When we’ve been to the vet’s we usually go for a walk in Clyne Gardens, the park opposite the surgery. It’s a special place for Annabelle because it gave her the idea for the park in her story where the boy and his naughty cousin find the magic Gateway.
As well as being a fairies’ playground, Clyne Gardens is an exciting place for us dogs. There’s a massive grassy slope for racing on…
…and all sorts of new and interesting smellepathic messages to investigate.
There’s even a pet cemetery. Annabelle thinks we don’t know what it is, but I always feel a bit spooked when we walk past it.
At the bottom of the slope is a tree with a big old man’s face carved in the trunk. Sometimes children sit on a long, curved bench in front of this tree and listen to a local storyteller. 
Last time we went to Clyne Gardens, an imp jumped on my back and whispered in my ear. It told me to chase a black Labrador and growl at it. Annabelle couldn’t see the imp, she just saw me hassling another dog and put me on the lead. Pearl was very superior about it, looking down her long nose at me and beaming sarcastic thoughts.
‘If that imp had told you to jump off a cliff, would you have done it?’ she said. ‘You’re older than me, you’re meant to set an example.’ Oh, she was loving it!
She soon lost the moral high ground when we got home – she stole a whole bag of chews, and that was without an imp egging her on.
We have a word for that kind of behaviour – it’s called ‘skanking’.
For more about Clyne Gardens, visit http://stillwalks.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/pink/
The Literate Lurcher 