You won’t believe this…

I packed a role of duct tape and a lead pipe, put on my black and day-glow orange ‘I VANT TO BE ALONE’ T-shirt with Jinksy’s poem printed on the back, asked Holle if she dared to go with me, which she did, and went on a quest to post a letter (if you haven’t a clue what I’m talking about you’ll have to read the previous post and the comments first). It took some courage, but your ideas and tips on how to avoid talkative lunatics made me brave. I could do this!

It’s about a 20 minutes walk to the nearest mail box. Holle and I took the small track along the fields to the muddy path, followed the muddy path towards the village this time and had a lovely quiet walk to the mail box. Nodded a few times to people who were working in their garden, or, more likely, the garden of their employers, because almost everyone in our village has a man to do their gardening and a woman to do the vacuuming. We don’t. As you know, I have chosen to be my own slave. Anyway, I was walking on the other side of the street, this street has houses on one side only, so I felt safe enough. I posted the letter. Holle had a good sniff around the place and we turned around and followed our own footsteps home again. There we were, minding our own business, happily walking along the silent side of the street, when a little girl, I guess she was about 10 years old, appeared on the driveway of one of the houses on the other side of the street. “What a nice dog!”, she called to me. ”Thank you!”, I called back. ”Can I pet it?”, she yelled. ”If you really want to!” ”I really want to!” ”Oh alright then!”, thinking a ten year old girl wouldn’t be likely to yap me to death. Well… What do I know about ten year old girls. Not much. They turn out to be champion-talkers. She crossed the street and walked towards us. She petted Holle, who loved the attention. “We have a dog too”, she said. ”What kind of dog do you have?”, I asked. ”A Flatcoated Retriever”, she said. “It has an ear infection. And the vet, well, in fact my best friends father, Otto, he happens to be a vet , he looked at it and he said it is an infection and he gave us tablets that we have to give the dog and tonight we will give the last tablet and then Otto will look at it again and see if it’s okay, and then….” Okay, so clearly this child was related to the mad woman with the bicycle. “Keep calm”, I told myself, slowly getting the lead pipe out of my bag. (No not really of course. I wouldn’t club a child. Not even a yapping one.) ”……and I have two sisters and a brother and my brother lives in … and my sister, the oldest has just bought a house in … and my other sister lives in a rented place, but she’s going to buy a house too… yadayadayada (so I was thinking, since this child is only ten or so and her siblings are much older, most likely her parents are divorced and her mom has remarried an older man who already had children, whilst politely pretending to listen to all the yapping, forgetting about the wonderful ideas you all gave me to get rid of lunatics like this, however small and innocent looking)… and my parents are divorced (see!) and I live with my mother and my father who isn’t really my father (I’d guessed that already dear)… and my sisters and my brother are my dad’s, who isn’t really my dad, children and they are all coming over today… and… I took a deep breath and quickly said: ”Well, that’s nice, but I have to go now. Bye!”, and took off at great speed, dragging Holle with me, leaving slightly baffled girl standing there. Phew! I’d finally managed to escape this one.

But I have thought of a solution now. We clearly have the wrong dogs. Labradors are just too friendly looking. The farrier said it last time he was here to pedicure the horses. He said that if a guy wants to place a personal ad to find a woman, he has to put in it that he has a Labrador. Because owning a Labrador indicates that you are a friendly and trustworthy person. Néver put in a personal ad that you own a Pitbull. Not good for your chances in the women-finding-market. Our farrier is a fountain of knowledge. We will have to get Pitbull costumes for Holle and the other dogs. Or perhaps we could paint them to look scary. Not like this dog in China that still looks cute.

photo taken from here

And on my next walk (if I can ever build up the courage again to go on one) I will be singing and talking out loud, gesturing wildly, wearing the ‘I VANT TO BE ALONE’ shirt whilst signing ‘I’m deaf’ and looking very angry. It takes some effort to be able to enjoy a nice and relaxing walk.