I have a habit of shortening everyone's name. It is lazy and sometimes annoying but nicknames and minimised monikers make ME feel more comfortable and, I think, put other people at ease through perceived warmth. My favourite nickname of all time was bestowed on a great pal of mine. We call him "Fatal". He instantly took to it. He said it gave him an air of danger, of strength and hidden menace. One fateful day he asked in the pub: "Which incident was it exactly which prompted you all to call me Fatal?" He was less than pleased with the reply. "It wasn't an incident, Fatal. It is because your name is Alan and you are fat!"
My mutant chums have numerous nicknames for me. My male pattern baldness prompted the classic tag "Cadfael" (still one of my favourites). My tendency towards corpulence landed me with "Big Boy" - a name which brings admiring glances from females who instantly put two and two together and make five. The third nickname which comes to mind is "Doolittle". That is not because I am less than hyperactive but because of my obsession with rescuing, patting and seeking out animals. Well, this morning I truly lived up to the title.................I communicated with, if not actually spoke to, an animal!!!!
I know no-one is going to believe this but I swear on all that is important to me that what follows is entirely true.
Being still tired and emotional after the excesses of the last few days, I decided to treat myself to a lie-in while catching up on the news and doing a bit of blogging. Henry, the three-legged leader of the pack round at Pither Towers, had obviously missed his old dad while he was away getting a job and getting drunk and so he was desperate for a cuddle while I was getting ready to post. He clambered INTO bed alongside me and, as I was mulling over things to write about, he reached across me and hit the keyboard with his front paw. He then looked at me knowingly, gave me a kiss and hit the keyboard again. The results were six lines of seeming gibberish, including things such as "AAAAAAAAAABTA" and "/GT3GoIg3GcnY/". You get the general idea?
I decided it was worthy of a post and so originally wrote this piece, including the gibberish, asking if anyone had any ideas what Hen was on about. Well, I wrote the piece and duly hit "publish" and the gobbledigook was transformed on the blog into the following:
o}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
I swear the above is exactly what Hen's writing turned into when decoded! Now, I don't know about anyone else, but I find that scary - very, very scary. Purely a coincidence? Well, why then has an image of something a dog no doubt thinks and dreams about all the time appeared? "Imagine a land beyond space and time......doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo." Grantham shall not have Henry - it is the Twilight Zone for him.
P.S. Admittedly, the bit with the "O" and the "}s" at the top doesn't make any sense to me. It might just be the most poignant and informative message of all. If anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them.
No comments:
Post a Comment