Letter From The Other Side, from Cynthia written by
Elizabeth. M. Thompson.

Dear Del,
Here we are back in suburbia. No more vast undulating horizons beneath the vivid blue domed skies of the Mallee, just the motley assortment of roofs and a barren forest of spindly television aerials we can see from our windows.
We called in to see Aunt Alice and Uncle Rodger to find all was not happy in their little Garden of Eden. In fact Aunt Alice was not speaking to Uncle Rodger and evidently at some point had threatened to leave him.
Now at their advanced ages and the tangled details of their residency at the village Uncle Rodger pointed out it could be quite difficult for her to go to such an extreme measure although he admitted reluctantly he had upset her.
Eventually once he had calmed down sufficiently to explain to us what had occurred we understood a little of her frustration.

At the retirement village some of the crafts people have a workshop. The men make little things to sell or give away such as wooden toys, planter pots and small tables and articles which can be handy.
Uncle Rodger had been working on staining a small decorative wheelbarrow planter and was feeling very pleased with the results. He wanted to show it to Aunty Alice. Because the stain was still wet, he walked across to their unit to ask her to come to the workshop to admire his handiwork. In his hurry he forgot to put his pot of wood stain down and carried it across with him.
Just as he entered the door he tripped, just a little trip, but sufficient to loosen his grip on the tin of wood stain. It fell, plopping on its base onto the floor and sprayed up and over, the chairs and couch, the coffee table and carpet and worst of all, the sideboard on which stood in pride of place, Aunt Alice’s mother’s silver tea service.
Aunty Alice called him a dolt, a useless article of a man and worst of all compared him unfavourably with her first husband,…… long dead many years ago although from recent remarks he must be polishing his newly acquired halo quite a lot.
She is such a tiny lady but her cutting tongue has brought many a brawny man or pompous woman down to garden gnome size. Although I know there have been words she has uttered in haste and which on reflection, I’m sure she wished to retract. However as yet she shows no signs of wanting to retract any of what she must have said to poor Uncle Rodger who does feel very badly about the mess.
Of course by the time we saw it the stain was well and truly dry and it was quite staggering how much of the room the muddy coloured fallout managed to reach.
Their insurance will cover some of the damage and Teddy tried to make Aunt Alice feel better by offering to repaint the walls in a colour she liked. But the damage to the silver service is beyond us. We shall take it to one of the older better jewellery stores which still know what they are talking about and not just filled with pretty sales people who can’t even open a watch to put in a new battery for you, and see what can be done.
We took them out for lunch and Teddy suffered through eating a ‘pensioner’s special’ of crumbed leather masquerading as chicken schnitzel and the inevitable vitamin depleted watery vegetables. We think by the time we took them home they were feeling a trifle better about things and had begun to see some benefits in having the room repainted and new chairs and couch
Teddy has also been taking an inordinate amount of interest in motors which he thinks may be suitable for hovercrafts this week. I don’t know what will be emerging from his shed in the future but one of his ideas for a solar heater he invented for our last house has been written up in a glossy ‘renewable energy’ magazine. His enthusiasm levels are extremely high. I’m never sure if that is a good or bad thing but after all these years I’m used to expecting something interesting. Just so long as he doesn’t expect me to understand and listen to all the tedious details of just ‘how’ and ‘why’ they do what they do. My mind gets lost very quickly in the fog of mechanical and dimensional figures he seems to be capable of remembering.

The dogs met us with glee and much barking laced with the special reserve they always display when we have had the cheek to leave them at home to be cared for by William or Monica, both of whom spoil them as much as we do.
The reminders for their annual canine inoculation injections were among the pile of mail we picked up and I made their appointments with the usual trepidation.
Kate our R.S.P.C.A princess, is a cross breed. We have had her since we were on the farm and we think her original cruel owner bred her for hunting. It took us two years before she stopped cowering with fear each time we came home after being out even for a short time. She must have been beaten regularly. Fortunately she had the company of an old happy well adjusted Cavalier King Charles by the name of Leicester at the time who gradually helped give her the confidence to greet us without expecting to be hit.
She is however an excellent hunter and used her talents many times over the years to catch snakes, bush rats, mice and to keep the neighbour’s cat stuck up our elm tree overnight once or twice.
She definitely has some German Shepherd in her and we think some Basenji, although it wouldn’t surprise me if it was actually part Dingo. Teddy has remarked he thinks her teeth would look at home in the mouth of a White Pointer shark and the vets who have been brave enough to deal with her over the years have had occasion to agree with him.
She has never adapted to living in the suburbs very well and can still on occasion think any small white dog is ‘lunch’ on legs. It made taking her for walks very stressful until we found good open parklands where we could quickly dash off onto wide detours around any approaching ‘lunches’
After Leicester died we brought Walter home aged eight weeks. He became Kate’s puppy and she adopted him with love and showed far more patience with his antics than we could ever have dreamt of her doing.
He is a pure bred bumptious, bumbling mischievous young black Cocker Spaniel. Like most spaniels he likes to give the appearance of being a bit dumb as this allows him to get away with things like dipping his ears in your coffee and shaking it over the furniture, because you, the owner, thinks he just doesn’t understand. After having five spaniels over the years, we know they are not at all dumb just very stubborn and quite hard to train.

