Even the best laid plans can turn to ashes.  And even the worst laid plans.  I’ve been nagging my husband since approximately June to tell me what plans he might have in mind for visiting Northern family this Christmas.
          ‘Are you kidding?’ he scoffed.  ‘It’s six months away.’
          Any woman worth her salt will know, when it comes to planning, that six months can pass in the same time frame as six weeks.  So when we got to six weeks from Christmas, I asked Mr V the same question again.  My husband blew out his cheeks.
          ‘I don’t know.  Mum’s not been well.  She’s having an angiogram.  Let’s wait and see what the results are first.’
          So we waited, got the thumbs up, and just two weeks from Christmas made hasty plans to travel to Manchester.  Except, not surprisingly, hotels were booked up, and train ticket prices had been pushed up.  I’ve been galloping towards the deadline on a book, so surfing the internet for hotels was not on my list of priorities.  It’s been as much as I can do to finish writing the Christmas cards. I cleared last week’s ironing at midnight, by which point this week’s ironing was slung over a chair giving me reproachful looks.  The following morning I got up bright and early, ready for a writing marathon, whereupon my son rang me every five minutes to ask questions about his conveyancing, his mortgage, his budget, his earnings, and finally his anxiety about whether he was doing the right thing buying a property.  I’d barely finished talking to him through gritted teeth when my husband telephoned to ask what joy I’d had on finding a bed and breakfast, and booking train tickets, by which point I was talking in terse monosyllables.  Hanging up the phone, I returned to my laptop, re-read the same sentence that I’d been re-reading for the last two hours, when the telephone rang again.  No surprises, it was my anonymous caller (who has been ringing for months now) wanting to talk about his trouser banana (let’s not go there). By this point I had more steam coming out of my ears than a boiling kettle.  Flinging my hands up in the air, I left my characters in the middle of a slanging match, and took my pooch off for a walk to clear my head and calm down.
          ‘Hellooo!’ said a familiar face as I walked through the woodland, Molly bouncing along at my heels.
          ‘I haven’t seen you for ages,’ I said to my fellow dog walker.  She always has a huge and very beautiful German Shepherd with her, and various other dogs that aren’t hers but which she regularly walks on behalf of dog owners stuck in an office.  Today’s pack were a couple of extremely obedient border collies, and a very unruly Labrador-cross that rolled its eyes naughtily before charging off after a squirrel with Molly.  ‘Who’s that?’ I asked, as the golden dog followed Molly around.
          ‘Buster,’ she replied.  ‘He’s the lowest of the low in this pack.  Looks like he’s going to try and dominate Molly any second now in order to raise his self-esteem.
          ‘Dominate Molly?’ I asked, puzzled as, seconds later, it appeared that it wasn’t just Buster’s self-esteem that was rising by the second.
          In that moment I wasn’t quite sure what to do.  Whether to scream “RAPE!” on my dog’s behalf, chuck doggy chews about as a means of distraction, or to continue uselessly hopping from one muddy foot to the other as Buster slammed a golden paw on Molly’s back, shoved her to the ground and attempted mounting her.
          ‘She’s a virgin!’ I squeaked, sounding like one of Barbara Cartland’s fictional characters having the vapours.
          ‘Possibly not for much longer,’ came the reply.
          But Molly Muddles was having none of it.  Her street dog genes kicked in and suddenly she was a snarling mass of pink gums and snapping white teeth as she twisted round and nipped Buster firmly on the nose.  Within seconds everything deflated and Molly shot off on a scent.
          Ninety minutes later I was still waiting for my dog to come to heel.  This is the second time she’s had a doggy tantrum on me and refused to come to heel, instead attempting to shimmy up tree trunks after squirrels and then barking in frustration at them to please come down right now so she can eat them as an afternoon snack.
          ‘Come!’ I said, as per the training book and how Molly has been taught.
          Molly had other ideas.  I was starting to panic now. My characters were waiting, a deadline was looming, and quite apart from anything else, the light was fading.
          When I finally ran her to ground, I was in no mood for nonsense.  Back home, I got to grips with the arguing characters, picked up the shrilling telephone and told my anonymous caller where he should put his trouser banana and then finally, finally, got to grips with sourcing a hotel for our trip to Manchester while my daughter booked the train tickets and we tried not to faint over the cost.  Back to the laptop, a few more thousand words and, hurrah, I typed THE END.  I celebrated by unfolding the ironing board and polishing off the second pile of ironing.  It was nearly one in the morning, but I could relax.  Everything was coming together.  Christmas was now welcome to visit the Viggiano household, peace would rule, and there would be goodwill to all men, mad dogs and even anonymous telephone callers.  Except … except …
          ‘Cancel the hotel and get a refund on the train tickets,’ said my husband.
          ‘Eh?’ I said, wondering if I’d heard correctly.
          ‘Everyone is in bed with flu.’
          So, there you have it.  This is how both the best and the worst laid plans turn to ashes.  Which reminds me.
          There was a doctor, a civil engineer, and a planner all sitting around late one evening.  They began discussing who had the oldest profession.  The doctor pointed out that according to biblical tradition, God created Eve from Adam’s rib. This obviously required surgery, so therefore that was the oldest profession in the world. The engineer countered with an earlier passage in the bible that stated God created order from chaos, which was most certainly the biggest and best civil engineering example ever, thus proving his profession was the oldest. The planner leaned back in his chair and with a sly smile said, ‘Yes, but who do you think created the chaos…’