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| George the charmer | |
| Written by arablethecrocket | ||||||||
| 07 May 2007 | ||||||||
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George the Charmer By Alan Crook It was one of those very balmy days when I actually sat in my garden. Sat that is rather than chase a lawn mower or give yet another bush a haircut. Balmy enough, to just sit, rather like the old saying “Some times I sits and thinks and some times I just sits!” I decided to just sit, oh and drink tea. At least I would have drunk tea but like all things gardening some thing or in this case some one beat me to it. If my brain had been in gear I would have shooed my visitor away, as it was I sat fascinated as a large gangling dog loped across the lawn, lowered it’s mussel into my cup and drained every drop. He then nonchalantly sat and looked me straight in the eye, with a twinkle as if to say “No chance of a biscuit with that I suppose?” I thought this dog should have been a builder with a cheek like that. It was quite unnerving looking into features of an ancient dog. A dog on which every thing drooped; his eyes had huge bags around them like a dad after the three-o-clock feed. His skin sagged, the sides of his mouth sagged and his back sagged. He was skinny and tall and of what breed I can only guess that his father was a carin and his mother wasn’t a carin. Through all his ancientness and his sagginess beamed a smile. It can only be described as a smile because I was forced to smile back. “Well now that you’ve drunk my tea the least you could do is tell me your name” I prompted. Isn’t it strange how we expect an answer even though we know that one couldn’t come? I reached forward and scratched his ears and asked again quite bluntly this time “What’s your name?” To my astonishment he said “George!” Please don’t think I have fallen out of my tree, the dog actually spoke. Well not spoke so much as barked in such a way that it sounded for the entire world like George, it was a sort of “orge” with a distinct effort to woof it out. I asked again and got the same response. I couldn’t believe it. It was so clear and obvious that he was most definitely called George, and right up to this day he is called George. We sat discussing various topics as only man and dog can when we were joined by my wife. Wives have a different understanding about life that only another wife can understand. If they see a dog, they go out of their way to cuddle and fuss it, see a husband however, and she will find him a job. So we both (George and I) sat there with varying degrees of expectation. George simply smiled and I coaxed my wife to get her to ask our new visitor his name. Her expression and delight were something that is only reserved for some one who is going to get a severe cuddle. This was the stuff of romance stories. An otherwise sane sensible woman was reduced to uttering gibberish to a not so dumb animal. Amidst the fuss I was dispatched to bring a replacement cup of tea oh and one for myself and the forbidden fruit, biscuits long denied to one with a spreading waistline. We had gone from balmy to barmy in a few short shakes of a doggie’s tale. We spent the next half an hour or so exchanging niceties and settling the world wrongs when with a humph which I could only take as “ok break time is over now get on with it” George raised his gangly frame and walked to the middle of our large pond and sat looking all regal and grand with his backside in the water observing the fish as they swam around his front feet. It seemed so perfectly natural that we didn’t even query his presence. By this time I felt duty bound to get on with my garden and work whilst his lord and master sat and gave instructions. A few short minutes ago I would have been reading, now I had two slave masters over me. George made it perfectly clear, there was absolutely no chance of his going home were ever that was, he had daned to take up residence with us whether we liked it or not, and the truth is we liked it. Not being really sure of our next step we decided to take the dog indoors whilst we rang a few contacts to see if they had any ideas of where he came from or if they knew of any persons missing a spare part. George had no intention of coming indoors. He was quite happy to sit on the door step but no further. When night time came and no poor soul beat a path to our door we opted to let him sleep in the shed. We fitted out an old cardboard box with a scruffy blanket deposited a bowl of water and mountain of tomorrows bubble and squeak then left him with the door wide open and the gate likewise in case he felt the urge to return from where he came and that was it for the night or so we thought. At about 11:30 we were woken by a banging on the door fit for a midnight raid. We opened it to a very angry neighbour who thought it disgracefully irresponsible to leave an electric drill running in our shed. I didn’t even own an electric drill and all three of us crept to the back of the house like characters in a keystone kops film. There in the shed was George. A George that is not curled up in his new bed but sat upright and leaning against the bicycles fast and hard asleep snoring with a continuous drone. I had a sneaky feeling that all was never going to be the same from now on, after all how do you stop a dog from snoring. In George’s case it was easy, I put his front feet in a washing up bowl full of water. He settled down, we settled down and our neighbour left shaking his head in disbelief. The only person not moved by the experience was George who had remained asleep through out all our administrations. From that day to this I have had to put his feet in a bowl of water at ten o clock, and he still sleeps leaning against the bicycles. There is a gap in our fence between our neighbour and ourselves, through it, at least once a day we are invaded by Poppy. There is absolutely no defence against Poppy. She is a young lady who was designed to break hearts and talk for ever. She is two years old with beautiful red hair hanging in ringlets and wears a nappy as big as the Isle of Wight and has a vocabulary the size of England. Normally she follows me around the garden with her father’s old mobile phone pressed to her ear and a hand bag dangling from her shoulder. As she wanders so she chatters to both me and someone called Jane on the phone. I am barraged with questions and told to do all sorts of things usually because Jane thinks it’s a good idea. Poppy also drinks my tea when she can get at it, and is a disgraceful thief of my purloined biscuits. If I was to listen to her (or is it Jane) we would be eating ice cream all day. She, like George, has a fascination with the pond and the fish, and since the pond is barely three inches deep I felt the only one to really object would be the fish. The rate things were going I would not be surprised to find a fish sitting on the lawn drinking my tea along with the dog, Poppy and the odd kami kasi fly. I am known as granddad two, granddad one being in the nether regions of Africa with a missionary