The day of the appointment arrived and we put the dogs in the back of the station-wagon. While driving to the vets they must have had a conversation and cooked up a scheme to confuse we humans and give the outing even more entertainment than a visit to the vets usually held in store for all of us.
Because she remembered the chaos of our last annual visit when Kate had spied a guinea pig and thought it had no right to live, we waited in the car for the veterinary nurse to tell us we could go in.
The dogs knew exactly where they were and refused absolutely to get out of the station wagon no matter how nicely we asked.
Teddy lost patience and lifted them out. He held Kate’s lead, I held Walters’ as he is much easier …usually.
We dragged, pushed and pleaded with them to go through the doors as other owners with their obedient dogs sitting smugly at their feet, watched with undisguised amusement at what must have seemed to them our inept ability to train our pooches.
Harry the vet put a muzzle on Kate and she glared at him, her long fine legs and body quivered in disdain.
I quivered nervously wondering just when she would make her move and show him her marvellous teeth.
Teddy lifted her onto the examination table and to our delight she stood still for the examination almost until the end when a quiet growl at Harry indicated she thought he was becoming far too probing in intimate areas for her comfort.
He pronounced her fit and well, slipped the inoculation into her neck area quickly and she was lifted down from the table with much sighing and feelings of relief from us all. Once her muzzle was removed she even deigned to eat a liver chip.
Teddy walked her out to the car noting how she sashayed her backside provocatively at a slobbering Boxer she had noticed appreciating her elegance with interest.
Walter up to this point had watched the process from his position on the floor without moving. He now refused to be helpful in any way. Our usually friendly, well to be frank, over friendly thirty kilo fellow, became a limp heavy bag of dog meat I couldn’t lift up onto the examination bench.
Harry walked around the table to pick him up and stopped before he bent down, saying ‘That is a most unfriendly stare.’
I looked down at Walter to see he was now sitting upright, his body rigid and his dark eyes glaring at Harry. Never in his two years of life have I seen him take up such a threatening posture.
Harry produced the muzzle once more. Once he was sure it was done up he lifted Walter onto the table. He never took his eyes from Harry’s face and turned on the table to watch his every move pirouetting quickly if he moved behind him and growling quietly.
It took all my strength to hold him still for his examination. I talked to him telling him he was a ‘good boy’ and saying all the things he liked to hear even though at the time none of them were true. He chose this moment to pee the litre of urine he must have been holding onto for just this occasion over the table where it spread slowly to the edges to run down onto the floor splashing my shoes and I guessed Harry’s as well. The rest he paddled in spreading it even further across the surface.
Pleased with our reactions as we tried to get our feet out of the dripping stream, he swept his bushy tail through the rest and plastered it onto our clothes and faces.
As out attention was diverted, this was the moment he chose to lunge at Harry trying to bite him through the muzzle. When that didn’t work, he sat in the mess looked up at the ceiling and in the style of the leader of any pack of wild dogs, howled at the top of his lungs.
I now suspect this was to call Kate back into the examination room to give him some aid.
Instead Teddy returned just as the inoculations were put into Walter’s neck by a wet and frustrated Harry and just as the stench from Walter’s anal glands filled the room.
Our embarrassment was complete. We knew Harry would have to clean himself as well as the room down before he could see any more of the waiting patients.
At last Walter was lifted down and offered a token peace-offering of a liver treat.
Now as I said, he is a spaniel and anyone owning one will know they will usually eat anything put in front of them or anyone else if given the chance, their gluttony is legendary. Walter loves liver chips but not on this day. No! To complete his Jekyll and Hyde act for the day, he crunched it once and spat the rest out onto the floor amongst the urine he had already spread across the tiles.
Teddy took him out to the car while I sheepishly paid the bill thinking I should offer some sort of peace offering to Harry for Walter’s behaviour but I was too ashamed to speak and dared not meet the eyes of the mother of a young child who I think voiced the thoughts of everyone in the waiting room. ‘They were naughty dogs weren’t they Mummy? Ruffy would never do that would he Mummy?’
I gritted my teeth as I paid the vet nurse all the time thinking that saintly Ruffy would probably be the small white variety which make Kate think of a light tasty lunch..
By the time I returned to the car both dogs were playing happily in the back of the wagon and I stank as much as they did. Our clothes which often have a light dusting of dog hair were by now covered with almost as much fur as the dogs as it stuck in clumps to the urine soaked patches.
I suspect ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ are still sniggering out in our backyard. My only source of solace is to know that the mobile dog-wash lady is coming to-morrow. If she catches sight of our clothes she may offer to put us through with the dogs.
Unfortunately Del, I haven’t told you about the philosophy class today, all I will say is that it appears not to have been of much benefit to me as yet, I’ll know more when I write to you next.
I need to go and rearrange some of the dust in the house as well as having to do a rather large load of smelly, hairy washing.

Love for now from your ‘furry flower-child friend’

Cynthia.