Dogs and Doubles (ED! #11)

No matter how hard life is, there will always be someone worse off than you.
There is a place on this earth where people are locked in confined spaces, with barely enough room to stand up. Where these people are exposed to extremes of heat and light, and shaken around, until they're ready to confess to almost anything.

This is called British Rail.

Mike Harding told that joke many years ago, but as this edition of Ed is coming to you live from a particularly bumpy train, it seemed kind of appropriate.

"What shall I write about in the next edition of Ed?" I asked myself yesterday. Then a flood of calls to mailbox reminded me - "Tell us the story of the dog who wanted your ice cream", you said. Aaah, I remember now. I always did have a lousy memory.

The incident with the dog is one of my earliest memories from when I was young - it's funny how some things stay with you. Life when you're young is a bit like the aforementioned example of British Rail. While spending life being driven from place to place by a chauffeur - albeit in a baby buggy - sounds nice, it's often not all it's cracked up to be.

When you're small, everything is so much bigger. And no things could possibly have been larger than the dog who wanted my ice cream. I must have been about three at the time, possibly younger. I'm not sure where I was - my mumsie had escorted me there in the usual manner so I didn't have any exact map co-ordinates in my mind. I think it was a park, or something. It certainly had a nice swimming pool nearby.

Anyway, before too long, my day out was interrupted by the opportunity to have some ice-cream. As any parent will tell you, kids of the age that I was at the time will *always* want an ice cream when they see one. And so it was with me. I indicated to my escort that I desired an ice cream. A big one.

It was a very good ice cream, actually. One of the proper ones with a cone and you get a scoop of your chosen flavour - in my case, mint choc chip. But this was one of those special double cones, which I haven't seen for ages, so I had two scoops. Truly, I was king for a day.

I was as happy as Larry, whoever he was, and about to take my first lick when in bounded some huge, ferocious, snarling dog. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a pit bull or anything dangerous like that, but when you're three, any reasonably sized dog is huge and ferocious when it's not licking your face or letting you pat it.

But this dog was in no mood for being cute. It saw my super deluxe ice cream, with two scoops. And it wanted it. What did it do? What could it do? It did the only thing a dog can do. It started barking at me. Loudly.

This troubled me, a three year old with a fine non-dairy milk double scooper ice cream. And you have to bear in mind that when you're that age, there's only so many ways you can handle a situation like that. I did the only thing I could do. I immediately started crying.

The fearsome dog didn't like the noise I was making too much, but it still wanted my ice cream. Well, I was having none of that. While manfully fighting off this dog by sobbing my eyes out, I ensured that my ice cream was safely out of harms way - I steadfastly held it above my head. It was not having my ice cream.

On and on the dog barked, louder and louder were my cries. Until, somehow, this impasse was cleared up by the reckless owners of the noisy dog and my mumsie. Before long everything was alright again, and the dog was gone. Funny how quickly things happen when you're young.

With the dog out of the way, I think I got two licks out of my super special ice cream before... I dropped it. And oh how I cried again. Well, so would you if you were three. Protecting your ice cream from a dog is one thing, but dropping it is quite another. The moment a food product hits the floor, it's officially out of play. No more ice cream for you, young man.

Mumsie took me home and I watched an episode of Paddington before I went to bed. After all, I'd had a big day.

Events like this are what dangerous criminals are made of. Many a law court is faced with the miscreant who has gone mad and smashed all the windows in a building, or plucked the feathers off all the budgies in a street in a serial kind of manner. What are events like this traced back to? "I dropped my special ice-cream!!", pleads the defendant. Scarred for life.

I'm slightly better mentally balanced than that, though. But before this unhappy incident does any more damage and turns me into a nutcase before I'm 26, I need to put this right. The next time I find an ice-cream stand that does those special double cones, a double mint choc chip will be mine.

I just hope there are no dogs around. It could destroy a lesser man.