June 30th 2006
You Twat has been back for three days now, leastwise it’s three days since I became aware it was back, with not a bark or a howl to inform me of its return. That would make it nine days it had been at large. What it got up to while it was having its taste of freedom I’ve no idea, but whatever it was it certainly quietened it down to some tune because there hasn’t been so much as a peep out of it since its return, despite it being tied to the clothes stump all day while the Pollitts are out, as per usual.
Perhaps its nine days freedom have sated its appetite for the delights of the outside world, maybe now it realises it isn’t such a big deal after all, and certainly not worth barking and howling all day in the hope that it’ll  be given another taste of it. If I had to bark and howl all day in order to be allowed out in it I wouldn’t be doing much barking and howling, that’s for sure.
Atkins Down The Road said, in what I detected as a hopeful tone of voice, that it is the lull before the storm, and it wouldn’t be very long before You Twat is barking and howling again, and at even higher volumes than before to make up for lost time.
If it does I have decided, on moral and humane grounds, to render it more-or-less permanently asleep on sleeping pill-spiked meatballs, until such time as the Environmental Health people have stepped in and put a stop to the whole sorry business. It will mean time and trouble, and it will cost money, but the only other practical alternative would be to let Atkins shoot it, and I just can’t bring myself to sanction that, although Atkins is rather keen on the idea (hence his tone being hopeful when he said it was the lull before the storm, I suspect).
In case the worse comes to the worse I have made an appointment with the doctor so I can obtain from him some more sleeping pills, and I also called in at our local butcher to get his best price for poorest possible quality minced beef in ten pound quantities. “Having a barbecue then, are you?†he asked, which explains the bloody awful beefburgers I get served with whenever I attend any of my neighbours’ barbecues.