Doggone

It is very late and I am on the taxi rank.

I have only just got around to writing this.

That sentence really lends itself to the word gotten, which never came back after it emigrated to America, I considered using it, but decided against it because of being English. I have used an Americanism in the title, and think that one is quite enough for any one diary entry.

The reason for such a tardy beginning is that we have had a domestic crisis. I do not wish anybody to become worried, and so to avoid any unnecessary anxiety I will tell you now that it is all happily resolved, and so you can listen to the recitation of events without feeling troubled.

Roger Poopy went missing.

He ran off this afternoon when I was shouting at Mark.

I am not sorry I was shouting at Mark. I was very cross. His box of plumbing fittings has been left in my kitchen for several weeks now, ever since he thought he might start to install the pipes for the divorce solar panel and then didn’t. He moved it into the conservatory for a while, and then back into the kitchen.

He can’t fit it into his shed because of all the junk in there.

I was explaining, loudly, that I like my house to look like a nice hotel, and that the presence of a massive tub of bits of pipe and spanners was not a desirable accessory. I was doubly cross because he had just been to the tip and left almost everything that I would consider rubbish behind.

We had a disagreement about the definition of rubbish. His was wrong.

I imagine you will struggle to believe that there were some bits of firewood that have been cluttering up our yard for months simply because he thinks they are too good to burn. He was wrong about that as well.

Anyway, during the shouting, Roger Poopy, who does not like shouting, mostly because he is never quite sure that it is not directed at him, sloped off out of the back gate.

The back gate was open because Mark was going to take some things that he wished to save secretly up to the farm out of my way.

I was busy telling him that a rubbish heap at the farm was just as bad as one in the garden when we noticed the absence of dog.

He was gone.

We hunted everywhere. We went to the Library Gardens and to the cash and carry. We went around the village and to the park. Then we went to everywhere again to make sure.

I rang the vet and the police but nobody had seen him.

We could not begin to imagine any circumstances under which anybody might steal him, no matter how valuable a commodity dogs might have become. He has lost his collar during some recent altercation with Rosie, and tends to growl in greeting, and hence we thought he might not be easily captured.

Apart from that he is a first class pillock. I know that sounds harsh, but he has been very definitely under-endowed in the intellectual department.

Despite this obvious deficiency, Rosie was very upset. She refused to go for her own walk and hung around the garden miserably, staring at the space where Roger Poopy ought to be.

In the end we had to go to work, where I spent ages putting advertisements on Facebook pages for lost dogs. I was restrained about these and limited my description to his being ginger and neglected to mention that he was also a boneheaded idiot. Lots of people liked them, which mystified me, and some people marked them with pictures of hearts, which mystified me even more and made me wonder if perhaps I am suffering from some sort of emotional deficiency. I do not think I have ever seen anything on Facebook which would move me sufficiently to add a picture of a face clutching a heart at the bottom of it, perhaps I am a sociopath in my inner soul. Anyway, I was encouraged to find that people were well-intentioned, although nobody had actually seen him.

Then some time later I got a phone call from the Peppers, whom regular readers might recall have emigrated to Scotland.

Somebody had called them wondering if Roger Poopy ought to be out by himself, careering around the park barking at people.

Mark and I shot off the taxi rank up to the park, where I bellowed at the top of my voice, and sure enough, a small ginger shape came belting across the cricket pitch, beside himself with relief and joy at not being alone in the world after all.

Then he recalled that he was not supposed to run away and spend the day barking at people, and rolled over on the grass, apologetically, grinning with all of his teeth.

I sighed and forgave him.

We still have an idiot.