clarification

her maamship has challenged me to describe to my readers just what it is that young dave does when he is enraptured with his wedding tackle. her maamship, it has to be said, has seen the act before, usually when the peeps are eating, so i can only conclude that her request is purely in an effort to make yours truly blush. as today is her first day of true judgeship, having been enwigged yesterday, i will humour her. but i would warn those of you who are squeamish to talk amongst yourselves for a para or two.

young dave, as you know, is a lurcher. the lurcher is a type of dog known as a longdog. this does not refer to the wedding tackle but to the body. a long body is useful for many things, not least stopping your legs banging into each other when running fast.

young dave has chosen to turn his long body to good use performing what i believe is known as 'oracle six' on himself. it seems that humans have to engage the help of another human to perform oracle six but young dave has discovered that with the help of one or two yoga techniques he can achieve quite satisfactory results solo.

so there you have it. the only problem that young dave might experience on his wedding night is how to incorporate his bride into this activity without ending up in a knot...

lost in translation

i see that, not for the first time, my attempts at discretion have left some of my oversees readers puzzled. all i can say is, please do not attempt a google image search for wedding tackle unless you are of a strong constitution.

i will attempt to explain my euphemisms without offending those more sensitive of my readers.

take a dog like my goodself. turn him over. at one end will be his head. at the other end, his tail, or what passes for a tail in some breeds. from the tail work your way (visually rather than manually, i would suggest) towards the head. first you will come across the little hole where the icky stuff comes out. then you will come to a little bag containing mysterious marble-like things (unless said dog has had them stolen, as in my case). then you will come across a long pipe which is fixed to the undercarriage of the dog with fur but which occasionally pops out to say hello (in the case of our household this can cause alarm among the humans).

the marble bag and the pipe together comprise the wedding tackle. they are so called because they come in handy on one's wedding night. and on other occasions too. a bit like fishing tackle for fishing, if you get my drift.

and as for knitting our own electricity, i am afraid my boy and his pithy sense of humour is to blame. whenever herself comes up with a money-saving scheme my boy will roll his eyes heavenwards and say "oh no! another knit-your-own-muesli scheme!" there are variations on this but 'knit-your-own-electricity' is entirely herself's own work.

so there you are. at ease...

charity begins next door

here you can see a shopping list, dear readers. there is nothing particularly unusual about this list, i hear you say. then when you look again you may notice that as well as run-of-the-mill things like cornflakes, there are also "suitable vegetables". this is to differentiate them from "unsuitable vegetables". himself has issues with certain sorts of vegetable.

and what, i hear you ask, is "being and nothingness"? is it something you put in cake to make it light and full of air? no, dear readers, it is nothing to do with shopping. it is the name of the blog of a cyberfriend of herself. the shopping list was the only piece of paper she could find when she needed to write it down.

the shopping lists are getting rather less inspiring as the financial situation becomes more precarious. but as usual, herself has a plan. tomorrow a man is coming to visit. herself has applied for a grant to help out with the knit-your-own-electricity project. the man is apparantly very formal and posh. i have been practising sucking in my cheeks in order to convey the lack of decent food round here.

but it seems i am not to have the pleasure of making his acquaintance. young dave and i, and my boy, are being banished next door for the duration of the visit. it took me a little while to deduce why this was. after all, we are friendly and polite. but it seems that the man might be a little taken aback by some of our habits. young dave's recent discovery of his wedding tackle has led to some fairly steamy scenes in which he practices for his wedding night. and i am not beyond reproach in that department, in spite of my advancing years. my boy is being sent to keep an eye on us. i think in part his banishment was prompted by his suggestion that we show the man how enterprising we are in our financial schemes.

"as he comes in," said my boy, "i'll ask him if he wants to pay to see some dog porn!"

ah well, at least we will get to fondle young ruby...

highbrow

dear readers, i had a horrible shock to my system yesterday. young dave suddenly grew some eyes! he had some when he first appeared, but they gradually disappeared behind grey hair. i got used to him looking like a rug. then all of a sudden - he has eyes again! it is too much for an old chap. i think it was herself's doing. she decided he needed to be introduced to the world and went at him with some scissors.

yesterday was a day full of drama. my boy is off school with fear. he has fear of going to school, fear of going out of the house, and sometimes fear of coming downstairs. while the former two conditions are perfectly manageable for us lurchers, and indeed lead to more of my boy's company (which is something i love) the latter is a cause for concern. so it was with great relief that we learned that we were to go to the beach and that my boy was going to try and come with us. so off we go to the beach, with my boy pinching one of his eyebrows to stop the queasiness (he has found an acupressure point by default). we all got out of the car and young dave and i went off in search of places to, well, you know...

