yuk

If a turd had to be anywhere indoors then it’s best that it was on the coir matting and relatively intact. Important to start the day with a good omen. Lolly gave me a “yeah? What of it?” look, smacked her chops, stretched until her paws skidded on the floor, and squeak-yawned. I can’t begin to describe what an irritating combination that is, and her favourite trio of moves. Then she shook, and I closed my eyes with a hunched shudder to the invisible splatter hurtling towards clean walls. She stood, thoroughly pleased with herself.

Having fallen foul (ho) of dog turds the other day, I am raw with recent faecal experience. I had weeded the driveway, then tottered down the side of the house towards the compost bin, carefully keeping a wary eye out for turds blending cunningly with the gravel since, God, can that dog ever create! Another cause to ponder, just what’s in it for me?
It’s got to be 2 or 3 a day she squeezes out, the product of the toxic plops from a tin I ladle faintly into her bowl. The things for which my degree comes in handy.

My mother does it bigger and better. Not only is their dog the size of an old-fashioned caravan, but she’s reached her incontinent phase (dog, not mother; we’re talking seas of wee) and she has to be fed by hand. Tripe, or chicken breasts, and mars bars. What with the hamsters (yes, now plural) turning their tiny pampered snouts up at anything less than Waitrose tenderstem broccoli, their pets cost more to feed than they do.

“Yes,” my mother said, “I picked up some good reduced things from Waitrose today, though.”
Every penny helps when you’re haemorrhaging cash having the extension knocked down.
“I feel a bit guilty,” she said. “It’s your inheritance.”
“I rather think you have first call on it,” I said, “Spend away. Anyway, what were your bargains?”
“A Thai chicken curry for your father, 95p and a, well this doesn’t sound actually very nice but it will do two meals, a parsnip and carrot mash for 65p for me.”
Unpleasant, but with the added benefit of stretching to 2 meals. Who can resist?
“The dog can always have it,” I said.
Her silence suggested that it wouldn’t be good enough for the dog.

I trod shy of the landmines of fresh turds and slung the weeds at the compost bin. At which point, something fast and dark and, gulp, rat-shaped, heat-missiled itself out of the bin, through the hole at the back and on to where it belongs, which is next door.
I stepped back … into a turd. Nice shoes, too.

I discussed it with my mother. We decided it was a mouse. Possibly a big mouse. The R word is not used. But, where is the justice in any of that? A good deed cruelly repaid. Shit on the shoes taking 20 mins to clean off. Yum. A similar smack around the face by fate’s careless hand occurred when I bent down, once inside, to do some unnecessary sweeping and a cupboard door swung open from nowhere to smash into my head. The conspiracy of inanimate objects to piss you off.

Out on the walk, the talk is of the 800 new houses planned to link 2 villages: neither of which wants linking. They will go in nearby fields which “flood once in a thousand years” (environmental agency). Surface water gathering after a 20 minute shower doesn’t count; that it is more or less a flood area doesn’t count. The wretched crew of that irritating Blears woman rubber-stamped half of it on a whistle stop tour (the image of her in her leathers on a bike floats unbidden to mind).
Last week, we went to an interface session or whatever they called it at the village hall. E was too angry to stay. I spoke to a nervous young sacrificial lamb booted and suited and wheeled out from the PR company to deal with us enraged villagers, all of us quick to snarl and jealously guard. He hovered near flipcharts which detailed the proposed rape of our countryside.

“What about all the extra cars?” I said. “Come 20 to 8 in the morning the roads are already all clogged; there’s no employment here, everyone has to travel to get to work as it is.”
“Ah,” he said, Pleased That I Had Asked; he bounced a finger in the air to show so. “We’ve established that, at outwards time, point three of a vehicular unit per dwelling will be added to the flow.”
“What?” I said (so much to enrage here). “Please. Say car, not vehicular unit.”
Outwards time? Point fucking three. Flow! “800 houses means 1600 cars,” I said, “and if they’re not driving to work, they’re driving to the schools – which are already full – where does point three of a car come into it?”
“We’ve consulted a survey,” he beamed.
“Commissioned by the End User?” I asked, nastily slipping into bollocks-speak.
“By an industry standard, as it goes, a company called TRICS,” he said, proudly.
Tricks? Nuff said. I filled in a form, blackening it with the dire poetry of my upset.

