So, there were these lettuces.
Crisp and green and altogether heavenly, rudely green in the morning sunlight.
And beyond the end of one’s own garden. So far beyond, in fact, that they might be in Elysium. They are altogether forbidden fruit. Or vegetables.
Because they are growing in the nearby garden of an enchantress.
Ah, you remark, but this is a game of odds. It is evens that this is a dark witch, evens that it is a white one. We’ve all seen The Wizard of Oz. Check out her slippers, you advise sagely.
This, Reader, is a dark witch.
But those lettuces do look very nice indeed.
Day after day a woman gazes out of the window across her own stubbly potato-populated square of God’s Own Earth, over that wall, and after a while, steeped in drab mediaeval poverty, she begins to become a tad obsessed. She convinces herself her health won’t take this, that she must have them at all costs. She raves at her beloved, and slowly he believes her: for slowly but surely it seems she is pining away.
And all for a bit of salad.
Finally her significant other has has enough. That’s it, he says, I’m going to get one. She won’t miss one or two, And he sets off on a daring raid for which – lets face it- there can be no possible hope.
So, half an hour later, there he is, lettuces in hands, Witch towering over him. And what do you think you’re doing, Sonny, she demands, and he must acknowledge that there is nothing quite as scary as a really scary woman.
He cuts a deal, which has a whiff of unthinking terror about it. Don’t do me for theft, old woman, he says, take my first-born instead.
Oh, I don’t think I could have borne the look on his wife’s face, when she realised she had traded her first baby for a couple of lettuces.
Rapunzel, relate the Brothers Grimm, headed off to live with the witch whose idea of childcare was to brick her up in a tower and encourage the growth of a healthy mane of hair. This acted, so to speak, as a dumb waiter: the hair can pull food, and the witch, up; and it can lower them down.
Gravity and hair can work well together.
Not for my husband. When he grows his hair, he begins to resemble Radovan Karadžić. Most of the time he sports a fetching short back and sides which makes him appear about ten years younger than me. He is a dapper gentleman-about-town as he travels about the capital.
But let those locks grow and something seems to go amiss with gravity. The hair assumes a physics all its own.
He is not the only one who has battled the hair monster, here at Shrewsday Mansions. But Felix, and Maddie and I all have locks more of the obedient persuasion. The other member who has a few problems here and there is Macaulay.
How cruel of nature, Reader, to bequeath to a small dog eyebrows of such extraordinary fecundity. They began all obedience, but have reared up and over his eyes like some great wave, enveloping the limpid brown pools hidden within.
His mother was a King Charles Spaniel. She gave him those eyes: and also the foppish tendency of his ears to grow long and cavalier. He cannot wear a hat worthy of Charles because his little frame simply does not possess the classic form of a spaniel. He is doomed to resemble some groupie following an ageing 60s super band.
His moustache follows suit: it is a catweazel-like appendage which will simply go on growing. In CS Lewis’s The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, the ship’s crew happens upon lost lords from Narnia: but they have been in an enchanted daze, and their hair has quite overcome them. So, Reader, would Macaulay become, alarmingly quickly.
And so it fell to me to pick up the phone and call Sharon and Topps.
Sharon is an endlessly patient dog groomer; Topps is her trusty hound, who chooses not to accompany her on work missions because of the tricky political situations this might engender. Instead he stays at home and takes care of the marketing and publicity.
This afternoon at 3:30pm, Sharon arrived and Macaulay did his best to depart.
He tried the front door, the garden, and upstairs: and when I had barred these he bolted to his favourite glory hole under the stairs. I watched Sharon coax him out. He came, but he wasn’t buying any Mrs Nice Girl. He knew what she had in store.
Two hours later he emerged, a preppy fresher ready for his Mrs Robinson. Everybody said ooooh. Everybody said aaaah. The dog’s limpid pools were making an appearance after about nine months in hiding.
But I am in Coventry, so to speak. The dog’s baleful non-verbal language is directed full-on at me, a laser with little mercy. How could you, he emanates. You betrayed me.
I am ready for him, though. “Think you’re hard done by, dog?”, I transmit asympathetically. “At least you’re not holed up in a tower after a dodgy exchange with a couple of lettuces, winching your Bonio up by your ears.”
Kate Shrewsday 
Lettuce pet the dog
Indeed 😀
good to have you back.
i guess mac’s giving you his back ‘back treatment’?
he’ll roll in somthing tomorrow, you know that, don’t you?
I’m ready….off to the forest now…
I’m sure his ears would be fully equal to the task….
Absolutely, Jan. They are looking so very preppy!
Macauley looks like a wise old soul . . . who wonders about the sanity of his people!
Glad you’re back, Kate. Hope the eyes are on the mend. 😀
Nancy, the wonders of modern medicine are many 😀 Mac is most displeased with his subjects this evening. He has just compensated by chasing a deer; now he feels a bit more canine….
