Life and death is very much order of the day and quite a conversation topic for Verity. The departure of her friend Jim still weighs on her and she is equating getting older with dying. Asking me how long we’ve had Alex the Wonderdog, I tell her that it has been nearly ten years and he’s getting an old dog.
“Alex is old,” she says with alarming frequency now, “And when he dies we are going to get a new dog. A spotty dog. One I can stroke.”
No wonder Alex the Wonderdog growls at her and eyes her with suspicion.
The same logic has been applied to my up-coming birthday and with cold precision she keep foretelling my death and saying she’s going to buy a new dad when I’m gone.
You soon learn to grow a thick skin in this business.
One shaft of light appeared today when I told her that I needed to make some phonecalls and that I needed to call the estate agents.
“Estate agents are bad people!” she exclaimed, before running away in tears.
‘Nuff said.