A night to Remember

It’s around six o clock on a dreary, cold, evening – rain threatens.  I’m filling up the car with petrol and sending a text to the babysitter. There are too many things on my mind:  I’m wondering whether my son will make the A team squad for football, whether the kitten still has diarrhea, whether my latest novel will sell to a publisher who is willing to pay good money. I’m about to pay when I realize, with sickening thud, that I’ve put petrol in the Audi diesel estate. It even says diesel, in big capitals on the petrol cap.

I am expecting the nice man behind the till to tell me something miraculous, like he can just syphon out the diesel with a bit of pipe for  £5. He says I mustn’t start the engine but paradoxically that I must get the car off the forecourt as soon as possible.  He adds that it will probably cost £200 to fix it. Nice. Great.  Thank God, we have breakdown cover. I wonder how much it would cost to fix without it?

When I telephone my husband, he replies with a gruff kind of preoccupied hello, and when he hears my appalling news he sighs and hangs up. I call him back because I don’t have any of the insurance details.  He says he’s on to it. It’s dark now, and cold. I sit in the car but am too afraid to turn on the engine in case the car blows up. I read the back of a packet of crisps. I call my husband again, and he tells me, in barely controlled rage, to be patient.

He calls some time later, and says help will arrive in a couple of hours. So I walk home. We wait and we wait but nothing happens. At 9 the nice man from the garage, calls to say he will fine us £500 if we don’t move the car. He’s worried that a tanker of petrol will arrive and won’t have access to the pump.

My husband offers to go to the garage and wait with the car. A couple of hours pass. I ring him on his mobile, but there’s no reply. I feel appalling guilt that I’ve put him in this situation.  I text.  Then I ring again. By now it’s 11.00pm. I worry that perhaps he’s been mugged or run over, or killed. I imagine at any moment, a policeman will turn up to inform me of his death.  I wonder whether to ring my friend and ask her to come over so I can go and search the streets.  He can’t be still waiting. It’s about 1130 when I notice that there is a text form my husband. Its cryptic, it doesn’t make sense. I am thinking now, that the text is a desperate plea for help. He’s just managed to press one button on his phone before he was hit on the head. I am about to cry, when he comes through the door. I rush towards him. I have never been more pleased to see anyone in my whole life.

Sponsored Post

Kitten-heaven

This is our 9 or 10 week old kitten, that we fetched from Battersea Dogs Home. My daughter has named her Boe, the other choice being Sunshine! Boe is energetic, curious, a little reckless, and feisty.  When our three year old tabby met Boe, she spat and hissed. The kitten stood her ground, until big Kitty ran away. Boe was born to a stray cat, who gave birth in someone's garden and perhaps that has given her an edge. It was slightly harrowing to see her mother in the enclosure next to her, miaowing as we took her away - her litter of four all gone now, and she's still there, waiting to be neutered.

Battersea Dogs and Cats Home was founded as "The Temporary Home for Lost and Starving Dogs" in 1860 by Mrs Mary Tealby. Mary Tealby had separated from her husband and moved to London in 1860 and decided to open a "canine asylum" after the death of a starving dog she had tried to nurse back to health.  She established the Temporary Home for Lost and Starving Dogs in a stable in an Islington mews. The Times ridiculed the home on the 18 October 1860. "From the sublime to the ridiculous – from the reasonable inspirations of humanity to the fantastic exhibitions of ridiculous sentimentalism – there is but a single step... When we hear of a 'Home for Dogs', we venture to doubt if the originators and supporters of such an institution have not taken leave of their sober senses."

However, Charles Dickens gave support and  published a piece in the magazine All the Year Round in 1862 about the home, calling it an "extraordinary monument of the remarkable affection with which the English people regard the race of dog. It is the kind of institution which a very sensitive person who has suffered acutely from witnessing the misery of a starving animal would wish for, without imagining for a moment that it would ever seriously exist. It does seriously exist, though."

The home moved to Battersea in 1871 and they care for over 9,000 dogs and cats every year. It costs £14 million (Yes 14 million!) a year to run Battersea and their funds come entirely from the public. 

If you want to help them or adopt a dog or cat ring 0207 622 3626