Ungleblarg, continued
Third day. This is booooooring.*
* * *
Disturbing encounters in the company of hellhounds:
Encounter number one: This evening we were boiling along in pursuit of a strolling family: mum, dad, two ambulant offspring and a blob in a pushchair. As we steamed up behind them, the dad looked over his shoulder and then shepherded the rest to one side, so we could bomb past. Well, most of the rest: he, mum, pushchair, and little boy moved hastily to the left. Medium sized girl moved to the right. The path at that point is not all that wide, and hellhound necks have a Reed Richards** quality. They can be trotting perfectly at my side on a loose lead and still be poking their long pointy noses in inappropriate places.*** I paused for a moment but the girl just stood there, so I was trying to hook my companions in as we passed, and I did not look too fondly at her—ten years old or so, I guess, about as big around as a pencil but just starting to shoot up. Nandalia!† her parents shouted. If everyone moves to one side of the path to let someone else by, you move to the same side of the path!
An important point about this is that they seemed like a good-natured, getting-along-with-each-other family. They looked like going for a walk together was a normal thing to do, even perhaps as if they enjoyed each other’s company. You can tell a lot by the way people walk, as you steam up behind them. And when they shouted at Nandalia, they didn’t sound angry, only mildly exasperated. And then the mother said, in no worse than a half-affectionate, half-exasperated tone, and apparently for my benefit: Oh, she’s useless.
Um. Oh, she’s independent? Oh, she has a will of her own? Oh, her mind is on higher things? Even, oh, she’s ten years old, and path width hasn’t occurred to her yet. She’s useless really bothers me, even in an affectionate tone of voice. I never raised kids, so I don’t know how truly, gruesomely, all-inclusively annoying they can be††, but this just doesn’t seem to me a good tactic for raising flexible, competent adults, part of whose competence and flexibility is based on having a durable sense of self-worth. And just by the way, the kid is already wearing glasses, and—remember I got quite a good look at her because I was less than thrilled by her chosen stopping place too—had the mien of someone who has decided to grow up to be the weird loner always-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-path nerdy one.
Encounter number two: We were, it occurs to me, on the same stretch of footpath a few days ago, thundering up the final slope of the river path before we turn up an even steeper hill into town. Ahead of us was a woman in one of those small all-terrain vehicles that’s a kind of cross between a golf cart and a wheelchair. With her were two large Alsatians on leads. She was stopped and talking to a man who was leaning against the bank on that side; there’s a narrow sort of shelf at the top of the bank that you can walk on if you like heights. On the other side there’s a house wall. Man, woman, Pinzgauer, and two (large) Alsatians are taking up the entire path.
The Alsatians see us first. One of them stands there looking alert, like a police dog at a burglar, and the other starts leaping up and down and barking. Not in a good way. The woman looks up, sees us, and moves the Pinzgauer . . . maybe six inches toward the man leaning against the bank. While she’s got the business end of the Alsatians cranked in toward her, as the going-to-pieces one bounds around, his tail is still very nearly brushing the house wall . . . and, pardon me, but she’s holding their leashes in her hand. There’s nothing wrong with my legs, my hellhounds weigh less than half what her Alsatians weigh, and if I were trying to hold them sitting down while they made a bolt for something irresistibly interesting . . . they’d drag me off my chair.
Oh, he’s fine, she says of the noisy one. He’s a pussycat really.
He doesn’t look anything like a pussycat to me and there’s still the one with the ninja stare.
I think we’ll just go up here, I say, and we vault up the bank. It is interesting to me that Chaos—who walks wailing past the Border collie who bit him, he’s so anxious to make friends—isn’t at all reluctant to give the Alsatians a miss. Maybe he doesn’t like the stare either.
The woman says sharply, Don’t you believe me?
Believe? What the f—dranglefab does belief have to do with it? But I am all mouth and no trousers in real life and I said in my best turning-away-wrath voice, I’m afraid we’ve had too many bad experiences with dogs we don’t know . . . and stayed on the shelf, Chaos, who was on the Alsatian side of the bank, cringing against my legs.
So you don’t believe me, the woman said, furious. I shrugged and kept on going, and as we turned the corner up toward the town I could hear her shouting at her friend—shouting so I could hear her, of course—I just find it so rude when people . . .
At which point I was out of earshot, thanks to the sound-defeating properties of fine old Hampshire brick-and-flint walls, and my increasing deafness.
People. Weird.
* * *
* I’m so out of it I cancelled handbells. So I’m depressed as well as ungleblarged.
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Fantastic
Ordinarily my mind would go directly to Elastigirl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elastigirl_(The_Incredibles)
since The Incredibles is one of the best movies ever made, but this afternoon I was reduced to watching the Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer as I lay on the sofa. The hellhounds liked it fine. I fear they are not very discerning.
*** One of the great hellhound mysteries is what makes one person interesting and another person humdrum and insipid. Whatever it is it is not relatable to human standards: I accept that hellhounds are not necessarily going to gravitate toward people reading LOTR and/or wearing pink All Stars but I admit to being startled when they want to leap gladly at someone who reeks of twelve packs a day. And while they are instant pals with anyone who wants to say hello, sometimes they are nice, polite, well-mannered, tail-wagging four-feet-on-the-ground doggies and sometimes they are gonzo kangaroo wowee-wowees^. I have no idea, and therefore have to be braced for the worst at all times.
^ Cheez, is this a great demon name or what? http://www.whiterosesgarden.com/Nature_of_Evil/Demons/List_of_Demons/B_contents/bunyip.htm
I always thought bunyip was pretty good.
† I seem to be on an Oz roll tonight.
†† I can extrapolate from puppies . . . puppies who talk back and whom you can’t lock in their crate and run away for a few hours . . . which is deeply frightening.
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