There is a dead mole on the lawn. Or I thought it was on the lawn but it suddenly erupted on the carpet in my study, flicked there by a nifty bit of work from the NOTORIOUS P.U.G.
He was the cutest creature ever seen on earth – the pug not the mole – and could cut a swathe through Portobello Road like Moses in the red sea with people bowing, throwing palm fronts, kissing him etc. Now though he has become a teenager and things are changing.
He hangs out on the sofa with lads playing Grand Theft Auto 5 or is it 6 now on the X Box ? I don’t know, but I do know that the game was spectacularly depraved when my sons were 12 and the conned me into buying it saying it was a bit like the Italian Job. I tried playing it in an attempt to join in with them, but I was completely appalling at it and crashed my stolen car into a heap of people immediately. I think I got a lot of points for this but I couldn’t go on. I can’t think what the tireless running character at the centre of this game does for kicks now – years ago he was mugging grannies and then running them over, so by now he must be performing acts so intolerable there should be white out on the screen. Anyway, the pug is certainly under age for it. Much does he care, he just lolls about chewing sheepskin and looking at me with the same gaze my sons have perfected of blank amazement.
This is not what I planned for pug or children, but increasingly I cannot even remember why I would want to stop them. Anyway, how can I? My sons are both over 18 and are free to do as they choose. As I am, and my choices right now include a lot of vegetable gardening. We have grown pink fir apple potatoes and cocktail sized carrots plus perpetual spinach and a jungle of salad in a postage stamp sized vegetable garden. I adore the Mr Mac Gregor feeling of going out to dig up supper, and it is extraordinary that because the home dug vegetables are so delicious, not much else is needed, so some days I honestly find we are self sufficient apart from the ketchup my middle child insists he must have with everything. He says the invention of Heinz Tomato Ketchup is more significant than the invention of electricity . I like his passion. I wonder if it will ever swerve to another object? He is going to Cuba for a mini gap year soon. His packing has been desultory but I would be prepared to wager hard cash that he has a ketchup stash somewhere in his luggage.
Dusk is almost falling and I have some hard labour to accomplish before dark. Packing is my idea of hell, and I am doing it for the pug, one child and myself as we head off for a moment of Balearic bliss in Mallorca. Well, the pug isn’t, he is going to Suffolk, but the rest of us are ready for some poolside reading. I am taking Jane Smiley’s “Ten Day’s in the Hills”, and Rosamund Lehmann” “Invitation to the Walz” to reread. My 12 year old daughter has “I capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith. One son has “King Lear” by Shakespeare and “American Psycho” by Brett Easton Ellis, while the other has ”The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov, and “Pimp, the Story of My life” by Iceberg Slim. We will have much to discuss.
The Notorious P.U.G. has his own fan page on Facebook: The Notorious P.U.G. on Facebook
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