The sunshine is lovely.
Life seems pretty lovely this week. We are warm and the hyacinths and daffodils are in full bloom, the children are home, and the world is a splendid place.
For everybody, that is, except the poor dogs.
It is bird-nesting season again, and so time for the dogs, who had become dreadfully smelly, to have their semi-annual far-right haircuts.
Today I changed into some disposable clothes that I have been saving for the purpose, built a little table in the back garden, and set to with the trimmers and the nail clippers.
They were not happy at all. They do not like haircuts, and it is not at all an easy task without bloodshed.
I almost managed the no bloodshed part, but right at the very end, when I was clipping the very last of Roger’s claws, he gave an almighty, desperate wriggle, and I cut too much of the claw off, and his poor toe bled.
We were both very upset, him more than me, obviously. His paw was sore, and worse, it turns out to be the one he uses for scratching himself, so he finished up with blood spatters all over his head and neck, like something out of one of Oliver’s games.
I gave both of them a bath, which further deepened their gloom, although they needed it very much. Their coats had become so long and dense that underneath their skin was flaky and horrible, because of having had nowhere to go for the last few months.
When they were done they both cheered up a great deal, and bounced around joyfully, pleased to be light and cool again. We wrapped some kitchen roll round Roger’s paw, and Mark fastened it with some tape. This was as much to stop the carpets getting covered in blood as for any hygienic reasons, and also because he chewed at it so much that it kept starting to bleed over and over again.
When his paw was bandaged he had to walk on three legs, and held the injured one in the air, stretched out behind him as far away from himself as he could manage, like a surprisingly ugly ginger ballerina. He kept trying to shake the bandage off whilst he was walking, and you should not laugh at somebody else’s awful misfortune, but I am rather afraid that we did, a bit.
We put the leftover fur in a box on top of the shed for the birds to take for their nests, last year they took every last shred of it, and indeed, by the time we went to work, three or four starlings were perched on the washing line, looking speculatively at it, it will all be gone in a couple of days, recycled into warm beds for spring babies.
Whilst I was busy traumatising the dogs Mark carried on demolishing the old shed. This is the lean-to bit at the back of the house, and I am more than pleased that it is going. It is ugly and scruffy, and has become a repository for rubbish that we can’t quite bear to put in the bin, but don’t want either to look at or to use. This is things like cardboard boxes that will be handy for lighting the fire, and an enormous bucket of rusty nails that Mark has taken out of firewood which he thinks he will weigh in next time the scrap metal man comes for something. I think probably we will put those in the dustbin quite soon, but I have not told him that.
It was a good idea to start taking it down today, because we had got hardly any firewood left, and so it could be re-used straight away. Mark bashed the slates off, and then cut the timbers into stove-sized bits and brought them indoors in the wheelbarrow.
He had not finished by the time we had to stop to get ready for work, but all the same we felt as though Progress was Being Made.
We left Roger determinedly chewing his bandage off and came to sit on the taxi rank, which is where we are now.
Things are moving forward.
