CHIM CHIM CHEREE

Yesterday, I passed the Chest, Heart and Stroke shop and decided to buy a fountain pen and biro set I’d seen a few days previously.  The pen is a Miyota, which to fountain pens is undoubtedly what a Wartburg was to motor cars.  I was attracted by the fineness of its nib.  When I got it home and started to write, the narrative resembled the last brave efforts of an expiring arachnid.  I put the pen back in its case and vowed never to use it again.  At least my money was wasted on a fine cause. I repaired to my study to dream up things to do.  I went through each drawer and cupboard and threw away whatever was irrelevant, including the reams of papers relating to my idiotic attempt to make a business case for purchasing a Borders garage back in 1992, by means of a large mortgage from the bank that then liked to say ‘yes’ but now likes to say ‘niet.’ The garage failed three years later and now is a combined house and art gallery.  Needless to say I didn’t buy it.  I didn’t create one iota of extra space from this great purge.  Later, in persistent drizzle, I took the little black spaniel out for a wander round the well-trodden paths of this semi-rural idyll. I saw a woman pulling a splendid young golden retriever with a plastic trumpet round its neck.  “What’s up?” I asked. “Can’t you see?” she replied, and pointed to the dog’s legs.  I could only count three.  There was a stump in the place of its fourth. “Run over, just up the road here.  He smelt something, jumped out of the garden and into the road, into the path of a car.  He’s managing well enough, I have to say.” I nodded, and walked on.  Later, I saw another woman leading with two leads a weird-looking terrier cross.   The dog heard a bus rumble by and jumped about two feet in the air.  “He’s a bit nervous,” I said. “Terrified,” the woman replied. “I’ve only had him a week, and he’s scared of everything.” “Rescue dog?” I asked.  “From Romania,” she replied.  “They’re brutal to them over there.  In fact, they’re an absolute shower. I went on-line.  A woman rescues them off the street and she had about fifty.  I chose him.” “How old is he?” I enquired.  “The woman said ‘he’s over two’.  He could be five for all I know.”  “He’s certainly unusual-looking,” I remarked. “His appearance isn’t improved by the fact that our cat stalked him last night, and then slashed him under the eye.  There was blood everywhere.  He was lucky not to lose an eye.”  “He’s had as thin a time of it here as he did under whoever’s replaced Ceascescu,” I observed.   “Things can only get better,” laughed the woman.  I walked back home. This morning, I noticed workmen starting work next door.  This is the home of the lady who has just moved in.  She has bought a wood-burning stove and the workmen have come to fit it and vent it to the outside.  Now these 18 houses were built in a factory down the A1 forty years ago and assembled like Lego in a couple of days.  We used to call them prefabs but now they are the much posher ‘timber-framed houses’.  They have absolutely no facility for the creation of fire or for the expulsion of the resultant smoke to the outside air.  I watched the workmen from the lounge window, which looks directly out onto next door’s side wall.  To my dismay, I saw that they were drilling into the wall, less than halfway up the house, which is presumably where the vent would be positioned.  I went up to the study to do some work.  When I returned, I could scarcely believe my eyes. The men had hammered a hole about two feet in diameter and were busy attaching what might have been the original chimney for ‘Puffing Billy’, only four times as long.  They return tomorrow to finish off the job.  The chimney will apparently have to be higher than the eaves of the house, which means it will be something like sixteen feet long to exhaust the fumes from a spindly little wood-burning stove. Every morning, when I open the blinds to greet the morn, my eye will immediately be drawn to what looks like the smoke extraction apparatus belonging to a works canteen, not six feet from my lounge window.  Five houses in the street have changed hands in the last nine months.  If things are as bad as I expect, there may soon be a sixth.