I should know better

Still recovering from a toydog show in the far north. This is one in which I function (in fits and starts and with great laziness) as a commitee member, which is why it began well before dawn, wifh me and a number of women, all old enough to know better, shoving, heaving and shoehorning dogs in crates and all the paraphenalia required for the show into an ancient minibus never designed for the purpose.

By chilly starlight we built up a swaying edifice of Papillons, Poms, and cooking utensils and sundries in the back. Somewhere in there, there was even a pot of soup......

It`s a beautiful run up to the east coast. Somewhere on the way a little dog, less than enchanted by the prospect, made his unhappiness known, and a familiar smell percolated through the vehicle. Instantly the fouled air was blue with denials.

"I only feed top quality dry food - mine never produce a smell like that."

"It`s not mine - I can see him."

"It`s probably just a fart......."

The affected dog, deep in the stack, kept his secret. I can however reveal that he really wasn`t mine. And it wasn`t just a fart.....

And nobody complained about the soup........in fact there were compliments on the depth of flavour.

I suppose it went well with some of the home baking. One lady always donates what she calls her "skitter cake" - "three cups of bran and four of fruit and somethings gotta move." She claimed to have fed it to one unpopular judge and rendered him housebound for three days. (This was strongly applauded.) .

The show went well. It always does, and is a great favourite. I had all three puppies, so two had to be handed out to strangers and were overawed. Florian did his best, but Marcus decided it was a time for looking cute and climbing up someone`s leg. As a result of this he is now having a training holiday at the home of a good friend.

Prudence was quite taken by this chance to show off and swaggered excessively, actually winning a pupy class.

The Young Lad was Best Dog.

Whizz condescended to attend, but was not lucky. His absolute disdain for the show, the judge and the human race in general was, I felt, best expressed in a picture.

Spent an unprofitable morning setting up a digital box in the bedroom and then fiddling with it for reception. You can waste hours on that type of thing, and I have concluded that the little ex-security monitor which I picked up for a song in the the eighties and use as a bedroom TV is perhaps a tad over the hill and will have to be replaced.

I do collect old radios......but I seem to accumulate old TVs There`s a subtle difference, which has a lot to do with inertia and disposal difficulties. The radios increase in value - for the interested out there, the pride of fhe collection is a 1936 Philco Peoples (original valves, black ebonite, working order, now earthed ). The TVs increase in dust.

I used to be able to fiddle with them like the radios. In the seventies, despairing of boredom in a stagnant job, I enrolled for night classes in TV repair. It was highly entertaining, a real sanity saver.

There we would stand, knees trembling, circuit diagrams and soldering irons at the ready. And at the other side of the room, lined up on benches, hummed, banged and shuddered the Hulks - ancient sets all scavenged from the skips at the back of TV rental shops, some of them smoking gently, all stripped down for service.......

Collectively they would have been snapped up by Gilliam or Carpenter for set dressing.

You prayed not to get a smoker. Please, something quiet and non-agressive just needing degaussing, or a few resistors replacing........

Several of us tended to approach them at arms length. Seeing this, the cheery chap taking the class decided to offer some reassurance.

"It`s true that you do meet quite a few sets that are electrically unsafe. Well, there`s no need to worry. If you feel there`s a problem, just keep your left hand in your pocket and work with your right. See, your heart`s on the left side, so if the set decides to earth to ground through you, the juice`ll go down your right side and miss your heart entirely!"

As often, words failed me. I have often wondered since just how long he survived, and by which other mad tenets. Probably phlogiston and the continued existence of Elvis were happily accepted as gospel. A man for whom Old Sparky, the electric chair, would have held no fear.

I don`t fiddle with TV sets any more. Alas, like so many things, they moved on and I didn`t..