Our dog started barking. He doesn\u2019t normally bark when visitors arrive. Also he never takes any notice of the postman, simply ignores him, as opposed to the little terrier next door who invariably lets me know when the mail is about to be delivered. Our dog showed signs of upset and we thought he must have spotted a squirrel through the window or heard an unfamiliar noise, we certainly hadn\u2019t heard anything.<\/p>\n
And yet, it was Aldous and his wife he had sensed somehow, for it was them who turned up at our backdoor quite unexpectedly to collect their little dog after returning from the Continent. They shouldn\u2019t have come until a day later.<\/p>\n
Here they were, now. The whole place suddenly became very noisy, my children told me later. There were \u2018hallo\u2019s and \u2018how are you\u2019 and \u2018how are the dogs\u2019 and \u2018lovely to see you\u2019 and \u2018did she behave herself\u2019. And they bent down to greet their dog who lay on her back for them to \u2018tickle her tummy\u2019. Our dog came up to join the crowd. My attention was taken altogether by the visitors. I could vaguely hear our dog growl and took him by his collar. He kept on growling and Aldous\u2019 wife said, look he\u2019s jealous, and put her hand on him. We rarely hear our dog growl, quite unusual in fact. He does like to claim his share of attention, but we\u2019d never heard him growl on such an occasion. We\u2019ve known him to growl at Aldous\u2019 wife once or twice, we have no idea why. I didn\u2019t pay any attention to him this time and my daughter told me later that he had in fact bared his teeth …<\/p>\n
Aldous and his wife looked tired. I made them a cup of tea, not a single cup of decent tea they\u2019d had while away, and they started telling us about their latest Continental experience. How extraordinarily expensive everything was, absolutely horrendous, out of price. They simply hadn\u2019t felt like buying anything, except a bit of chocolate. On their last night there they had been taken out to an extremely posh restaurant, we heard, so many francs a four-course meal. It was incredible by any standards. And the quality of the food so poor. The decorum was nice, the packaging so to speak, but what they got … Little better than what they had had on their night out with their former neighbours. At least the meat wasn\u2019t tepid! There had been huge colour postcards on each table, ready stamped for immediate use. Aldous\u2019 wife had taken one as a souvenir and showed it us. It looked an impressive place. Seeing a large house on top of a green hill reminded me of a composer who had lived and conceived one of his works about a famous pair of lovers in this same area. Of course, his music sends Aldous to sleep, and when I asked, had they come across this house, too, all I had for an answer was a weary smile.<\/p>\n
But the generous finance scientists receive over there! All the latest equipment. And they don\u2019t know what to do with it! Aldous had received the information that once the equipment was put into place, the beneficiaries had to think hard how best to use it. Isn\u2019t it incredible! And here, there\u2019s nothing like it! So short of everything.<\/p>\n
One big comfort: our houses here were much nicer than the ones on the Continent. For all their money they mainly lived in flats over there. How people could put up with that, Aldous didn\u2019t know. He had the pleasure of hearing his house described by somebody who\u2019d been as a \u2018sort of castle\u2019. Just to show the difference.<\/p>\n
Aldous\u2019 lectures on ecological subjects had all been very well timed, Aldous said, because of a disaster that had struck the chemical industry of that country, virtually killing off all fish in an important river. There was a big outcry and general pointing of fingers at the scientists of that particular discipline. Of course, what science has to do, Aldous remarked and had been heard, was to criticize itself. This was a case where things had gone wrong and one shouldn\u2019t be afraid of admitting that, he had told his colleagues.
\nI thought this was a remarkable statement. Obviously the things that had gone wrong had nothing to do with him.<\/p>\n
Anyway, they were both satisfied with their Continental excursion, even if they were out of pocket by so many pounds. The expenses hadn\u2019t covered everything, but then you can\u2019t expect them to pay for one\u2019s wife as well. The fee he had received for his lectures was negligible, Aldous said. And what a lot of work involved with it. Any businessman would get more for his efforts. They had finished their cups of tea, looked revived, picked up their dog and prepared to go home. Shall we see you at Paul\u2019s tomorrow night? Aldous\u2019 wife asked. I said, no, we hadn\u2019t been invited, in any case we were going to a concert. She said, see you next week, I\u2019ll bring you some chocolate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our dog started barking. He doesn\u2019t normally bark when visitors arrive. Also he never takes any notice of the postman, simply ignores him, as opposed to the little terrier next door who invariably lets me know when the mail is about to be delivered. Our dog showed signs of upset and we thought he must […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-aloud-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}