Screw You Dolores

by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  For someone who writes love stories it seems a bit dry balls, but I think he probably was onto something with the sorting out all the big stuff before letting the chemistry go too crazy.

  Having said that, I don’t believe I have ever asked the Ginger what religion he is. Or whether he wants to live in the country or the city. Or whether he wanted to get married, for that matter.

  Oh well, too far into the happily-ever-after to worry about that now!

  Matches might be made in HEAVEN but divorces are made on the SP104 near TARANTO

  We may be lifers in the marriage sense, but the Ginger and I could have ended up with a very different kind of sentence after driving up and down and around and around a particularly torturous piece of roading in southern Italy a few years ago.

  We won’t have been the only ones. In fact, I shudder to think how many otherwise unsinkable marriages have ended beside the settling ponds in the industrial wasteland on the outskirts of Taranto, sometimes referred to as Italy’s Worst Tourist Destination.

  We had not intended to stop in Taranto at all, and indeed we never did, yet we still managed to spend two hours trying to extricate ourselves from this collapsing naval base famous for its pollution.

  Indeed, the only thing between us and the potentially fatal levels of dioxin in the air were the 22 lanes of speeding trucks and careening buses, hurtling down the road on either side of us.

  The Ginger was driving and I was attempting to navigate but, as anyone who has driven in Italy before will tell you, the roads don’t match the maps, and the signs we had been following from Lecce had suddenly disappeared, leaving us snarled up in a Dante’s Hell of traffic.

  By the time we got to our destination for the evening — a gorgeous country B-and-B on a sprawling grassy knoll in Basilicata — we could not even look at each other, let alone speak.

  The only thing that had stopped me throwing myself out the car window while we were driving was that I couldn’t stop coming up with different ways to murder my beloved. Would it be a shovel to the back of the head? I swear I got goosebumps at the thought of the sound it might make. Would a cricket bat sound better?

  Should I poison him?

  Take him back to Taranto and drop him at a roundabout? Shoot him? …

  The possibilities seemed endless.

  I refused dinner and clung to my side of the vast bed, drifting off to sleep imagining my husband in a little wooden row boat, pushed out to sea, with no oars and the big golden sun rising in the sky — surely a ginger’s darkest nightmare.

  When I woke up in the morning, I found that much to my dismay that I still wanted to chop him into tiny pieces and feed him to the squirrels. And he was still asleep and not even snoring.

  I got up and looked out the window at the beautiful pastures rolling into the distance from the old mill house in which we were staying. It was the wrong place to be in a bad mood. I was on holiday in Italy — a trip I had dreamed of for years — and I realised that, even though my fingers still itched to throttle my husband, I didn’t want to spend another moment feeling like that.

  ‘I have a plan,’ I said, turning to look at him. He’d woken and was sitting up, looking scared. He quite often looks like that, and sometimes it’s a constipation thing, but on this occasion I am sure he could sense the lingering homicide still hovering in the air.

  ‘What we need,’ I said, ‘is to put aside the events of yesterday, and make today especially lovely, even if we don’t particularly feel like it deep down or even right on the surface.’

  We could say only lovely things to each other, I said, do lovely things, and act in a manner which could be conceived of in no other way than absolutely lovely.

  I then gave him my cheesiest adoring face, and faked being mad about him, not with him. He was sensible enough to do the same thing, and within the space of a few minutes we were heading back to having a good time.

  To begin with, it was quite sarcastic. ‘No, you have the first shower.’ ‘No, you have the last croissant.’ ‘No, I’ll put sun tan lotion on your back.’ Etc, etc, etc. But, do you know, as with laughing yoga, what we started out faking very quickly turned into the real thing.

  As we left the little country hotel, I laughed when we bunny-hopped away, stalled at a stop sign and turned immediately in the wrong direction.

  Then when I led the Ginger onto a winding back road instead of the much speedier highway, which we could see above, below and sometimes beside us, he said he preferred the scenic route.

