Mud Hounds and Worms

There were worms on the paths in the park, long thin worms. The blackbirds were having an easy breakfast, and so rich was the feast they were finding food with on every hop. The worms had risen to the surface to escape the waterlogged ground.

England is famous for its rain, but we have had heavier downpours than usual. Water stands in pools where there have never been pools before. The crocuses have taken a mournful battering, their petals spread like cloaks on the muddy ground. Pigeons are hunched with fluffed out feathers standing precariously on one leg waiting for the sun to dry them out. And all around them pools reflect the blue of the sky, or glitter with silver light from the sun.

The blue sky will make a good backdrop for any flag that is flown today. It will raise our eyes from the mud that is around our feet or in my case from my trousers. A wayward hound had decided to jump up against my leg with a bounding enthusiastic greeting and cover my trouser leg in mud.

Dogs do that.

They look around for some hapless soul who is absorbed in the study of damp pigeons, hapless worms or ruined crocuses and then after first dabbing each paw in the appropriate amount of mud they then launch themselves into a trajectory that will ensures total coverage. It’s a friendly gesture!

The dog owner then descends on the newly anointed, besplattered soul and begins a conversation.

‘You’ve a nice smile,’ the unapologetic owner comments as I fend off his mutt.
I grunt in reply.
‘Oh, has he jumped on you?’ the unabashed dog owner says. While his dog is presently mud wrestling with my leg right before his eyes.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I apologise in my traditional humble British downtrodden style.
‘I’ll put the lead on him,’ the unashamed dog owner comments as Fido for good measure whisks his pond-dunked tail against the other leg, before releasing as many airborne mud droplets as he can in a twisting body shake all over me.
‘So why were you smiling?’ the unapologetic, unabashed, unashamed dog owner asks.
I notice the past tense and grimace. This is enough encouragement for the dog owner to fall into step beside me; while Fido (the dog’s real name has been hidden here to protect his identity) trots obediently by his side.
How our conversation ended with a discussion about Polish prisoners being walled up in granite caverns in the Channel Islands by German soldiers during the Second World War I don’t know, but it did.
After our ways parted, and his mud hound trotted obediently away, I was left with this man's stories: prisoners who were entombed in the granite caverns they’d been carving out; a man who was found with potatoes in his pockets and who was then shot. How some of the German soldiers were tolerant and would turn a blind eye, whilst others had that meaner streak that led them to enjoy the cruelty they could inflict on others under their power.
A cloud had darkened the sky and I shivered.
I rescued two worms on the way back hiding them under crocus shawls away from their oppressors: the orange-eyed ruffled pigeons and the sprightly blackbirds.

The sky was blue again, a perfect day for raising a flag.