Norman in Town

There were a couple of serious incidents this week in town involving Norman.

That sketch is not 100% accurate, we don’t live in Tokyo and Norman isn’t Godzilla.

The first incident was when I was passing the fruit and veg shop and a man was choosing a few carrots. Told you it was serious.

There looked to be a bit of a manky collection in the bottom of the basket but the man had picked out the best ones and look pretty chuffed with his selection. As he learned over to look at the tomatoes, his carrot hand protruded out into the street a little, something like this:

Two things to note here – the Fruit and Veg guy is a terrible marketer, look at those labels, and secondly, Norman likes carrots. Norman likes carrots just as much as he likes absolutely anything else in the universe that can fit in his mouth.

While walking through town, you may rightly say something like ‘Keep control of your stupid dog’ – and you are correct. But you fail to remember I’m a daydreamer, especially when walking, and I took my eye off the ball, or carrot, for a micro-second. I was probably thinking ‘What can I write in this week’s newsletter? What about that time I got locked in a nightclub and had to break my way out… ‘

(Please note my hair is brown, it was a long time ago)

Then Norman bit the carrots out of the man’s hand and the newsletter problem was solved. Thanks Norman, you’re the best.

You don’t know how many times I apologised to the man, I’m going to make a guess at 27. There were no more decent carrots, the tomatoes were naff and the cabbage was … me. He wasn’t happy.

He went home hungry and I walked on to meet Diane at the butcher’s.

She had our other dog Lizzi and I was given charge of both when she went inside to buy meat. Lizzi hates Norman’s guts. She told me about a dream she had once, it went something like this

I think there might’ve been a machine gun and a couple of hand grenades involved as well.

Norman is usually not bad at waiting, but the smell of meat wafting out of the butcher’s was too much for him and he started boinging up and down.

We’ve all done it.

You know when you see one of those really chunky sausage rolls with caramelized onion or something… 

Norman started jumping and Lizzi had just had a haircut.

You might think what’s that got to do with the price of caramelized onion sausage rolls… Well, after a haircut Lizzi’s collar doesn’t fit as well as it should, and when she saw Norman boinging, and she couldn’t reach the meat cleaver on the work surface to stop him, she thought ‘Stuff this’ and whipped her head out of her collar and legged it down the street.

It was a busy street – cars, lorries, steamrollers that sort of thing.

And I think Lizzi thought, I didn’t really want to do that, but now that I have I’d better style it out. She ran half-heartedly across a side street and Norman went mental because he likes an event, especially involving Lizzi.

You know that old comedy routine where the bloke is walking along trying to pick his hat up but keeps kicking it instead.

That’s what this was like. I wasn’t kicking Lizzi, let’s get that straight, but every time I got close to her, Norman jumped like a maniac and I couldn’t grab her, especially since she had no collar on. So I proceeded along the pavement and across two roads, like this

Norman, a trampolinist, and Lizzi skipping a few feet ahead when I got close. The low point was the very busy cafe, the high point was when I imagined I didn’t have dogs and my life was full of fluffy unicorns instead.

After most of the town had seen me, Diane came out of the butcher’s, saw this ridiculousness going on down the street, said some cute words to Lizzi, like ‘What’s that silly Ian doing to you, Mrs Fluffykins’ picked her up, then we went home.

Simple.

I am just so glad Lizzi didn’t use her superpower. She can go invisible. 

Me Mam was walking along with Lizzi on the lead and I looked round and this is what I saw:

Incredible isn’t it. Completely invisible.

I was just about to call Mulder and Scully when this X-File was solved. Lizzi came round the corner, ten yards behind. She’d slipped her head out again (yes, we need to tighten that lead up a bit) and me mam hadn’t realized. She’d been walking an empty lead. Lizzi is very gentle on the lead, so that’s not as daft as it sounds.

Might skip town for a while.

Have a great weekend.

Take care and all the best,

Ian

(If you want to leave a comment below, that would be great)