Tonight is one of the joyful taxi rank nights on which I have got a really good book.
It is Ben Elton’s new book, generously donated by Number Two Daughter.
I am reading it as slowly as I can in order to make it last. It is every bit as terrible and wonderful as one might expect, and I am enjoying it very much, in an appalled sort of way.
Having a good book makes me not mind in the least about being at work. I am feeling perfectly happy, sitting here in the dark, listening to the rain pattering on the roof. It has even been hard to tear myself away from it to write to you, but of course there is no satisfaction quite as splendid as knowing there is something nice to look forward to, and it is waiting for me, when I have finished.
I regret to announce that the hoped for boost of renewed energy did not happen.
Worse, I kept myself awake coughing until late into the night. I woke up feeling cross and uncomfortable, after which the traitorous dark side of myself decided that my immune system was already facing sufficient horrible challenges without getting sweaty and breathless. Obviously this was more than enough reason to avoid the gym.
There is a virtuous light side of myself as well but it is not terribly strong willed and easily persuaded to idleness and vice.
Once we were awake we took the dogs to the vet.
You might be aware of various machinations concerning Lucy’s end of term ball. In the end it has been decided that we are all going to go to this, and the consequent organisation has been sending me cross-eyed.
We are going to spend two nights in the hotel across the road from school. Of course we could stay in the camper, but on the whole although campers are ace for camping, they are not the ideal location for getting ready for, or for travelling to, a ball. Our camper van is my very favourite thing, but nevertheless it is the pumpkin that stays a pumpkin, no matter how many magic wands you might wave.
On reflection we felt that we could not take the dogs with us and abandon them in the camper van to be ignored for two days. We have taken them with us before when we are doing something more interesting, and it is rubbish for everybody, because nobody wants to tear themselves away from more exciting things to take them for walks, and the dogs are somehow more bored when lying next to an empty chair than they are when there is a person in it.
Hence we thought that we would put them in kennels for a couple of days.
We rang some kennels who said they were happy to accommodate even the smelliest of grumpy old dogs, but first wanted to know if they had got vaccination certificates, which they hadn’t.
Roger was vaccinated against something as a small poopy, and his father was probably vaccinated against things years ago when he belonged to somebody more responsible, but even if they happened to be fully immune to every disease on the planet, we had no acceptable evidence, and therefore they would not be allowed in kennels.
This turned out to be topical, when I passed the newspaper stand I learned that the government is going to take the same approach with children and school, so once again I am in with a current trend.
The result was that we had got to take them to the vet, which we did, today.
They liked the waiting room better than the vet surgery. There were more interesting smells than anywhere else in Windermere, and their noses could not have been closer to the floor if they had accidentally sniffed some chewing gum.
Sometimes I think the vet has taken out too large a mortgage for her own good.
Roger Poopy’s father had hardly been pinned to the slab for more than a minute when she announced that he needed three teeth removed, and it would cost three hundred quid.
We were not overwhelmed with pleasure at this news. In fact, had he been a working farm dog, that sentence would have resulted in his being instantly removed from the vet’s table, taken home and shot.
We explained that we might not wish to invest three hundred quid in his long term future. He is a crumbly ancient ruin of a dog, of indeterminate age, and we have thought for a while that he is very probably living on borrowed time. He has a heart murmur and a growth which might, or might not, be cancerous. He is almost completely blind, has a dodgy knee that pops out of its socket every now and again, and he loathes children. He regularly sexually assaults his own son, smells ghastly and his default setting is to hide under the table and growl. He does this all the time, unless he is in the garden, in which case he is hiding under the workbench and growling.
The vet, who is young and keen, said that all of this was all right, and could probably be fixed if we were awash with cash, but that it is not cool to have a dog who doesn’t like children.
He became homeless in the first place because of disliking children. I adopted him because I thought this was a perfectly reasonable prejudice to have, not being very keen on children myself. He does not bite them, which admittedly might be problematic, but that may just be because we have always kicked him and chucked him back under the table before they have got close enough.
However he has become considerably grumpier with age, and we have become resigned to his early demise once he begins to savage anybody other than Roger Poopy, which we think is another perfectly reasonable prejudice.
We said that we would think about it and took him home.
Once home we investigated the teeth. Lucy, who once thought she might like to be a dentist, stuck her fingers in his mouth and wagged the rotten teeth about.
We decided that they were loose, but the gums were still intact.
We gave him a rib bone and watched him crunch it up.
Mark said that it was clearly not hurting him. He had not winced, or objected when Lucy had poked his teeth. Given that he snarls threateningly when Roger Poopy even tries to suck a bit of his fur, for the purposes of reassurance, we thought that probably he did not mind about the bad teeth in the least.
We contemplated removing them ourselves. One of the taxi drivers did this with his own tooth, using Jack Daniels as an anaesthetic, and we have had the occasional go at amateur dentistry on ourselves at times when we have been especially short of cash.
In the end we thought that we would probably leave it for now and see if it started to bother him, but I am afraid that he might be approaching the end of his days.
Mark says that he has got until it all starts getting painful, and then he has got until painkillers stop working. His days are numbered.
I shall be sad when we get to that time. He might be a bad tempered old grump, but I am in something of a glass house in that department.
Poor the dog.
