This is not a lazy metaphor for a primed four leg canine revoking it’s UXB status at the epicentre of our family. No, it perfectly describes the scene awaiting our 6:30am arrival in a kitchen full of frantic hound, and the aftermath of an incident which channel 5 would title “When stomachs go bad“.

It was hard to see where the sick stopped and the dog started, as the hoovermurf* showed his appreciation by smearing his barf stained flanks against my mostly bare flesh. Cold sick delivered by mad twirling dog is not something I ever wish to repeat at 6:30 in the morning. Or, to be more precise, ever.

Having removed excited pup, puke dripping cage and a sleeping mat that was now merely a repository for everything dog-voided, we found exactly where the sick stopped. Obviously the chunder was well represented in a blast zone around his cage, but to find it sprayed half way up the wall and splattered on an innocent pan some five foot distant came as an eyebrow raising surprise.

I will admit that my recent joy of finally crossing the threshold of dog ownership was slightly tempered by washing down a shivering puppy in the pissing rain, clothed only in a sick stained dressing gown. Still at the other end of the shitty stick was Carol armed with only a mop, bucket and nose peg to reclaim a room which resembled the arse end of some particularly hard core squatters.

You can’t blame the dog of course. Well you can, but I guess he wasn’t too thrilled to be sleeping in his own excrement either. And he was properly ill, as was demonstrated by a full on barf-athon which lasted until we saw first blood and then the emergency vet. To prove he wasn’t kidding, he was sick on her as well which provoked a needle full of antibiotics and a bill within a couple of beers of three digits.

I was properly worried for a while. Remember when your kids were babies where the default state of mild terror swerves between a conviction that all this crying must mean meningitis, and holding a mirror under their nose to check they’re still breathing once they’re finally silent?

It’s like that only with more barking although baby shit is definitely smellier than dog poo. No it is, try it for yourself if you don’t believe me. The problem with small mammals is they’re basically a finely balanced chemical reaction suspended in an open ended tube. And once you start chucking duckweed, socks, small stones and grass into that combusion chamber, it’s no surprise to find the walls pebble dashed.

He’s alright now of course. Well actually he’s a bit more than that, and has already been accorded the status of full family member. He’s quite bright for a lab apparently which means he’s not quite terminally stupid. Educationally sub normal definitely, stupidly affectionate, desperate to please and certifiably bonkers.

Still I reckon maybe I’m the dumb one here**. There’s something in a lifestyle that spends 20{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of its time playing, eating and checking out the nutritional content of rocks, and the other 80{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the time sleeping.

Yeah, that’s a dog’s life I could get used to.

* A recently discovered mutant species created by splicing a vacumn cleaner to a set of dog parts.

** Thank you for those silent words of support.

…Crush Crush Lie and Die*. If I’d spent any time whatsoever in casual analysis during a vigorous hour of Spider rehoming, the sheer volume of gossamer webs could be simply explained by enumorous prey stupid enough to be caught.

These winged spitters and shitters are noticeably more prevalent out here in the boondocks. And after much fencing with the furry loofer of doom – “Ha, take that you bounder” Swish/Swipe/Twirl “I am Zorro and this is my sword“- the border guards were evicted and the flybarians were at the gate.

And soon through it, but only hunting in packs of two. And not the same two as testified by the fly graveyard under my monitor. There must be hundreds waiting desperately outside, “Hey Bill, you gotta get in there, flashing lights, crumbs, whole acres of stuff to shit on, it’s ace” but something is preventing them from entering in a back swarm.

Maybe there’s a Tower Fly directing traffic “Permission to fly in and poo?” / “Negative Ghostrider, the pattern is full“**. Still in the meantime, is there a departure lounge where “Flies like us” or “The Fly that loved me” are playing?

And every time a brace buzz in to visit dead relatives, they come into the orbit of THE DESTROYER OF FLIES, THE SCOURGE OF INSECTS, THE SPLATTERER OF WINGS or – to demyth the object a bit – a rolled up jiffy bag. No not that sort.

I’m confident that through the wonder of natural selection, a few fly generations downstream of those flat-plastered onto my monitor will instinctively know that to enter the kingdom of the splatter is to miss out on all the other buzzing, shitting, spitting and being generally annoying opportunities on offer elsewhere.

And if not, well it’s a quick dance of death as they desperately try to evade the swinging reaper, before the inevitable end as their tiny brain is squeezed out of their arse at high pressure.

Lord of the Flies, That’s me.

* 80’s hit. Lead singer had “Prongy Bow Wave” Haircut second in silliness only to that Gel Advert from a Flock of Seaguls.

** It’s a multi media eighties homage in here today.

A few years ago, the pony tail and red braces tribe spent time I’ll never get back “strategising“* that all companies would only be successful if they exposed their IT systems, process and – if my notes are correct – arses to their customers.

Their smugness that Clicks’n’Morter** organisations would founder as their traditional qualities of customer service, owning stock and not wearing clothes heading for the new emperor smashed against the cyber-rock bullshit hidden by hideous flash web sites.

And what actually happened? 1999 internet stock crash, crappy outsourced customer service, multi tiered non delivery systems and the ability to track your deliveries on line. Thanks fellas, it’s been emotional.

But let’s not demean all their efforts – surely being able to divine the exact location of some web purchase is a mile marker in the glorious marathon of forgetting what shops are for. Because it is important to understand exactly at what time the desperately important package you’ve spent two hours saving twenty pence surfing for will finally arrive.

