LOWDOWN Summer 2013 page 28

Sian also sent Lowdown this poem which was written by the un-named sister of a friend.

LAMENT OF THE BASSET HOUND

Drawing courtesy of Sheila Williams©2013

My real name is Arthur Peter Cecil Wyntonham
But I’m known to friends as Henry, and they think I really am.
For I never told them, ’cos they’d think my name was posh.
And they’d be right, because it is. I’m afraid, it always was!

It doesn’t really suit a dog with legs as short as mine.
And ears that dust the pavement and get caught in garden twine.
It’s really very difficult when you’re a Basset Hound!
Unless you tie your ears in bows, they scrape along the ground.

People say I have got wrinkles on my feet and ’neath my chin.
I say it’s ’cos my skin’s too big and I’m too thin.
But they think that’s just excuses and I suppose it’s true,
But when you are a Basset Hound and there’s nothing you can do.

So please remember, if you can, that names like Arthur Pete
Don’t suit a dog with floppy ears and very wrinkled feet!

Rhyming ‘posh’ with ‘was’ for some reason reminded me of Ogden Nash.
So a little Ogden Nash dog poem.

The truth I do not stretch or shove
When I state that the dog is full of love.
I've also found, by actual test,
A wet dog is the lovingest.

Another Ogden Nash dog thought.

A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.


Non doggy but slightly more profound

There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball,
and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.

Unfortunately we currently 2017 appear to live in a country run by a government largely in the ‘none at all’ category.

Lowdown Summer 2013 Contents