  The sarcasm soon disappeared, leaving actual loveliness in its place. It was quite refreshing to learn that I could simply decide to let go of a bad mood. As a champion grudge-holder, this had never occurred to me before. I always thought that the mood was in charge and I was just holding on because that’s the natural order of things.

  But by turning that on its head and invoking what came to be known as ‘A Day of Loveliness’, I was escaping the thunder cloud that sometimes hovered above me and rained on everything.

  We continue to declare A Day of Loveliness every now and then, although, because we drive in separate cars and pretty much know our way around, it is not generally invoked because of things I would like to do with a cricket bat versus a skull. But if there’s been bad news, say, or a financial meltdown or a bit of nastiness fired from outside the compound and the clouds are starting to form, then A Day of Loveliness is just the ticket.

  Sometimes it’s a date: we might walk into town and go up the Sky Tower and then go to one of our favourite restaurants for dinner. Sometimes it’s a walk on the beach or a day-trip out of town or a special treat of fish and chips with fresh white bread and lashings of butter.

  Interestingly enough, while it was I who invented the Day of Loveliness, and who initially invoked it, it is the Ginger who remembers it and calls it in.

  This could be the secret of our success as a couple.

  Or it could be that he’s only 48 and hasn’t started forgetting things yet.

  Me, I blame Tinkerbelle and Bunny*

  * Don’t read this if you don’t like dogs. Or if you do like cats, A lot.

  If I could name one thing that has brought me a consistent level of unexpected happiness over the past 15 or so years, it would be our dog.

  Not the same dog, because the first one died, which obviously brought me no happiness at all. His name was Kit and he was a Kerry blue terrier, which is a breed of dog that looks a bit like Snowy from the Tintin books, but grey. They came in very handy in the Dark Ages for catching super rats in the slums of rural Ireland, I am told. Kit never showed much aptitude on this front, but I’m assuming that this is because we were, happily, short on super rats, and we left him at home whenever we went to the slums of Ireland.

  We’d already decided not to have children and, in similar fashion, much discussion went into whether we were suitable dog owners. They’re a big responsibility, we were told by finger-wagging people who seemed to think we weren’t quite up to it. Declaring that the worst thing that could happen is that we could run it over or sell it to the circus (which didn’t seem to change anybody’s mind about our suitability), we forged ahead and procured our first puppy.

  It was one of the best things we ever did.

  What the finger-wagglers had failed to point out is that pets can really make you laugh, if you get the right one. I’d had a horse before, which had not been particularly funny; expensive mostly, and a bit painful when you fell off.

  Nor had I had much fun with my horrible cat, Tinkerbelle, whom I got from the SPCA when I was about 11. She was wild, I suppose, and wanted to stay that way, enjoying nothing more than scratching my eyes out and hissing at me. As cuddly as a pinecone on fire, she went on to spawn a litter of equally awful kittens, one of whom — Bunny — Mum and Dad decided to keep. Her favourite thing to do was jump in through the bathroom window and rip to shreds the back of the neck belonging to whoever was sitting on the loo. Tinkerbelle and Bunny. Two less endearing hatchet-cats
you are unlikely to find.

  Little puppy Kit, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to be embraced and adored from daylight till dark. However, we soon learned that this made it quite tricky to leave the little f**ker.

  By the time he joined our family I was no longer working full-time in an office (roll out the barrel), but I did need to leave the house occasionally, sometimes for hours.

  Kit did not care for this. He would go into a panic the moment I picked up my handbag, and would seem to still be in it when I got home. He would be waiting at the door, and the moment I opened it he would jump almost up to my head height, panting with excitement, turning in circles, mad with relief. Guilt consumed me. What a terrible effect all this panic must be having on his system, I thought.

  But then one day I left the house, got to the car, realised I had left my phone behind and headed back inside. Kit was waiting at the door, and the moment I opened it he jumped almost up to my head height, panting with excitement, turning in circles, mad with relief.

