Chapter 23: The Smell of Death

Another Monday, Another Struggle

How can it be Monday yet again? Monday with my orders is the busiest day of the week and wow, printing the orders on this particular Monday was extremely difficult. It even included a couple of paracetamol.

It wasn’t raining, and even though I felt like a bag of complete pooh, I carried on. I replied to all my emails in a professional way. Being self-employed is one of the hardest things in life with a catastrophe as we can’t go sick. We have to keep going on and apologise when their delivery is late etc., we can’t say piss off my dog is missing. (Sorry, that is rude, yet we still can’t say, “I beg you, my dog is missing. Could you give me some more time?”). I also sell on Amazon, and we have to reply every day of the year; yes, even on Christmas Day, you might put the kettle on or pour a bucks fizz when you wake up on Christmas day, I don’t turn my computer on and deal with all the complaints of how their Christmas is totally ruined because there is a dent in a gym mat, oh, they send me a photo so that I can see the dent (I can just see it next to their fingernail). A bank holiday only means not meeting the courier that day, and the next day you have double to send, so no, we don’t get days off.

A Rant and Support From Friends

That was my little rant tee hee about if you are self-employed as to how lucky you are, yes you are if you have amazing friends as this is what happened next: “Christine, two people have called; apparently George is at mirravelle.” said Claudia. “Claudia, I am still inputting; I am so sorry. Can you go? I can’t tell you how cringe that was to ask, yet with real friends, you just can, so I did. “I am on my way; I will call as soon as I know anything,” said Claudia.

“It’s not George,” said Claudia, yet this time she actually agreed how people might have thought it could have been George. I couldn’t help myself but to message Claudia back and say: “Oh, so it wasn’t a 10ft white poodle then.”

Carol then messaged as I was just inputting the last order “On the way to collect more posters,” she typed. Carol was more than a rock than what I think she actually ever knew; it was like automatic for her.

Posters, Dogs, and the Fields

TNT had been and collected the days orders, Carol had collected more posters, so I decided to take all my dogs and walk by track and field towards where the photo had been taken. I can’t explain how good Jeremy and Peter were as I couldn’t take all the dogs on leads. Kev had to be on a lead as the weeds in the field were taller than him, and as for Steve, the majority of the time, I had to carry him. After a few hours, I decided to call it a day, and just as we were on track to the house, I saw Jeremy rolling in something; oh, he was having the time of his life. “Jeremy, what are you doing?” I shouted. Then I got closer; I had one second out of body experience like I had been shot by a lazer, as he was rolling in what appeared to be a small dead black dog the same size as George. Then when I got close, I could see it was the body of a poor little black cat. I can’t type what I shouted, yet he stopped, and as we approached my gate, I was like oh my god, Jeremy stinks he is covered in the dead cat.

I took the lead off of Kev as I opened the gate and put it on Jeremy’s collar, and yes, he went mad as if I was killing him; wow, it was a struggle getting through the gate and turning the alarm off.

Jeremy was still screaming as I tightened the lead near the hose pipe and ran into the house for the shampoo and a towel. I was only sick a little bit, and obviously, a little bit of wee came out; thankfully, Jeremy has never done this since, just a shame that I wasn’t that fortunate.

I fed the dogs and, at this moment, decided to hide George’s little red bowl in the cupboard.

A Call From My Brother

My phone started ringing that wonderful siren noise, my heart leapt a beat as it was my brother. “You ok?” he asked. “No,” I sobbed. We were both holding it together as I knew his situation; I haven’t mentioned it until now yet feel it is relevant as you might wonder as to how close that I am to my brother, yet he never flew over once. I need to keep this to the point and short.

We sadly lost our mother many years ago, and basically, our father was left with 3 kids and a business. Basically, he just couldn’t handle the situation. He began going off on the razzle; to be fair, he was only 40 years of age, and before we knew it, he was marrying a very younger lady after just 6 months of our mother passing. Not learning his lesson after that ended, he went on to marry yet another younger woman, yet this time he chose an alcoholic. So now at this point, our father had absolutely nothing, and sadly became terminally ill. My brother came to the rescue and bought him a beautiful house with living quarters upstairs and full living quarters downstairs. This spared him living in a hospice. The inevitable happened, and my brother now needed to sell the house. You guessed it, the alcoholic just wouldn’t help with the viewings; it wasn’t long before review after review of people wanting to have a viewing that had been informed how she wouldn’t let them in, and if she did, the reviews were: house stinks of fags, it stinks of cats and couldn’t see all the garden due to all the dog shit. Also, this house was a five-hour drive from my brother, so you can understand his total dilemma. So, each time he had a viewing, he had to deal with it. Not easy when you are 5 hours away, and you have no clue to what you are going to walk into when you get there.

Memories and Guilt

I still feel guilty to this day, as if I wasn’t dealing with my George missing, I would have flown over and dragged her out of the house. Obviously by the hair. My brother knows this.

So, after a much needed catch up with my brother, that actually made me feel normal for a couple of hours. Then after we said our goodbyes, I put the kettle on, and I ran myself a bath. This was progress, OK, so I never actually got in the bath, yet I did remember to turn the taps off, yet I never emptied it.

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