Black Doggerel

Conversations I'll Never Have (More's The Pity) Number 76398633662 (or thereabouts.)

Good afternoon, Mr Cantankerous Arsey Neighbour With The Bike.

That's a lovely-looking German Shepherd puppy you suddenly have there.

No, that barking Norwegian Ridgeback impression Spike is doing is not dog language for "Oh, let's make friends with the cute puppy!" It's Spike language for "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!".

Yes, I can quite see how you could confuse the two, because I already know you're that stupid.

I know you're that stupid because when I abruptly changed direction (TO AVOID YOU, IDIOT!) and walked Spike back two hundred yards the way we'd come instead of carrying on towards home, you took it into your head to follow us with the damn puppy.

You were at the junction. You could have stood still, or you had a choice of three different directions you could have walked away from us. I had a choice of either walking further and further in the direction I already hadn't wanted to go in, or walking down Barrow Road where the neighbour with the two unsocialised dog-aggressive outdoor Rottweilers (and that's another rant in the making all by itself) was out in his garden making barking noises at them and winding them up. In the end I decided the least annoying/dangerous/noisy option was to head for home and try and get Spike past you as quickly as possible. It was noisy. It wasn't pretty. But at least it was over fairly quickly.

Don't fucking follow me with that damn dog again, you fucking slack-jawed grinning cretin! Thanks to the incredibly well-trained and forbearing dog down the road (I LOVE that dog's owner) I had just about got Spike to the point where he can be in sight of a German Shepherd without losing his shit entirely. You really helped me a lot with that. Not.

Oh, and pick up your dog's crap, wankstain. Yes, I saw you.

Please die,

Liz and Spike.

*draws breath*

I really need a Spike "fuck off and die" icon, damn it. *makes hopeful face at cottonmanifesto*

...in other news, while I was writing this, Cassie looked intently out of the window and barked. I knew she could make some weird noises, but this? Took the fucking biscuit. Cats are weird.

Dear Shiny-Headed OCD Clean Freak Down The Hall,

I appreciate that you like our communal hallway to be clean. So do I. But can you stop fucking repeatedly flooding the fucking building with neat fucking bleach? There are fucking pools of it all down the corridor, walking down there made my sodding eyes sting and even my fucking flat stinks of it now from the dogs tracking it in. And they really fucking hate having their feet washed, too. Go live at the public swimming pool if the smell of chlorine gets you off that much, for fuck's sake.

Hoping you choke on the fumes,

Your Neighbour.


Dear Overfriendly Lady In The Next Building,

Exchanging pleasantries with you on a dog walk doesn't mean I want to be your new bestest friend. I didn't even tell you where I lived, and there you were ringing my doorbell which is disturbing enough. Also, I don't mind lending you the odd bit of tobacco but why on earth would you ask a more or less complete stranger to lend you money? The answer is NO, and it's always going to be no however many times you ask. And you can't buy a kitten off me either, firstly because I don't sell animals, secondly because continually asking me for money does not fill me with confidence about your ability to look after said kitten properly, and thirdly because you have small children and I don't trust you to be the sort of mother who can successfully train them not to torment it.

Sincerely not yours,

Liz and the kittens

What the everloving actual fuck...?!

Just had a conversation with Downstairs Neighbour Couple. They told me that Cassie's former owners would like to "have the orange and white kitten if it's a boy".

OK, remember the way Cassie got dumped on me without any forewarning? Those people had my phone number, but they didn't think Cassie's welfare was important enough to speak to me at all before bringing her to the Conservative Club without so much as a cat carrier or a litter tray and leaving her with someone else to pass on to me. It's pure luck that I didn't want her to bait my dogs, sell to a laboratory, feed to a python or make fucking mittens out of, isn't it?

They told me they didn't know she was pregnant. Personally, I don't believe a word of that, I'm convinced they rehomed her solely because they didn't want the bother of kittens - but I suppose it's possible. Again, it's possible to be a responsible owner and have your eight-month-old kitten get unintentionally pregnant - but it's also not a bloody point in your favour.

Lastly and most telling, I was told that Cassie was being rehomed because her owners were moving into sheltered accomodation where pets weren't allowed. So what's changed? Did getting rid of your pregnant cat magically make you twenty years younger? Is it only black and white girl cats that aren't allowed at this "sheltered accomodation", or - tell me if I'm getting warmer - is it just that Cassie wasn't a little fuzzy-wuzzy kitten any more, you can't be arsed with speutering your pets, cats in heat are a nuisance, and if you have a boy cat the accidental pregnancies end up being some other poor sap's problem?

I like Downstairs Neighbour Couple a lot, and they aren't the SPOs in question, so I only touched on the "sheltered accomodation" issue briefly and told them all the kittens were girls (I'm not completely certain about the tabby, in fact, but that's irrelevant). They knew what I was getting at, though.

Cassie's ex-people: FUCK OFF AND DIE. NO KITTEN FOR YOU!

I have one neighbour on my floor - I'll call him Cheery Bald Neighbour - who, every single time he sees me, says two things during the course of the conversation.

