Townhouse, Country house, Doghouse

 I find suburban life frustrating. The temptation is to make plans like a Londoner: meet you here, see you there, but in reality my life slowed down to the pace of the arthritic dog I was looking after. I walk to the bus, I wait, I sit on the bus, I change bus, I arrive, I go back in time to feed the mutt.

When the opportunity arose for me to return to my family home I took it and, dog bed under one arm, suitcase under the other, I jumped into the back of a car and sped off from Barnes, London to farmyard, Sussex.

Night one: after a feeble attempt at chasing the new pet rabbit round the table, dog sleeps quietly in kitchen. Upon awaking finds old chicken bones (left for resident pride of feral cats) outside the backdoor and had them confiscated, but otherwise a peaceful morning.

After a morning of drizzle the afternoon was bright and I willingly accepted the invitation to ride across the fields with my mother. I have memories of getting the giggles on horseback; even a trot would set me bouncing from side to side in the saddle, laughing like a drunken sailor. My steed – an ex-polo horse – hadn’t been ridden for at least a week and I hadn’t been a rider for at least a year; a combination of inexperience and energy that led to a race across an open field and a view of the sky from the mud.

It may have been the thrill of the ride that made me neglect the little dog in the kitchen, or it may have been the fire that warmed the room next door that made me rush away from her. Something made me fail my duties. Morning number two was not so peaceful as the first…

First down, before the dawn chorus, my mother let the dog out to sniff the early air. Failing to catch a warning whiff herself she stepped, heel down, into a warm and soft pile and in her horror bellowed out the name of the offending substance. Laying in his bed above the kitchen my father was woken by the noise. Suspecting the cause of the disturbance (clue in the shout) he dozed whilst the clean up operation was completed. Satisfied the turd was cleaned, my mother moved towards the Christmas tree to hang a fallen bauble and squelched her toes in to a second pile of poo. Shouting louder this time she finally drew a sleepy audience to the awfulness. Blissful in my attic room, I appeared an hour later totally ignorant of the drama. I was treated to a re-enactment. Twice.

The dog would have to go home. On the train on the way to London, the little dog tried to step up from the platform and found her legs too short and her joints too stiff. She fell in between the platform and the train, hanging from her lead with her paws scrabbling on the step, until she was hoisted up in to the carriage where she then set about eating dropped crisps and spilt beer.

I think the trauma of the country was too much for the pavement princess, and her home (and her dog-flap) was a welcome sight.