phoebe!

hello readers! i know many of you will be desperate to know the full story of my new lady friend. herself has been trying to write a post for several days but she cannot get the picture thingy to work so you will have to wander over to flickr to see pictures of her.

as regular readers will know, the peeps have been looking for a hairy lady for me for some time. herself was indulging in her favourite occupation of laptopping when she saw a post on a lurcher forum about a lady lurcher who was desperate for a new home. so she got on the phone to the number given. it turned out the lady in question was in north devon which is some distance from us. the peeps had a hurried discussion as to how to go about collecting her. there was a certain degree of urgency about this following a rather unfortunate incident involving two cats.

the arrangements were complicated somewhat by the fact that my boy was off school with a hacking cough. he did not jump at the chance to travel down to devon and back in one day. he wanted to spend the day coughing over his computer keyboard. he was given the option of going to school and coughing there or or coming in the car with us. and there was the small matter of young rokit. herself felt that the new lady meeting rokit should be postponed for a little while and i have to say i did not relish being confined in the back of the car having my ears chewed for several hours.

herself is nothing if not a woman of action. she got on the phone to mr and mrs rokit and it was agreed that mr rokit would take young rokit to work with him. he is building a wooden floor for some people and the idea was that rokit would help. herself then had the brainwave of offering mr rokit my boy's expert puppy-sitting services. this was jumped at by all concerned. my boy looked forward to a day on someone else's sofa with a telly to watch that might actually have a fully-functional volume control rather than the choice between shouting and whispering that is offered by the peeps' ancient steam-powered telly.

so herself and i headed off very early the following day with a flask of tomato soup and a cheese sandwich. the plan was that himself would drop my boy off with mr rokit in auntie bernie's fiat (auntie bernie has purchased sparky the audi, which has allowed the peeps to pay off most of the credit cards) and herself would take himself's car. we had just got to southampton when the phone rang. it was himself.

"it won't start!" he wailed. usually this sort of phone call would be filled with some choice language but herself had taken the precaution of extracting a promise that he would not ring her up and swear at her so he was forced to keep it clean. herself suggested he ring the breakdown people. himself is allergic to phones so herself ended up on the phone trying to explain to the breakdown people that she was actually on the other side of southampton in a car that was clearly working but that they needed to go and rescue himself and the dead fiat on the drive at home.

we had just entered dorset when the phone went again. it was himself.

"its broken down on the roundabout!" the roundabout in question is about 2 miles from the house. herself suggested that he ring the breakdown people again. this idea did not meet with much enthusiasm. himself said the fiat was as much use as a chocolate teapot. at this point we went down a hill and the signal on the phone went. herself realised that it would appear as though she had hung up on himself, which would do nothing for his temper, and that he would not ring the breakdown people even in circumstances such as these. the picture of my boy sitting coughing on a roundabout was not a good one.

we tried several telephone boxes, none of which worked. then we pulled into macdonalds in search of a phone. the staff kindly allowed herself to use the one in their office. it went to himself's voicemail so herself left a grovelling message and we went on our way. it later transpired that himself and my boy had got the bus home, a story fit for a blog post all of its own, with my boy carrying various imitation firearms and wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses and himself looking bearded and murderous, amidst some rather funny old ladies. i will ask my boy to write about this another time as this is already a rather extensive missive.

eventually we got to devon and found the kind man who had taken care of phoebe. the minute we had got out of the car phoebe jumped in and had to be coaxed out. she obviously knew she was coming with us. we had a little run around in a field and herself had a cuppa with the kind man before we headed home. i rather let the side down in my initial encounter with my new lady friend. in my defence i can only say that she had the aroma of a cowshed and it was not immediately apparent to me that she was a lady. things are settling down now but i am having to be on my best behaviour.

phoebe has had a life that would turn most of us into vicious and miserable monsters. she was kept in a shed for years and did not even have a name. the evil people that owned her killed their other two dogs with a shovel. she is pitifully thin and her coat was really matted. herself is slowly sorting the hairdressing issues out and the canine supermodel is eating like a horse. even at her most pitiful when she first arrived, she wagged her tail and licked the peeps.

i have to say now my lady friend smells a bit sweeter she is growing on me...