( In which I rant at length about my neighbour's annoying habits )

Also, I'm 90% certain that he was the perpetrator of Lake Domestos last week. The stairwell still smells faintly like a public swimming pool.

( A small rant about supermarkets and annoying people )

- this rant was brought to you today by six chicken bones and the tail-end of a baguette.

In other dog news, would you believe me if I told you Spike was acting as a stooge for a dog-aggressive dog? I wouldn't either, but he is. Directly Underneath Me Neighbour adopted an adorable Jack Russell bitch at about the same time as Downstairs Neighbour Couple adopted Yellow-Dog Buster, the miniature Dingo. We often meet him on our walks and Spike and Squish are great friends with his first JRT - however, New Bitch goes into a screaming canicidal rage at the sight of other dogs, even from across the road.

The great thing about this is that Spike doesn't. He likes terriers and he loves bitches and he doesn't care that she clearly wants nothing more than to rip his kidneys out and wear them on her collar. So we do the thing where we retreat just far enough for her to stop screeching, and I get them to look at me while D.U. Neighbour praises her for being quiet and reduces the distance a little each time. None of this is prearranged - we just tend to take walks at the same time. Dog synergy, or something.

Grr. Some fucking obsessive clean freak in this building flooded the lower stairwell with what smelled like neat bleach. It's lying on the floor in pools, and just walking through made my eyes water and my nose run. No way to avoid the dogs walking in it on the way out and back. I just sponged all their paws off in case it burns or they want to lick them, which Spike heartily disliked.

Spike has taken to sleeping pressed against the door of the cat room. His is a pure and slightly creepy love. Cassie did come out to say hello to him yesterday when I fed her, though.

Kittens later. My sister's lovely bloke came over on the way back from visiting Mum last night and drove me to Grimmauld Place and back so I didn't need to walk it. Joy! He also took a short video of the kittens on his new camcorder (their excuse was that they'd want it to take baby videos, but I know my sister - any excuse to buy nice toys!) We didn't have the software to upload it straight to my HD but he's promised to email it soonest.

It's colder and cloudy today; looks like rain. Maybe even that thunderstorm I hear rumours about. More joy!

Oh, and my fucking kitchen tap is broken! It's not just dripping, it's unstoppably, noisily trickling. Must ring Council before I lose my last remaining marbles.

Fucking wankbastard pissmonkey neighbours have been letting off sodding fireworks every fucking night for a week now. Tonight's performance is a. coming from somewhere within 100 yards of the flats and b. includes a lot of those shrill whistling screeching ones - which means I'm typing this with a distraught collie in my lap. And it's going to carry on like this till after New Year now. It's going to be a fucking long winter.

Please excuse and ignore earlier bout of whining. It's as resolved as it's ever going to get. Thank you to everyone who cared.

The thing I hate most in the world about my dogs is their awful morning enthusiasm. I wake up like Nick Mallory (from the Diana Wynne Jones books, he's in The Merlin Conspiracy and Deep Secret) and I am non-functional for several hours/pints of coffee after waking up. It wasn't such a problem at Mum's, I could leave the back door open to the garden and sit around in my dressing gown till noon if I wanted. Here, though, there is no garden and no back door, and I am required to be fully dressed and at least alert enough to keep hold of their leads every single time they take a piss. I quite enjoy it the rest of the day - it gets me out, it gets me talking to my neighbours and it improves their leash manners (well, Squish's, anyway - Spike still cherishes a secret belief that if he takes off fast enough and has enough faith, the leash will have retroactively ceased to exist and he'll go straight to warp. It's hard on the wrists.)

But the morning one just kills me. Sometimes if I've taken them out really late the night before I can sit for half an hour and get one cup of coffee in, but what with Spike's phaser stare and random cold nose attacks and Squish's little "don't mind me, I'll just starve to death in a pool of my own pee" noises, usually I just bite the bullet and take them immediately. They follow me to the bathroom and jump up and down while I pee, they help me put my clothes on, and when I reach for the leads they explode like a pair of squealing bouncing fangirls while I stand there like a zombie trying to attach them to the collars. It's torture - and I have to do it every fucking morning.

Also, two of my right-hand fingers are randomly sore and unusable this morning. I have no idea why. It makes typing tricky. I'm starting to wonder if I'm getting rheumatic in my old age.

*grump piss moan grumble*

I am now wondering if I actually need to wait for a natural disaster before I resort to butchering my irritating bastard noisy neighbours to feed to my dogs.

I have a very big empty freezer...

Sodding hormones. Still in a pit of self loathing here. I feel about as entertaining as a Vorta comedy revue and as desirable as genital warts.

However, I have a new book, some dark chocolate and some rather fine tiramisu ice cream, so I'll get by. This can't last longer than another day or so, surely?

And in other news, I believe I've been elected as TrekBBS' "Last Person You'd Ever Want to Ride Out a Natural Disaster With" after someone started a thread in the Briar Patch asking how hungry you'd have to be before you'd eat your pets. My assertion that I'd sooner butcher my neighbours for dogfood didn't go down well.

Ah well. My grief is controllable.

*snerk*