Waking up in Kendal I had a strange feeling that something was amiss, like that uncomfortable sensation you get when you’ve done something wrong or forgotten something but can’t put your finger on it. So I left the hostel and took a morning walk around the town, which is a tourist trap because of it’s access to the Lakes, but worth a visit anyway, very picturesque and what have you.
Down by the river there’s a park and lots of people were out walking dogs. One man had two sheepdogs and one that had the same black and white colourings but looked more like a husky. Well it was a husky, hence the resemblance, but it had exactly the same colourings as the sheepdogs and so looked the same until you got closer. The man had this quite intriguing sling-shot apparatus, which had a rubber ball at one end, and when swung round and released would send this ball a considerable distance. The dogs would then race after it.
It was interesting that the sheepdogs would naturally lie flat on the ground when waiting for their master to launch the ball, but the husky would remain on four legs, tongue lolling out, wagging it’s tail. Let’s presume these dogs have grown up together, and yet the husky refuses to follow the sheepdogs style and lie down. Would this mean that the sheepdogs just lie down genetically, without any training? And huskies will never naturally lie down? Sheepdogs lie down to make themselves less threatening to sheep so that when they stand they can attract attention and therefore better control the flock, I would imagine. But where sheepdogs put on Earth to control sheep? I thought they were just a breed of dog that farmers have begun to use to control sheep because they are quite intelligent and obedient, but if you got a sheepdog puppy, would it naturally lie down when waiting for instruction?
You! Go and find out!
No, surely you would have to train a dog to do that? Or would you. They seem to do it very naturally, as if by instinct, and if the farmer had trained them to do it, surely he would have trained the husky too? Maybe the husky is too stupid to be trained. Or too cocky. I wonder what the sheepdogs think of the husky and it’s arrogant ways?
Especially as on a couple of occasions it was the husky that reached the ball first, the sheepdogs must be thinking ‘Why did I bother with the lying down thing? By the time I was on my feet Simon was well away, given his standing start. Why do I lie down anyway? Curse my genes, or training.’
But it wasn’t this that was niggling me. I was still trying to think what it was (did I leave the iron on at home or something) when I called a local taxi firm to take me up the road to Oxenholme station. The taxi driver told me jokes on the way up. We got to the station, I paid the cab, and wandered into the booking hall.
“First train south is in an hour and forty minutes� he said.
Oh! That’s what it was! Trying to get home on a Sunday! Silly me. This was going to take forever.
“Then you’ll have to get on a bus at Preston, which will take you to Wigan, and then go to Liverpool from there.�
“What if I go to Preston, get a train to Ormskirk, and then a train to Liverpool?�
He wasn’t sure about this radical thinking and checked his computer.
“Trains don’t run to Ormskirk on a Sunday.�
Of course they don’t. It’s Sunday. I asked if there was a pub nearby and he pointed up the hill and so I walked up through some woods and came to it. It was ten minutes to twelve, and the sign said it opened at noon. A girl was standing out the back who probably worked in the kitchens of The Station Pub, which was a bit too far from the station to really deserve it’s name. The Bit Of A Treck Uphill From The Station Pub might have been more appropriate.
“Opens in ten minutes� she told me.
I stood around outside, thinking what strange and new places I get to see and how I should really appreciate it more. After about fifteen minutes I tried the locked door again and then looked through the window. A man came over and unlocked the door, allowing me in.
There were loads of people in the pub.
“Should have used that door,� he said, nodding towards a door at the end of the pub. “Been open ages.�
Eventually it was time to go back to the station and the marathon began, going to Preston, getting on a coach, being told to get off a coach, going to Wigan, running for the Liverpool train that left two minutes early to avoid picking anyone up the BASTARD, waiting an hour in the pub over the road watching the football, getting back to Liverpool about six hours after I’d set off, and then joining Kerry for a drink in the newly refurbished Belvedere on Falkner Street.
Six hours. There’s your Sunday travel for you. Must get these car keys sorted out.
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