Mostly of Imps and Hellhounds
The weather (with reference to immediately previous Note) is only one manifestation of a rather lumpy day. There’s been a lot of imp activity*: towels keep falling off towel rails, items that were right there in front of me mysteriously disappear, pairs of All Stars I know I’ve just put away keep reappearing in the middle of the floor, anything I want out of my knapsack is always on the bottom, and I’ve managed to leave a dark brown tea ring on my ancient porous plastic sink, which will be a big ugly freller to get off.
And furthermore there is no pupdate today. Whiiiiiiiiiine. B twin has been so disobliging as to go to a sheep show.** She has however promised us a proper full length final*** climactic pupdate as the small furry hooligans—er—I mean sweet adorable puppies pass the eight-week mark and are ready to go out adventuring into the world and begin to contemplate on the distant horizon the prospect of becoming . . . dogs.†
I’ve been running hard against the clock all day because I had both the dentist this afternoon and handbells this evening. The clock has been winning, of course.†† I had a bunch of stuff to get into the post today, which is to say last week, so I was cramming it into envelopes this morning—with one eye on the sky since we’ve had black clouds playing leap-frog all day and I have two hours of hurtle to get in—and of course the self-stick glue doesn’t work†††. Arrgh. Postage is now also so painfully ridiculous that it’s worth a little faffing around with your postage meter and a pair of scissors: I got my resubscription to the (American) Homeopathy Today magazine under the 10 g limit by cutting off the ads and imprecations to raise your level of membership. In spite of the obviously heavy swathe of tape to hold the nonworking-glue flap down. Small cheer.‡
There’s a strange dog staying at my semi-detached neighbour’s. He’s got a much bigger garden than I do ‡‡ but it opens on the road, and his gates are always open. This is not a dog that riots up and down our cul de sac, which is a good thing, since the road at the bottom is disastrously busy. But it is a dog that comes out through the gates and stands in the road whining piteously when she sees hellhounds emerge from our front door . . . but by the time we get to the top of the hill and Wolfgang, she’s retreated back to the lawn beyond the driveway and gives us a silent who, me? stare. This winds the hellhounds up. Granted most things wind the hellhounds up, but I have some sympathy in this instance. I hadn’t thought about Psycho Dog when we piled out the door today, the plan being that we would walk to the PO and post our taped-shut, carefully weighed letters before we hit the high trails. Psycho Dog came out and did her turn, so I suddenly had ramping leviathans‡‡‡ at the ends of the leads . . . I can’t yell No! with letters in my mouth, and I can’t hold onto rampant anything with letters in my hands. . . .
The dentist . . . well, the dentist was the dentist. Was the dentist. And will continue to be the dentist for some time. I get to go back in a few more weeks. Joy. But if this entry is a little less incisive than usual, put it down the effect of my usual extra-quadruple dose of aenesthetic: and it was one of those little insignificant, positively negligible cavities that in fact turned into one of those ‘just a little more . . . just a little more’ details with the drill. But then, I would hardly know I’d been to the dentist if I didn’t come out on my hands and knees. §
But that is not the end of the day’s trials. Handbells. There were handbells. And at the end of the evening, Niall said, Remember that wedding we rang handbells for last month? You had a good time, didn’t you?
What do you mean, I had a good—No! No! No!
Yes. We have another handbell wedding in September. §§
* * *
* Imps get underfoot, like hellhounds. Sometimes you can only tell the imps from the hellhounds because the imps giggle: their effect on towels and All Stars is similar. Hellhounds produce an astonishing range of noises, but giggling, thus far, is not one of them. I think I’ve told you before that—fortunately—common-or-garden variety barking is not much indulged in either, and I try to suppress this when it appears: Darkness is a bit of a barker. I do permit one or two sharp Commands for Attention: he likes to lie in the middle of the floor and then adjure me to rub his tummy. This of course quickly turns into a free for all, since Chaos has no intention of being left out. ^
I get so used to the mostly-minor racket they make that I forget the effect it may have on other people. I’m as pathological as possible about preventing them from flinging themselves on passers-by unless the passers-by have positively asked for such tribulation, but we do tend to swoop down on people and I don’t reel in till the last moment. Tearing over the countryside not long ago they were doing their harmonic double growl over ownership of a plastic bottle as we barrelled down on a pair of Serious Walkers, booted, gaited, and walking-sticked, and shortly before I would start cranking my guys in, the bloke whirled around, stared at us, and said, I thought that was a motorbike.
^ Yes, I keep demonstrating that I am a Bad Dog Owner: when Darkness orders me to rub his tummy, I usually do. But hellhounds are not big advantage-takers: they can’t be bothered. A little roast chicken+, a little rioting, it’s all good. But ruling the universe is not their idea of fun.++
+ The drawback to eating roast chicken in this household is that hellhounds come and stare at you. You’re eating our food! they say. I find this pretty funny in creatures who regularly take the attitude that eating is optional and they’re not in the mood. Darkness does at least more or less eat it as it comes, when he eats. Chaos tends to eat the chicken out and then, left with a bowl of slightly-soggy-with-chicken-stock kibble, hunch up and look ill-used.
Some cat-oriented forum person asked why, if hellhounds will actually eat chicken, I don’t just feed them chicken? The first answer—which someone gave before I got there—is nutritional. Dogs aren’t pure carnivores like cats. The second answer is cost. We spend a frelling fortune on chicken as it is. And plain brown rice was a lot cheaper than fancy niche-market no-cereal kibble is. Sigh.
++ Much. I am presently trying to eat my supper~, write this entry . . . and fend off hellhounds who, having failed to eat as much of their supper as they should after having failed to eat most of their lunch, have decided that it is the perfect moment for sticky-falling-apart toy throwing and general mayhem. Yes, I could tell them to Go Lie Down, but they’d look so sad.
~ which happens to be roast chicken
** www.sheepshow.com A big sheep show. Yeep.
*** Well maybe not absolutely final final
† And may they all be good eaters.
†† I have a basket of decreasingly wet laundry that’s been waiting to get hung up for two days. Fortunately I mostly wear cotton jersey and denim. Besides, wrinkles are nearly de rigueur with All Stars.
††† More imp work.
‡ Another item for the post today was the bill for the Hot Water Heater Man which was what, ten days ago? It arrived yesterday. And down at the bottom it says, payment by return of post please. By return of post? What? What happened to thirty days?
‡‡ If you’ve got a garden, it’s bigger than mine at the cottage. People restricted to balconies and windowsills are allowed to say their gardens are smaller than mine. And it had better be a small balcony.
‡‡‡ More the crocodile end than the dolphin end of Leviathan.
§ I can write a cheque sitting on the floor. It’s not a big deal. Although interaction at the dentist’s front desk has got more challenging because both the regular receptionists have taken an interest in how PEGASUS is coming along. Maybe they’re just worrying about their salaries for next year.
§§ This is really high ranking, ambitious imp behaviour.
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