Despite prolonged and determined efforts I did not get my day’s tasks done, and worse, I am late for work.
I am writing to you in a snatched ten minutes whilst I am waiting for my flask of tea to boil. I forgot that I would like to take tea with me, and remembered just as I was setting off out of the back door. This is very rubbish because I take a flask of tea every single night, so perhaps I am getting dementia. If so, and any of the children are reading this, I know you are not allowed to do euthanasia so leave me by myself with a decent gun and I will save you the trouble. Nursing homes are expensive and horrible. I do not want to be in one, not even as a visitor.
I might like Cooper’s Chase. That looked jolly nice on the film.
In the meantime since I am still supposed to be maintaining my own life without the aid of underpaid Filipino care assistants, I have spent today getting on with it.
We did not have our walk.
This was partly because I am idle, but mostly because Roger Poopy has got a sore paw.
He has been limping unenthusiastically for the last few days, and last night Oliver and I had a proper look at it, with a torch, and discovered a large pink swelling on it. We poked this a bit, which he did not like, and in the end smeared it with Germolene, which is my favourite cure-all, and left him to it.
This morning he did not want to walk on it. He would not come down the stairs when I shouted him for our morning dog-emptying-on-the-fells excursion, so I called the vet.
I did this with the greatest reluctance, because vets can charge with even more ruthless efficiency than garages, but a dead dog involves hole-digging and other general nuisance, which I decided were beyond my scope at the moment.
This afternoon we all trooped over to the vet’s.
Rosie came too, because I could not imagine how noisily miserable she would be to find herself excluded from such an excursion.
We upset everybody else in the vet’s as soon as we walked in through the door, because they were not on leads, since we don’t have any, and one woman leaped to her feet and said in a tone of faux-terror that her dear little dog was very timid and vulnerable, and would have a trauma if allowed to be introduced to my smelly hooligans, so the nurse produced a lead and told me to put them on it, which I declined. I explained that they were Good Dogs and would stay by my feet all by themselves, and then called them To Heel in such a thunderous manner that they crept into obedient line behind me and hid under my chair when I sat down.
They would have very much liked to belt around the waiting room chasing some of the other stupid dogs, which were straining on leads and barking at one another, but they knew that they must not, and merely allowed themselves frustrated little whimpering noises as they gazed at them.
The other people in the waiting room made tutting noises and the faux-terror woman said that it was shocking that my dogs were not under proper control and on leads like everybody else’s.
Fortunately the vet called us in then, because the dogs have got rather more self-control than I have, and if anybody was likely to get into a fight in the vet’s waiting room it was not them
They followed me obediently into the surgery, with one or two longing backward glances, and poor Roger Poopy was lifted up with some difficulty, because he had become deadweight, on to the table, where he trembled violently and tried to make himself as small as possible.
The vet poked the swollen bit on his paw, which promptly and messily burst.
This was obviously a huge relief, because Roger cheered up immediately, and tried to get down.
The vet said that it was a cyst, and prescribed antibiotics, which cost me seventy five quid, so next time I might just start digging the hole.
He said that Roger should be compelled to rest, and that he should have a cone collar to stop him licking it.
I am of the opinion that if it were bad for injuries to be licked then we would not all wish to do it. Please do not misunderstand, I have no interest in licking Roger Poopy’s disgusting pus-filled wounds, I will leave that to Rosie, who loves him far more than I do, but when I cut my own fingers I always want to suck them immediately. I feel the same about picking scabs, it is so irresistible there must be some biological benefit. In any case I think the cone collars are wickedly cruel, and Stop Doing That generally works pretty well if there are things like stitches that should not be tugged about.
I declined the cone collars, forked out the seventy five quid, and we departed.
The dogs belted joyously around the car park, and so I think I am going to ignore the advice about rest as well. They would be very sorry not to go for a walk again tomorrow, especially if his paw is not hurting any more.
Normality will be restored in the morning.
