Dunking brambles,
dunking brambles/Splash! – in the coffee...
Oh no, it's bagles that Slim Gaillard sung about.
A much more pleasurable activity, dunking bagles, than wrestling with brambles.
Especially the rampant kind of brambles that rip your flesh and render useless even
the thickest gloves. With the beautiful weather of the latter part of the week,
I resumed my 20-year struggle with brambles. Like ants and cockroaches, they
are one of nature's hardiest survivors.
I've been wrestling with them for so long now that I've
almost forgotten the reason why. Something to do with the territorial status quo.
It's like one of those interminable and impenetrable wars during the Dark Ages.
What's it all about, Daphne? At least
it gave me a chance to do something useful while surveying the newcomer. She
who demands attention.
Getting to grips with nature also affords a close-up on
its seasonal process. Trudging in from my labours, I noticed that the climbing rose
is covered in budding leaves. Gradually and almost imperceptibly, the times they are a-changing. Winter is
slowly giving way to spring, always a source of rejoicing.
Apart from the occasional bursts of industry – I was up
on the roof in the sunshine, for example, with kitchen roll and blue spray,
cleaning the accumulated grime off the solar panels – most of the week has been
given to the continuing education of Daphne Sampson. I've been encouraging her
to do her business out of doors by watering the growing grass myself. She's
learning fast; just the occasional overnight accident now.
Friday evening, however, everything went to pot. First, there
was an extended power struggle involving the sofas, whose throws we removed to
reveal them in their glory for Daphne's first social event. We're trying to
teach her that she can't sit on the sofas unless we happen to be sitting with
her. Understandably, it's a hard concept to grasp. But before our friends, the
Jacksons, arrived with Hattie, their French bulldog, a long and intransigent
battle of wits took place. Every time we removed the pup from a sofa to put her
in her basket, we found her sitting on another one as soon as our backs were
turned.
Once the Jacksons arrived, pandemonium broke out. Hattie
is a squat and plump-ish dog who leads her life on short legs close to the
ground. Her squashed face gives her a winning expression, but she suffers from
her breed's genetic breathlessness whenever she exerts herself. Daphne was
initially intimidated by her huffing, bustling elder, but soon emerged from
under a chair to spar with her guest. Such was the excitement that puddles
started appearing with alarming regularity. All of her recent learning went
straight out of the French windows for the evening.
She also discovered her bark. (Or yap, at this stage.)
Trying to conduct a conversation with such a commotion going on is not easy. I
felt particularly for Myrtle, our not inconsiderable cat, who was upstairs
sitting on my records: her refuge of choice. The Daughter and I took turns to
go up and reassure her that everything was really all right, that the
disturbance was temporary. It's hard for her at the moment. Her sister hasn't
returned since taking off on Evening 1. Then we had to take away her food at
night, because Daphne has discovered how to get upstairs to polish it off. And
now, to put the old tin lid on it, here was her otherwise peaceful house full of
rowdy dogs.
Over dinner, the Jacksons asked us about the origins of
our Terrierdor. We've discovered during the week that Daphne has a real
aptitude for rooting out snails, which she brings back in via the cat-flap in
order to practise her shell control on the terracotta tiled floor. The sound of
the ensuing scuttling reverberates around the house. So we've concluded that
the mother was a Labrador and the father a Gascon Snail Hound (a very rare
breed, once thought to be extinct). Our plan now is to fine-tune this instinctive
skill by giving her a taste for truffles.
That way, she can earn her keep. The weekly bill for her
board and lodging has gone up exponentially with the discovery that the
bog-standard puppy-dawg food just gives her diarrhoea. So we've had to invest
in a bag of so-called scientifically formulated croquettes. I am sceptical, but
have to say that her little pinky-grey furless tummy is getting more rotund
with each increasingly solid no. 2. She
bellyful.
Although we were worn out by our Friday evening with the
Jacksons, the good thing about having a canine guest was that Daphne was worn
out all the next day. If there's anything better than a youngster at play, it's
a youngster asleep. You can get your life back, briefly. With no rugby
internationals to deflect my motivation, I was able to get back outside in the
balmy sunshine and clean out the mile-long stretch of copper-coloured aluminium
guttering at the back of the house, which hasn't seen a gloved hand in about a
decade. It wasn't too bad, considering, although typically the boggiest stretch
was out of reach of my ladder. My clever idea of trying to dislodge the debris
with chimney-sweeping baguettes
proved remarkably ineffectual.
This weekend, our young learner will receive another
house guest. They can play outside in the sunshine. With luck, the meeting will
wear Daphne out for at least another 24 hours. The good wife plans to plant the
Alfred Lord Sampson memorial rose donated by the Thompsons, his former god-parents.
And this particular serf can get back into his suit of armour, so to speak, and
go off to war once more against the vicious brambles. In the centuries to come,
they will write about the struggle and maybe speculate what it was all about. This
life of ours, it's quite an education.
No comments:
Post a Comment