When I asked for good blog material

. . . THIS IS NOT WHAT I HAD IN MIND.

The day after I wrote the previous post, including telling my life to make a note that I wanted blog material*, Genghis & I were walking, or rather plunging & careering, across Strathspey** Park.  I think I had done my usual cack-handed version of posting, which is to say it went up at least a day late, while I forgot it was waiting to be proofread or thought I already had posted it, or something, but the adventure I’m about to relate occurred on a weekend afternoon, right?  So G & I are off-the-hedge-wall-ing*** on either side of the little narrow access road that runs round one side of the park, & having a perfectly pleasant time on a sunny weekend afternoon with only a patchy hedgerow between us & playing fields full of children & meadows full of dogs & children, & suddenly from a break in the hedge on the other side, where a footpath takes you in a different direction, comes a Very Large Black Dog.  Off lead.  I had maybe half a second to think ‘well surely it’s friendly’ when all of its fur stands on end & it breaks into a volley of barking which takes no imagination whatsoever to recognise as not friendly.  & IT GALLOPS STRAIGHT TOWARD US.

When I’m frightened I tend to get angry.  There are certainly situations when this would not be a useful response, but in most ordinary affrays it beats collapsing helplessly on the floor/ground & bursting into tears.  HEY! I shout. Angrily. Where’s the doodah blasted owner??  HEY!  Meanwhile Genghis is straining against his harness & barking & snarling & generally indicating that he is up for this, whatever it is, & listen up, you on the other end of the lead, LET ME AT HIM I CAN TAKE HIM WITH ONE PAW TIED BEHIND MY BACK.  Genghis, as I’ve told you, is long-legged, so he may have been as tall as the dire wolf† facing us, but it probably weighed twice as much as he does, & giant whirling paws can only do so much. 

Some small ineffectual humanoid had scuttled through the gate during our initial confrontation, & scampered (ineffectually) at the dire wolf, which easily dodged out of his way.  I am by now yelling WHAT IS THAT ******* DOG DOING OFF LEAD, not having the presence of mind to say ‘dire wolf’ & besides that’s two syllables & takes longer.  The dire wolf is still barking & snarling & making little darts at us, & Genghis is yanking me around keeping us facing the enemy.  As an aside here †† I was interested, after the fact anyway, that Genghis squared up to the threat with no hesitation & stayed squared up. Genghis is so good natured I’d, if anything, have expected him to be nonplussed & dismayed rather than going all he-man—er—he-dog about it. †††  I’m not sure if this creature was all mouth & no trousers anyway‡ or, if Genghis had either cowered or I’d been dogless, it would have actually sunk its teeth into flesh. 

This was all happening over the course of maybe a minute, it just felt like a year.  The dire wolf was perhaps getting bored, since Genghis was refusing to be bullied, so it‡‡ let the scuttling humanoid sort of shoo it down the road, but the humanoid still couldn’t grab it, so it circles BACK to have another sally.  Both my shoulders & my throat are getting sore.  The unextinct large canid & the scuttler loop around us a couple more times & then the canid again decides we aren’t all that much fun since we’re not grovelling & snivelling & lets the scuttler shoo it‡‡‡ on again & this time he got his lead on it.  “Sorry,” he muttered.  “£$%^&&*(()_~#!!!!!!!!” I replied.  Presumably he kept it on lead, in which case he’s stronger than he looks, ɸ & ruined its afternoon by preventing it from eating any small children or fat slow terriers.

So, life, no more sweepingly magnificently death-defying blog material, okay?  I’ll just talk about the weather or something.

* * *

* dumb move, right?

** If life is going to start coming after me with, if not malice, then a perverse sense of humour aforethought, then I’m going to try to encourage it to satisfy its undesirable urges in directions that we might both groove on.^  Or degust.^^ For example:

THERE ISN’T ENOUGH BAGPIPING IN THIS TOWN.  WHAT DID I MOVE TO SCOTLAND FOR yes all right several things BUT MORE BAGPIPING WAS DEFINITELY ON THE LIST.  IF I WANTED LIVE-RECORDED BAGPIPING ON YOUTUBE I COULD GET IT IN HAMPSHIRE.

It seems to me there are all kinds of ways life could unhinge the creaking door of my mental stability^^^ using bagpipes.  Note:  I’m six blocks from the market square.  When it hosts bagpipes I hear them.^^^^  I live in a kind of goofy fantasy-fear of someone serenading his/her/their beloved, who in this story happens to live near me here on Juggernaut Street, at an hour I would find inappropriate, like Count Almaviva & Rosina,^^^^^ only with a mob of accompanying bagpipes.  & AT LEAST THERE WOULD BE BAGPIPES.

^ We actually said this in the 60s.  It was another world then, including as it did bell bottoms & tie-dyeing.  I note with deep cultural dismay that both bell bottoms & tie-dyeing cycle back through currency now & then.  So groove on I guess.

^^ I was just looking this up to make sure I’m using it correctly.  Yes.  It means to enjoy, to taste, to relish.  My iPhone dictionary+ has a little arrow thingy so you can click back to the previous word or forward to the next word.  The previous word is ‘degum’.  Ooh, cool++, I thought, I wonder what ‘degum’ means?  Something to do with monks or shamuses?  Deglazing or degringolading?+++

Nope.  It means ‘to free from gum’.   Siiiiiigh.  The world is so drab. 

+ IPHONE = CURSES . . . no no no no no we are not going there today, or we’ll never get out of here alive.#

# Some other day, when we’ve donned our flameproof armour & sharpened our enchanted sword in advance.

++ Yes it’s true I still say ‘cool’

+++ Yes, I’m cheating.  I absolutely had to look up the spelling of ‘degringolade’ & wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t from a language I’ve made up & wouldn’t be in the dictionary anyway.  In which case I could decide how to spell it.

^^^ did I just end that, um, creaky metaphor with mental stability?

^^^^ & if it’s after . . . say . . . ten in the morning—maybe eleven—oh, maybe noon—I will probably hitch up Genghis & descend from our hill-height+ for a closer look.  This is usually less than fully gratifying, however, since there will be a lot of people there before us, & trying to edge tactfully for a better view isn’t an option with an accompanying GWHP milling around.  He’d be happy to be thrilled by the sight as well as the sound of bagpipers—he’s happy to be thrilled by most things as long as a majority of them have to do with food—but tactful is even less in his skill set than mine.

+ We might say experience a DEGRINGOLADE. Our hill is steep.

^^^^^ First act of The Barber of Seville.+  You can look it up.

+ ROSSINI. I didn’t really have to tell you that, did I?

*** I did describe our progress as careering

† No they are not extinct.  There’s at least one living in Scotland

†† Should this be a footnote?  I’m not always sure

††† He is also totally DEPERSONNED by his rank terror of fireworks, & a royal gigantic & frequently bruising pain that is too^, so it’s not that he’s fearless.

^ & the fifth of flapdoodling November is approaching

‡ Reasons to live in the UK include being able to use this phrase as if, you know, it’s just a phrase you can use.

‡‡ There was too much fur to check its undercarriage, & I was also a trifle preoccupied, but I of course leap to the conclusion that it was male.  Bitches can certainly be dire & wolfish^ but this seemed like standard male I’m-so-big-&-scary nonsense.

^ I should know, being one, although I’m not a canid.  Um. I don’t think?

‡‡‡ With a gesture STRANGELY FAMILIAR from my interesting experience at Bounder & Blighter the other week.  I should have bitten him.

ɸ unless the collar has hidden sedative-tipped spikes on the inside, responsive to the pressure of the lead