Ruby,Sammy,the heroic Staffy,Pippin,Bambi and Aughtie etc

I went for a walk/run this morning, attached to my old discman. Intending to listen to an album I’ve been remixing. The speakers in the studio are good and can take a lot of bass frequencies. When I play it on the normal, household sound system, theres always too much bass for those speakers. I want to hear it on the tiny ear plugs as well. Running around the hills, I get to hear it with all manner of bird sounds as well. I got used to it on the last album, “knock yourself out”, and added some squawks and exotic jungle fowl shrieks to the last track “2068 babe”. That seemed to complete it.
On the previous Saturday morning I’d been for a run and stopped to chat with an older gent who always walks his two dogs , Ruby, a rusty coloured terrier, and Sammy, an old salt and peppered Jack Russell. The man, whose name I have neglected to ask him of, always wears a smile and a single earplug for his radio gaffa taped to his ear. We stopped to talk. He never liked dogs but his late wife did and he got used to them. He used to tease her for talking to them but understands that they respond to emotional sounds. he even posited that a plant will grow if you talk nicely to it. I laughed. He began a bit of talk about God but I begged off and he didn’t continue. I asked him where his accent came from. “Dresden” he said. The story came out as to the fire bombing and how he was told to lie on his stomach when the air raids started as the bombs could move the air with such force it could crush your lungs. He was nine years old when the fire bombings occurred towards the end of the war . He rushed out of the house as it started to burn and saw another bomb hit , leaving a crater the width of the road we were standing next to. He pointed at it to illustrate the dimensions. He lost his entire family in the conflagration. That very day. He mentioned he saw a little Daschund running around in the crater that was where his house had been. It was his companion, for a while. He grew up in Dresden as it became a part of East Germany. I mentioned the recent German film “the lives of others” , which he hadn’t seen. I mentioned it had to do with a Stasi agent. We were standing on a dirt walking track on the edge of the forest and he still looked around and over his shoulder before he spoke to me of a friend who was cautioned to change his ways of talking lest he encourage the interest of that secret service, whose informers were a good portion of the population. I was patting Sammy and Ruby through the story. Good companions for this fellow.
I continued my run and listened to my music. My mind had been enlarged considerably though. The reverberant room was bigger and connected to other , unexpected things since I had left the house. Up ahead there were a trio of people looking intently through the undergrowth for something. Magic mushrooms, I surmised. Its the season for organic psychedelics and they grow well on the edge of the forest. Actually, every day this week there have been mushroom gatherers treading carefully and looking hopefully through the ground debris there at Sherbrooke Forest. I was gladdened that there is still that deliberate interest in getting out of it in the community . Times are awful dull, why not!
Sometimes on my run I hear all never see a soul on the streets but hear all the dogs begin to call out to each other from their locked gates. The area is a bit of a dormitory. Little traffic and no shops or distractions. Suburban streets with enormous trees and much greenery hiding and draping each dream home. (All the homes being very different to each other).
Today I stopped at the edge of my driveway and spoke to Pru who was walking Bambi, her Pomeranian who marched up to see if she could bite me on the nuts, and Pippin, a white little terrier who was more mature. Stand-offish and disinterested, though she liked a bit of a neck rub just where that damn collar sits all the time.
I continued on, turning the corner where Suzie, the old, kind Kelpie always comes up for a chat, past the teen party house where the all white guard dog and his delinquent pal sit and bark by the gate all day. Further up the hill is the house where the chihouhua jumps up and down , vertically, behind the curtained window in complete frustration as my nuts walk past so invitingly. Down the dirt track there are the two St Bernards and then the tiny terrier who provokes its pal, the Staffy, to race out and chase me. Somewhere in there is a new, preposterously huge McMansion which sits where a very moderne wooden house used to be. Only it was burned down one night , perhaps a bong slipped from somebodys hand. The family was roused to escape the ensuing fire by another failthfull Staffy. We still refer to the whole corner by that incident. “The Staffy block”. Then the two Shitzus who shout from behind the wooden fence as I start up hill again. Finally there are Toby and Ruby, two miniature Schnauzers who get into a delirious funk of barking as I ( and my nuts) run past their manor. I have seen these two being walked past my joint and they are strangely silent and polite , with their owners, (whose names I have again neglected to learn) as they get their exercize. No bother, they are moving soon, I see by the sign on the front lawn. My favourite neighbourhood dog, Tony, left about eight years ago. he was very smart and would race out from his driveway and accompany me on the whole circuit. His owners gave him to another house around the corner. the new family changed his name to ANZAC and then “sent him to the country”. I have never spoken to the latter again and the former bunch are now vacating the valley. Perhaps our icy demeanour has frozen them out?
We have no dog, just an imperious cat named Aughtie. Named after Custer. Its what his brother Tom called him when they were children.