Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Different strokes
Of course, guarding the house and gardens shouldn't have been up to me at all, this is very
much Toby's department and to his credit most of the time he does a decent job. He has a deep,
angry bark which tends to unnerve anyone who approaches the main gate, but once inside he
reverts to type, rolls over on his back and sticks his legs in the air. Bless him, he's just desper-
ate to be loved. His guard-dog duties, however, had been made more difficult than usual by
the dreadful late spring weather. There were no drought fears anymore - the heavens opened
and stayed that way. Not only was he cooped up inside for most of the time but there was very
little fruit to defend. The awful weather meant that most of the orchard was actually fruitless -
no plums, peaches or apples to be had - putting my chutney production into severe difficulty.
A corporate booking agency that I work with a lot had even asked if I could supply fifty jars
of chutney to add to the Christmas hampers which they gave to their clients; I'd blithely com-
mitted myself to this just expecting the fruit to be there and it wasn't.
Toby was also preoccupied with Pierrot, as we all were now as his health suddenly began to
deteriorate. It didn't help that everything about Pierrot's history was shrouded in mystery. We
assumed that his previous owner was an old lady who spoilt him rotten and who had just died,
leaving him homeless. We didn't know his breed for certain, though he seemed to be a cross
between a King Charles spaniel and a dachshund, his age was unclear, and even his name,
Pierrot, isn't his name. His owner left no papers, or if she did they were never found, so the
rescue centre had given him the name Pierrot. Though it wasn't entirely chosen at random.
Having guessed that Pierrot was about nine years old, the rescue centre put his birth year as
2000 and the corresponding letter was 'P'. The only problem with this is that he's clearly not
Pierrot and at the grand old age of nine he wasn't going to start answering to a different name.
We've tried calling him all the names beginning with P, but pet naming is a personal thing and
there's no guarantee that his P is any kind of recognised and traditional name anyway; and be-
lieve me when you've got three boys who like nothing better than to giggle at rude words there
have been some pretty salty suggestions. And all of that is on the assumption that he was even
born in 2000, he might be a year either side, an O or an R. Yes, even the French didn't insist
on 2001 being the year Q.
He simply didn't respond to anything, and OK that may be largely because he was actually
quite deaf by this time, but it all served to make him quite impenetrable. In the past month