One small issue. They are really quite shit. Our Freesat receiver is made by a company that sounds like an advertisement for some extreme porn. HUMMAX are sold by Dixons, dispatched from a warehouse owned by someone else, and not really delivered by DHL. Really, what could possibly go wrong with that supply chain?

Well someone’s pulling mine. DHL dispensed with hard facts and instead offered a couple of quite creative fantasies. Firstly the response to my tracking code was “fatal error, database has exploded, fat IT contractor on the shitter, try again later” before the fabrication increased a notch to “Delivery not possible. Recipient business on holiday”

Couple of points here, we’re neither a business nor on holiday. Since the non delivery didn’t even include a scrawled card tossed in the general area of the front door, a more accurate message would be “Lazy Driver has feet up in cab, reading sports pages and mooning at cows“. Twice I emailed them (because ringing them would undoubtedly unleash a call centre in which, after ten minutes, two people would feel the urge to eat the phone) and twice they ignored me.

So I emailed Dixons who, in a pact with their delivery agents, ignored me as well. I became mildly irritated and resorted to BLOCK CAPS. This generated some activity at the far end assuring me that my package would be delivered as soon as we had finished our holiday. I made the bold claim we were not on holiday and – only a couple of days later – was offered up the worthless promise that delivery was scheduled for today.

If we weren’t on holiday. So I cannot tell you how surprised we were when the driver – fresh from 4 days of sleeping in his cab – bowled up and nearly bowled over the total innocent represented by the aerial fella. We fell upon him as a man dying from thirst would on encountering an oasis, and wrenched from his sweaty hand the magic box that would deliver Channel 5.

Fortified by a strong cup of tea, Sam the aerial man laddered back up onto the roof, waved the Satellite Dish around, performed complex stuff with expensive electronics, and finally delivered a televisual solution that runs to two TVs, four freeview receivers, six SCART cables, one HDMI thingymagic, six remote controls, and about a hundred channels. 93 of which appear to be selling me crap products via the Internet, which is about where we came in.

Of course you could consider the alternative of buying stuff from a shop that has both stock and people. It may cost you an extra tenner, but it’s unlikely to invoke a phone bill running into millions as you wait for someone, anyone to prove “your call is important to them“.

And the real reason I am writing this junk? There is bugger all on the TV.

* that alone is a sufficient crime against the semantic truth to sentence each and every one of them to suffer death by extreme haircutting.

** On second thoughts, death is probably too good for them.

Normally a demeaning term reserved for pseudo-cosmopolitan coffee geeks and anyone roaming the city asylum known as London. But today – in a final card burning rejection of my birth county – I have assumed the mantle of poncy beverage bore.

Previously on the hedgehog, we’ve covered off the extensive customer experiences available at Ledbury station. Basically, it’s Bob scowling at you from within his hermit hut, and the fat controller blithering on about nearline, crossover point switching at Abergavenny. The nearest one can get to a milky drink is to accost a passing cow. And as for a newspaper – well a lucky find would be a wind-flecked Herefordshire Observer (incorporating ‘Potato Harvesters Monthly‘)* from 1992.

Rather than use an hours train time for something useful, I’ve cast my net wider in search of yesterdays news. And that takes me half a mile in the wrong direction, with a further few minutes desperately checking my watch as the crusty old proprietor regales me with endless stories of tomato propagation from the inter-war years.

Java though, has been conspicuous by my grumpiness. Ever since acquiring the espresso machine of much faffage, many a happy hour has passed through selection of bean, multi-grain blending experimentation, significant waffling of the frothy fluffer, and occasional drinking. On the downside, instant coffee induces a hurl reflex, which is something I’d happily dispatch on those marketing morons who sell the big lie that dead, frozen beans can somehow taste like real coffee.

Methadone and Heroin. Stella and Kaliber**, Espresso and Instant. See where I’m going with this? Metro-Bloody-Sexual goes without. Until this morning, when a hopeful side street sidle dropped me dead centre at an early opening cafe properly equipped with an espresso barista. Took a while for him to notice me tho, as I’d dropped to my knees whispering “I TAKE IT ALL BACK, THERE IS A GOD AND I AM SAVED”

Once we’d established that my nutter-nuss was merely a mental release valve for a man in clinical need of fresh coffee, he served up a two shot stonker for the miserly sum of£1.50. Missed a trick there, bit of a sellers market, I was ready with the house deeds. And because Heaven had descended to this little plot of Earth, the smell of frying bacon introduced the very welcome prospect of a crunchy pig sanger for accompaniment.

Sadly it was not to be due to a non bread delivery. And in my unrequited gluttony, the clock had been ticking and I was running out of time to pedal. What to do? My only real storage solution was to quickly internalise the problem but the double fat latte was still far too hot for that option,

Thankfully my laziness in not removing a second bottle cage was rewarded in a makeshift beverage transportation system. It’s flexible too – this evening it was to be found gently – but briefly -with a Steak and Cheese Pasty nestled in its’ midst. But the only way I’d be able to offer photographic evidence of that is with a chest x-ray.

* Sponsored by the Potato Marketing Board. All six floors of it apparently. How exactly can the humble tuba need over a hundred people to find creative ways to sell it? “MORNING TEAM, who wants to be the guardian of the idea pool while we brainstorm new ways to pitch the Maris Piper as the Versatile Vegetable?”

** Any confused younger readers may like to follow the link above. But on no account ever extend their research into actually drinking it.