The privilege of ageing! Him Indoors goes to collect my tins of food from the vet, only to find a note on them from my vet – and my vet is not my favourite person, let me tell you, since my “anal gland” incident three years ago – telling him that “ Dylan should now be changed to eating Senior food”. Senior? Senior? Hang on, just because I’ve passed my eleventh birthday it does not make me “old”. I won’t have it, which I have been proving ever since to Him Indoors by being very demanding about chasing the ball. Often. Indoors and out. All day.
The fact that my legs are not as supple as they used to be, sadly shown by my apparent inability to jump up on The Bosses bed in one clean movement, does not make me “senior”. I can happily walk a good walk, as I did the other week when my mate Auntie Karen took me along with her dog Alf (a very lively border collie) for a few miles.
Alf came and visited for the day the other week when Karen was working. It was all a bit stressful for me at times, being honest, because he is for ever on the move. Even worse, he sat in my place on the settee. I gave him my “stare” and a bit of a growl but the young pup just jumped up and bounced around the room getting all of my toys out! The final act was when he jumped into the window on top of the book collection. I nearly passed out. Him Indoors was not impressed.
He has not been too impressed with our politicians either. He has spent hours explaining the pros and cons of Brexit to me over the months, often in varying levels of outrage at one side or the other. But the apparent delaying tactics of the Maybot, combined with all the antics of the Old Trot as he tried to “persuade” his MP’s not to leave, reduced him the other evening to a gurgling, screaming sound at the TV as he lay in bed with his rather large whiskey.
He was laughing though when he watched the contortions of the Od Trot trying to avoid sacking that bloke Williamson the other day. All this inbuilt racism and anti-semitic stuff has taken a long time coming, he said, and quoted at me lots of old examples about some folks called Hamas and Hezbolah.
He’s never been much of a fan of Mr Trump. “Old Crook” seems to be his usual greeting when he appears on our tv screen. But when he listened to that lawyer bloke giving his evidence, he did literally go ballistic with laughter. Apparently he feels that is staggering that anybody ever voted for him, because he had known about his practices for years by reading books and newspapers!
We’ve had a few trips to the pub in recent weeks, which is always enjoyable because I am allowed a few crisps. Occasionally I get to bag the lot, but normally he keeps a tight watch on me. My favourite is going to the Great Western because they serve up rather splendid cheese or ham cobs, plus pork pies that are wonderful and I normally manage to scrounge something by going round the tables.
One of the reasons for a few of those trips was the resurgence of our beloved football team. Rumpy Pumpy is a much happier place since the Portugese Git departed with his minions and his millions. Our Norwegian hero has ski-iid into Old Trafford and put the smiles back on The Bosses face. There is a downside to it all though because his re-found enthusiasm has meant he’s back to jumping up and down when United score, shouting at the tv when an offside is missed, and all that sort of hoolie behaviour. For a sleepy chap like me, trying to relax whilst the game is being played, it is extremely disturbing. I’m forever barking at him because he has frightened me with his antics. I try giving him “the stare” but that doesn’t help either because these days he is too keen to watch the match. In the good old Jose days the footy was so boring he never hardly looked at the screen.
It’s not all sweetness and light though because Him Indoors does have some bad nights. He gets up in the middle of the night sometimes, woken up and can’t get back to sleep. I think he should try turning the radio off but he won’t have it, even after I’ve rather cleverly caught the wire and pulled the lead out of the back to try and help. I reckon he needs a nice lady to cuddle him up – obviously nothing more since I’m sleeping in his bedroom – because he seems to miss his Chris rather too much on these sleepless nights.
Finally, the Great Impresario of Festival fame is still busily burrowing away trying to sort out his acts for October. I gather it is looking ok but still some gaps to be filled. He has taken his eye off the ball in recent weeks I reckon because together with his co-conspirator Peter they had to organise a special music night at the Hall that featured Kiki Dee and a new band, Saving Grace. It wasn’t just any new band though, it had been set-up by Robert Plant, he of world fame and a top rock-god in every way! The old boy seemed to both happy and stressed all at the same time. The price of success!
Stay happy folks!
Woof! Woof!
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