Captain Midnight here, taking a well-earned rest.

Himself got his first Covid vaccination recently. I thought he’d be leaping up and down with joy but apparently the effort of acquiring antibodies is so exhausting that it calls for an afternoon nap. I suppose I should be grateful that he got out of his pyjamas long enough this morning to take me out for a brief constitutional before climbing the wooden hill back up to Bedfordshire.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m partial to a nap myself. In fact I’m pretty much a world expert in dropping off during the day. Let’s face it, there’s not much else for a dog to do during lockdown when his human spends all his time sitting in front of a computer screen bashing away at the keyboard.

At least if Himself takes a daytime nap I can use him as a pillow. He’s certainly plumped up a bit in the past few months (ha ha). The other advantage, I’ve discovered, is that if Himself sleeps during the day, he wakes up during the night and goes downstairs to make Hot Chocolate, which means he can let me out into the garden to bark at the moon and generally disturb the neighbourhood.

If things go on like this for much longer, we’ll either become completely nocturnal or go into hibernation. Himself says that he quite likes that idea and is making a sign to put on the front door:

“PLEASE WAKE US UP WHEN IT’S ALL OVER”

Captain Midnight here reporting from snowy Kingscote.

I’ll be frank with you, it wasn’t my idea to go for a walk in the snow. Himself said that it was too good an opportunity to miss and that we didn’t get snow that often and that we’d be alright if we dressed up warmly in our padded jackets. He conveniently forgot to mention that, while he’d also be wearing two pairs of socks and insulated wellies, I would be slogging bare-pawed through the white powdery stuff.  
Also, not to put too fine a point on it, I am not the tallest dog in the world. Borzois, Great Danes and Wolfhounds might be able to keep their undercarriages clear of the drifts, but I would definitely get icicles where icicles have no business to be.

Himself was dead set on hitching me to a sled. ‘If that dog Buck can do it with Harrison Ford in Call of the Wild,’ he said, with a wild glint in his eye, ‘I don’t see why you can’t give it a go.’

‘Buck was a 140 pound St Bernard-Collie cross,’ I pointed out. ‘That’s 7 times bigger than me. What’s more he wasn’t real.’

‘What do you mean, not real?’

‘Call of the Wild is a movie. Buck was a CGI dog.’

‘Come on, Ted. I’m sure you could do it.’

‘No chance. I’m not a CGI dog and you’re not Harrison Ford.’

Much to my relief, Himself looked embarrassed by my straight-talking and agreed to drop the sled idea. However, it soon became clear that he couldn’t completely let go of the idea of us playing at being polar explorers.

‘Who do you want to be, Scott or Amundsen?’ he asked

‘Scott froze to death out on the Ross Ice Shelf and Amundsen ate his dogs. I don’t fancy pretending to be either of them; couldn’t we stay inside by the fire instead?’

‘Like it or not chum, we’re going for a walk.’

I fully intended to stay put on the sofa, but not to be outmanoeuvred, Himself rattled the housekeys in the lock, waved the lead at me, and yelled ‘Walkies!’ Undone by his irresistible arsenal of hypnotic suggestions, I couldn’t muster the willpower to stop him clipping the lead to my collar.

I’m just going outside and I may be some time.