Wuff with the Smooth: Macaroni

I was chatting to a friend last week who, after Trump dumped his tariffs, lost a small fortune on the stock markets. It was such a loss I can’t even tell you how much, for the simple fact that you wouldn’t believe me. Let’s just say that it was a small fortune and leave it at that.

During our telephone conversation as my friend was breaking his news, I noted that he didn’t sound overly annoyed at having suffered such a significant financial blow.

“Sure, what can you do?” he replied. “It’s not that I can actually do anything about it. Hopefully Trump wises up and changes his mind about the tariffs and the markets recover.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” I told him.

“I know. But that’s the way it goes sometimes. If you raged at everything that goes wrong in life, you’d end up having a very short life.”

“That’s a very philosophical attitude.”

“It’s the best attitude.” And as an afterthought – or possibly to change the subject, my friend asked, “How’s Waffle?”

“Aye, well, he’s still living, anyway.”

“What did he get up to now?”

I considered telling my friend that Waffle puked in the hall last week after eating two Jelly Tots (see last week’s article for full report). I considered telling him that Waffle won’t stop sniffing round the hens and I’m concerned that it might put them off their laying. I even considered relaying the long and arduous report about how Waffle has discovered how to nudge his way into my work bag to search for morsels of food or more likely, empty crisp bags. Like, how does he negotiate the zip?

I said none of this, though. The man had just lost a ton of money when the arse fell out of the stock market; the last thing he needed to hear was me complaining – unnecessarily – about the hound.

“Ah, the usual,” I eventually replied, obliquely. “Are you looking to borrow him for a while? Maybe he could offer you some advice for future stock investments.”

“Ha ha,” he laughed, sardonically. “He certainly wouldn’t do any worse of a job at it than me. Come to think of it, if you can rub some Wotsits into his face, squeeze him into a wean’s suit and make him say ‘tremendous’ all the time, he’d definitely be able to do a better job than that other nutter.”

“Trump doesn’t like dogs, apparently.”

“Apparently so,” my friend qualified. “Which is a bit weird since almost all the other American presidents had dogs.”

“Is that right?” I asked.

“That’s right,” he said. “Conveniently, I read an article on just this topic a few years ago.”

Apart from being riotous craic, this friend of mine has something of a photographic memory – when he wants to. He continued…

“Do you know what Abraham Lincoln’s dog was called?” he asked.

“I didn’t even know he had a dog.”

“He did and it was called Fido.”

“Fido – that will be easy to remember, if it ever comes up at a pub quiz.”

“Can you remember what Bill Clinton’s dog was called?”

“Waffle?”

“No, it was called Buddy. JFK – he had a whole squad of dogs, but I can’t remember their names except that one was an Irish Wolf Hound called Wolf.”

“This could be your specialist subject on Mastermind,” I suggested.

“Well, it’s not going to be the stock market, eh,” he laughed. “George W had a dog called Spot and Obama had two dogs but I can’t remember their names.”

“You’re slipping.”

“As far as I’m aware though,” he continued. “There were no First Dogs called Waffle.”

“There’s only one Waffle.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“You said ‘almost’ all the presidents had dogs.”

“It’s funny the things you remember… Apart from Trump not having a dog – he hates dogs – of course… one president, William McKinley didn’t have a dog either – but he did have a parrot. I can’t remember the parrot’s name but apparently it could whistle the song ‘Yankee Doodle.’”

“You’re making this up,” I said but I knew he wasn’t. And he knew that I knew that he wasn’t.

“Stick that feather in your hat…” he said instead.

“And call it macaroni?”