Sunday 27 June 2010

I have learned that there are certain advantages to having a massive, bright pink, cross of campness stained into my fur.

Whilst walking along the riverbank with Maisie the other day, I inadvertently chanced upon my long-time nemesis, the psychotic hell-swan (http://jasper-thedogsblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/thursday-28-june-2007.html for verification).  Yes - alas - he is still alive, still irrationally enraged, and still begetting spawn ever year.  Dear, oh dear.  Hmmm... perhaps I should introduce the swan and Peaches?  With any luck, they'd annihilate each other within seconds.

I didn't realise the swan's proximity to myself until it was too late.  I shrank to the ground and prepared for a battering, Maisie shrieking hysterically behind me.  As the foul concoction of feathers bound with malevolence bore down on me, hissing and spitting, there was the merest moment of silence followed by an even more threatening sound.

Opening my eyes a little I turned to see the foul beast settled back on the water, rocking backwards and forwards and snorting.

He was laughing at me.  The more he laughed at my pink cross, the more helpless he became.  I straightened up.
"Oh, s*d off, you fat old crow." I muttered as I wandered off.  Hmmm... but I DID manage to avoid a battering - something in that perhaps.

My partner and I will be listening to this afternoon's England World Cup game on the radio at home, as opposed to going to the pub.  This is for four main reasons, which I list here, in order of least importance upwards:

• My partner has just found out that she has dangerously-high blood pressure.  An England/Germany game could well be the end of her, particularly if it leads to another penalty shoot-out;
• The next couple of days are, for us, that no-man's-land between running out of money and pay-day.  This precludes the purchase of beer;
• It is terribly hot today - too hot, my partner feels, for me to be out in the afternoon;
• Public match attendance would, in all likelihood, result in the reapplication of my St. George Cross.  I'm not going through another week of that nonsense.

I doubt we'll win.  But - hey! - I didn't get beaten up by the swan, for once, so it will all have been worth it...

Good afternoon.