly and irritatingly and swaggered round to wipe her face on the sofa.
“You said she ran off,” E looked peeved, cheated.
“Well, she came back, I went and found her. But it meant passing the house on the corner, it’s being done up and they were chucking out all the plants, I got a load of the irises.”

There was never going to be a meeting of minds over what constitutes a stroke of luck, and any sentence beginning “the dog ran away” which didn’t end in “and ended up in Glasgow,” was doomed to disappoint, particularly when all that came as compo was some knackered old discarded irises. They are however knackered old irises of a particularly pretty shade of a strong powder blue. And I have just the spot for them.

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PS I'd like to thank some new readers who left comments buried deep in blogs I wrote about a year ago. Very much appreciated. I must have ticked something some time which enabled these to be forwarded. Savvy or what.