I can be such an idiot sometimes. Not just borderline stupid, but an all out mind-blowing, foot firmly in the mouth, prize idiot. I have recently formed an arrangement with another driving school. We refer pupils to each other if they come to us from areas that either of us doesn’t cover. I have normally been communicating with the girl that owns the school, but as she has recently gone into hospital, I have been instructed to communicate with her colleague.

I received a text on Saturday asking if I covered a certain well known area (I dare not mention the name, as I feel I have offended enough people for one week!). As the said area is a haven for drug dealers and the less salubrious of societies characters and given the fact that I have already had a few bad experiences with pupils from there, I tactfully (or so I thought) declined any pupils from this area. My text read along the lines ‘Since this area is a notoriously rough and seedy area, I think I’ll pass but thank you very much anyway.’ You can imagine how much I wanted the ground to swallow me up when back came the reply ‘Thanks a lot…that’s where I live!’.

In my defence, instructors seldom pass on pupils from their own area but hey, if you’re going to dig yourself a hole, make it a big one!

Talk about having to open my mouth to change my socks.

Holly’s been plodding her way through the week in her usual docile lumbering manner. I’m positive she’s got the canine version of sleep apnoea. As we sit together on the sofa in the evening, she often heaves her upper body onto my lap, kindly painfully digging her elbows into me, whilst making herself comfortable. As she gets more relaxed without a care in the world, the snoring starts and inevitably the TV needs to be turned up as the decibel level of her snoring escalates. This goes on and on, muzzle vibrating, nostrils flaring, jowls flapping, walls shaking, and then suddenly, it stops. Silence. Nothing. No body movement. Deathly still. What on earth’s happened? Has she died? There’s nothing else for it but to give her a sharp prod…and then it happens. An enormous, rip roaring, earthquake inducing snort that any pig would be proud of, one which comes dangerously close to inhaling the contents of the living room and she’s off again contentedly resuming her snoring and the TV goes up a little bit more.

I think Holly must have tuned into the prize idiot vibes I’ve clearly been giving off this week. Where her teatime is concerned, I’ve tried to get her into a routine of having it at 5pm. However, sometimes this has to vary slightly depending on the hours I’m teaching, so on occasion, she has it at 4pm. Unfortunately, this results in a battle of wills between us every day around 4pm in the hope she’ll get her tea a bit early. I try to ignore her whingeing demands and stick to my guns until 5pm. However, one day this week she got the better of me. I was particularly stressed and she was particularly demanding so I gave in and fed her early then went out for the evenings work. On my return home around 8.30pm she looked at me with disdain, lumbered into the kitchen and started throwing her bowl around. I then had an almighty CRAFT moment (Can’t Remember a Flipping Thing) and seriously couldn’t remember if I had fed her. I was so worried I’d forgotten, I gave her another tea. She’s now cottoned on to my daft memory lapse and this has resulted in, every evening this week, Holly throwing her bowl around in the hope she’ll get two dinners! I’ve now politely explained to her ladyship that I may be an idiot most of the time but not ALL of the time.

I also learnt this week that Holly’s a bit of a floosy. On our walk the other morning, she started flirting outrageously with the bin men and managed to get a bonio off one of them. Trust Holly to find the only bin man in the Lothian’s to carry a dog biscuit.

I had a week off from Tarzan, my trainer as he was away for the weekend. I ordered a Chinese Takeaway to celebrate, so I think I can quite honestly say that between Holly’s multiple dinners and my takeaway blowout, hers and my diets are both up the Swanee this week! Ah well, tomorrows another day.