organisation. Granddad two is very convenient for both my wife and Poppy’s mum since at the drop of a hat I am left to contain the chatter whilst wife and mum invade the shops. There was no question of an introduction and cautious approaches from dog and girl. Poppy and George were instantly in love, and promptly walked to the middle of the pond were Poppy sat alongside George and constantly talked on the phone to both Jane and the dog. Occasionally she would stand and lift the saggy skin around George’s eye to make sure he was still awake and listening. George for his part duly held the position of chief confident from this point on. George won friends by his sheer presence; he accumulated them as a natural course. I saw him one morning, through our bedroom window he was sitting in the position he normally adopted when talking only this time it was to a fox. The fox had adopted the same position they sat opposite each other and although not a sound was uttered they were obviously both on the same planet and discussing something that involved great closeness. It turned out that this had been a regular meeting because on other mornings that I woke at the same time they were there chatting as usual. I knew the fox had been around for some years in the past. On the occasions that it had been around in the past it left its’ calling card but now it treated the place with more respect. Being a confirmed inhabitant of the pond won him friends in the duck family although this took quite a lot of quacking and angry exchanges from mum duck but in the end she settled down to a wide berth strategy and a grudging nod that acknowledged a truce rather than a friendship. The only one not suited to George‘s presence was a chicken or a cockerel to be more precise. This was strange really because we didn’t actually own the bird and it only appeared when George arrived. Where the bird lived is as much a mystery as it was with George. But it arrived with a certain amount of punctuality every day, then it strutted around George and nagged him and flapped it’s wings an awful lot and then went back to were it had come from but were is still to this day a mystery. George’s peculiar foible lay in the fact that he liked to chase balls, not unusual in a dog as a rule but for one that could be beaten into second place by a granny with a Zimmer frame it seemed a strange choice of fun. We discovered this quirk after we did the obvious when we just picked up a ball that had been lying in the undergrowth since the day of creation and rolled it. He returned it and the game began. It extended to us dragging him to the park for the safety of our flower borders, there he made another friend. This time it was a doggy friend. I tossed the ball gently and he loped to bring it back but with the arrival of a beautiful lively poodle the stakes changed. Out of bedevilment I threw the ball far beyond George’s normal boundary but he set off in a serious loping fashion and was far out gunned by the poodle. The poodle gathered the ball but instead of bringing back to me it dropped it at George’s feet and he in turn returned it to me, so the game went on until the poodle (called Henry) dragged his owner into the game. Now it was my turn to gain a friend. Henry’s owner was a very tall fat man who puffed and panted with just the effort of getting to our side of the park. I wondered how he had a dog that was in such a fit condition when he was so far the opposite. His reply was to ask me to join him for a beer on the downs and he would show me. Aristotle had a short fat father who was Greek and a long tall mum who was English. Arry, as he was known, was only twenty eight but he looked over forty. He still lived at home with his parents and they still fed him like an elephant. They were very wealthy and he didn’t work much so the pounds went on daily. The dog was a deliberate attempt to get him to exercise, but he saw through it from day one. Now after a trip in a very battered Land Rover we reached the top of the downs and there Arry produced a large forked branch and an equally large pair of braces. With that ensemble, a pair of deck chairs, and a six pack of beer we walked about a hundred yards along a path with glorious views and a huge drop. To my astonishment Arry pushed the branch into the ground in a hole that had been used many times before, he then attached the braces and voila one giant catapult. Henry was away long before the first volley was fired, but fired it surely was. I sat in amazement as the ball disappeared over the hill and Henry followed so willingly. We then sat down to a can of beer whilst Henry took a full ten minutes to return with the ball. It then drank a little and was waiting again by the time Arry had reloaded. Another ten minutes passed and kept on passing until after an hour the dog chose to sit it out. Arry went on to explain that when they got home his mother thought they were both exercising to the same extent and that her beloved son was having problems with his glands. I met them several times after that and we enjoyed a beer or two in the same manner. We knew that we couldn’t keep the dog for ever but when we accidentally discovered the where a bouts of his owner we were another few days before we plucked up the courage to face the inevitable. It turned out that the chap was a very friendly fellow and glad to see his old companion back. He had been in hospital after a sudden stroke and no one knew about the dog until it was too late and all efforts to find him were given up after the first week of his disappearance. Now his owner could not speak and was very crotchety much like the dog but it was plain that they belonged together. When we parted and left George behind (we at least had got his name right) we felt like we had lost a dear friend and a character to boot. The following week was still and dull. I even made progress in the garden but it didn’t seem the same. Poppy couldn’t understand it and I couldn’t face Henry or Arry. I even woke one morning to find the fox sitting outside the shed, and as for the cockerel, it started to nag the ducks instead. Order resumed and we began to be reconciled to the fact that the days were to be our own again but we didn’t want them this way. By the time I got round to actually sitting in my garden again it was autumn, but I was determined to get the last drops of warmth from the sun and the last drops of tea from my cup, then a long knap before supper. I woke to find George looking at me once more and it was all I could do to stop myself from shouting for joy, but back he was and back he stayed. When we tried to take him back to his owner we learnt the sad fact that a second stroke had taken him to be with the Lord. His family had learnt of his adventure with us and were more than glad to let him return. We were complete again, George, Poppy, the fox, the cockerel, the ducks and Henry with Arry. There were others added and each of them brought their own stories all of them were linked in some way to a dog who called himself George.
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