Dogs Delight 15 Takeaway

 

   I also try to avoid the hearty and matronly trio who play long games at the tennis club in season and any other sports they can find for miles around, pedalling with sturdy legs between venue and village.  There is a constant danger that they will appear around any bend, escapees from a Beryl Cook canvas, and dismount to vigorously massage Bailey and vigorously quiz me.  I have no idea why they ask so many questions because I can tell they are not really interested in my replies.  I expect it is social conditioning.

Two days after visiting the showroom I abandon the fields for the relative peace of Laxley and happen to see the vicar entering the off-licence, wearing his new panama.  He very rarely strolls around the village, for which I cannot blame him.  After all, he has a choice of five parishes to honour with a visitation.  He is the Reverend Newsome and he is exceptionally tall and bony, like a memento mori; but when he speaks and writes he is sadly prosaic and, like most clergy, not at all spiritual.  I did not like to accost him as I had Bailey with me, gasping and pulling hard on a stout lead. 

I was taking him to see the vet because after drinking in the Lone Gelding the night before he stole some chicken carcasses from the teeming bins in the inn yard and swallowed some of the bones.  Richard called it a ‘takeaway.’  

The vet, who lives with seven Alsatians, dislikes human beings.  He intimidates me almost as much as Saracen, so that when I am in the waiting room I have to breathe slowly and hug my knees and tell myself that his bitter sarcasm is just the corollary of his devotion to animals.  I suppose it is lucky that he does not direct his contempt at dogs.  He is especially scathing today, because of the chicken bones.

We have run out of dog biscuits so we return via the crossroads, where there is a convenience store run by the Chatterjees.  They are a silent couple, said to be running the shop down, and the goods are arranged sparsely along mainly empty shelves; but there is a lone box of Bailey’s favourites left with a very noble Labrador on the front.  Mr Chatterjee lumbers out of the back room when the shop bell rings and sadly takes my money.  He tells me they are hoping to move out before winter because they find the village depressing.




Dogs Delight is now available on Kindle at 
 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dogs-Delight-ebook/dp/B00CA8XZKC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368550507&sr=1-1&keywords=dogs+delight

Dogs Delight 16 Random

When we get home I lock Bailey outside and watch him wander over to the angel and cock his leg against the plinth.  Then I hunt for the Chronicle, the village freesheet, which I find at last in the bottom of a drawer between lurid rhododendron catalogues.  I take it across to the window seat: Peter Hopkirk is striding past in waders, a sack containing moving animals over one shoulder.  On the penultimate page is Reverend Newsome’s Lines from the Vicarage, but they are not as encouraging as I would like.  This month he is reflecting on bus shelters again. 

‘A chance encounter with a senior citizen,’ he writes, ‘set me thinking about the randomness of life.  But is life really random?  I feel that Mr X and I were meant to share that moment of communion, waiting for almost three quarters of an hour for the number 63.’

Possibly that is how he speaks from the pulpit.  I decide that his least elevated sermons will probably be for the Family Service, which is notorious for children running about enjoying themselves; so if I do go to church I must attend something less frantic.  I have long wanted to experience Evensong, which seems to be a service in which you can remain more detached.  I imagine the dark cool interior of Saint Agnes’ and the soaring organ music, the few reflective souls dotted about the pews enjoying moments of calm and space and eternity.  I will sit among them and perhaps I too will achieve some kind of revelation.  But then each shadowy figure becomes more defined and I see that every one is an Apostle.  A week passes by.

Dogs Delight is now available on Kindle at 
 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dogs-Delight-ebook/dp/B00CA8XZKC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368550507&sr=1-1&keywords=dogs+delight