“No one wants it! Mr Lovely suggests setting up barriers, guns, a sort of passport control,” confessed Mrs Lovely. “I suppose we’re not allowed to think that sort of thing.”
“Your daughters could man it,” I suggested.
“Don’t! I want them put into Care,” she said. “We’re quite nice; and the children just aren’t.”

Mrs Very Rich’s 2 are at one of the smartest schools in the country. “They eat like pigs,” she said. “Pasta by hand!”
”Curry by hand!” trumps Mrs Lovely.
“Soup by hand?” I asked, really rather pleased with it all. My father is Table Manners Taliban and is shocked by our two’s manners. But at least they, generally, use knives and forks and sit facing the table.
“Soup?” Mrs Lovely gave me a look. Don’t be silly, Milla.
It’s almost worse when they do use cutlery,” Mrs VR said of her 17 year old. “Grabs the fork with her fist and shovels, chin to the plate. Talks with her mouth full, the lot. Disgusting.”
We laugh.

Mrs Gossip sidled up, torn between wanting to slag off her children and store up ammunition against the rest of us. She settled for both, “Oh, you’re so lucky, having just boys, Milla,” she said dismissively. “Sounds like yours are a handful?” she wheedled hopefully, turning a face towards the others.

I had seen Mrs Anxious earlier on, waving, bleakly at the backs of her two sons receding into the distance, trudging up to school. “Not allowed to walk up with them,” she explained.
F10’s slippery little hand had clutched mine the harder. We always walk up together. T13 always happily kisses us goodbye when dropped off at his bus. I thought of that now, smug before a fall maybe.

“Oh,” said Mrs Lovely, “Lulu! In town, I’m not allowed to acknowledge her, or her friends. Can't say hello. No. I have to turn the radio off as we draw up to school. Wind the windows up, everything. Not allowed to exist.”
Mrs Gossip nodded happily.
“It’s probably something or other to do with what they’d call identity and separation and stuff,” I said wisely, a long evening with a psychobabble friend still in the memory. “They’ll be back, they’ll be great later. Don’t you worry.”

The dogs, known – we like to think affectionately – as the hooligans, were munching on a fat old crow (dead). Tossed feathers fluttered in the air. The dogs hawked and chomped and sneezed. Everyone shrieked and attempted fat lady runs up the hill, inept scaredogs in inefficient motion. By some miracle of miracles it was Mrs Gossip’s foot which landed in the cow pat.

the dog it was that died … oh, cruel cruel dream, I wake up in the shower, brought to by an importunate bark

The joke goes something like this.
How do you tell which loves you more, your dog or your wife?
Lock both in the boot together, and leave. Whichever is pleased to see you after an hour, well, there’s your answer.
Even to contemplate, I grip my chair.

You wouldn’t have thought there was another turd in her, so frequently does she squat and leave her odorous offerings. I feel undressed without a pocketful of green slippery poo bags awaiting their fill. But yes, in the brief hour between E exiting south: work, and me returning cross from a school trip, the beast had laid two tremblingly large turds of dubious consistency and a nasty sprawl of wee, the lot making the carpet outside the kitchen very much a no-go area requiring scene of crime tape. Penalty no doubt for inflicting dog prison on Lolly or, more likely, for bringing her home from it. Strange things have happened to her tum meanwhile.

I tackled the turds with long-stretched arm. Dollops which sagged and oozed and wept into loo paper which sogged and collapsed into a stinky mash. I gave myself wrinkles wincing.
Have I mentioned that dogs are vile?
Not nearly often enough.

Lolly herself lolled careless in her basket, sprawled like a post-coital floozy too idle to tug her dressing gown across her bits. She stumbled to, yawning. Very feckless teenager deigning to commit to breakfast at noon. She stretched her paws and gave a bored squeak while I gagged, and sprayed Oust and Febreze and I-Hate-Pets’R’Us, with generous abandon and little care for the ozone layer. Faecal particulate matter swamped the air, storming the nostrils. It begged for reviving handkerchiefs to be pressed to the snout. I needed a chaise longue on which to collapse and see out my recovery.

