Seeing The New Year In!

By Ronnie Bray

Our chosen method for seeing the New year in these past few years has been to watch the Waterford crystal Ball fall in New Yorks Times Square, wish each other a Happy New year, and then take to out beds. It is a sound plan, and it works to our advantage usually! This year, it didnt go according to plan thanks to a few local law breakers and an elephant of a dog called Belle, our sweet Groenendael. This year it was different. We couldnt wait for New York to do what London and Australia had done hour earlier, and so we retired early, being tired, and, being ancient, we can get away with it without folks thinking it strange. Saturday night we are treated by the local public broadcasting system putting on Hyacinth Bucket [careful how you pronounce that!], followed by Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmers As Time Goes By, which is followed by one of my firm favourites that is tolerated by my wife, Last of The Summer Wine. After I see Last Of The Summer Wine, which is a travelogue about the region of my birth, an anthropological study about the inhabitants, and a sociological study about how to get along together with a variegated population when it is markedly varied and totally incompatible in all the important avenues of life. The tiredness, to which I referred early, was so potent that I dropped into Nepenthes arms whilst Geoffrey Palmer was

trying to think of a good come-back to Judis ascerbic wit over some trifling thing she had said to him after he had been bested in a brief exchange by Mrs Bale. Thats the point at which the spread of inhibition over my cerebral cortex was consummated, and I fell insensible. It was my intention to remain in that condition until Pheobus ginned to rise and rosy fingered dawn slithered over the crest of the Superstition Mountain and warmed the Valley of the Sun to its working temperature for New Years Day at around 75 Fahrenheit, when I would rise and attend to the needs of the day and the requirements of our dogs. However, other forces not unconnected to the natural world were at play to force my designs to submit to the urgent distress of Belle in response to the few local people that undertook to let off fireworks in a no-firework zone. Mark this: it is not illegal to buy and own fireworks in a domestic zone, but it is against the law to light them off. However, someone always does. The illegal firework people do not set off their rockets and bomb shells in large numbers, but only in ones, twos, and, by the most incorrigible, threes. Neither do they wait until the Old Year gives way to the New Year in our time zone, which is Mountain Time, or Greenwich Mean Time minus 7 hours. Somewhere in the midst of, I will guess, Compos diatribe against either Blamire, Foggy, or someone else, a few minute rockets whooshed through the clear night sky. These were immediately attended by 80 pounds of prime

and licensed dogmeat launching herself up onto the bed in a single hefty bound to find asylum that would bestow surcease of terror, abundant and unquestioning comfort, and an ultimate sense of safety in our arms. This we took with out customary love, patience, and understanding. It didnt work! Belle was hard to please and didnt settle. Instead, she went on a walkabout on our bed, trying first this position, then that one, and then a whole series of in between us, along the backs of our pillows, ligging against one and then the other of us for a brief moment before setting off again to find a better place. Although we have a King size bed, there was not a place where our darling Belgian felt was right for her. Consequently, she launched herself down from the bed and roved around the room and bathroom to find a niche where her well developed senses would be counselled by her massive intellect that she was safe from all harm, especially noisy ones. At her departing, I settled back to sleep and was just getting to the bottom of the hole behind the White rabbit when another pyrotechnic device was set off bringing Belle in its wake to repeat her previous performance and achieve the same signal lack of satisfaction as she had previously. This exercise was repeated several times until at about 11 30 pm someone exploded a mortar bomb a few hundred yards from our silent home. This device launched both dogs into disarray, even little Frankie who had laid on her pad by the side of my bed and been calmed after every report by a few strokes down her glossy back.

There was nothing for it but for me to rise, put on my robe, and move into the living room, where I put on the television and watched a variety of usherings in of the New year in various parts of the world and the country with the volume suitably hushed. Frankie came to lie on my feet, and Belle took up her usual position on the couch to my left, where she laid her head on her big paws and kept one eye open and fixed firmly on my face. I know I could get to sleep like that because the comfortable chair I have is extremely large, welcoming, and must I say it? supercomfortable. However, surprise, surprise! Belle had a different notion. I presume that human beings are not the only ones that can enjoy pathological perseveration, because Belle had a surfeit of it and although no further reports were heard, she could not be sure that they really were at an end. Consequently, she prepared herself for the worst by coming from the couch onto the arm of my chair and then proceeded to walk across me, resting when the forelegs were on the right chair arm and he hind legs on the left one. I stroked her and cooed to her, which she likes, and she stayed about four minutes, evidently soothed until she wasnt! Then, realising that her position would look ludicrous to a stranger, she found her way down, carefully avoiding Frankie, who, at 37 pounds, would have been crushed has she been stepped on by a descending Belle with all her weight on her leading foot: a point loading pressure of four

tons! Being down did not suit her either and so she went for a walk to think matters through. This brought her back to the couch, and the couch led her to come and sit on me for five minutes, and then to jump off again and wander more, eventually settling down on the couch with a weather eye on me. At this point it was midnight in Arizona and I said Happy New Year! to no one in particular, but it seemed the right thing to do. Thereafter, I fell asleep once more and drifted through aching limbs, a nagging back, and dreams that included a host of wandering dogs, imaginary fireworks, and wild bulls in the hallways, dreams for which I should charge for their re-telling, and was woken up, not by Dawns trembling fingers rapping on the kitchen patio doors, but by the Christmas Clock chiming Silent Night. Yeah, right! I also woke with a sense of peace and blessed refreshment, for which I thank Him whose unseen hands soothe away our fears and cares if we will yield to His care. Gay and Ren slept as if the war was over, and the dogs had on their sleeping faces peaceful demeanours. The world was still, the noises gone, and I prayed that all people could awake that morning of the first day of the New Year, hoping that if they also woke to peace, that their peace would last. I am saddened to know that it will not, but that will not stop me from hoping and praying for it. Nor will it stop me from wishing you, and your loved ones, including your dear pets, a very Happy, Peaceful, Prosperous, and healthy New Year!

Copyright 2012 Ronnie Bray