Month: February 2022

(Good title for a song that.)

Last week, I very nearly ‘blogged’ about how, with my other half away, the dogs were sleeping upstairs with me… but then the two girls started fighting, which rather took the shine off it I’m afraid. (Tt, women!)

I only mention it because last night, in something of a role reversal, I found myself sleeping downstairs with the dogs. It’s been said before that I can pretty much sleep anywhere, which is just as well really because, perhaps unhappy about me muscling in on their territory, the lion’s share of the sofas (well, the dog’s share I suppose) was already taken up and I spent quite a lot of time leaning against the side of a settee with my behind on the footstool. Despite that, and despite the need to go outside for a wee (twice) I slept very well.

Let me quickly head off at the pass the thought that this bizarre behaviour was the result of a “you’re sleeping on the settee” row (or, in our case, a “you’re sleeping as near to the settee as you can get” row). One of our dogs is tremendously nervous, easily spooked by loud bangs, or raised voices, or the noise of his own breathing. Consequently, with storm Eunice en route I knew that every shake of the window, every rattle of the letterbox, every general shudder and gust, would have Max running straight upstairs and scratching frantically at the bedroom door – and most likely with the other three close behind, not out of fear but the opportunistic chance of getting to sleep on the bed again. So the easiest thing seemed to be to stay downstairs to reassure him without the need to go pelting upstairs like a thing possessed.

Thankfully, at time of writing anyway, I can report no damage from Eunice. I have of course had to spend an hour so far this morning trying to explain to the dogs why I’m not taking them out for a walk (I felt a little like Homer Simpson when he says, of trying to convince Bart not to do something, “God help me, I even tried reasoning with him”) and if nothing else it certainly says something for the scale of this morning’s Red Weather Warning that I’ve promised to take them out this afternoon… when the wind will be down to a mere sixty miles per hour!

Luckily after a while the dogs always revert to their default position, ie they are now asleep again across two settees and a dogbed. Personally, and unusual sleeping arrangements notwithstanding, I’m wide awake – and simply from having had a good night’s sleep, I’m not wide-eyed in fear at the storm raging outside. My only concession to worry (so far…) was a sudden panic at five am about the wheelie bin becoming airborne – whereupon I brought the poor thing indoors, which is why it’s now stood by the front door in the incongruous fashion of, say, a time-travelling police box standing in a junkyard.

The storm, I gather this morning, has prompted a second Red Weather Warning for this afternoon – perhaps seeking its fortune, Eunice is heading on to London. I don’t know whether in the heart of the city it’s quite as easy as it is down here to, at very short notice, close the schools and cancel some buses and sleep half-perched on a footstool for the night. Luckily I don’t work on Fridays (my boss is forever complaining about it, tells me to stop snoring at my desk) but even if I did I think I would have absented myself today. Hopefully, given the advance warning, everyone has been sensible – and hopefully with minimal damage to property and no damage to life, the storm will literally blow over.

Meanwhile, based on our forecast, we’ve another hour or so of not walking the dogs and of not being able to hoover the downstairs hall carpet because some idiot has parked, of all things, a wheelie bin there! Hopefully my other half isn’t TOO annoyed about that.

Otherwise I might find myself sleeping on the settee again tonight.