The Kennel Kernel

Edit 2 BHC Christmas 2010 Article.

This is the version I wasn't allowed to submit...

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It is I, Wellington Basset here. Consumer of yore show sanis, escape artiste & curse of st hubert’s. Now if it’s the staff reading this, then give this to the Very Important Bassets on yore sofa & go and get us a tasty smackerel of something while I explain the true wonders & traditions of the festive season to yore VIBs & lesser breeds.

Have they gone yet? Good. Eat these pages after you have read them. It is for yore own good, as you will see. Christmas is the time for joyous opportunity. There’s more time for mayhem, distraktions & tricks than there ever was on Halloween. Read on & don’t leave this lying around for the Cat to find, or all will be undone & kitty will be Topp Cat.

OK. Come In.

The Advent Calendar. This is a thing the tinies hang on the kitchen wall & fold bits of cardboard back. It seems to function as a Chocolate Dispenser. I can see no other obvious use. Choccy is very luverly, but it is not good for you at all. Bit like what your Mum says when dad opens another bottle of beer. Just sit underneath it, stare at the floor if they drop the sweets & do not move. They will think you have grown up at last. Little do they kno.

The Tree. As considerate as you might think they are providing an indoor facility for your ablutions, I strongly suggest you conduct this sort of business outside as usule. What it does make for are ransom & extortion. Simply tease off one of the shiny round decorations & hold it yore mouth. Do NOT bite it. Instead wait for your Mum to have a fit of the screaming habdabs & waft all manner of bribes under your nose. Hold out for steak before you relinquish the bauble & get lots of hugs. All this stops them taking you for granted! NB this only work once-see bit about magazines later.

The Christmas Box for your staff. This is easy diggings. Simply find the shiny stuff you’ve hidden throughout the year & drop it in. Lots of hugs, clever dog & treats. There’s one born every minit.

The newspapers, comics & Christmas special magazines. Should be outlawed by the Geneva Convention as illegal weapons-I’d rather a split-seam ‘creaker’ kane. Should you find yourself on the receiving end it’s only fair if you eat the Radio Times & bite their internet connection. All families are but two missed TV programmes away from a descent into barbarianism. Or charades.

Guests-family. Always good for a touch of something. Except gran. It would ne nice if they just formed an orderly queue & dished out the treats, but instead you have to put up with inane chatter & the interminable ‘how much have you grown’ tosh before they hand over the goods. Just nod & silently diskard them.

Guests-friends of family. Fine for jumping up & running around. Roll over & beg. Look longingly at their plates. Sooner or later one will relent & ask if “anyone ever feeds that dog?”. Nope. Not as often as they should.

Guests-dogs of friends of family. Tricky. Best hide all the toys before they arrive, otherwise wee FiFi the poodle in her bow will have them all & little Stroggy will nip her tail & then there will be a fight. For which you will get the blame & be back in the Jug again. A cleaning of the cupboards, walls, you getting a brush & a bath & a full water bowl might give advance warning. On the other hand it might also herald arrival of she-who-should-not-be-mentioned.

Other Guests-Gran. What mathematicians & other insane profeshunals call a ‘special case.’ All is never what it seem. All family, well nearly all, is pleased to see her. Except yore dad. This is becoz when there is no-one else in the kitchen she fix him into yore basket with an ‘old fashioned’ look & launches in with ‘your feet are a disgrace & when did you last wash your face?’ Swiftly followed with ‘when I was a girl, real men used to..’ Her ears then glow red & she finish on a final uppercut: ‘I have no idea what my daughter sees in you at all.’ She swiftly depart room & you & dad look at each other, wondering which one of you was being talked at. It does not matter. It doesn’t to gran.

Father Christmas. This means a smackeral of pie for you. There is usually a glass with something vile in the bottom it, which for some reason smells a lot like your Dad when he has fallen asleep in the soup. It would be a chizz for the tinies if Father Christmas was banged up so it’s down to you to do the decent thing &, ahem, dilute it. He’ll never suspect what with it being much the same colour until it is Too Late. Only good manners to leave a little bit of the pie & also to point the cat in that direction. With a bit of luck puss will cop for the lot & the Geneva Convention can be briefly considered abandoned. Who would have thort puss would have done that, wot a bad cat, etc? Take care to look inscrutable i.e. do not hang yore tongue out of the side of your mouth & drool with anticipation or the game will be up & you will be in Wormwood Scrubs along with dere Santa.

Charity & unfortunates. See those wee birdies outside? The ones that wait until you’re almost there & then wing it? They are deserving of your largesse. And they luv pic ‘n’ mix, much as you will this afternoon’s dinner. So the correct thing to do is to, ahem, recycle that vile dog fud you were given for breakfast onto the patio. In addition to providing a nutritious & now hot meal, you also have the benefit of more space for the main event & the warm glow from a recycling job well done.

Christmas Day Lunch. This all need to be played carefully after the Roast Beef Incident earlier this year. The vital bit is not to do what they are expecting & you were hoping i.e. pinch the bloomin’ lot. When dad stands up & offers a ‘toast to the queen’ this is yore cue. Well actually is dad’s cue to slurp more booze, as he hav no interest in the royals wotsoever, but no matter. Shortly after yore dad will lower his voice & raise his glass (agane) & mutter ‘absent friends’ & yore mother will blub a bit. Quietly go sit by your master (yes, I kno- wait for it..) & put your head on his knee. He will then nearly fall over when he move & say something like ‘blasted dog.’ Gran will look thortfully down at you & joy of joys you will get a sopwith’s sossie under the table. There are times when I luv the old gurl.