Next port of call for the frowsty wolf was the water bowl from which she supped greedily, replenishing her withered bladder. Her spongy beard steeped in slurpy leavings, she padded in to spray it, with the kind of extravagant shakes dog favour, all over the kitchen floor. Sending me scurrying for one of several mops which cause our utility room to be so dangerous.
God, but she’s a full-time job, a one-dog employment opportunity, salary in the negative, perks few.

I put her out with ill grace, my foot may have made sidling contact with her beamy behind. Accidents happen. She needed rapid re-acquaintance with her real lavatory, the great outdoors, although her interest in this swift tutorial was limited.
From the stair, I could hear her impatient, desperate bashing at the door, claws clattering on the glass, outraged to be left outside. She would be high on her hind paws, assaulting the door like a bear beneath the lash, baying in a booming bark too big for her.
In a 1950s film there would be the chance that a great big eagle might fly by and snatch her to its teetering eyrie but no such luck here.
I trudged back downstairs to let the foul hound in.

She stood stock still, eyeing me in an offhand manner, affecting blank surprise that I might think that she might want to totter in.
Hello? you barked, madam.
Then she took her time about swaggering inside, swinging her hips louchely while licking her chops with insouciance before lurching back to her basket, seemingly exhausted.
My don’t the heart just break? A dog’s work, it’s never done.
Man’s best friend?
Hmmm. Don’t think so. Not in this house.

The school trip had been to a Large Store, previously the sort of place I am fully prepared to linger, wafting up and down wide aisles like the Stepford Wife I aspire to be.
Until now.
Every year each class is invited here to make something: a salad, a pizza, a cheesecake and to undertake some sort of item-spotting task within the store. This year a dragon had popped on an apron to do the recipe demonstration, best friends to Robert Helpmann’s child catcher. Her hair – it would not dare – was unmovable, her chin a knee, and her laser stare, scary with disdain, bore down on the children. “Step away from the table … don’t touch … don’t talk … it’s rude to talk when an adult is talking … keep back … stop talking … keep your hands off … be quiet …” on and on and bloody on. It was quite shocking how bossy and spoil-happy she was; and in the rare moments she wasn’t issuing orders – say to draw deep sour breaths – one of her three minions was there to carry on the good work, hissing, “it’s rude to talk when an adult is talking!” Cartoon snakes the lot of them, smacking the air with their wooden spoons, ridiculous red faces beneath hygiene caps. Pursed lips.
God knows I can’t stand an impertinent child and would put myself high up on the Stressy List but I was as a laid-back hippy, dopey with moon dust compared to this lot who seemed unable to accept that their tiny charges were only 8 and 9 and, rightly so, a tiny bit excitable about wielding a whip. Aren’t we all.
It made me cross.

Back home, scowling at the dog, I stood in the largest, most gorgeous kitchen in Europe knowing that unpleasant tasks faced me:


That my immediate future was grim.
The carpet in need of another chemical assault if our olfactory systems were not to be corrupted. Rock hard soil to be negotiated with outside in the name of weed clearance.
Dull things belonging to other people to tidy.

The dog shuffled over, as near to hang-dog as she could bear to muster, laying slow, precise paws, almost balletic, on the temporarily clean floor, while still rife with low cunning, for farts seep from her behind. Smelling moistly, like a pub pie.
Revenge is flatulence, best issued warm.
Her meaty brothy breath clouds the air. She barged her head into my leg. Gee, thanks. I fiddled kindly with her ear. Her tail swishes. Friends again. Sort of.

Sweeney'd Dogg

We are all embarrassed to be seen with Lolly now. But then we’re very shallow. Apart from F9 who is a loyal little beast and will adore her forever. “Come on darrrlen’,” he croons, skinny arms held strangle-lovingly tight around her neck.

