The man at the next table looked down at my fidgeting spaniel and shook his head. ‘Not trained,’ he said.
How rude. There I was, having a quiet drink with my friend at the local pub, when the man at the next table decided to give me some unsolicited advice about how to control my dog. There is nothing worse than unsolicited advice about techniques of cocker spaniel stewardship. As any cocker spaniel owner knows, if you manage to train one not to leap out of too many third floor windows, then you are doing well.
I have to admit, however, that the man at the next table had some right to intervene. Cydney was driving the pub mad by whimpering and wriggling at my feet. Actually, she was howling as though her lungs were fit to burst, and yanking so hard on her lead that she was pulling me across the floor on my seat.
The noise of the spaniel howling and the chair scraping across the flagstones and me gasping ‘Oh, Cydney, please!’ every few minutes was rather ruining the ambience of one of Surrey’s most modish gastropubs (clientele include Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and there is often a queue for the helipad).
Also, it was quiz evening, so the howling did rather interfere with the compère calling out the questions. But you have to understand that Cydney has sat through a lot of these quizzes and is beginning to get a bit hacked off.
Yet again, we were being asked for the number of bones in the human body, the number of states in the US beginning with M, and the number of keys on a ‘standard’ piano — none of which we could remember, as usual.
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