Heavenly Beverley : Soothing The Savage Beasts

After all the excitement of the long weekend, including our sensational Sundowner, we could have done with a restful few days. Alas, for our slightly weary bones, this was not to be. After a fairly low key Tuesday, the accelerator was pushed firmly to the floor once more.

My fabulous friend and Activity Co-ordinator to the Stars, Stacey Dowding, had organised a morning tea stopover for her bunch of indefatigable seniors at the East End Gallery on Wednesday. Ladies and gentlemen, Stacey deserves a medal for courage above and beyond the Call of Duty. She is Commander-in-Chief given the challenge of keeping her elderly charges entertained on a daily basis. She arranges excursions and incursions, parties and day trips on a mammoth scale. Heaven help me if I tried to wrangle this decidedly sprightly and exceedingly opinionated mature-aged crowd more than one morning tea a year!

They arrived en masse right on time and piled out of a coaster bus and a mini-van. I think we welcomed about thirty of them. There may as well been thirty thousand of them as they barrelled through the front doors. The urn was boiling. The tea and coffee supplies stood ready. The jam and cream were at attention. Somehow, we had forgotten to cut the scones in half.

A tense standoff ensued as Michael frantically halved the scones before he was trampled to death. With a sigh of relief, he finished this task and stood back to allow the hoards to feast. The following scene was akin to a stampede arriving at an evaporating African waterhole.

There was nothing subtle about some of our guests. Demands for the location of the public loos along with the ongoing clamour for their morning tea created a cacophony of high drama and a deafening roar. There were two carers and a driver with them attempting to keep them on schedule amongst the mayhem.

Unexpectedly quickly, the noise levels reduced. Now, our visitors resembled a plumply satisfied pride of lions and lionesses having just consumed the tasty smorgasbord on offer at the aforementioned waterhole. And we were exhausted.

They came, they ate and drank and they did enjoy themselves, I think. After fifty action-packed minutes, they were herded back into their transport, off for lunch in Toodyay. I felt like phoning the Freemasons Hotel in the town, warning them of the incoming invasion and suggesting mass evacuations before there were casualties.

We slowly cleaned up the carnage. And with school holidays in full swing, we had other guests come through the doors. They listened with grateful mirth at our tale of just escaping with our lives. Somehow, we reached two o'clock in the blink of an eye and we needed to leave for Northam with Pip to see Graeme and Ingrid, our vets. They had bravely volunteered to stare into the nostrils and throat of our hacking, snorting, reverse-sneezing Jack Russell.

Once we'd arrived, we hauled Pip bodily out of the car to face the music. Graeme suggested we leave the muzzle off and see if I could calm the flexible and hairy rod of steel writhing in my arms. Surprisingly, he was probably better behaved. The pre-med was given with no real issues. True I did resemble an abominable snowman in a red teeshirt (a bad choice of clothing) and I sniffed and coughed up Jack Russell hairballs for the next two hours, but I was relatively unscathed.

We enjoyed a sedate and satisfying afternoon tea and a peaceful sojourn to the local library. On our return to the vet, we discovered that Graeme and Ingrid had all appendages attached and correct and the investigation had revealed nothing sinister. He had straight septums, an unobstructed throat, excellent lungs and heart, clipped nails, drained anal glands and a definite rupture of his ACL. Which we would continue to treat conservatively with anti-inflammatory medication as required. And Pip had been a total angel...

We returned home to Station House very gratefully. Ruby was ecstatic to see us. Madame Cat was non-committal. We indulged ourselves immediately with a couple of very large glasses of vino, a simple honey chicken dish for dinner and staggered off to bed.

The moral of this story? Do not be fooled by the soft wrinkles and silver hair of the elderly. There is often nothing frail about them whatsoever.

Until next year!