Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I have to say that it's not entirely unusual for stray dogs to turn up unannounced, France
is one of the most dog-friendly countries in the world, they're welcome in restaurants and
on planes - no-one bats an eyelid. But when the summer begins to kick in and the holiday
season starts, some people would prefer not to have to pay kennel fees and dump their poor,
generally elderly, beasts in the countryside. It becomes someone else's responsibility then,
someone else's burden, in this instance, mine.
Ordinarily we are perfect for the job, an out of the way, single-track country lane; generally
quiet yet easily accessible from two small local towns, ideal dog abandonment territory. But
we had been less accessible than normal for the past couple of weeks as apparently those
that run this part of the Loire Valley had won the tarmac lottery and almost every road and
car park was in the process of being re-covered. No bad thing you might think, but in this
case they had clearly forgotten to include the planning department and had left the placing
of
'Diversion'
signs and
'Route Barrée'
warnings in the hands of either anarchists or rank in-
competents. Usually the French will ignore a
'Route Barrée'
sign until actually faced with a
non-traversable hole in the road, but these latest signage efforts were particularly spectacular.
It was chaos and one thing the French road system doesn't need is added chaos. In the end the
whole area seemed choked up and had just descended into a melee of incessant horn beeping
and futile fist waving.
What I'm saying is that someone would have had to put in a special effort to dump their poor
dog down our road while all these diversions were in place. Natalie went through the usual
process and rang any neighbours and farmers nearby who may have lost a dog; she rang the
vet who told her to ring the Mairie and they promised to send someone out, roads permitting.
That's when she contacted me.
Getting the familiar sense that it would simply be a matter of course that we would be ad-
opting the new stray, I decided to change tack and try a bit of reverse psychology.
'A new dog, you say? Why not? It's been a while since we took on an extra mouth to feed...
how exciting!' Surely no one could mistake this heavy-handed sarcasm for what I really
meant?
'Oh that's lovely. Speak to you soon. Bye then.' Not for the first time, I'd been completely
out-thought.
I eventually arrived in Cyprus, where I would be performing for the next week, feeling like
I'd been played, conned. And as I sat in the garden of the villa ruminating on how animals
were effectively running my life, two chickens wandered into the garden, then a cat and then
a chaffinch sat on the pergola above the patio and shat on me. I don't know if I give off some
kind of chemical that attracts beasts, but they just seem to follow me wherever I go. I'm like
some reluctant Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Natalie rang half an hour later, the dog apparently did actually belong to a local farmer who
hadn't at the time realised that her dog was missing; a good thing, Natalie said, that the little
