Imagining a different future

We've been having super lovely weather in NE Scotland this week, and my paws are now feeling tip top, so on Saturday morning (I'm delighted to report) Gail decided to abandon the household chores and take me for a walk up Morven, long our favourite Deeside hill.

One learns, given the climate in these parts, to seize the moment.

Half way up the initial steep ascent, we ran in to a chap who Gail knows a bit through her work, who was out walking with his wife. It was a good excuse to stop for a breather, and it turns out this couple are both geologists and hail from the southwest of France, near the Pyrenees. Wife was ever so friendly and as she tickled my belly in a way I might describe as 'très agréable' her husband warned Gail to keep a close eye on me, as wife yearns for a dog and he said there was a danger I might be kidnapped.

You know what, I am thinking, would it really be so bad to be kidnapped by a French geologist and maybe end up living close to the Pyrenees?

I am imagining a life spent hiking in the dramatic mountain landscapes, enjoying croissants for petit dejeuner, a selection of smelly fromages for lunch and maybe cassoulet cooked with generous quantities of goose fat for dinner.

Gail could still come to visit and perhaps even fulfil a lifetime ambition of cycling up the Col du Toumalet.

Who knows, I could get the chance to visit my blogging friends Bob and Sophie and thank them properly for sending me that comfy soft collar earlier in the year.

Oh and if I stay in France long enough, that nice young Monsieur Macron might yet permit me to retain my precious EU passport?

For some reason, when we reached the summit, Gail seemed keen to hold me tight …

… and was reluctant to let me get too close to the French couple (that's them, sat behind me in the picture below, sheltering from the inevitable wind).

One world in a street?

It is grey November in Northeast Scotland. Aberdeen is the centre of my world, but my owner Gail has lived many years in London and two years in the USA, and she occasionally complains that we are a bit boring up here, lacking in cultural diversity.

Can this be right, I ponder this morning, as I walk down the street in the drizzle.

True, our nice French neighbour Jacques, who arrived in Aberdeen in a 1970s to work as a diver in the nascent North Sea oil industry and married local girl Lucy, has recently moved to a bungalow in Brechin. The house has been sold to a couple returning from Dubai, although they have not yet moved in as the house is being remodelled by Polish builder Waldemar and his 'boys'.

Neighbour 'other Gail', three doors along, will miss her good friend Lucy, although she keeps busy between looking after her half-Russian granddaughter Fedosia, and flying off to visit a daughter who lives in Australia.

Next to 'other Gail'  and also relatively new to the street, is an African family (Nigerian?) whom we don't know much about yet, except that they all greet us with big friendly smiles whenever we walk by.

Across the road, you'll see Neil and Yvonne's house. Yvonne, like Gail, is an 'economic migrant' from England, although Yvonne's Jewish family originally came to London early last century, fleeing pogroms in Lithuania.

Now I'm standing next to Mike and Kirsty's house. Mike might be an avid supporter of the Scottish Nationalist cause, but he was born half a world away in Pakistan.

We have't seen so much of Jim at No. 2 lately, ever since his labrador Mackay died of old age. Jim is a private man, who a few years ago became the centre of unwanted attention when one of his sons was reported in the papers as having been kidnapped in Afghanistan.

So this is just one quiet street in one not very cosmopolitan part of the UK.

We are all connected, and had better try to live together in peace, don't you think?

Negotiation and compromise

So I am cross with Gail 'cos of the lack of presents from France. Given her lamentable record in this department, I guess you could say I should not have raised my hopes, but we WFT's are incurable optimists.

And Gail is cross with me because, in a fit of post-prison pique, I did not allow her to post any more of her holiday photos (those featuring a certain famous Bicontinental Dachshund) earlier in the week.

Readers will be pleased that Gail and I have decided to honour the spirit of Human Grandad, who was known for his quiet diplomacy and his skills in conflict resolution, and we have reached a compromise.



In exchange for a chunk of Sainsbury's best saucisson sec, I have decided to allow not just one but TWO photos of Gail with my godmother Tootsie and her lovely Mom.

OK, and one more of Tootsie then. She is totally adorable, for sure. 

PS Many, many thanks to Dachshund Daddy for saving the day with his camera, after Gail's ceased to function just hours before the rendezvous with Tootsie.

Please take me with you. PLEASE?

Yes it is that time of year again. Gail is going cycling in France with her friends, and heartlessly confining me to 'camp' for ten days.

Rumour has it she has also arranged a rendezvous with a certain Bicontinental Dachshund and her family at the end of the trip, which I am also going to miss.

Humph.

Normal service will resume on this blog in a couple of weeks.

It gets even worse...

