It’s not as if there was anything wrong with the garlic crusher — it’s an imperfect tool and hard to clean, as always; and his search for the perfect garlic crusher is doomed, like it is for the perfect Parmesan grater, the perfect apple corer or the perfect vegetable peeler.
From long observation (while patiently waiting for food to emerge), I can tell you these things are either made in China and are therefore thin, cheap and flimsy; or made in Italy and are beautifully designed, boldly priced and don’t last much longer anyway.
He has a habit of thinking about improvements to these kitchen tools, mostly when he’s trying to put off something, like ridding the vegetable beds of nettles or crawling under the hedge to unblock the sprinkler heads in time for summer.
I could tell he was relieved when a light shower of rain came through — not proper rain but a flimsy drizzle — so he could further delay dealing with the world.
Which is the problem, of course. He feels he has to deal with the world.
It’s a flaw I have been trying to correct for some years by demonstrating the joys of living without guilt or worry.
The Boss is a slow learner in so many ways. His failure to follow my example is a prime example. We dogs don’t do guilt. Guilt is a purely human invention, going back to Adam and Eve, so I’m told — as if a dog would desist from devouring forbidden fruit!
It’s like when he catches me hooking into the sugar snap peas, which I must say can make him a little tense, particularly when he catches me tearing whole pea plants off the trellis.
But guilt is absent. I wag my tail when he yells, thus offering him a profound indication of my affection, if not undying love. There’s nothing to be guilty about. I am being my splendid self.
Anyway, he was trying to deal with the world. The referendum was done and dusted, and there were messages from family and friends, app notifications and news articles venting disappointment or relief or a mixture of both, but plenty of guilt and worry about what it all means.
And the Israeli-Gaza eruption, where he sees only gloom and worry, is invisible to me. He tries to draw me into it, saying there will be many dogs on both sides of the impending conflict, or war — assigned to all kinds of tasks, as they have been for centuries.
He insists on telling me that around 50,000 dogs were recruited during World War II in the United States alone, acting as sentries, messengers, sniffer dogs and spies.
Long before that, George Washington used his dogs to fight against the British colonialists, as did the other side.
These days, they use us to sniff out explosives, mines, tripwires and combatants. But do we worry? Are we guilty? Of course not. We just leap into it with gusto, from moment to moment.
Eventually, the showers passed, the sun broke out, and I stood at the door uttering intermittent barks until he let me out.
He opened the door and went to shut it, but I turned and barked again, wagging some more, until he got the message to come outside. It was a good thing, too: he heard the unmistakable chirruping of the rainbow bee-eaters straight away.
Their early scouts had landed after their long migration on Thursday, in time for the Show weekend, as they do, but by Sunday, the main flock had arrived, and they were flitting and gliding and singing right across the bend.
He nodded towards the river, and we wandered down to watch them. It’s where we both needed to be. Woof!
15°C