The Wrong Collar by Celia Woodruff
Ouch! As her fingers caught the sharp edges of the cheese grater, she looked round for something to mop up the mess. Blood everywhere! Hmmmm. Ahha, as I looked towards the laundry basket, there were the old nappies she had put aside to use as cleaning cloths for the Holy Dusters team. Grabbing one, she dabbed at her fingers to stem the flow and carried on getting lunch ready. Well done Cathy!
Afterwards, as she always does, she stopped and thought hard about why she had caught her fingers on that grater. It had never happened before. What a dangerous implement to have in one’s kitchen. And why do they need to have such tools in their houses anyway? Was she in the usual rush and lost concentration? Or was she simply day-dreaming as she is wont to do? What useful purpose does that cheese grater serve, other than to reduce the cheese to a neat and tidy heap to make the Welsh rarebit she had just eaten? Yes, that made sense, because I would just love a bit of that Welsh rarebit. Just think of it……..it smells and looks delicious! A slice of gently toasted bread, capped with a delicious mixture of beaten egg, a dash of Worcestershire sauce and that yummy grated cheese, all mixed up together and gently placed on top of the toast, then grilled unto perfection, with a softly browned crust of bubbling cheese, just asking to be eaten. And the aroma; mmmmmm. But then another thought seemed to cross her mind…………..was she wondering, like I was on this occasion, what else she had inadvertently added to her lunch? It hardly bears thinking about! Then she looked towards the nappies and started to look dreamy again. Was she wondering what else those nappies had mopped up in their lifetime of service? I was. Another thing to ponder on another day perhaps? Oh well! She looks like she’s moving now. Looks like she’s getting on with our afternoon tasks. Yep! She’s getting my lead. And where are her things? She can’t go off the church without my collar.
As the Reverend Cathy Blunder hunted around the house for her badge of office, Rufus the red setter bounced around and, yes you’ve guessed it, faithfully brought the necessary dog collar to his mistress, whose life was one little Blunder after another. It was such fun living in the busy, happy, and household of the Blunder family. 5 children, 4 cats, 3 stick insects, 2 Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs and me – Rufus – oh and Mr. Blunder of course, who like all of us loved her for her scattyness! It meant that life at the Vicarage was never dull. Dog collars abounded, and it was a miracle that the reverend had not yet turned up for Sunday services wearing the wrong collar. What a picture it would be to see my bright, shiny, bone decorated name tag twinkling around her neck – Rufus – the cleverest dog in town. Woof, woof!
From Simon: When this started, I thought it was a simple third-person narration, the action described by an anonymous story-teller, but it soon becomes clear that it is told the dog’s point of view. Which gives the piece a lot of charm. Most of those of us who have pets have looked at them on many occasions, wondering what is actually going through their minds. Well, now we have the answer. The shortcomings of the Reverend Cathy Blunder (love the name) are benignly observed by the wise Rufus. And we, the readers, warm to her because of his approval, which is endorsed by Mr Blunder ‘who like all of us loved her for her scattiness.’ Rufus’s conjecture, that she might on some occasion be scatty enough to put on his collar with the ‘bright, shiny, bone decorated name tag twinkling around her neck’, as opposed to one of her own white ones, might be fanciful, but it’s an engaging canine fantasy. And, bearing in mind the brief for this exercise, which stipulated that ‘dog collar’ could be used in either sense, it’s nice to read a piece which brings the two together.