Six Months On...

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"Cue the fanfare! Roll the drums!"

"Come on... Come on! I've been waiting six months for this!"

"It's my return - my second coming. The world hasn't seen anything like this since Steve Jobs returned to Apple!"

"What do you mean - can I wait until you finish the Cyclopedia? It's not good enough. I've a public out there waiting to find out whether I lived or died! That's it, you're fired! I'm getting another ghost writer".

Excuse me readers, I'll be back in a short while....

"Sapphie! where's that copy of the Writers and Artists yearbook? Get me Douglas Coupland on the 'phone will you? If he's not available, get Bill Gibson. I quite like the idea of being the hero of some cyberpunk thriller. What d'ya mean they won't talk to me???? Don't they know I've got a web page read by thousands of people across the globe?"

"Okay, Sapphs we've tried everyone I can think of. It's up to you now. I've seen you sleeping on the keyboard, can you do it?"

"Well, who can?"

"Hey, you're one smart pussy cat, If you think she'll do it, I'll go along with it. If nothing else she'll think she's in with us and I'm sure we can bribe her into giving us more food!"

Come on, come on ... don't be shy, a little applause if you please......

Now, let's start again...

I expect you probably thought I'd be pushing up daisies (or weeds, knowing the state of their garden) by now. Well, there were times when I thought it was all over too. Even the vet reckoned I was past saving. I went two weeks without eating - OR - going to the toilet. I could hardly raise my head from the bed most days.

At one point they even took me to my favourite beach as a sort of last visit. I was so weak, I had to be carried to the sand and couldn't even walk more than a few feet before collapsing. Brings a lump to my throat just thinking about it. He carried me back to the car muttering darkly about where they were going to bury me. Next day, I thought he'd go out and pick a nice spot beneath one of the Apple trees and start preparing it. But did he? No. He goes into town to a supermarket. Comes back with a box of eggs, a tin of chicken soup, two bottles of vitamins and a syringe! Needless to say, I was too weak to get out of bed to greet him but as he walked past he just snapped, "You're for it now!".

Now, I'm not over-dramatising this but he comes back a while later with the syringe and a glass bowl with some foul smelling stuff in it. Turns out it was warm chicken soup with raw egg mixed in. He grabs me by the scruff, sticks two pills down my throat and squirts the contents of the syringe down after them.

So, did your mother never tell you how good chicken soup is? Well, praise the Lord and pass the dog food. I came off that diet pretty quick. If you have a beard you'll know the problem - it's so sticky and it smells disgusting! For a while I managed to convince them that I could only manage to eat the same as them, especially if it was slightly unhealthy. Well, you weren't going to eat all that cream cake , were you? Then I'd condescend to eat catfood. Really annoyed the cat , but what the hell? She only thinks she's as good as a Puli, she isn't really.

Talking of Pulis, where is all my fan mail? Now don't use the excuse of the Christmas hold ups because we all know there's no such thing in Cyberspace. Don't go saying there's a log jam somewhere either cos I've checked my router regularly. There's only been one Puli related enquiry , and that was very general. Fair enough, I know a lot of you were probably too well mannered to write just in case I wasn't here anymore. I never did work out how to have an auto-response on my mail saying. The puli is no more. It is an ex-puli. I never did see what was funny about that dead parrot sketch. Now, if it had been a labrador, That would be funny!

Oh, all this chatting is making me hungary again. (Excuse the pun). My absolutely favourite food of the moment is pork and apple sausages but he won't let me have as many as I want. Sheer greed on his part, I assure you. I take my revenge in the time honoured fashion. You know that smart bed I am pictured in at the top of the page? It doesn't look like that anymore! No. I've shredded the matress part. That'll teach them, I thought. But no - the skinflints - they moaned and carried on and accused me of vandalism. Well, as I said to Sappho, I may be a teenager in their years, but in animal terms we should both be regarded as grande dames. Sapphs is 56 and I am 91! I request, nay I demmand, better treatment! Well, I wrecked the matress at midnight so they couldn't buy a new one immediately. So she suggested they give me a pillow. I wasn't too impressed at first 'cos though it's comfy, it hadn't taken much effort on their part. Then they went to town to buy a replacement "for when they have visitors", which is hardly ever and they found that it was going to be much more costly than a dog bed so I won in the end. There was no way they were going to use a feather pillow once I'd had a few days lying on it. I really would recommend it to anyone but the feathers do get up your nose from time to time!

We had a domestic crisis before Christmas, though I thought at the time it was just an attempt to take away attention from me The archive wife had to go for a checkup. Now I have these too, I look forward to them. One day I may get to bite that Antipodean vet again! However, her vet took one look at her and decided to keep her in something they call a hospital. Terribly inconvenient. First of all the boss was worried, (I don't mean THE boss AKA Bruce, though they did meet briefly once before a gig at the S.E.C.C) - No! I mean my boss. He was sent off to buy a nightdress of all things, cos of course she didn't have anything with her. Don't know what all the fuss was about really, I can go away just in the coat I stand up in, as long as I get fed.

Anyway, when we went to deliver it, there was a blizzard raging. I decided to take control of the situation. I was going to ride shotgun! I jumped from my rather comfortable position on the back shelf (it's wonderful the way snowflakes drop on the window) and took my place in the passenger seat. I was going to navigate. Between you and me, there's no way we'd have made it with him driving and navigating at the same time. He forgot about a Puli's sense of direction. To be honest, some credit must go to Carly. We have this spiritual bond that allows her to sense what way I want to go. She's amazing, even if she has done 226,OOO miles now. When we did get to this hospital, he didn't even let me go and visit. I bet you he was basking in the glory of driving through those conditions himself - probably never mentioned me! AND - if that wasn't bad enough - I'm a fully trained P.A.T. (Pets As Therapy) dog. I now have a job going to visit an old man several times a week which certainly seems to make him feel better! I suppose it was being so close to death, you come to realise that you have to do your bit for those less fortunate...

Anyway, they kept the archive wife in hospital for a week, she's not gone back to work yet so Carly and I came up with this wizard wheeze to cheer her up. The archivist drives us all out into the country and we all have a sort of picnic, whenever it's a nice day. Surprisingly, for midwinter, these have been quite numerous, with glorious skies, great colours on the hills and drop-dead gorgeous sunsets. To be honest, it's just another excuse to "do lunch". But when the countryside looks as great as it does you can see why people write poetry. I can only do that in my native Hungrian which would lose too much in translation but I do admit it inspired the artistic side of me. I got home one day and was overcome. I've seen that Andy Warhol stuff - please, don't mention (chicken) soup cans! Anyway, I've sort of stolen the idea a bit and created my own homage to "Pop Art". If you really look at it, you'll see the meaning of life in there. I find it rather mesmeric, I've got the original hanging above my bed and I often fall asleep staring up at it. Wonderfully relaxing, I assure you.

With all these pills I've been taking, I'm a bit wired most of the time. I'll happilly gallop along a beach for hours on end and when I get home I just don't know what to do with all this energy. I put some of it to good use and got round to submitting an entry to Yahoo! for....

I must stop staring at these cans ........................ zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

"..........uh, who's on the 'phone? Orson Welles - for me? I can see it now. Barely crawling to the top of the stairs with the food bowl in my mouth, then dropping it as I bark out "Rosebud" for the last time. The tin bowl clangs as it bounces down the steps. The camera pans to my still, cold body and fades to black"

........................ zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

........................ I must work on my acceptance speech for the Academy

........................ zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

A day in the life of the archive dog.

Another day in the life of the archive dog.

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