How the bell tolls

As you are well aware, Trotter tends to gibber like a psychiatric patient at the full moon every time he goes on his walk.

Sometimes this is so pronounced first thing in the morning that Martha wrestles him back in through the front door to leave him barking like a thing possessed, stood up with tiny paws pressed against the glass in the door. She has always been concerned that the loud gibbering at this time of the morning may upset the neighbours, which has always struck me as rather ironic, as she doesn't seem to worry that the barking from the house may be equally loud and annoying.

Anyway, yesterday morning Trotter must have been communing with his inner voices because he didn't make a sound as Martha put on his lead. He didn't make a sound as they left the house, or walked round the block. He didn't even get wild and excitable when they got back to the house, when the gibbering is normally at it's intense worse, as Trotter knows that his breakfast awaits him.

Martha was dead chuffed.

It was with some shock then, when Martha popped into Varne's for her supper on the way home from work, that Varne announced that Aisha had overslept that morning.

Apparently the sound of Fly whistleling on the way to work around 6am is Aisha's wake up call, and then she snoozes until Trotters insane gibbering howl wakes her with a start at 6.45 and she knows its time to get up and get the kids ready for school.

Not so yesterday morning when a silent Trotter passed by, leaving Aisha fast asleep and the kids late for school.

Perhaps this is a lesson for us all. They say that everything happens for a reason, and until last night we did not know that Trotter was put on this earth to be an alarm clock.

As well as an interior designer.