  It occurred to me then that, so far as Kit was concerned, the door closed (which was bad) and the door opened again (which was good), but in the meantime he did not know if it had been shut for two minutes or two days.

  Not long after that the Ginger built Kit a lovely fenced outdoor enclosure — quickly christened ‘puppy prison’ — complete with A-framed kennel, his girlfriend (a towel rather unfortunately embroidered at one end with the word ‘Mummy’ that he humped at every opportunity), and a box of toys.

  The first time we left him there he looked most unimpressed, and, sure enough, by the time we returned from wherever we’d been, he was sitting on the outside of puppy prison as pleased as punch.

  Witnessing him from an upstairs window, we soon saw that he could jump over the chicken wire the Ginger had put up, so a wooden rail was added to make it higher. Watching him later from the same window, we saw that he could jump over that, too, so we made the rail higher again.

  Next time we left him in puppy prison, he burrowed his way underneath the chicken wire, and was once again waiting for us by the back door when we got home.

  Kit had the road sense of an already-squashed gnat, so this would not do.

  ‘He is just not an outside dog,’ I told the Ginger, and puppy prison was abandoned.

  To punish him (the dog, that is, not the Ginger), I bought him a blue sequinned strap-on disco cap, but he looked so sad every time I put it on him (the dog, that is, not the Ginger — oh, hang on! No, they both did) that I could only do it for 5 minutes at a time, 10 max. How I laughed.

  Kit went off me a bit after that, though; not hugely, but enough that he would often go to the Ginger in a simulated tug-of-love situation. I didn’t really mind, as they could both be a bit smelly. And I liked to look out the window and see Kit trailing after the Ginger as he pottered in the garden, doing whatever he was doing that never seemed to result in much actual gardening.

  Kit got the measles, too, as it happened, and died the same week as the Ginger’s sister when I was away in London. I was beside myself, as you can imagine. I did not need two things I loved a lot to leave me just then, but they did.

  When I got home I could not bear our house without our dog in it. Who knew something so small and asleep most of the time could leave such a hole? Within a minute I had decided to replace him. I got in touch with the breeder, who happened to have two puppies that would eventually be up for grabs, and so we travelled down to Otaki to see them. (By the way, the same uncle who talks about the measles says nobody ever goes to ‘see’ a puppy without agreeing to come home with one, so be warned.)

  One of the Otaki puppies ran out and somersaulted in the air like a circus clown and juggled a dozen avocadoes while reciting poetry. The other tripped, dropped at my feet, rolled over and gazed at me adoringly.

  ‘We’ll have that one!’ the Ginger and I both cried, pointing at different dogs.

  In the end the choice was not ours, and I’m delighted to tell you that the one we now have is the tripper, dropper and roller. I wanted to call him Kit and pretend nothing bad had ever happened, but the Ginger said that was creepy, so we called him Ted.

  Ted could have his own show. He is hands-down the clumsiest, dumbest dog I have ever met in my whole entire life — and I love him like chocolate.

  He arrived in Auckland by air, and I brought him back to our house, first putting him in the swimming pool area for safe-keeping so I could unpack the car without him escaping from our otherwise unfenced property. He ran straight over the decking and across the surface of the water, sinking — unsurprisingly — like a stone to the bottom. Clearly he was unfamiliar with the concept of a swimming pool. (He also turned out to be unfamiliar with the concept of glass doors, and to this day does not go through one until someone else has gone through first. So far as he’s concerned, sometimes going over there really hurts your head, and sometimes it doesn’t.)

  On the day he fell in the pool, I was wearing near-new Stuart Weitzman patent-leather ankle boots, and it was about seven degrees and raining.

  ‘I hardly know that dog,’ I said looking at my feet. ‘But I’ve grown very attached to these shoes.’

  However, they did pinch a bit on one of my little toes, so I jumped into the icy water with all my clothes on and rescued the silly hound. He has not been near the swimming pool since, and even avoids puddles.

