My dog; my thigh

Ever since damaging my knee, I’ve not really made much of an effort in the garden. I blame the fact that I’ve not really been able to bend it. As a consequence, the garden has gone a bit mental.

Add to that the fact that I missed mowing the grass and you get some sort of idea what the garden looks like. Sort of reminds me of my hair when I don’t go to the hairdresser for three months.

I (sort of) rectified that today (and yesterday).

Starting with a decimation of the weeds in the the Hedge Bed (or Chutney’s Bed if you’re talking to Mirinda) and the ex-nettle bed, I managed to get them looking more like they have a bit of management applied to them.

Of course, the rain which has been coming and going in light, wispish showers, forced me into the office at times but, generally, I managed quite a lot of fruitful work.

While I weeded yesterday, today I made a start on the soon-to-be bark chipping path which will run down the side of the office and along the fence line. My efforts were aided by the rain, making it easy to force the shovel between sods, while being hindered when it fell down too heavily.

While I finished the day with aching thighs (from doing everything standing up), I felt some sense of achievement. The new path was about two thirds complete when bad light halted play.

In passing, I’d like to mention a weird fellow I saw on the TV tonight.

While waiting for Mirinda to call, I found myself half watching a programme about people with a tattoo addiction. Among the bizarre people who seem to think it makes sense to ink badly drawn shapes, permanently on their faces to those that do things impulsively while drinking too much in Ibiza, there was one who loved his dog.

He loved his dog so much that he had a tattoo of his face on his thigh. I have to say that the artwork was very well done, if a bit big for my taste. Anyway, just prior to filming (I assume), the dog died and this guy was devastated. Then he had a ‘great’ idea.

He decided to have the dog’s date of death tattooed under the face on his thigh. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, except for one small thing. He wanted the artist to use a rather special ink.

Following an elaborate and tear filled funeral, the dog was cremated and the ashes handed to him. From the pot, he took a small quantity of the ashes (I assume he scattered the rest somewhere according to the dog’s wishes) and went to see his tattoo mate.

The artist prepared his inks and then, careful not to sneeze, he mixed in a small quantity of the dog’s ashes. Then, and only then, he tattooed the date of death beneath the dog’s head.

Chances of blood poisoning aside, this chap now has a permanent reminder of his beloved dog’s life and death but also has the knowledge that he shares a few bits of him on a cellular level. Now, that is weird.