SKITTLES

There was a guard dog that was kept in state of deep-freeze.

Hard a s a rock it sat outside the Engineers Arms, a popular venue for the local elite where positions were secured by the playing of skittles. In this game everything that they had learnt together in their youth was pitted against one another and they fought to the end. It was the winner of this game who was chosen to be the guard dog for the next game and was ceremoniously hoisted into the deep-freeze department of the local abattoir to be hardened into the appropriate stance.


And so the guard dog stood hard and still glaring ahead with a look of frozen indifference on its face. Yet when another dog happened to pass, warmed slightly by the excitement that this approach brought, there grew a tiny soft patch hidden deep within the frozen countenance of the guard dog. This gave rise to a confusion of intentions. And in the gap between control and excitement came the twitch; a convulsive and erratic twitching of the body both towards and away from the object of desire. It was the suddenness of this movement that proved the greatest deterrent to the approaching dog and so, terrified into submission it would run tail to its belly away from the enigma. Again the guard dog would freeze over in the isolation of its solitary position. And so it remained this way, keeping at all times intruders at a distance.

At the end of its term of office when the game of skittles was over it was finally thawed out in front of the gas fire in the reception room of the Engineers Arms. The fixed expression would then seem to droop a little. And as it sat there in the warm soft lighting of the interior of the Engineers Arms it could sometimes be heard to sigh deeply to itself. And the casual drinkers at the bar, noted for their strong sense of clan-manship, took note of the odd character of this new-comer, already unrecognisable as the former guard dog to their establishment.

As the guard dog’s period of de-frostation came to an end so started a new life. It was quickly led away by officials and put into retreat in a retirement house somewhere in the suburban corners of the outer reaches of the city. Here it was fed until its belly wiped the floor and on the slightest rustle its expression would wrinkle into a thousand tiny knots of expectation and its tail would wag stirring the air around it and occasionally thumping the ground below.


The young ones got into the habit of teasing the inmates of the retirement home by swiftly approaching and leaving again. For they had no time for the comical greetings of the old.

No it was the enigmatic intransigence of the guard dog that they admired as it stood as always outside the Engineers Arms with a look of frozen indifference on its face. For here was a dog that had mastered the game of skittles at least once in its life. And it was every small dog’s ambition to do this.