Dogs Lies and Videotape

This blog post is actually about dogs and lies.  I put the videotape in there to draw you in but there is nothing kinky about this blog.  Sorry for the deception.  But deception has been on my mind recently.  

On our recent trip back to the UK I visited one of my parent’s dearest old friends who they have known since the late sixties and I have therefore known since I was an egg.  She is without a doubt the most wonderful, batty, hilarious, divine person I know.  She has a thousand stories and anecdotes that will make you fall off your chair laughing and if I could bottle her I would as she is the best tonic for a dreary day.  I hate referring to people as he’s and she’s, quite rude, so for the sake of this post we will call her Aunty Norma, because in fact, that is her name.

So Aunty Norma related a story to me on this last visit about how she duped a friend over a pudding.  She had invited this good friend over for supper but not being that great on the dessert front she asked my Mum, who is a dab hand in the kitchen, to make her a pudding that she liked.  The pudding was a Pineapple Fluff.  For those who do not know it is a sort of light set pudding often served in a Champagne glass, very tasty, bit seventies. 

Anyway, as Aunty Norma’s friend ate the pineapple fluff she remarked how much she liked it and asked Aunty Norma how she made it.  Now given this lady was a good friend of hers, she could have quite easily said “don’t be daft, I didn’t make it.  My friend did” and they would have chortled about it and moved on.  But instead she came up with an elaborate lie of ingredients and method to pass off the pudding as her own.  Aunty Norma said that as she was relating this great British bake off fabrication she could see that her friend knew she was lying.

At the end of her tale, Aunty Norma said she had no idea what on earth possessed her to tell that fib.  This got me thinking and triggered a couple of memories from my past which I then shared with Aunty Norma and have decided to confess to here.

The two lies I will be discussing are from my childhood.  The first is more a withholding than a lie and the second is downright disgraceful.

Before I get into it, I do believe there are a few reasons why good people lie.  I think the main reason is to flatter.  I mean conversations would be very short if you responded “no” on every occasion someone asked you “have you read that book?”  “did you hear that piece of music” “did you see that film” or “do you know so and so?”.  

I am far too old for such lies now to blatantly say “yes” when I clearly have not read that book so instead I say “um, I am not sure.  It certainly sounds familiar” or “um, yes, it rings a bell … do go on…”  This then flatters the person to whom I am talking, helps encourage the conversation along so the person can tell their story and I can end it by saying “oh yes, now I remember”, even though I have no idea what they are talking about.

I think this is modern day gentlemanly conning or to put it in even nicer terms charming people.  

Anyway, getting back to my lies.

A colleague at work related a story about her young daughter taking to going to bed in a sleeping bag which she thought was very odd.  Naturally I remarked “well your child is clearly an imbecile” while twizzling my moustache and twirling my cane but within thirty seconds of that statement remembered that I used to sleep in a sleeping bag on top of my bed and I did not do it at the innocent age of 7 but as a post pubescent, full busted, graduated, working adult.  In fact, I realised I was still sleeping in that £7.99 Argos sleeping bag when I got engaged.  What in the hell does that say about me?  Or more to the point what does that say about my husband?  Clearly very little.

I found that gross old sleeping bag in one of my mother’s cupboards last week.  She seems to show more Cancerian cat collecting tendencies than me given she kept that horrid thing and moved it from her home in London to her flat in Guildford.

Anyway, I did not retract my comment to my colleague and confess that I was a secret sleeping bag sleeper. 

The second lie is the worst lie I ever told and I am so ashamed of it but after nearly 30 years I think I can confess without too many repercussions. 

  

The person involved was an old school friend of mine and is not on Facebook, although mutual friends are so they may have a memory of this in which case I will completely understand if I am unfriended and effigies of me are burned in Kingsbury. 

 

When I was 10 I left my junior school and did not go to the local high school with all my friends but instead was sent to a school about 20 minutes away.  I didn’t know a soul.  Over the next few months I made friends with a little gaggle of girls one of whom was going to get a dog.

 

I loved dogs.  I had wanted a dog for years but my parents were not animal lovers so this was never to be.  Anyway, during the whole process of deciding on breeds and doing their research as a family I became stuck to her like glue.  We were friends anyway so there was really no need for me to tell her what I did but I did because sometimes these imaginings of what your life could be run away with you and before you know what you are doing you have gone quite mad.

I told her that I had a dog.  It was a golden retriever and her name was Sandy and she was a 4 month old puppy.  I told her all about the dog breeder we found, where I took her for walks, that she ate pedigree chum (that was the only dog food I knew) but liked eating my food too.  She was a good dog and we had done puppy training and she liked to sleep in my room.  Lies upon lies upon lies upon more lies.

The truth was that I did have a dog.  It was a light golden Labrador puppy that was about 30cm long and used to shuffle along for five seconds then raise itself up on its hind legs and yap for five seconds before shuffling again for five seconds and then raise itself up again and yap for another five seconds.  

So elaborate was my lie and so strong was our friendship over this fib that she and her family invited me to Crufts one year.  God I actually feel physically sick relating this story.

They ended up getting a lovely little long haired daschund who I assume lived a long and happy life.  I don’t quite remember what happened to my fake dog.  I know my real dog did conk as its batteries leaked green goo inside its little power compartment and it was forever frozen  in a half bark, half sitting position, much like a dog lover might stuff their actual pet and stick it on the mantelpiece.

I can’t bear to think we might have thrown him away.  Poor old Sandy.  Don’t laugh.  My husband thinks my name choices for teddies are hilarious as I had a small teddy which I still own called Austin. 

Luckily for me my little boy takes after me given his favourite teddy is one that I was given when I was 7 that is now his and he called him woof because it is a crumpled old dog.  He recently got a small bush baby type teddy dressed in a coppers outfit and has named him Harry The Police.  This is because he has a friend called Harry and the bush baby is in the Force so there you go.

I will never know why I decided to construct this huge lie.  It is beyond me and in fact did not make my life any better. I never invited my friend over to my house because she would then know my golden retriever puppy was actually a toy dog from Hamley’s.

In hindsight I wish I had just started smoking instead if I was that keen to fit in with somebody.

I have never told any lies since other than on my recent application to become a submarine commander where I said I have conversational Arabic.  I didn’t really think I was going to be shortlisted for that job anyway.

And of course I lie incessantly to all young children.  Not about important stuff but everything else.  I think it is important while they are still wide eyed to feed that imagination with nonsense and fibs before they become cynical old goats.  

I learned that from Aunty Norma who told me an epic tale at the age of five years old while eating a pineapple fluff at our house that my Mum was a superhero because she had saved our whole family from a Boa Constrictor.  I was agog with interest and wonder but never told Aunty Norma that I had no idea what a Boa Constrictor was.  Well, now she knows.