Running Wild

Before taking in a pet, it’s always wise to wonder if you have everything in place for them and you’re covered for all eventualities. Do we have insurance? Do they poop where they should and not all over the kitchen floor? Can you smack them with a newspaper if they’re naughty? I’d like to venture that taking ones in-laws in should be subject to the same degree of checking, if not more so. True, my mother-in-law does have a wet nose and a shaggy coat, but that’s more to do with post-nasal drip and €10,99 not-so-wisely spent at the market in Arteixo, Galicia.

And so it was that on 17th August 2016, our octogenarian lovelies landed at Gatwick Airport, straining at their leashes to be let out for a run and desperate to mark their new turf. That didn’t take long. Within a couple of weeks, my father-in-law was digging up the lawn to create a new border in which to plant vegetables. The problem with that is that we are currently renting this house and are supposed to hand it back as we found it. His argument is that it now has more features than it did when we took it on and we’ve therefore added value, although I’m not quite sure how I’m going to explain a wonky border dug out by an 89 year old, that houses a few potatoes. And tomatoes. And garlic. And butternut squash. You see, instead of keeping everything in one place, Pepe, for that is the name of the aforementioned octogenarian, decided to spread his seed far and wide and see where it landed. So we have tomatoes in the wonky border, tomatoes in the raised beds and just for fun, tomatoes by the shed door next to the wild garlic. Which in turn is next to the potatoes (which are also in the wonky border), which in turn is next to the peppers. Oh yes, we have peppers too! Our garden is a constant voyage of discovery.

They scared me, these new pets of ours. I would look out of the upstairs window to see Pepe leaning on his crutch (the metal kind mentioned in episode one, not the other kind from the Art House movie “Confessions of a Geriatric Market Gardener”), bent double, straining to poke his marrow into the soil and lobbing anything he didn’t want over the fence into the farmer’s field beyond. Maria, the 87 year old spouse of said Pepe, would be also bent double. The problem with that was that the dresses she chose to wear could also have featured in the Confessions film, as they rode up at the back in a rather alarming manner and with frightening ease. The thing is, the village people - as explained in the original “I Am Spinach” blog, wouldn’t think twice about this. Seeing an elderly lady’s nether regions is not something to be worried about when one has a small-holding. In fact if anything, it reminds them to collect the eggs from the hen house!

And so they set to work, planning to make us city folk self-sufficient by the end of the year. The most alarming sight of the whole venture was one evening as I was heading for bed. I went into their lounge to bid them goodnight, only to see them in coats, armed with a torch and heading into the garden. Fearing that we had two elderly cat burglars in the house, I frantically called José through and asked him to ask them in Spanish what in heaven was going on (my excuse is that I don’t know what ‘cat burglar’ is in their language). It turned out that as well as the torch, they had an industrial sized pot of salt and were going out to kill slugs and stop them nibbling their cherry tomatoes. Every night for several weeks we were treated to the sight of two people who can barely stand upright in full daylight, pottering around the garden by torchlight, looking for things to kill. I couldn’t bring myself to watch and would go to bed convinced that the next morning, we would find them face down on the Japanese patio (it’s only about four foot square, so don’t get excited), drowned in the bamboo pots. But no, dear reader. The next morning we were greeted with tales of derring-do and the number of kills. Thankfuly they didn't bring them to us as a trophy, like cats do. I've woken up next to a slug before - but enough of my sex life - but several withered, salt covered slugs on the duvet whilst two old people looked on with smug smiles waiting for our affirmation would be pushing the envelope a little too much.

“16 and your father got his crutch stuck in the woman next door’s overhanging bush”

“Eh??”

“We killed 16 of the little buggers. AND we ripped a load of that hanging stuff down because your father walked right into it and it nearly knocked him over”

“What hanging stuff?”

“That stuff from next-door’s garden”

“What did you do with it?”

“Well, we put it over the fence at the back. What else would we do with it?”

Keeping pensioners is not for the faint-hearted. Once I’d been bribed with offers of cooking dinner for a week (so, I’m cheap and I know it!), I wondered how difficult could it be? We would rent a house large enough to keep them secure and warm, put some Spanish TV in so that they were kept amused and distracted and take them out for the occasional bit of fresh air. The problem is when you let them out, they don’t come back. And why don’t they come back? Because they can’t hear you! Over time, both of them have become harder of hearing, but neither of them will admit it.

“Dad, I think you may need your hearing aid looked at because you’re not hearing so well”

“Eh??”

“I said you can’t hear as well as you used to”

“Of course I can, nothing wrong with me. It’s your mother who’s going deaf”

So we speak with Maria, because we’ve also noticed a deterioration.

“Mum, I think you probably need a hearing test because you’re not hearing so well?

“Eh??”

“I said we probably need to get your hearing checked”

“Why? There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s your father you should be worried about”

And so the conversation between them is a joy to behold....

“I’m going to cook dinner Pepe”

“Eh?”

“I said I’m going to cook dinner”

“What are we having?”

“Eh?”

“I said, what are we having?”

“Oh, I’m going to make a tortilla with some chorizo”

“Eh?”

“Dear God, you need your hearing checked!”

“Eh?”

And so it goes on, ad infinitum. It reminds me of Julie Walters as the elderly waitress in the brilliant Victoria Wood “Two Soups” sketch. Compounding that particular auricular issue, at this very moment in time my own mother has come for a week and she’s just as bad. She has her own hearing aids which are the ones that fit directly into her ear without any external tubing, but I’m convinced that all they do is totally block any sounds going in as well as constantly squealing like a banshee. The other night during dinner, I asked her how the meatloaf was that I’d made. Her response? “Oh.....if you want”.

And so, here we are. Another weekend has come around and there are now (temporarily) four of them to take out. We tend to let them out for a longer run at the weekend because, well, we have the time and there are two of us to round them up if they get a little out of control. Thankfully, they don’t try to dry hump other pensioners like the Jack Russell we used to have (other dogs – not other pensioners in case you were thinking we had a dog with some kind of weird fetish), but the moment they do, I’ll be checking to see if Dignitas do gift certificates.