Does she trim and clip dry…. or is she one of those dog groomers with a trailer which contains a hidden bath?
He looks very smart, I must say, but on a sunny day he may need dark glasses…..to protect those beautiful eyes
She comes in with a tall table and sits the dog on top. I have rarely seen him looking so forlorn.
I shall invest in a pair of shades for him forthwith, Pseu 😀
Great to see you back in circulation Kate – I’d only listened to the Audioboo earlier on today, and so it was great to pop back this evening and see a new post (not to mention the honour of a comment for me).
Love the description of Phil when his hair gets long – made me LOL!
As to the terrors of doggie haircuts, we should get Barley round to sympathise with Macaulay. She endured the mobile grooming van a few weeks ago, and then cried for most of the rest of the day!
Anyone who knows Phil and hair will recognise the Radovan reference, Miff 😀 Mac will be able to compare notes with Barley in the near future, I hope – The Smart Set…
Such a handsome fellow Macaulay is with his ears lowered and his eyes raised. He’ll forgive you, just wait and see.
I just finished The Art of Racing in the Rain for our book group. I laughed and cried and was moved. Have you heard of it? I didn’t think I would like it, but, I did very much.
Sounds like another must-read, Penny! Thanks for that!
It takes us three days to trim our dog. You should see my couch when we’re finished.
What punishment did the witch inflict?
Ah, the Rapunzel story…she took their first born, Rapunzel, and locked her in a tower. Took a handsome prince to undo the whole shebang, he spotted the girl and fell in love and tried to rescue her. It’s all in the Brothers’ Grimm big book of frightening and disturbing fairy tales…
I think I must’ve only been exposed to the sanitised version – or unknowlingly forgotten the beginning.
I’m not sure Grimm stuff is ever sanitised 😀 There are older versions going back a long way but I didn’t have enough words to lavish on them…
Original script here: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm012.html
Ah, but like Samson and his strength, perhaps Macauley’s character was sapped by the removal of that haphazard hirsuteness – his mask-of-wild-hunting-dog removed, if you will 🙂
Bluebee, you have once again touched the grist of the matter 😀 I gaze on him this morning and wonder where the cave-dog hippie-bearded beatnik joie-de-vivre went. His little attendants have all departed, and he is once more ordinary.
Although he does look like a film star.
Oooh! Tell Mac that he looks so much younger!
His head would grow to at least twice the size, Paula….
I’m smiling at a wonderful vision of Mac trying to depart. It does seem a shame to trim the eyebrows when he spent nearly the whole year growing them. But now he looks like a real dandy: just needs a bowler to complete the outfit.
I’m smiling that you’re back, too. It was delightful to hear your voice on the Audioboo, but of course it was entirely too short. And ephemeral. The words just didn’t stick to the page as these do.
Kathy, a wonderful comment, thank you. We are really an audio family: everything is out loud and louder.Thank goodness for audioboo! But it’s nice to be able to write again,
Now I’m off to procure a bowler hat for my dog.
LOL @ Phil’s hair. Poor Mac, he does do hang-dog really well.
Don’t underestimate the glare, Cindy 🙂 He’s been non-verbally persecuting me for more than 12 hours now..
I love his moustache, and I het those eyebrows move expressively telling you more than just a waggy tail could do.
Tell him from me he looks very dapper with the trim (but secretly I think many of us long for the shaggier rock-playing types)
Ain’t that the truth, Sidey 🙂 When I met Phil he had long curly hair just he same as mine. I thought I was in heaven..
see, we do love them like that 😉
are you still getting the ‘back treatment’?
It’s easing now 🙂
Sorry to discover you’ve been out of circulation, Kate, but delighted you’re back – on top form 🙂
As for Macauley, I feel his pain, having cut my very long hair very short, twice. I refuse to repeat that & can quite understand him diving for the stairs! Have to say too, that I love that pic of his shaggy mop!
Such a Hell’s Doggie, isn’t he, Naomi? I’ve been oooh-ing and aaah-ing over those lovely Quest photos…what a stunning dog, and so beautifully tempered too! Glad he and Dave are such firm friends. Best of luck, too, for May. Thinking of you both.
Ah, I wondered where we were going with this witchy lettuce story – funny, I didn’t remember (or never knew?) the why of Rapunzel’s imprisonment. Macauley really is so cute, whether he’s rocking his 60’s locks or mincing about in haute couture. The latter is definitely easier on the human caregiver – guess he’d relegate me to the doghouse as well if he read me. 🙂 Of course, the hands that (whether in person or by proxy) subject them to all manner of coiffure-related torture are the very hands that feed them… surely a thing to keep in mind.
Ruth, you have my dog taped 😀 Food is truly the bottom line. Unfortunately there’s so much of it running about in the forest right now, on two legs and four, that he no longer sees me as prime foodgiver. So far even the pheasants have evaded him , but for how long I dare not say….
Thank you for the most entertaining of comments 😀
have you been forgiven for your crime?