Dad takes a Dive

Sometimes I'm so proud of my Dad - tall - strong, protective, a cunning hunter-gatherer and all other alpha-male attributes..... and then again....

We'd barely set out on tonight's walk and Dad was juggling the three of us, as ever, on the flexi leads, trying to look not too much like a maypole. We'd crossed the road OK and then turned right up a side street. Dad had just steered the H from going straight on across the T junction, when he kicked into a big crevasse in the pavement.

In a "dive" that would have done a Premiership footie player proud he landed on his hands and a knee, dropping all three flexi leads and shooting his mobile phone forwards out of his top pocket so that he heard the skittering away of it but had not seen it. He may have sworn under his breath. I have tactfully forgotten.

As ever, when we're walking, I was up front and pulling, so my lead accelerated out of his hands and barrelled up behind me; Dad saw the departing of it but not where it went, as he was concentrating on not getting injured. Meg and the H were behind and dragging, so their leads shot back towards them, blocking their paths and stopping them in their tracks.

Feeling foolish and embarrassed, Dad scrambled to his feet, dusting himself off, rubbing grit out of his palms and checking his trousers for tears and holes. He was quickly able to grab up the leads of Meg and the H, but looked ahead and couldn't see me so, thinking I'd be round the next corner, which was a car-less cul-de-sac, he stooped to look for the phone. This involved more hands-and-knees, whereupon he attracted a concerned old guy saying "Are you OK?" and had to explain the circumstances. He found the phone face down wedged under the tyre of a parked car. Lucky.

He, meg and the H then set off in "hot pursuit" of me, racing to the corner but still no sign. Then, back the way they'd come, they heard the unmistakeable "meep" of a Deefer in distress. Racing back the found me trying to emerge from under another parked car, where the cord of my lead had become wrapped round the road-contact-patch of another tyre. I was stuck, three quarters under the car, and invisible from most directions

Thank goodness for "Meep!" as a noise. No harm done to anyone or anything...

Except for Dad's pride. he now feels there's no fool like an old fool!

Deefs