When going out for my morning dog walk, I have got into the habit of picking out a route that suits my mood. If I have had a poor night of sleep, I go off the beaten track in the hope of not seeing anyone. If it is a fresh morning with blues sky, I say “good morning” to anyone within striking distance.

However, I often struggle for anything further to say. One of my favourites is, “turned out nice again”, when it is raining, with the response often being the obligatory, “Oh well, it’s good for the garden”. On a nice day, I often say, “this will do me until September” or “if it was like this all the time, we wouldn’t need to go abroad”, which in part, is true, such is my allergy to people in airports.

Leftfield Mike

There are of course, some leftfield characters on my walks. There is one guy I see most days, called Mike, who is from Nottingham. When I say, “How are you doing?”, without fail, he says, “Aaah can’t complain like…well I could like, but it would do me know bastard (pronounced bastad) good”.

Then there is another woman who always says. “Moooooor-ding” in a way that would suggest she has a sinus issue. She says nothing else just ‘morning’ created into an annoying version of a usually harmless word. It must last about three seconds. On a nice day I can tolerate it, if it is a miserable one, I want to push her into the stream.

Dooo-pitter Come!

Then, there is a woman with a little cockapoo pup that is about as out of control that you could imagine a cockapoo pup (think Zebedee on acid). With the naivety of youth, the moment it sees another dog it wants to annoy the shit out of it. It took me a while, but I eventually worked out it is called Jupiter. This is because the lady calls it dooo-pitter.  

Now, I don’t really give a toss if a cockapoo pup wants to come and bound all over me whilst my apparently bi-sexual dog attempts to nail it to the floor. But Mrs Dooo-pitter is not so keen. It could be argued that if she doesn’t want her pup sexually violated by a seven-year-old spaniel, she could put it on a lead, or a “bastad lead”, as Mike once said.

Instead, she waits until all hell has let loose and starts shouting, “Dooo-pitter come, Dooo-pitter come, Dooo-pitter come, Dooo-pitter come, Dooo-pitter come”, like a 45-inch single with a stuck needle on it. Of course, Doo-pitter is having none of it, leaving me to untangle the whole sorry mess.

Then, for the rest of the circuit, all I hear in the distance is “Dooo-pitter, come, Dooo-pitter come, Dooo-pitter come”, and I wonder what it must be like to be her husband and how demanding his sex life is.

“Peeee-ter cum, Peeee-ter cum, Peeee-ter cum, Peeee-ter cum”.