Merrill

It’s quite amazing what communications come to one via the internet. What for example do you make of this?

Headed ‘To Mr. Glyn Jones a request for two hand written autographs.’

Dear Mr. Jones,
Will You be kind enough to make a precious gift of 2 hand-written ( not
printed ) autographs ( one for ALEXANDER and one another for my brother
VLADIMIR )? We shall be glad to receive Your original autographs sometime.
Thank You very much in advance ! We shall feel highly honoured.
We wish You all the good lucks and all the best always and everywhere ! Let
the successes and the joy of life accompany You in all Your deeds !
Sincerely,
ALEXANDER and VLADIMIR STOLYAROV,
ROSA LUXEMBURG ST. 50-11,
71112 BERDYANSK,
UKRAINE.

Well, apart from the not so good English, the address is genuine and the request is genuine but the whole thing, according to the research Douglas has done, is evidently some sort of scam. Note the signatures need to be hand written, not printed. Reminds me of Bond’s shaken not stirred. We can’t really fathom out how it is supposed to work. Presumably money is involved somewhere down the line but what possible use can my signature be in the Ukraine? Evidently anyone who has a website is fair game, even someone as unimportant as me. I, being flattered by the request, might have responded but naturally the communication was immediately deleted. I still do get the occasional fan letter from Doctor Who fans wanting an autograph but these are usually accompanied by a photograph they’ve taken off the telly and sometimes even include  postage stamps which aren’t much use from Greece but a nice thought.

Getting old, coming to the end, is no joke. Our lovely Merrill, she who wrote the Christmas letters and who over twelve years has given us so much pleasure, is now completely incapacitated. Her legs are simply useless and she cannot stand up on her own let alone walk. She has to be carried everywhere, and held up even to eat her dinner or shit and piss. I say it like that, shit and piss, because I hate poncey words like “evacuate her bowels” Her back legs went first but now it is all four and it has happened so fast. It breaks my heart to see her lying wherever she is put down, she must be so frustrated because she is as alert as ever. If she were a human she would be bed ridden but a bed ridden patient could at least have books or the telly or something to keep them amused. We are making as much fuss of her as we can but, looking at her watching us, one cannot help but wonder what is going on in that little canine brain. Does she know she is reaching the end? Can she sense it somehow? Or is she just frustrated at being so completely incapacitated?

A friend suggest steroids might help but when she was taken to the vet (Merrill that is not the friend) he dismissed that idea, not because it wasn’t a good suggestion but because of side effects on the liver and kidneys. In fact he took tests and the liver showed a marked tendency towards problems so he suggested half a Depon a day which is what she has though she hates taking it even in food.

Now we have to ask ourselves, is she in pain? We don’t believe so. Does she have any quality of life? Well at the moment we think maybe she still has although her condition must be similar to locked-in syndrome and I fear soon, if nature doesn’t get there first, we will have to make that decision we would rather put off forever.