Saturday 25 August 2012

Odd Wheels and a Dog Called Wolf.

I saw two strange vehicles coming down the lane at twilight yesterday evening, and in the back of one of them I could just make out a huge and fearsome creature. They were parked on the pub car park earlier, so I went and investigated.

The huge and fearsome creature turned out to be a dog called Wolf. Wolf is big, which isn’t surprising since he’s half German Shepherd and half Mastiff. He made friends with me, or rather he constantly prodded my hand with his nose demanding to be petted. I didn’t decline his advances, of course. One wouldn’t wish to offend a dog called Wolf which looks entirely capable of wrestling lions to the ground and biting their heads off. Besides, Wolf was actually quite a nice dog.

The two strange vehicles were not only strange, but interesting.

One was a Jeep-type vehicle dating from the 1950s. It was East German, and had seen service patrolling the Berlin Wall in the days before they pulled it down. Its owner told me that the manufacturers had made no changes to its design for thirty years, since it functioned so well. How very backward of them, you might think. How very lacking in enterprise. Actually, I think we could maybe learn a thing or two from the pre-enlightened East Germans. Not changing something that works perfectly sounds to me like a very sensible thing not to do.

The other was an old British Army truck that had been made in 1939. It was one of the relatively few of its kind that didn’t get left behind at Dunkirk and comprehensively trashed. (Seven thousand in all, apparently.) I was informed that there are only five of them left in the country, and it has a top speed of 32mph in favourable conditions so they don’t take it on the motorway. It has a bed and cooking facilities in the back, and the two men (and Wolf) use it as a sort of caravan when they go to old vehicle rallies.

I didn’t ask them whether they were gay. It never crossed my mind, which might go some way to exonerating me after the recent heavy discourse on a certain blog post.

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