it was not long before young dave found a wonderful prize - a seagull. not in the prime of life, it has to be said. in fact not very alive at all. but young dave was the first to find it so it had a good amount of meat on its poor frame. i helped him a little but herself called me off the minute she saw where things were heading. but young dave cannot be deterred when he is on a mission. he was up and down the beach carrying the seagull, with all its innards swinging around, for some time. meanwhile, my boy was starting to want to go home. the great outdoors is not something to be rushed.

my boy went to sit in the car in order to tweak his eyebrow more effectively. meanwhile, young dave ran up and down the beach, pausing only to munch further bits of brain, fat and muscle from the poor former seagull. after the previous issues with seagull wings this was another level of depravity, even by my standards. i draw the line at eating brains. at least unless they are sauteed.

anyway, time went by. a lot of time. the seagull shrank. young dave swelled. the peeps discussed how much they hated him and how sick he was going to be all night. herself observed that as himself still has a compromised immune system the task of cleaning up regurgitated seagull feathers mixed with regurgitated seagull gizzard would fall to her. this made her feel rather downtrodden, but with no-one to blame. other than young dave.

eventually young dave ate everything except the brain. this was dangling on a long sinew and young dave took great pleasure in running up and down the beach waving it at herself like a yoyo. by now the air was a little blue. herself told young dave that if he didn't either eat the brain or drop it she would have to kill him. but young dave knows when herself is joking. she cannot kill flies never mind errant puppies.

anyway, eventually young dave leaped into the car. the boot was slammed shut and we headed for home. young dave made the mistake of trying to lick my boy, who was in the back. young dave, as regular readers will recall, has a beard. after spending an hour or so eating seagull the beard was a little greasy and very smelly. my boy let out a shriek that would have brought the seagull back to life.

but my boy is on the mend a little now. he is taking photos with herself's camera. you can see them here.

and young dave, in the face of all predictions to the contrary, kept the seagull down...

in which joker and young dave meet lady kinky

well readers, young dave and i have now met the lady in question. here you can see a picture of us all. and she is nothing like as frightening as we expected. in fact she is rather scared of us. when we went in the car to collect her she was placed in the front seat. i am not sure why this was. maybe herself was worried about young dave's developing interest in his (and everyone else's) rude bits. anyway, lady kinky climbed gingerly in and sat quaking like a jelly the whole way to our walk.

as we got out of the car the rain really got going. once out of the car lady kinky seemed a lot less bothered about us and it was not long before she was running up to young dave making funny snorting noises like a pig. young dave was rather pleased to have the attentions of a lady and showed his glee by doing some very impressive silly running up and down the river bank. as he roared past the lady she made more snorting noises, but was nowhere near fast enough to catch the little blighter.

the rain got heavier and heavier and we all got very wet. the damp didn't in any way dampen young dave's ardour and lady kinky and he romped around like nobody's business. however, once we turned around into the wind it was another story and there was great relief when we got back to the car.

oh, and we have discovered how she got her name. her little tail has a 90 degree bend in it from where it had been broken at some point and not set properly. so we really didn't need to worry about dungeons, or worse still oubliettes...

the dominatrix dalmation

dear readers, it seems that we are not involved in the 'knit your own muesli' project any longer. it is now far more scientific than that. we now have 'multiple income streams'. this means that, as well as heading off to the office and doing boring things there, herself also sells things on ebay, does cleaning for other people and goes to car boot sales. it seems she also walks other people's dogs. not content with having young dave and i to walk, herself has found another dog to walk too.

to be fair, herself did not go out advertising herself as an expert dog walker, even though she has probably walked more miles with dogs than most folks on the planet. what happened was that she was chatting to a friend who had been let down by her regular dog-walker. herself offered to help them out.

as it turns out, the friends' dog does not come out with us on our walks. she is a rather nervous soul and is afraid of other dogs. i am not sure why anyone would be afraid of young dave and yours truly but it takes all sorts. the plan is to gently introduce her to us and then she can join us on our rambles. so all i know about her is what i have overheard. and i have to say it is rather disturbing.

to start with, the friends' dog is covered in spots. now i have nothing against a few spots. my legs are rather speckled in fact. but spots all over? and then, more seriously, there is her name. it seems she is called 'kinky'. so when this new friend starts to come for walks with us we will have to suffer the embarrassment of herself yelling "kinky! oh, kinky!" around the neighbourhood. i suppose we should be glad that it is not normal to call dogs by their full names.

our friends' surname is power. the thought of herself walking round the park shouting "kinky power", pursued by men in raincoats who want a good telling off, is too much for my sensibilities.

i hear you puzzling as to the relevance of the picture. it is our dvd player. herself was planning to sell it on ebay. until she discovered it no longer works...

