K8 the GR8

Three things occured today with morals in them somewhere:

The good.

The outside lane of the Arklow bypass was congested with four cars, led by a horsebox.  I mooched into the ‘fast lane’ to overtake, thus exceeding the speed limit a bit.  At 70mph, I was almost clear, when I spotted a boy racer approaching my rear at a fierce rate of knots.  I could have pulled in behind the horsebox to let him pass, but I felt like pissing him off so I stayed put, forcing him to de-cellerate from his 120mph or whatever the hell he was doing.  He climbed right up my exhaust pipe to make his stupid little point. 

To put the willies up him, I left my right foot on the accelerator, and pressed my left foot gently on the brake pedal.  Not enough to affect the revs of my engine, but enough to turn on my brake lights.  He panicked, and got a nasty dose of the speed wobbles.  Most 18 year olds haven’t a clue how to react in aquaplaning conditions.  I watched with satisfaction as the pale driver of the souped-up civic got a nasty dose of reality and regained control.  He pulled himself into the outside lane and drove very sensibly until I left him at my junction.  The burnt hand learns quickest, they say. 

The bad.

My next door neighbour is a bit of an oddball. Have you ever seen one of those documentaries where the focus is a man who keeps his excrement in jam jars because he’s afraid to flush it away?  Well, this lady might be cut from the same cloth.  She has a huge affinity for animals, and regularly appears with some new pet that is suffering from some affliction or other.  This is all lovely, but she really isn’t doing them any favours.  The authorities have been around a few times to ease our neighbourhood rat problem, and have solved it by asking this lady nicely to put her rubbish out for collection, instead of letting it pile up in her garden.  Her children walk on carpets made of rabbit poo, and there is a very creepy collection of empty pet cages on her back doorstep.  The lady has hoarding issues. 

I’m getting off the point though.  What is troubling me, is this lovely black labrador puppy in her back garden.  It’s chained to a delapidated clothes-line, and howls a sad lament all day and all night.  It’s been doing this for weeks, rain or shine.  The constant chingling noise of the chain and the incessant whining means we can’t open our bedroom window on clammy nights.  It just seems so cruel for this puppy with abundant energy to be tied up like that.  I have been meaning to talk to my next door neighbour about him, but she seems to have taken herself a wee holiday, and hasn’t been seen for over a week, until today.  As she pulled into her driveway in her banger, I lost my balls completely.  Curse this inexplicable fear of confrontation.  I don’t want to call the ISPCA and commit the poor dog to death-row.  I don’t know what to do, bar deprive my own dog of kitchen scraps by flinging them over the fence.

The ugly.

My puppychild has a blanket from which she rarely parts.  It is so germy, that lately it’s been growling when I approach it.  Today I managed to smuggle it from puppychild’s bedroom to the kitchen un-noticed.  I wrapped it in a sheet, but unfortunately it became untangled in the washing process, and to her horror, puppychild discovered that PoohBear was in peril, drowning in suds. 

Her reaction was similar to that of some poor soul who has just woken to find that he’s been buried alive.  She desperately clawed at the washing-machine door and howled a gut-wrenching cry that lasted for the entire wash-cycle.  My nerves were in ribbons.  I couldn’t repeat the whole process again with the tumble dryer, so I appeased her by handing her a clean, damp blanket which she is now clinging to for dear life.  I am evil incarnate in her eyes.  I know this because she is refusing to make eye-contact with me now.  Another notch is marked against her childhood innocence, but at least her damn blanket is behaving itself for once.

A child with issues