Whether it was the overpriced, chicken-flavoured, bone-shaped treat that I gave him last Sunday I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t feel that the two minutes it took him to devour it was sufficient to mark the third anniversary of his birth.
Or perhaps, having now stripped all but the most out-of-reach apples on the tree in our back garden, he wanted to lay his paws on a few more for what I can only assume is an attempt to challenge Thatcher’s dominance of the West Country cider market.
Either way, he’s been at it again, departing the house in a way that I suspect would impress Airey Neave – though, to be fair to the former serviceman, the punishment awaiting Hector almost certainly pales into insignificance compared to that which would have been meted out on Neave by the German Wehrmacht were they to have thwarted his escape from Colditz.
Which brings me, admittedly somewhat tangentially, to my having been water-boarded this week. This was, as you can probably imagine, a novel experience for me – someone who, other than that now infamous incident involving a Henry hoover, a bowl of custard, and a one-time member of Taunton Deane Borough Council, has never upset the authorities to such an extent that they felt justified in employing a form of torture well known to be prohibited under international law.
And yet there I was. Forced by my two interrogators to lie supine, with my head tilted back, a cloth draped over me, and absolutely prohibited from crying out whilst one poured water into my mouth and the other attacked me with a distinctly pointy electrical device the like of which I’d never seen before.
Admittedly it was kind of them to provide me with protective eyewear – which is, I guess, why we all ought to be grateful for both the Geneva Convention and the General Dental Council.
Not that either of these august bodies seemed anything but powerless to limit the fee that these denizens of dentistry saw fit to impose on me for enduring their merciless ministrations – a sum that was, ironically, more than enough to set my teeth on edge.
But throughout my ordeal I didn’t squeak…much. Other than the moment when one of them probed, a little too aggressively I fancy, into an area around a particularly sensitive tooth, I gave them nothing but my name, my date of birth, and an update on my recent medical history. And this despite them then trying to bribe me with a fun-size tube of toothpaste and a couple of complimentary interdental brushes.
That said, suffering perhaps from a form of Stockholm Syndrome, I parted company with my white-coated assailants with a smile and a promise to return in a fortnight’s time for more of the same. Because let’s face it, there’s nothing more fun than being asked to ‘have a little rinse’ before being afforded the opportunity to spit what you had briefly gargled into a receptacle of free-flowing fluid that somehow manages to maintain the illusion that everything that’s just taken place was perfectly normal and clinically appropriate. Even if, with mouth still numb, most of it dribbles down your front.
But be that as it may, it’s time now for a glass of Hector’s Hooch – a uniquely flavoured brew which, at an ABV of 23%, he promises me, as well as acting as a highly effective oral anaesthetic, might just be enough to make me, if not forget his latest bid for freedom, at least no longer care!
Some musings 