Presents. Always nice to see the tinies faces during this time; although we’ll never see the likes again of when dad gave mum a drill & she give him hair curlers. Well, I hope not anyhow. It would be nice if they gave us VIBs things that are Good for You. Take Nail Clippers (I wish you would & as far away as possible.) At the least treat them to a new sharp blade. Better still get a really decent pair. Keeping with Elf & Booty, how about some really good shampoo? That disinfectant that smells like old fine wooden libraries & parquet flooring? Expensive at 1st sight, but a very little goes a long way. How about if someone treated you to a brand new bed? Whilst we’re talking about smelly things I do think it’s high time we had a new mop & bucket. Sorry, Ralegh that is. Wasn’t me & it never is.

The Christmas film. At one time this was the main event after lunch. Yore dad used to keep awake during the Bond movie, much to the annoyance of your mum. Instead now it is all cartoons & Harry Potter, which yore dad compares poorly to something called Morecombe, Wise & Angela Rippon. This also annoys yore mum, but it does not last because he soon fall asleep. Now the game is truly afoot. Quietly creep back to kitchen & look on the surfaces. You might need to stand on something, like Ralegh, but it’s worth it for the excellent spoils. NB do not pull the plate over the edge. Unless you’ve had yore lot & wish to get the others 6 of the best.

And no matter how well you hav fed, or drunk, come bed time under no circumstances fall asleep in the teenager’s (if you hav such a creature in the house-it’s really what kennels were designed for) dirty sock collection, or in the morning you will be ushered from the kitchen with a broom & it’s a Boxing day bath for you. You have been warned.

The Boxing Day show/walk. It’s not the winning it’s the taking part, they tell the smalls. And when the smalls are getting their hair brushed they hiss into your ear something like ‘if you don’t behave & come back with a rosette, we’ll do you.’ Why they don’t do the same to their own pups on School Sports Day I do not kno. Obviously it’s wot yore mother whispers to yore father just before the Dad’s sack race & see how hard he then try? Or maybe it is that she hav given him an incentive-maybe a sausage treat? Still there is a satisfaction in winning dog wot looks most like his master when dad is showing. I don’t even need to make any effort to look that miserable.

Panto. A proper opportunity for unsupervised mayhem, assuming you hav not landed a part on centre stage. Unless, that is, gran has been left behind, in which case you hav no hope. You could try worrying the old gurl by pointing yore nose at the front door & growling. Some grans are harder than others-there is a high risk of your radiant whiskers being reintroduced to a rolled up mag. Personally I believe sleep to be the better part of valour.

Party Pieces. Everyone thinks they have one. Some are more successful than others. Some make the X factor rejects look worthy of Christmas No1. However, this is where you can shine. After dad’s appalling & brutal murdering of Slade’s Merry Christmas simply let slip the catch & let the kitchen crew in. Snowball can say her name. Lucy can demand her favourite snack (hula hoop). Ralegh can convert a clean pair of trousers into a muddy sodden mess in about 0.02 seconds, whilst Moose pinches everyone’s shoes, the washing up sponge & anything else not nailed down. Dougie cleans the entire coffee table with a single sweep of his tail. TBH it would have been kinder to have done this before dad went on, but the poor fule deserve it & besides this is all about making you look good.

Charades. This is where you must effect a hasty exit or you will be dressed up as something hideous which will make them howl with laughter & take photographs. If you are caught then there is only one thing to do. Find the item you stashed under the sofa whilst playing lucky dip with the dirty washing on Christmas Eve & drop them onto gran’s shoes. If you are lucky it will be a pair of knickers. Make a break for it during the ‘I thought I told you to clean up’ discussion.

Other trad games. The only one worth mentioning is the 3:30 at Kempton. 2lb of tripe on the nose to win. If they fall for that you hav it made.

Thank you letters. This seems to be some kind of torture for tinies, judging by their howls. This is where you come in. Wot small boy wouldn’t want to pla with his doggie eh? If you are both clever the game can go on all afternoon. It only ends when the sordid truth is discovered by mum & you are sent back to yore basket. Never mind-it’s not as if it is the Gulag Kennel & you will be fed. Probably the tinnies dinner as well. This is a good moment to invest for the future. Ensure you take yore not-quite-empty bowl quietly up the stairs to their bedroom & scratch door. They will luv you for yore gesture & you will still get to finish yore dinner.

New Year’s Resolutions. Fine for everyone else but not for you. Unless you are on the invite list to that wedding, in which case start sliming now becoz the pickings there will be a once in a lifetime opportunity & you mite get to have a dalliance with a Corgi.

Now destroy the evidence & I wish you good will & fortune to all bassets, dogs, owners & even the cat. Bash on the bonios!

Wellington

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I am ridiculously pleased that I still got away with an oblique reference to Fat Freddie's Cat, bottersnikes & that the nob gag slipped through

EDIT: Farewell bestest buddy whose fault it all was that we got another one. Sleep well darling & hug Moppet, Noodles & Ralegh. There's not one day that passes when I don't think of you all, but it's always you first, WellyBelly.