We did not have a TV. Well that is not exactly true we did have a TV but it was not plugged in, and it did not have an ariel, and besides my dad had it locked away in the living room cupboard, where no-one could see it. Especially the radar men in their radar vans who went around looking for people who had TV's, but had not paid their license.
So what do you do on a cold winters night, well you stoked up the fire with coal, and slouched back in your chair with you feet up on the mantle and listened to your Dad tell stories. He would do impersonations of Mary the dyker talking to her black lab Beaut. Mary was a woman, and by profession she was a dyker, which ment she built dry stone dykes which are common on the Ayrshire hills.
Beaut was her dog who accompanied her everywhere. Beaut was a crazy barker. He would loose control when he barked. The Mary the dyker stories were always the same. Mary giving ineffective commands to shut Beaut up, and Beaut becoming more agitated and vocal, and ignoring her commands completely.
The stories contained descriptions of Mary's face, red with rage, veins pulsating on the brow of her temple, and spittle flying, as she shouted at her dog. As for Beaut all he ever did was bark, but to spice up the story there were graphic descriptons of how his testicles moved during a barking frenzy. My dad would bark like Beaut, and scream like Mary, and carry the dialogue between dog and woman for a good 15 minutes.
Even at the end of his life he was still making jokes about dogs. On observing a long haired Scottish terrier barking outside the window he mused that if you shoved a broom stick up that dogs arse it would make a fine feather duster.
I wonder what made him think that way, and having had that thought, why did he let the words slip out of his mouth.
Alzheimer's I suppose.
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