Week 43: Undead Dolly

"Dad, can I make you up like a Goth?", asked GT (Girl Teenager), who regularly styles herself on Robert Smith from The Cure.

Dad is awash with the Christmas spirit (two bottles of wine).

"Yeah of course. But not today. Maybe Christmas Eve".

Skip forward a few days and GT reminds me of my promise. Just before we are due to go on a Zoom chat with our local chums. She gets out her best and darkest make-up and goes to work. Very soon she starts swearing.

"Why the bloody hell do you have to have such baggy skin?", and "Oh God your wrinkles are making the lines go wonky".

I'm not feeling confident, and even less so when after a few minutes, some more eyeliner and more swearing, she declares that it's the best she can do.

"Now you need some hair". This is a shame because only that morning she threw away a jet-black wig that might have looked ok-ish. I'm left with a couple of wigs that have been floating around for ages; one is an 80s mullet (so "wrong look") and the other, well Dolly Parton would be proud of it.

And this my friends is how I came to be on a Zoom chat (because we can't meet in Tier 4) on Christmas Eve, made up as Dolly the Goth. Except I looked like I'd died a week earlier. I shall keep my Undead skin make-up free in future.

The trouble with being in Tier 4-nearly-lockdown, is that all you can really do (aside from go to school or college, as everyone knows the virus doesn‘t spread there) is go out for a walk. Add in a Christmas where you can‘t get together in groups, once you’ve opened your pressies and had your fill of turkey, unless sleeping in front of the telly is your thing, then walking is broadly all that is left to do.

And so it was that at 3.30pm on Christmas Day, Milo (the wallaby-Spaniel cross) and I set out for a quick whisk around Farthing Downs. I imagined that most people would be home as it was heading into dusk, and the road in which we park was pretty empty for cars. We popped through a gate onto the grassland and it was quiet; I would see one other dog walker a few hundred metres away along the shoulder of the down. Excellent, it was going to be a walk where I didn‘t spend half of it finding out whether Milo was having a good or bad day when it came to “recall”.

Farthing Down is a mile long, convex hill, shaped a bit like an elongated rugby ball. Standing at the northern end of it, you can’t see who else is on it over the ridge, particularly as there are some small hawthorn bushes and other things with foliage. As there was the promise of a sunset, we set off climbing towards the apex of the slope, Milo scampering around looking for sticks or crows to chase and snuffling away at the grassy mounds made over decades by Yellow Meadow Ants. As we climbed, we passed a couple who clearly Didn’t Like Dogs, and to my relief, Milo stopped in mid-bound toward them when I called him. This was going to be a good walk!

We rounded a bush approaching an intersection of grassy paths just as several families with toddlers arrived. At this point one of the Dads decided it would be Good Fun to race the toddlers down the hill. And dear friends, so it was. For Milo. His breed was created to hunt Woodcock (the birds). He LOVES to chase things. In his path, all these lovely little creatures that are made to hurtle after and play with.

“Go!” shouted the Dad.

”Shit!” thought the dog owner.

“WAAYHAAY!” went the dog, “Toddler Tenpin!”. And he was off, ears flying behind him as he barrelled after them. It was like watching Gin (so called because BOTTLES EVERYWHERE) ploughing her way to the front of a busy bar queue when the need is upon her. Toddlers were flying all over the place whilst the dog owner was yelling in vain, and the parents were trying to snatch their off-spring out of the way. Very quickly (in what felt like a year to me) the last toddler was scooped up and Milo was making friends with the parent. No one was hurt (he doesn’t bite and isn‘t aggressive, but of course those on the receiving end don't know this), but there was one case of Deep Embarrassment going on for one of the adults. Shamed, we beat a hasty retreat, grumbling about “bloody toddlers being allowed to run about, out of control”.

It’s a shame really as we’ve been working hard on recall with Milo. And dropping things. And “For God’s sake, stop hassling the bloody cat”. And he’s been doing well. So much so that he and the cat can actually be in the same room together without the cat running away. I mean there’s still a lot of arse-wagging and bouncing going on and the cat still tries to take the dog’s nose off if he bounces to close, but there is no more chasing. And as a result the hound can now trundle around downstairs mostly unfettered (but not unsupervised because Pot Plants and Christmas Trees). It’s amazing how much he’s learned in under four months.

With Tier 4 in play, Christmas Day turned into a game of Musical Relatives across the extended family. Nana & Pops, who had been due to come to ours, stayed at home, the Saucepan family couldn’t see Grandad because one of the Kevins (mispronunciation of ”cousins”) and sister Piggy got the Covid, whilst Aunty F travelled down from Aberdeen before Tier 4 was imposed and consequently bubbled at Grannies. When we worked through the bubble permutations, we realised that this left Aunty G at home alone, so promptly invited her to create a Christmas bubble with us and to come share in the dinner festivities. Naturally the hound, who hasn’t had much experience of visitors and people eating at the dining table, tried to knock her off her feet and scoff her dinner, but I think she had a nice time.

BT (Boy Teenager) has had a strange week. He’s sleep has been shot to bits once again, with him awake through most of the night and sleeping in the morning. Any chance of rescuing it was ruined by Milo who didn’t sleep well for a couple of nights, meaning that BT extended his awake hours (to 5am) to try to sort the dog out. A short-term blessing for the rest of us, but does mean that once again BT will need to go round the clock to get back to more normal awake-sleep times.

And then he got himself banned from the PlayStation network for three days because of a run in with a French and a German lad via the in-game messaging facility. Seems that these lads started it (by calling him something unrepeatable), but BT finished by calling them the same and added in a couple of Extra Insults for good measure and promptly had access taken away. We thought that this might be a big deal as BT uses the network to chat with his mates, but he got through the three days with only a modest level of boredom. Still didn’t come out for a walk with the dog though.

GT has also had an unusual week. She's actually done some Moving About outside. In a bid to do something other than college studies, she's been out walking the dog with either Gin or I, and has been there when Milo has played fast and loose with the engagement rules (basically, nuts to the instructions, I'm off to meet the nice people and dogs). Whilst Gin or I's response is to shout louder at Milo to try to get him to do as his told, GT's is to run after him. Consequently, she's done more running in the last week than she has in the last decade And the result? She thinks she has The Covid because her diaphragm is sore. Nothing to do with her lungs having been repeatedly inflated to fuel the sprinting. Especially that instance where Milo swiped a kid's football and buggered off at a rate of knots with it.

So that's it. Week 43 and Christmas 2020 done. Although it was odd, we enjoyed it all the same, and where we couldn't drink with family and friends in person, we made up for it with partially inebriated Zoom chats. And now onwards into 2021 .... the year in which GT can learn to drive and BT and I might get a little business going.

Love & elbow-grease,

Mr H

x

PS New recipe 150 was cooked this week; Chargrilled Teriyaki Lamb from The Great British Chefs cookbook. It's an exceptional book of recipes, mostly quite challenging, but fabulous!