Wuff With The Smooth: Let’s go fly a kite

Waffle didn’t care for that storm last week – not a bit of it.

He didn’t care for the hurricane-force winds which ripped several tiles off our roof. Nor did he care for the deep, penetrating cold which descended after the power went off and after we realised we couldn’t properly heat the house.

He wasn’t even much of a fan of me tucking him in at night either, with that old blanket which has been squatting in the hotpress for years.

Every night, I’d make him get out of his bed before spreading out the blanket thereupon, bidding him return to his lair, before folding the blanket over, so that he was wrapped inside like a little hairy burrito. I know he didn’t like this ill-conceived procedure because every morning when I opened the door to his room (the backhall), the blanket was on the floor and he was back in his bed.

I also know that he didn’t care for the high winds because he whined through the whole escapade as if he was a rusty gate outside.

Something funny happened though, on the Friday morning when the storm hit – well, I can laugh about it now, anyway.

It happened during my usual morning routine, which goes like this…

After rising, complaining about being tired (and cold), visiting the toilet and brushing my teeth, I habitually head outside to open the henhouse door and give the three chooks some breakfast. Then I make sure their water is clean and eventually check for eggs. Waffle, of course, is with me every step of the way, usually trying his damndest to get in road at all times.

On stormy Friday, after I’d sorted out the hens and gazed gloomily at the holes in the roof and the broken tiles in the backyard, I went back to the shed to change out of my wellies. All the time, as you will appreciate only too well, Storm Éowyn was doing his/her best impression of a typhoon, trying (and succeeding) to blow me hither and thither across the yard whilst knocking down some nearby trees in the process. Undoubtedly, it was the worst storm I’d ever experienced on these shores and not one I’d like to see revisit any time soon.

Apart from the missing tiles, our fence took a bit of a battering (though it’s just about still standing) and the bins went missing periodically. Waffle too, almost went missing.

I had just changed out of my wellies and was standing in the shed looking out at the carnage, Waffle at my heels. I said, “Come on, clown,” and gestured with my head for him exit the shed.

Waffle immediately took the hint but as he jumped from the step of the shed, as he normally does, an enormous gust of wind snatched up the hairy fool and blew him away. Literally, he disappeared.

My first reaction was to blurt out a laugh. But my chortles were soon cut short as my virile imagination kicked in. And then my heart sank.

In the briefest of moments before I too removed myself from the shed, in my mind’s eye I pictured Waffle tangled in one of the trees at the bottom of the garden or worse still, flying through the air like a hairy kite in the vague direction of the North Sea. What would I do then?

Finally lurching into action, I stepped out into the storm and was instantly flooded with relief. I was never as glad to see the Hairy Fool come loping up from the bottom of the garden shaking his head. He was uninjured at least, although the bottom of the garden being about 30 yards away from the shed, he must have just missed out on a vicious entanglement in the trees.

“Good boy, Waffie,” I told him, giving him a quick scratch behind the ears. And then I pictured him jumping from the shed step moments before and being swept away in the wind – whossssh! – and I had to laugh.

“Come on, you,” I said. But just to be on the safe side, before making my way back to the house, I picked him up.

“This is purely a storm precaution,” I told him. “Don’t get used to it.”