keeping fit

dear readers, i have only just recovered from the festivities of the new year celebrations enough to tell you about them (herself has pointed out that this sentence may be a little lacking in the syntax department - no doubt mrs captain will put me right if she is reading this). a whale of a time was had by all, chez nous. herself has got the entertaining thing down to a fine art. as himself is still a little flaky when faced with large amounts of catering, herself has taken to inviting guests and then getting them to cook the food.

for new year we had her maamship, the prof and the extreme programmer to stay, in line with tradition. in addition, the snake charmers and mrs snake charmer's brother came, together with recipe books and ingredients. the next doors were also invited but had already agreed to be elsewhere.

cooking started as soon as the snake charmers arrived. mr snake charmer is a creative cook with great flair, but pays scant attention to the aftermath in terms of the state of the kitchen. himself by contrast, while being an equally fine cook, has an obsession with immaculate worktops at all stages in the process. these two might not sound as though they would happily co-exist in a kitchen. but we are fortunate. our kitchen has two zones. there is the ocd zone, where himself can happily wipe up crumbs and straighten chopping boards, and then, the other side of a pillar, is the adhd zone, usually occupied by herself and my boy, where chaos can ensue, uninhibited by order.

mr snake charmer was installed in the latter, with a glass of wine and his recipe books. the other peeps settled down in the living-room to work up an appetite. this process was aided by an inspired idea of the youngest of the snake charmers, who had brought with her a thing called a wee.

when young dave and i heard that a wee was going to be brought we were fascinated. young dave in particular loves a good wee. he has been practicing since he arrived, in all sorts of places and from all angles. recently he has taken to an amusing 3-legged version, in a rather endearing impression of yours truly. young dave has yet to learn that this should not be done while pointing towards the french windows. from inside there is a fascinating view of dave's undercarriage in all its glory, spraying the glass with golden nectar. i only hope that he moves on to lesson 2 before the summer. the french windows tend to be left open most of the time and i cannot see that this trick will seem half as amusing when the supposedly house-trained young fellow is going outside only to spray the floor from the garden.

i digress. the wee turned out to be an altogether different beast. it was an electronic gadget which my boy attached to the telly. the various peeps then held little bones in their hands and waved them about, causing little people on the screen to hit golf balls and roll bowling balls and all sorts. after an initial misunderstanding as to the requirements of fetching said balls, young dave and i settled down by the fire to enjoy the fun.

the food began to arrive but i am unable to tell you anything about it other than that it smelled divine. the peeps watched it like hawks and wolfed it down in a similar fashion. it was a thing called tapas. i think this is because after you have had tapas you have to have the tap on for quite some time while you clean up the kitchen.

eventually the new year came and went with much popping of corks, hugging and kissing and good wishes for better times. a couple of hours later and things were winding down. himself had gone to sleep sitting up on a stool (he is clever like that) and the prof and her maamship were nodding off. they could not of course go to bed until the guests had left on account of needing the sofa to sleep on.

the snake charmers were just leaving when there was a kafuffle outside. it was mr next door. he was in high spirits. young dave and i like mr next door, not least because he is in charge of young ruby, the next door dog. anyway, mr next door came striding into the kitchen, saying he just wanted to kiss lots of women and he would bring his guitar round and serenade us all. while normally this would be a huge treat, on account of mr next door's magical way with a guitar, there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm due to the lateness of the hour. the prof was standing by the cooker, reading the paper while waiting for the kettle to boil for his bedtime cuppa. mr next door paused in his flow.

"i have to say i'm not getting a singing vibe from you right now. maybe i can just kiss lots of ladies instead..."

at this point herself took matters in hand and gently wheeled mr next door in the direction of next door. he is a big man so it was fortunate that he was compliant. even with the large number of guests it would be a tricky business manouvering him through our narrow hall and into his own without co-operation on his part.

things quietened down and eventually everyone went to bed. but young dave was not to be dissuaded from his usual sleeping quarters. there is a myth, perpetuated by the whole family, that young dave and i sleep in our bed. everyone knows that the minute the light is out i climb into the leather chair and young dave spreads himself out on the sofa. but we pretend it is not so. unfortunately, no-one had explained to young dave, or indeed to the prof and her maamship, that things had to be different when there were guests on the sofa. when young dave was small it might not have been such an issue. but he made the mistake of snuggling up between her maamship and the prof.

even after a long evening, her maamship is a lady of perception. she knows well enough that the prof does not have a beard. she has tried to persuade him to grow one for many years, to no avail. the prof is equally astute. while he is aware of the effects of the menopause, he knows that these are gradual, and that beardedness in a wife would not have a sudden onset. it therefore dawned on both guests fairly quickly that there was an intruder in the bed. young dave was politely but firmly ejected in my direction with a gentle thud.

i can see i will have to get him an electric shaver (or chin scissor as my boy calls them) if he is going to make any headway in the kissing of ladies...

happy new year!