But for T11 and I it is testing. “Quick!” T hissed, “Let’s go now!”
He had worked out that if we left for school at 8.47, and walked with Lolly corraled between us like a prisoner en route to the black maria, then we would minimise the viewing opportunties. We would arrive at 8.52, 2 minutes after the gates had opened.
Thus the early crowd would be hidden in the playground, and their parents departed – leaving in a selfish screech of smoking tyres riding the pavement, too busy texting to bother with accurate steering, safe in the knowledge that their own children were kill-proof at school and only random others might get caught by a bull bar.
The late crowd would still be having breakfast ,and arguing over whether they’d done the maths game or not. At least that’s what happens in our house.
“Do you have to wear that orange coat?” he asked. It is my skiing-cum-dog walking coat and means that I am readily identifiable at 200 yards. He has a point.

For Lolly has been shorn and it is not her finest hour. We, meanwhile, now have first hand understanding of the phrase, “taken to the cleaners”.

The kennels she was at for a few days at New Year, while we had strange times in Devon in the name of holidaying with friends at a barracks of a hotel, was not a happy experience. They didn’t groom her, and she came home all matted. It was upsetting, but she was so pathetically pleased to see us that although they still charged us an extra 50% ,“it being Christmas” – a point I found myself dumbly agreeing with while inwardly thinking, “er, no it’s not, it’s the 5th of January" – I said nothing about it but hustled her home vowing never to return.
Anyway.
I cut out what I could and established a busy brushing regime to try to rectify the damage. She grew to loathe the comb. But then people kept being sympathetic thinking she’d had an operation, “ahhh, bless,” they’d say with their head held at a kindly tilt, so I had to bite the bullet and book her in for a makeover for the job to be finished off properly.

The “grooming parlour” (a building which might aspire to be a shed in another, more glamorous, life) was very 3 little pigs, seeming to be made from piles of hay and old clapboard. And that was the solid bits. I looked around for an obvious wolf huffing and puffing, but real wolves were thin on the ground, to be found instead I was to learn wearing aprons and bearing clippers and called Sue and Bev and they ran the place and hid their tails and What Big Teeth rather well.
And I didn’t know that then or I would have popped my matty mutt back in the car, locked the doors and driven away.

Inside (a moot point, the insideness of the “grooming parlour”) was a cage containing 4 white and clean little dogs. There were 2 industrial hair dryers attached to the meshed front in a manner displeasing to the health and safety executive within me (not a busy creature admittedly, that, being a disliker of same, but even I noticed it, so it must have been bad: a tangle of frayed extension lead leading unto another, even less impressive stretch of cable which in turn led out of the window and through the parking area and into another building, presumably one which had electricity all of its very own).
Buffeting the dogs they were these hair dryers.
I burst out laughing. Fur flying in all directions, the dogs blinking in mild surprise, I have rarely seen anything so ridiculously funny.

I handed Lolly over and picked her up, 4 hours and £24 later. The other dogs were still there, a permanent testament to the transforming power of the parlour. Cash was demanded first while the dividing door, plastic and collapsible, possibly stolen from a fire-damaged caravan, was kept determinedly shut. It was then opened sufficiently to allow the bulk of the groomer through, leading a large but skinny rat skulking behind her.
I craned my head into the innards of the far room for sight of Lolly.
“Here you are then, ducks,” said she who dared to call herself groomer: I demand an immediate downgrade to butcher.
You know where this one’s going.
The rat was Lolly.

How are the mighty fallen? Poor, poor, erstwhile beauty Lolly, the "darling of the village" now resembles a poodle rat made from pipe-cleaners, with a pornographic tail and Louise Brooks hair and eyes. Truly grotesque.
She had clearly been drugged, too; presumably to allow for the Shaving Of Parts, and looked more than baffled. It was all very disturbing.

We took her home and she shivered, so we laid her on a mountainous duvet and in the next 12 hours she mustered 6 massive turds. Made more extraordinary still coming from the thin sausage of her body, but not a subject best dwelt on.
Today she is sort of back to normal but it’ll be a while til she’s our old Lolly again and although she had to be clipped, about that there is no question, I can’t help feeling for what the poor dog has had to go through recently at the hands of those supposedly qualified to care for animals.