The Tiny Yorkie Dog Incident.

It’s a heady, stuffy warm mid-August late evening. The smudged painting of a blue-pink and yellow sky and low sun makes for a truly beautiful vista. As I drive along a quiet seafront road, I’m chatting to an articulate, engaging and funny story teller. This entire visual feast combined with good conversation is a rare joy.

As my eyes click open and shut and in the split second of a blink, a small pair of dog’s bollocks slide across my windscreen. My entertaining passenger is silent and opened mouthed. I’m also braking to a stop, a very quick well practised screeching, sliding, tyre smoking safe full stop.

I pull over just in time to see a middle-aged man and woman lifting something up from the beach below. At the end of what I thought was a rope, is a dripping wet and worryingly limp tiny dog that has now instantly explained the flying dog’s bollocks my brain had photographed a minute earlier.

I think the rest of this sorry tale can be told from a better perspective. So let us look at this from the point of view of the middle-aged couple standing near the zebra crossing.

The couple are deep in conversation unaware the extending lead with a tiny dark yorkie dog on the end was reeling out to its fullest extent onto a Zebra crossing. The little dark dog is now having a shit on the black part of the crossing nearly all the way to the middle of the road. The man holding the lead has heard a car, my cab. He realises where the straining shitting little dog is, he sees me in my cab at full national speed chatting away to an equally smiling passenger. I am not going to stop; I can’t see a small dark dog having a shit on the black part of the crossing. The middle-aged man pulls on the lead and in one quick urgent jerk, a sea angler would be proud of; the little dog that is about the size of a kitten has suddenly gone from a squatting position to a flying one.

As the dog brushes across my windscreen and my mind takes the picture of the tiny dog’s bollocks, it continued its journey at a pace through space over the heads of the middle aged couple, passes the railings and ends up landing in a pool of sea water on the beach below and to all intent and purposes is now dead.

I gingerly enter this arena of death and tears as the couple are pulling the dog up from the beach by its neck onto the promenade, both convinced it was an ex-dog, shifted this mortal coil, gone to meet its maker, you get my pythonesque drift. I attempt to get involved in their grief and lay some of the shame of this event on my shoulders, when as the middle aged woman tries to give the dog mouth to muzzle resuscitation the little bastard thing came back to life and bit her face and shits itself. (Although involuntarily this time) considering in the last minute, this little dog has been strangled, thrown at a speeding taxi, chucked in the sea, hanged and his owner tried to eat his face. I would be shaking and bearing my teeth too.

where's my fucking pills?

 I quickly left them there on the promenade bemused, confused, bitten and covered in reanimated dead dog poo.  I got back in the cab and took my customer home, whom, within moments of driving away also nearly shit himself laughing about the whole debacle.

I’ve now added this event to my burdensome checklist of things I have to look out for whilst driving the cab, these include looking out for pedestrians on crossings, sleeping drunkards inbetween parked cars that tend to stretch out as I drive by and then run over their arms.  Included on the list also are driving around fat blokes lying in the middle of the road and having to remember the give way to the right rule, I also now have to add a quick careful look for little black or white dogs having a shit on zebra crossings.

Do You Really Know What Love Is?

Do you Really Know What Love is?

The above phrase is used by all of us at various times in our lives, but what ‘really’ is it? Is it tangible? Would you know it was love if you felt it?

I know what love is.

Most people use analogies to describe the feeling of love, libraries are full of such things. Some of the greatest literary works have searing, soaring vast worlds that indeed try to best describe this feeling of love.  But alas, despite the descriptions of love from the great poets and writers, most of us at some point in our lives feel lonely for the lack of it.  Quite a few of us are resigned to the fact that love is an unattainable concept and settle for passionate first-time-sex-with-someone-new and close friendship. And further to that some of us settle for what suits our goals in lifestyle and career, whomever we meet that helps to provide that, is the ‘love’ of our lives.

All the above is fine, I am not judging. I imagine some great long term relationships have survived and flourished and long and meaningful happy lives have been had by all.

So I said after the first paragraph, I know what love is, yes I do, I definitely know what it is.  I’m not going to be adding any great literary work to any of the dwindling stock of our libraries, but here is my definition of my feeling of love, my analogy.

If you cannot remember doing this, put yourself in the position of a four year old and you're in a supermarket with a parent or beloved guardian. You do what all four year olds do and run off skipping and jumping through the throng of shoppers. You find something you like and want and turn and ask your parent for it.

Fear and panic rise within you, tears instantly well up in your eyes. Where? Where are they? Your face shows real fear; you are twisting and turning on the spot to find your parent. This happens all within the space of a few moments. The fear of being alone and helpless is strong.

That hand on your shoulder, you turn, that smile, the smile that says everything is alright has been close by all along, you didn’t know it but you were being lovingly watched all this time. What do you do next? You run off again of course! Appears you didn’t learn anything, but you have, you learned at a young age that being loved spurs you on to greater adventures. Having that feeling of relief and the sense of safety and happiness will always make everything alright.

I assume you are big and grown up now reading this, you’re thinking yeah cute analogy but it doesn’t relate to me now does it?

Imagine then a similar scenario; you’re at a party with someone you have gotten close to and proud to be with. You both split up and mingle, you are being courted and flirted at by admirers, you enjoy the deliciousness of being attractive to others, you throw a glance way across a large room to your partner, you connect, a smile and a glance tells you everything is ok. The reassurance of that feeling is more warming than the brandy you are drinking. Later still your back is caressed. A tingle. Your partner has just walked by. A hug in front of everyone that says we are one.

That look across a room, the loving hand, the reassurance that all is ok. That’s love that is. A love that makes you run, skip, jump, want. You can flirt and pole dance in front of your Nan and show people the tattoo on your bum. Knowing someone is there, not to stifle but encourage doing all you want to do or be and allowed to be a bit naughty just now and again.

My wife is way more sensible than me; I’m impulsive, indecisive and often unsure of myself, awkward even. Whenever and wherever I turn when we are together, that knowing reassuring look she gives me allows me to make a complete arse of myself, I hop, skip and jump and these days often fall over but that’s ok, she will pick me up and I will run off and do it all over again.

Maybe whilst you have been looking at the horizon, waiting for love to come, maybe, just maybe the person that has loved you, cared for you, even been there when you have fallen has been standing behind you all along. Maybe.

Right I’m off to do something daft like write about love and then publish it. I’m a hard-nosed Cabbie I am, but a certain someone has just given me the look that says it will all be ok.