Week 39: Slug!

”Well isn’t your puppy adorable! How has he changed the family dynamic?”

We are on a Zoom session with Alison, the Psychologist assigned by CAMHS (Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services) to help us with BT’s (Boy Teenager) anxiety. We’ve opened the session with Milo (the Spaniel pup) sitting on the sofa between me and Gin (so called as you can hear her emergency bottles clinking in her bag from 500 years away).

”He has most definitely made an impact. On pretty much everything. Including my rear-left speaker in the TV room as the bugger has chewed through the cable whilst we weren‘t looking.”

This is a milestone call with CAMHS. We’ve been receiving their help for nearly three years, since BT first became really unwell, back when it was all properly scary. I won’t replay it all again now, but suffice it to say that as we ended up in an ambulance several times going to A&E with him, CAMHS made him a priority. Sadly, he never really accepted their help, and so their Family Support experts Alison and Karen have been helping Gin and I to try to help BT. And you know what? It’s only gone and worked, at least to some extent. BT is still anxious around people he doesn’t know and can’t engage with formal education, but the lad that was too nervous to go into the back garden for a month, couldn’t handle seeing any relatives or friends for a year, and couldn’t face opening the front door to anyone .... well that boy now is a shadow in history. Today’s discussion with CAMHS might be the last one that is needed; it’s a big decision and we are talking this through with Alison.

Milo, perched between us, is blissfully unaware of the import of the call and after a few minutes decides to jump off the sofa to do his own thing. And dear chums, Milo doing his own thing is not necessarily the thing you want him to do. Just as I begin to say “I think BT has made so much progress we could think about closing his case with you, Alison”, the pup slides into Mr Luvva Luvva mode. His intended amour is the blanket that drapes over his crate at night to keep him snug. Gin digs me in the ribs as Milo finishes scrabbling the blanket into a ball and unleashes the beast. Drrrrr, Drrrrr, Drrrrr. He’s going to so fast it sounds like a jacked-up Woodpecker who has been plugged into the mains.

“There‘s some sort of interference on the line?” says Alison, Milo being out of shot of the ipad camera that we are using for the meeting.

“Ah yes, they are digging up the road just up the way” I say.

The call continues and Mr Luvva Luvva ”digs up the road“ for another 10 minutes before he falls on his nose and conks out. Suddenly Gin is digging me in the ribs again, and trying to point at something with her eyes. I look perplexed. She stares a bit harder in the direction of the door. What? Wait up. What is That? Oh God, the biggest slug I’ve ever seen is sliding down the wall, leaving his horrible, gacky, silvery trail behind him.

”Are you alright you two?“ enquires Alison.

Well not entirely, but as we are trying to convince you that we are actually all sane and competent enough to dispense with your services, somehow telling you about Mr Luvva Luvva and his pet slug don‘t seem to be the Best Thing To Do.

We rush to bring the call to a conclusion so that we can deal with the Mother of All Slugs. Good news! Alison agrees that BT is so much better, he should be signed off. It’s a strange feeling, knowing that the support that could be called upon at any time will no longer be there, but at the same time it’s so good to know that the experts agree that BT has made really good progress in dealing with his illness.

We both leave the room to make a couple of celebratory gin & tonics, and find something to put the slug in, contemplating how said slug found his way into the house in the first place. I have a suspicion which points to something with four legs and a penchant for bringing in Things from the Garden. Back into the Sitting Room, the pup is now awake and looking pleased with himself. The slug .... gone. Mysteriously the slivery trail stops shortly after it reaches the floor. Oh God he’s helped himself to a Slugsicle hasn’t he? Update: Gin has just reminded me that she later found the slug hiding on a table leg. Flushed him down the karzi. As you do.

It’s a mystery to me why dogs, with all their refined senses, will eat literally anything. How they have survived as a species I don‘t know.

Anyway, week 39. You know when you get an official looking letter through the post with funny little reference numbers in the envelope window? And your immediate reaction is “But I haven’t done anything wrong!” before you’ve even opened it? Received one of those. I haven‘t done anything wrong! Opened it; it’s a traffic violation. Ach, must be a mistake. I wasn’t out driving anywhere near the scene of the offence. I’m sure when I check the camera captures it will show the wrong type of car. But hold on! What is this? That is indeed one of our cars, being driven by someone so short you can only see the top of their head over the steering wheel in the enforcement camera picture. GGGGIIIIINNNNN! She’s driven through the world’s shortest no drive zone at the end of a street, marked out by four plant pots with traffic signs on them. Big plant pots mind. With big no entry signs on them. In her defence they were lower than the bonnet so she probably couldn’t see them as she didn’t have her booster seat.

GT (Girl Teenager) has been experimenting with her make up this week. She usually errs on the side of Understated Goth, but this week has gone for Drama. Except it was more Dalmatian. No that’s not fair, there were no spots. Her eye-make up, bars of black and subtly blended green, was something that Adam Ant would have paid to have done. And then we worked out who she looked like: Milo! She’d gone Goth Spaniel on us! It was actually beautifully done; a work of art. But guaranteed to draw comment.

And BT? As if to prove the point that CAMHS were right to sign him off, he spent both Saturday and Sunday afternoons out with his mates, messing about in the park and woods, going to the Fried Chicken shop and basically doing stuff that lads of his age do. How good is that?!

And that was it. Eh? No? It wasn’t? Mr H, you haven’t mentioned the leaking washing machine door (now sorted), the apparent leaking bath (it wasn’t; it was User Error with the hand shower attachment), the hours spent in the phone to Sky and BT (the telecommunications lot, not the boy) negotiating better TV, Broadband and Mobile packages, and the even more hours spent on the phone to O2 trying to get the phones unlocked and numbers transferred. And then there were the dinners (the best - roast sea bass with soy and ginger from Ottolenghi’s Simple; buy this recipe book if you don‘t have it!), the pup successfully walking off-lead twice, and finally getting back out on two wheels for the first time since the hound was acquired. Actually, all in all, not a bad week. If only Arsenal could remember how to play football.

Love & elbow-grease,

Mr H

x

PS I hear there is some dissent over the tips given out by Mrs Hinch (see first blog entry). Should I ever find time to clean properly again, I’ll let you whether they work.

PPS On a serious note, two sets of our friends have lost loved ones recently. All our love goes to the Running Around Family and Melbourne’s Finest, Baz & Cal x