Waffle

These are waffles:

 Nom, nom, nom eh? Although I couldn’t eat the whole plate. I suspect I might be sick if I did.

This is Waffle:

Or, more precisely, Waffle the Wonder Dog from CBeebies fame.

And this is Nell:

Who, on our long walk around Trentham Gardens yesterday, in the glorious sunshine, was often greeted by small children with the words, ‘Oooh! It’s Waffle!’(I’d forgotten it was Easter holibobs. The place was riddled with people shorter than me. It was way too peopley out there. But hey ho.)

Now, bearing in mind that I don’t watch CBeebies because I am neither four years old nor losing my marbles, I was initially confused by all the ‘Waffle’ business. I was thinking, ‘These children think my dog looks like waffles?? Are they deranged? Do they need to go to Specsavers? I mean, even if you squinted in the failing light of a Winter’s day you’d still be hard pressed to mistake this dog for a dish of baked lattice shaped dessert covered in syrup. Even if this dog does get rather sticky from time to time.’

But then a family stopped us in our perambulations and said, ‘She looks just like Waffle the Wonder Dog,’ and when I looked confused, they added, ‘From the CBeebies programme,’ and then there was, as in the Creation, light. (Just to clear things up, I don’t believe the whole Creation thing. Personally, I think it would take way longer than a single day to create the enigma that is an aardvark, let alone a whole planet of animal life. Just saying.)

I researched Waffle the Wonder Dog. He is, apparently, a miniature red poodle. Nell’s Papa (not Andy - I mean the original doggy Papa) is a miniature red poodle. I’ve looked at photos of Waffle the Wonder Dog as an adult. He doesn’t look wholly poodle to me. Perhaps he is poodle plus spaniel, like Nell. Anyway, life is too short to ponder such trivialities especially as my interest in Waffle the Wonder Dog peaked rather rapidly but I’m jolly glad we didn’t call our dog Waffle, and called her Nell instead, which is far more sensible. 

Last month I bought Nell her own annual pass to Trentham Gardens. It cost the same as an adult pass BUT she can take ANY human into the gardens with her for free! How good is that? So, if anyone fancies to take her off my hands for a few hours and go for a Trentham mooch, she’s a really cheap date. It was a bit of a faff taking her photo for the pass because she kept lunging at the camera. Basically, her identity photo is a close up of her nose with a couple of beady eyes just visible in the background. But she does look like a dog. And not a plate of waffles. 

Pre-Nell, it would take me 45 minutes to walk around the lake in the middle of the gardens. Yesterday, it took me an hour and a half. Some of this was because Nell was stop-start intense sniffing and zigzagging, and some because people were very keen to stop and chat, and make a fuss of her. She, of course, enjoyed herself enormously. She barked at the miniature railway train. She met other dogs and was very well behaved with them. She had a bit of someone’s ice-cream. She left dusty paw prints up several trouser legs. She probably ate some goose poo. Trentham has recently introduced some beavers to their waterways which is very exciting. We went through the beaver enclosure but didn’t see any. But it’ll add a frisson of excitement to future visits because one day we might! 

That was yesterday. The walk improved the sciatica so I’ve downgraded the sciatica alert from ‘Chop My Leg Off’ to ‘Mild Irritation With Rare Ouches.’ This morning, the weather is drizzly. As I write this, Nell has curled up on her ruffle mat (that’s ‘ruffle’ not ‘waffle’) and gone to sleep.