I should know better

I suppose a day that started badly had to pick up along the way. Florian the backpack and I arrived in the small hours at a dark and gloomy station. No lights. Nothing.

I wandered into the gloom. In the dusk the little man in the ticket office was pacing up and down.

There`s no power! There`s no electricity at all!"

He repeated this several times.

I said patiently that I understood. No power.

"But I can`t give tickets!!" He actually wrung his hands. His whole reason for existence had disappeared.

I left him to his nervous beakdown and prepared to pay full 1st class fare on the London GNER. They don`t take kindly to you buying tickets on the train. I braced myself for a fight to have my railcard recognised.

And I was in the midst of this struggle when the train ground to a halt and quietly died, in a deserted cutting among weeds. Sensing terminal breakdown the young lad immediately became anxious to sell me a really cheap return....

We reached Edinburgh 40 minutes late and I had to rush by taxi, eventually panting up to the ringside...

...Where things began to go better. Marcus won Junior. Florian was in a strange mood. Perhaps it was the rising gale, with the spectators wrapped up in flapping rugs. He didn`t settle and when I made the nonsense noises I make to get his attention on me and his ears up, he gazed at me and howled, right there in the ring. Nevertheless, he was second.

Then I could relax into the general bitching and gossip - oh yes, watching the judging too. A lot going on. The person who had sold to an Irish puppy farmer had a very lonely time. Heard the strange tale of the northern breeder who died suddenly and, having fallen out with his family, left everything, including 14 dogs, to the local football club. Fortunately two other breeders arrived and impressed on the local solicitor and executor of the will (who kept referring to the unfortunate Papillons as "A terrible millstone round the neck of our football club") the necessity of good homes, rather than instant disposal anywhere for hard cash.

And I have Marcus home with me. Like his brother, he has something of a sexual problem. Florian`s problem is that he hasn`t exactly had it - Marcus, alas, having had it is obsessed with it and is losing condition. He needs a holiday where there are no interesting ladies. He has discovered, much to his disgust that all my ladies are indeed very uninteresting and has settled for sitting on my knee. Now I have to fatten him up. Suggestions welcome.