Norman’s Walk – August 24

Firstly, I have to make a big apology to our other dog, Lizzi, she’s sad because she’s just not as much fun as Norman.

Which is why we left her at home.

August’s walk was too important for small dogs who like to sneak upstairs and sleep on the bed all day. For August, we needed a dog who could pose heroically in front of oncoming trains…

…and run through fields of wheat like Theresa May.

That’s who we needed. Not this:

Because in August we had to save the world again.

The walk started well, in fact, it was a bit quiet, look no clouds and only one strange creature.

But, this being Cumbria, we soon bumped into three more weirdos.

They told us Geoffrey was leading an alien invasion of the planet, and a rainbow across the sky was the signal for it to begin. Zippy was saying he could save the world single-handedly… before I pulled the zip across. A feature that I wish I could use on a lot more people.

So, we stepped up – we had to save the world.

But you can’t hatch a plan to save the world before you’ve had a scone (ask me mam). So we headed off to the coffee shop, with its fancy new sign.

Do I want a scone and save the world or do I take notice of the sign, and be scone-less and too weak to save the world?

Sacrifices had to be made. Specifically, the woman whose caramel shortbread got mysteriously stolen from her table and the man’s delicious toastie that was far too close to Norman’s nostril. Well fuelled, we put our heads together.

It turns out our heads together are just as useless as our heads apart. When we left the cafe, the invasion was well underway.

And we still didn’t have a plan. All Norman was bothered about was he couldn’t go for his usual swim.

And there were alien robots everywhere.

Norman, helpfully, got confused and couldn’t differentiate between aliens and humans.

Norman likes to stand in a river with a stick but surely humans wouldn’t do something that silly, would they?

I sought out advice from lifeforms more ancient and wiser than us. But The Singing Tree of Caldbeck was no help.

She was too busy singing ‘Fool in the Rain’ to celebrate the anniversary of Led Zeppelin’s last real studio album.

Even the famous Cumbrian Cloud Tree, under which all the great ideas in the world are thought of, was of no use.

I went down to my old school football pitch, where nothing had changed since 1977.

But I couldn’t think of how to save the world. What about you Snoopy? Woodstock?

Nothing.

Things were looking bad. But then the answer came to me in a flash. I remembered the principle I have lived by all my life – doing nothing is better than doing something. Phew. We all know aliens are defeated by the simplest things (e.g. the common cold), well look what happened,

The aliens built their invasion HQ on a budget and scrimped on the planning. The alien leaders were too fat to get out of the front door and organise their troops, so the troops all went back to their planet near the Sagittarius spiral arm.

World saved.

Fat aliens trapped.

Which made the CumuloSmilosaurus even more happy.

That was it. After that, we went home to Diane for coffee and to tell Lizzi all about it. She said we were both liars and told us to get lost because she wanted to do this…

…and would rather the world be taken over by aliens.

You can’t please everyone.

Have a great, alien-free, weekend.

Take care and all the best,

Ian

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