Best laid plans…….. often seem to come unstuck. The planned for trip, (which had grown out of all proportion) to the Dorset Steam Fair, had come spectacularly unstuck due to personal circumstances which for once where someone else’s rather than mine. I do apologise however, for sounding so unsympathetic, I am truly…….

Whilst walking the dogs and trying unsuccessfully to ignore the blister that was gathering momentum on my heel, I contemplated and ruminated on recent happenings and the implications thereof. I came no closer to discovering the answer to the ‘why’ question. (Do you remember when your young children spent an impossibly long time asking ‘why’ to anything and everything…………. That feeling of frustration has come rushing back!) I did decide however that in my next life, if there is such a thing, that I would come back as an animal of some sort. After all animals have an individuality and personality of their own which you can always liken to someone that you’ve met, but their lives seem so much simpler – no relationships, no politics, housing issues are put in the hands of someone else, you just eat, drink, have sex and be merry. I’m not entirely sure which one I would like to be though………

There was Popeye, now he really was a very ‘challenged’ duck. My parents, sister and I lived on a small holding where everything was grown from the wheat for the bread to the meat on the table (and that is exactly why I don’t eat meat very often – having Fred, the kid goat you had hand fed that morning, served on your plate as the evening meal is just not cricket.) Popeye was huge and had harem of beautiful Muscovey Ducks. He was very tender with them (most of the time) and rustled them from place to place with a great deal of skill. However, he hated rain with an absolute vengeance. Rain was the enemy, rain was the absolute pits. The duck house was moved a couple of metres down the field to a better position as is good husbandry practice. Popeye hadn’t quite clocked this momentous event; it was only the third day after all.

It rained, it rained with that intensity that is so purposeful and so, so dramatic. I had run inside, but in the few short minutes it took, I was wet through to the skin. I stood in the day room, steaming, looking out of the huge picture window which overlooked the largest field and the very beautiful Cornish valley that we lived in. I watched Popeye march as fast as his short yellow legs could carry him to the duck house. Not the new position, but where he thought it should be – as I said, not the most intelligent duck………. He stood there for the duration of the downpour, while I howled with laughter. He looked up at the sky, then down to his feet, up to the sky and down to his feet repeatedly. You could see from the expression on his face that he really didn’t understand why he was getting so wet and I’m so, so sure that his continually angry quacking sounded just like a string of expletives as he became more like a drowned rat than a handsome, majestic Muscovey duck.

So no – not a duck then. I do quite fancy the idea of being like Sam the Collie who isn’t quite all there……….. He’s loved, cuddled, stroked, fed and housed in a beautiful house with a lovely soft and cosy bed that smells just right. Drink is always available and treats are given on a regular basis. Exercise consists of chasing the chickens and sniffing out the deer. He doesn’t have to find a toilet as long as he isn’t caught short in the house and the best thing of all is that he can wind up the biggest cat you have ever seen by barking insanely at it, as it swings its tail, sitting on a shelf far too high for a daft collie to reach…………. Yes that’s it – a daft collie it is. Somebody throw me a bone…………………..