By Graham Hadfield

Rosie was a Jack Russell terrier. Now you may have heard that Jack Russell’s are
yappy temperamental dogs. This is rubbish. You will find that you have to listen to a
lot of rubbish in your life. No Rosie was a cool dog. Not cool like wearing shades and
the latest trainers. She was a dog for heaven’s sake. No cool in the sense that nothing
worried her. She could walk past large dogs barking loudly and straining at the leash
and completely ignore them. You see when she was out of the house, she was not
going for a walk but was on a hunting expedition. Nothing distracted her from that.
She sniffed around all over the place picking up the scent of other animals. She
particularly hoped to find a rabbit or a mouse and it’s not because she wanted to have
a friendly conversation with them.

Rosie’s owner Graham was a strange man, a computer programmer who would
wander along the street thinking of the latest code he had to write. Rosie didn’t mind.
All she cared about was that he used to take her for long walks along Bembridge
beach near the lifeboat station. The more he thought about his computers the longer
she had on the beach.

Now just before the beach were a row of houses and in one of them lived the Johnson
twins. They did not look like each other as Andy was a boy and Julia a girl. Stupid
people often used to ask them if they were identical. “I hope not,” their mother used
to say with a smile. As it was the Easter weekend, they had been bought lots of
Easter eggs by their relatives. These were lined up in the window of their house that
overlooked the road. The window was open as it was a very hot day and the twins
were happily playing in the back garden.

Graham and Rosie were just walking back from the beach when they spotted a
classmate of the Johnson twins hanging about in front of the house. This was Billy.
Fifty years ago it would have been easy to describe him. People would have said that
he was grossly and then a three letter word that begins with f and ends in t. Nowadays
that would be considered unkind. So instead let’s say that his underpants were the
size of a rucksack and his legs so chubby that his thighs used to rub together when he
ran. Not that he did a lot of that.

Now Billy was a bit like Rosie. He could sniff out chocolate from a long distance
away. This was the fault of his mother who had been stuffing him with chocolate bars
ever since he was born. It was not surprising that Easter was his favourite time of
year.

Billy was not a bad person, but he had spotted those Easter Eggs by the open
window. “That’s an awful lot of Easter eggs”, he thought. “Surely they wouldn’t miss
just one.” Breathing heavily, he walked into the garden of the house, approached the
open window and eased out one of the Easter Eggs through the gap. Then panic and
shame seized hold of him and he started to run across the garden to make his escape.
At that very moment Graham and Rosie were walking past the house. Suddenly Rosie
ran into the garden at great speed. Was she trying to stop the theft of the Easter egg?
Of course not. Rosie was a dog. She couldn’t care less about the Easter egg. No, she
had picked up the scent of a mouse and was determined to catch it before it
disappeared into a hole.

Graham shouted out but it was too late. Rosie and Billy crashed into each other and
Billy went flying. He landed on his head while the Easter egg shot out of his hands
onto the ground.

Billy started wailing loudly clutching his head which was bleeding. Rosie,
unconcerned by the collision, darted into the bushes looking for the mouse. Graham
came out of his dream like state. He quickly hurried into the garden, scooped up the
Easter egg and put it back on the shelf in the window.

After a short time, Julia and Andy plus their mother Sarah ran into the front garden to
see what all the noise was about. Seeing the scene in front of her Sarah shouted.
“Hold on Billy, I’ll just get my medical kit to treat that nasty wound on your head.”
She returned a short time later, cleaned Billy’s wound and put a large plaster on it.
But Billy was still inconsolable. Despite the efforts of Julia and Andy to distract him
he didn’t stop wailing. Finally Sarah had a brainwave. I know what you need. I’ll get
you one of Julia’s and Andy’s Easter eggs. That will cheer you up. You don’t mind
children do you.

For a moment Julia and Andy looked as if they did mind an awful lot but then
decided to be nice and Andy got an Easter egg from the window. He gave it to Billy.
“Don’t give any to Rosie,” said Sarah “chocolate is poisonous for dogs”. This was a
completely unnecessary thing to say as Billy had no intention of sharing the Easter
egg with anyone. Graham was so impressed with this act of generosity that he
determined to buy the twins another Easter egg tomorrow.

And that’s the end of the story. They ended up all sitting together having drinks and
eating Easter eggs in the garden. All’s well that ends well,” said Graham. Now the
person who wrote that wasn’t talking rubbish.