Most of this story is true.
My Aunt Pat is a big softie. She lives in a Portuguese village so small it doesn’t appear on the maps. She is Patricia Inglese: English Pat. Her home is constantly filled with children, the kitchen table always showing evidence of jam sandwiches. She never refuses a villager a glass of wine picked from her own vines and fermented in her gazonda (lean-to), and is never short of free help when the grapes need picking. It’s that sort of village. Everyone knows everyone else, and what you have you share. She will find eggs or tomatoes on her doorstep when someone has too many to eat themselves, and anyone is free to pick an apple or plum from her fruit trees.
But she is still, deep down, English. Though her lifestyle is pure rural Portuguese, her heart is still in firmly rooted in Surrey. When someone had kittens to spare, she said that she was worried about mice. When a farmer wanted to put down a dog he didn’t want to feed anymore, she said that she was worried about security (in a village where no-one locks their doors, nor needs to). When the village horse became too old to pull hearses and marriage carts she could think of no excuse, but bought it anyway. In short, she has an English weakness for animals.
So when the woman from the animal rescue league brought the beagle around to her farmhouse, the conclusion was foregone.
The EU has had its successes and failures. Pat would joke about it. “The Belgians make the rules, the English obey them, the French bend them, and the Portuguese say, ‘There are rules?’” But gradually, Portuguese firms are beginning to toe the line. Not always willingly, but the days of Portugal being the dumping ground of Europe’s dodgy dealings are fading. After all, Albania is much cheaper.
So it was that the animal research laboratory had brought its experiments to an end, closed up shop and moved to less regulated climes. The beagle, the earnest young lady had explained, was the sole survivor of a smoking experiment. Forced to chain smoke, the beagle had developed blood clots that had needed drastic action to cure. It would need special care if it was to survive, never mind thrive. In all other respects it was healthy, and it would be a crime to put down a healthy animal, wouldn’t it?
She carried it in from her van, along with the specially adapted skate board. Carried it, because the blood clots had necessitated amputation of all four limbs. The nervousness, she explained, was due to nicotine withdrawal. The beagle stared up at Pat with large wet eyes, and the battle was won.
Pat tried. Nicotine addiction is a terrible thing. She tried her hardest to break its habit. But to no avail. Every evening Pat would have no choice. She simply had to take it out for a quick drag.
nice lil story. 
Previous item
