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Spring is springing. Birds are singing. The flowers are in full bloom. This should be a time for four-legged boulevardiers like me to be enjoying a daily romp in some green, pleasant park. To be having a ball under a clear, blue sky (or at the very least trying to chase one).
But no. There was much discussion over the water bowl at Bar Grazie last week about what is fast becoming the season of neglect. Instead of doing the right thing by their furry better halves, dog owners are choosing to spend every Saturday getting dressed up like peacocks, just so they can watch a bunch of horses race around a big track.
Occasionally a smaller breed of dog might manage an invitation – I know a Pomeranian who posed successfully as a stuffed toy in his owner’s clutch bag – but the rest of us mutts are relegated to long, dull days at home, trying to make small talk with a stool or exchange bandinage with a bare patch of wall.
Then, when my owners do return chez moi, they’re strangely disinclined to take me for a walk. They lounge on my sofa. Complain they’ve eaten too much. I can’t see how one can over-indulge on bite-sized chicken sandwiches and canapés, but there we go.
Apparently this year’s hot tickets to the Birdcage are the Moet and Lexus marquees – at least, that’s what I heard at Loti when we were down in Melbourne last week. The car maker Lexus has erected a three-level pavilion complete with Babylonian plants and Pilbara greenstone for the week-long festival. In order to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability, apparently.
They’ve also found a perfumier to ‘deconstruct’ a fragrance into top, heart and base notes, one for each level. “Guests will act as the blending agents, diffusing the three scents as they move up and down the staircase,” I heard my owner read out from the Fin Review over breakfast.
To my mind, dogs are far more effective scent spreaders than humans, although perhaps our base notes are too bracing for such a well-heeled crowd.
For those of you with a taste for style tips, I’m reliably informed by the fashion editor of a metropolitan daily (care of her poodle) that the most stylish humans will be wearing relaxing suiting, or all-out, post-pandemic, high-octane glamour.
Headbands and straw hats are very much in fashion.
Cats, of course, are not.
Until next time,
H xx
