Dolorous But For the Dogs.

I went to Ashbourne today to do my post-Christmas grocery shop, but before I loaded myself up with heavy bags I decided to take a walk to the top of the Market Place. It was heaving with people, a great throng filling the pavements on both sides and covering as much of the space as was available among the vehicles on the market cobbles. A van was parked among the posh cars, generously kitted out with audio equipment and playing jazz music. I approached a woman and asked her what was going on.

‘We’re waiting for the hunt to come down the Buxton road,’ she said.

‘The hunt?’ I replied with the faintest hint of anguish. ‘Better make myself scarce then.’ (I’m not the biggest fan of hunting with hounds, you see, and the very sight of them turns me into something like a thermometer with the mercury rising rapidly and the glass in danger of destruction.) Since the only businesses open in the town were Sainsbury’s and the coffee shops, make a hasty retreat was what I did, back to the sanity of the supermarket.

But before I left the Market Place I saw a familiar face coming towards me. It was the woman I wrote about on the blog a few years ago – the one I used to see regularly in Sainsbury’s, the one who used to cackle at me and exchange banter, the one whose shopping trolley occasionally collided with mine, the one who quite unaccountably used to greet me like a long lost brother. She was smiling.

‘Hello,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘How nice to see you.’ Was it? I wonder why. I exchanged greetings reluctantly but politely, and hurried on.

But in spite of the generally downbeat nature of these few paragraphs, I have to mention the pet dogs. Lots of them. All sizes and colours held on leashes by members of the Market Place multitude, all looking happy with wagging tails, and all trying to make friends with all the other dogs. That, I told myself, was the silver lining.