I was late for work.
Despite rushing about for the entire day, apart from two guilty cups of tea with the Peppers, I did not get anything like finished, and by the time I collapsed into a rather horrid sweaty heap into the taxi, I was late.
This did not seem to matter, because there were lots of taxis on the taxi rank already. Now that there are no night clubs, and you can’t earn money late at night, everybody is coming to work very early. This is making the day drivers grumpy, and they all stay at work later, because of not earning enough. It is not cheering to come to the taxi rank and find seven taxis there in front of you.
I did not mind today. Today I was glad of a bit of peaceful time in which I could be idle with a clear conscience.
All of the usual daily things had to be done, and then I had to take the camper van back to Kendal for MOT Test The Sequel, which it failed again.
This was made even more tiresome, if that is possible, by Mark having forgotten to move the driver’s seat forwards after he had driven it the other evening, and it was so far back that my feet would not reach the pedals.
The driver’s seat does not move easily.
You have to pull up the bar underneath at the front, and then poke a large pole in behind the seat and lever it forward.
I did not have a large pole.
Stupid of me.
I wagged the bar about fruitlessly and heaved my shoulder against the seat. I tugged and hauled with all my uselessly elderly lady might.
The seat would not move.
I was late anyway.
I had to drive to Kendal perching on the edge of the seat in order to reach the pedals, clinging to the steering wheel in order not to slip backwards.
I did not like this.
I rang Mark, who suggested that I ask the man at the garage to fix it, but when I got there the man at the garage was so busy and cross that I hardly liked to ask him even just to look at the new number plate light.
He was very busy indeed and very cross that I had wasted his time asking him to look at a still-not-fixed camper van.
I drove away meekly, still perched on the edge of the seat.
When I got back to Windermere I only just had time to shoe-horn the camper van backwards and forwards into its parking space. This was not fun on a hot day without power steering and with the ridicule of some unhelpful but entertained taxi drivers on the taxi rank behind me. In the end one of them kindly agreed to toot on his horn when I was about to smack into his bumper, and with this invaluable assistance I managed to park.
I belted off back home to hurl the dogs into the back of the taxi. We were going to the vet for them to have their booster vaccinations. I do not know what this protects them against, but it seemed prudent in the current climate of social responsibility. Also the vet has rung me three times, sent me half a dozen emails, a text message and a letter through the post.
When we got there the vet would not let us in, in case we had some disease already. A person in a medical costume who was probably a vet but could have been a disguised hairdresser for all I knew, came out and took the dogs in one at a time, whilst I sat outside and waited in the disease-free sunshine.
Roger Poopy went cheerily, wagging his tail on the end of the vet’s lead.
His father growled bitterly when it was his turn, and planted all four paws rigidly on the tarmac, so that they practically smoked as he was dragged inside.
The vet came out with him and said that he had got a bad tooth, and also that she thought he might have an abscess. I said that we knew about the tooth, but that I did not have six hundred quid to get it taken out.
The vet said briskly that obviously something in his mouth was sore, because he had growled at her on the table and snarled when she had tried to put her fingers in his mouth.
I explained that actually he was a horrible grumpy bad tempered dog and that growling was what he does when people invade his personal space, which happens to start about six yards away.
The vet said that she thought it was probably toothache, and I was exaggerating about the price, because actually it would only be five hundred and seventy.
I said that I was not going to spend even five hundred and seventy quid on a dog who we think is about sixteen years old, and has a cancerous growth on his rear end. If he had an abscess perhaps he could have some antibiotics.
The vet said that they did not do that. They would take his teeth out under general anaesthetic and perhaps give him some antibiotics later.
I said that he was too old for an anaesthetic.
She said that they would do a blood test first to see if he was fit to have one, at a small cost of £49.50, and that if he was not then he could not have an operation and probably would have to be put down.
I said that in that case we could cut out the middle man and shoot him at the farm for nothing.
She gave me a price list then, and talked in a salesman sort of way about poor suffering doggies, so we went home.
The Peppers came over and we discussed it.
I do not think that his teeth hurt very much, because he is still crunching up chicken bones. I prised his reluctant jaws open and poked his gums to see if he would get cross and bite me, but he just looked ordinarily cross, in a grumpily resigned sort of way.
In the end we consulted the mighty Internet, and discovered that a dog abscess could be cured with some antibiotics. As it happened we had got some of exactly the right kind, so we gave him one of those, and a pain killer just in case.
I will try him with this over the next few days and see what happens. He is not very well anyway. He is weary and achy and has an uncomfortable growth on his back end, and does not drink enough water on hot days.
It would be nice if we could cheer him up a bit.
I hope it works.
