Date: 04 October 2007 15:39:28
Following on from my last animal-related post, here is another but of a much less holy variety.
My French friend (who seems to be featuring regularly in these posts and is in need of a pseudonym, so I'll call her Marie-France after a character in one of my first French grammar books) has recently moved from the far side of the village to a house closer to mine. I sometimes walk her dog for purely selfish reasons and those are that I need the exercise and some fresh air. Cleo, the dog of the title of this post, also needs as much exercise as she can get - so it's a mutually convenient arrangement.
Although I am a fair-weather dog walker and fairly irregular and erratic in my habits, Cleo is always embarrassingly enthusiastic in her welcome. Today was no exception. She almost knocked me over as I let myself in through the garden gate. Marie-France always leaves the lead and a bag for collecting poops on the top of the kennel, so nothing could be easier. I slipped the lead on the dog and off I flew. Cleo raced down the street in the opposite direction to the one I had been planning to go in. I felt like a cartoon character with legs flying out horizontally behind me as the dog took me for a run. She made a beeline for my house and so I decided to let her decide where to go.
At one point we came to a junction. Cleo sat down, scratched behind her ear, got up, sat down, scratched again and set off. We crossed Archers' Field and ended up on her former road. I wondered if she would go to the garden gate but she didn't even cast a glance, sentimental or otherwise, in the direction of the old house but carried on and after a while she sauntered back up her new garden path and into the garden. Home.
The walk was just what I needed. I had been struggling with motivation to work and the brief change of scene has revived me before settling down to translating my next assignment. I espied a hitherto unknown patch of brambles access to which I shall determine before the next blackberrying season. The sunshine is absolutely glorious today, t-shirt weather (which, my gentle international readers, is always worthy of special note and particularly at the beginning of October...), the first brown leaves are crisp underfoot and others are taking on their autumnal hues of gold and russet. The sky is blue, blue, blue, the fields are green, the hills are beautiful, God's in His heaven and all is right in this little corner of the world.