Earlier this week I told you about the cr*p so-called ‘present’ Gail brought me back from Switzerland (cheers Deccy for suggesting that most appropriate adjective….)

Let me tell you, that was just the start of it.

You know, I could just about accept the fact that my human was going off to visit her beloved but now elderly and wheelchair-bound godmother Doris in Luzern and that as she had to fly it would all be a bit complicated to take me along etc. I also understand that animals might not be welcome in the care home where Doris now stays.

Fine.

So why then does the first holiday photo I’m shown feature Gail out for a walk, clearly in ENGLAND[1] and being unfaithful to me with another dog? And no Gail I am not interested at all in hearing about Billy's immaculate behaviour on this walk up St Martha's Hill, what a perfect chap he is, what big, expressive eyes he has and what a calm demeanour, why can't I be more like that and so on and so on ad nauseam. Grrrrh!

And why does the next photo, taken by Gail, show her friends Kathryn and Steve half way up a mountain on a long and clearly fox terrier friendly walk in the FRENCH Alps[2]?

Oh no! Here are some of Gail's photos from what she claims is one of her top five walks in the whole world, in Luzern along the lake between the Kapellbrücke and the Verkehrshaus der Schweiz.

How can a walk without me even be in her top five hundred?

Then I learn that in Doris’s care home some of the residents are allowed to keep their dogs with them – Gail saw a Yorkie and a Lhasa Apso when she was visiting[3]. So most certainly I could have come along after all.

And finally. I have it on good authority that Luzern is a popular tourist destination crammed full of shops selling fluffy and eminently de-stuffable St Bernards, cows wearing bells and whistling marmots, all excellent toys available at reasonable prices[4].

I could even have fun silencing a cuckoo clock, if it came to that.

Footnotes by Gail

[1] Surrey, actually. The flight to Switzerland was cancelled due to thunderstorms in the Gatwick area, so my departure was delayed for a day.

[2] Before visiting my godmother I stayed for a couple of days with my Surrey-based friends in their Alpine chalet in Samoëns, France.

[3] This really is true!

[4] I’m afraid Bertie is ill-informed about the Sterling/Swiss Franc exchange rate. 

Released!

Happy to be out of jail and enjoying a nice long Easter Monday walk.

I am gratified to be able to report that Gail had a very red face when she finally came to pick me up and take me home from prison 'those nice boarding kennels'.  She did keep insisting that the new skin colour was due to sunburn, but you and I know that it was without doubt a result of the deep embarrassment she was feeling at having so heartlessly abandoned me to go cycling with her London pals for a week.

Now please look carefully at these photos of Gail's bicycle (the red one - to match her face) in France.

Memorial to five times winner of Tour de France, Jacques Anquetil

World War I military cemetery (Hem Farm)

I am quite certain that, like me, you have been struck by just one thought.

Lightly laden is it not?  (The bicycle, that is.)

Space on there for a 7.7 kg / 17 lb wire-haired fox terrier, surely?

Oh. I have just seen one more picture from the trip, depicting the unfortunate outcome of a bicycle on bicycle collision. Well. Perhaps I was better off in Scotland after all...

PS Thank you friends for all the valuable information you provided in your comments to my previous post. My not-to-be-missed lecture on gravity will take place some time next week.

PPS If you want to read an account of Gail's cycling trip, written by a 'proper writer' click here.

My rival

Some of my friends, I know, have to compete for attention with other dogs. We have all been reading with great interest about the dreadful situation that Scottie Jazzi has recently endured with newcomer Addy... Other friends have, heaven forbid, to share their living space with diverse species: cats, rabbits, hamsters etc.

I have a different problem, which I want to share with you today.

My main rival for Gail's affections is an inanimate object with two wheels.  Actually she owns three of these contraptions, but it's the one pictured here that I most resent. This bicycle came out of the shed a few weeks ago, and Gail keeps disappearing on it for hours at a time on what she refers to as 'a training ride'. (Different from a ride on a train, apparently).

It gets worse.

I asked Gail how we are planning to celebrate what my American pals call my 'gotcha day', the anniversary of day when I first came to live here in this house. It's coming up in a couple of weeks. Can you believe what I was told?

"Tough luck Bertie,  I shall be on a bicycling trip in France with my London-based friends for that week, and you will be in prison  those nice boarding kennels."

Are there not laws against this sort of treatment?

My friend Wilf

Every morning, over breakfast (sadly not croissants) Gail turns on the laptop and together we read about what Wilf and his family in SW France have been up to over the past twenty-four hours.  Wilfy, I know you are sick, and I just want to tell you how much pleasure you give us and to send you some love.