  His next faux pas, committed only a couple of weeks later, was to get his back legs confused when stopping to scratch his ear while perched on the edge of a sheer cliff-face. Naturally he fell down it, and was only saved by his cartoon-like ability to cling by his fingernails while the Ginger rescued him and I screamed hysterically in the background.

  Just days later I took him for a walk around a Central Otago lake. He was out of my sight for about four seconds before I heard a terrible blood-curdling Ted-type shriek. When I found him, he had managed to gather about 100,000 super-sized spike balls — like biddy-bids but bigger — about his person, and he refused to move because they were in his armpits.

  I had to carry him half an hour around the lake back to the car while my walking pal Miranda took photos and laughed herself sick. She’s with me in finding him hilarious, although I think she feels a bit sorry for both of us, especially after I demonstrated Ted’s dramatic way of dealing with being left at home alone.

  He doesn’t start spinning out when I pick up my handbag the way Kit used to, he goes and sits on his bed near the door. Then, if I give him one of his favourite treats, he refuses to open his mouth, leaving the treat to sit on his lips until he quietly spits it to the floor, then turns his head to look at the wall. I cry laughing at this display.

  Not that it worries him. Ted is without shame.

  He doesn’t seem to realise that the other dogs laugh at him when he wants to jump into his mummy’s arms when he gets a fright, even if it’s only a furball floating past, and even though he weighs 16 kilos and is not a jumper.

  Ted could no sooner work his way out of puppy prison than win a Rhodes scholarship. Just the other day I tried to get him to jump out of the car and he simply refused. All he would do was sit there and let me hold his paw while he leaned his head against my hand. If he was a sixteenth-century French princess and I was his unrequited lover this might have been OK but, as it was, people kept walking through the car park looking at me as though I had lost my mind. Still, he does make me laugh.

  Because he is quite handsome and knows it, if not much else, he will often walk up to a stranger and rest his chin on their leg, waiting to be patted. If they are wearing black, he will go with them when they move on, because in his mind all women or men who wear black are me. Sometimes when he moves too far away and I call him, he runs in the exact opposite direction until he gets to the next person wearing black. It’s not until I catch up with him again that he will realise there are two of us.

  It is a responsibility having a dog, and poor Ted does spend quite a lot of time staying with his haird
resser, but she has ever such a lovely pile of wood at which he loves to stare, sometimes for weeks on end.

  When I arrived to pick him up after my birthday trip to Paris, he shot straight past me to bark at a picture of a cat on a large tin of cat food. He still barks at that tin even though it’s no longer the same one and does not feature a cat. What’s not to love?

  I read in a how-to-be-a-dog-owner guide, when we were initially weighing up the prospect, that all your puppy wants is to make you happy, and I have found this to be utterly true … even if they’re doing it by being so dim-witted it could make the papers. For this reason, I will always want a dog in my life.

  Sorry, cat people, I know you have your reasons. I just don’t get them. And there’s room for all of us. Unless you’re Gareth Morgan, in which case there’s not quite as much room as the cat people would have it.

  Me, I blame Tinkerbelle. And Bunny.

  Letter from PARIS, ONE YEAR LATER

  So, here I am, in Paris again, a newly-minted 51-year-old.

  Well, Hawaiian Airlines flew me halfway here, and air miles could manage the rest — so why the heck not?

  Also, I felt that when I left Paris in the Year of Me I had not really appreciated it enough. Pleasing myself and making the most of everything and enjoying my life had proved really quite taxing, and at the time I wasn’t sure that I was doing it properly. In other words, I was not enjoying my life because of the very pressure I was putting on myself to enjoy my life.

  Oy, it’s not easy being me. But then it’s not easy being anybody. We’re all chasing 100 per cent happiness, but I reckon anything over 50 per cent has to be a bonus, and if you can squeak your way up to 80, well, all power to your elbow.