I was in the office late and engrossed in modelling some proposed business changes in a spreadsheet, when I heard a noise at the office door. I started, and looked up. It was a security guard.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t shoot\u201d, I counselled him. \u201cI work here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHo ho\u201d, he said. \u201cI don\u2019t even carry a gun. Don\u2019t believe in them. I work with a dog. A good dog is better than a gun.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI see no dog\u201d, I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI left him down in the car park in the truck\u201d, he answered. He glanced keenly at my crash helmet. \u201cThat your bike down there?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYep.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe important thing\u201d, he continued. \u201cIs to get a GOOD dog.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wondered how best to kill him. Offer him coffee, I thought, then when giving him directions to the makings, cut open his carotid artery with the sharp edge of that steel rule on my desk. Not that I wanted to kill him. Just a Gedankenexperiment<\/em>, like Maxwell\u2019s Demon, but with a dead security guard at the end instead of some warm gas and decreased entropy.<\/p>\n \u201cI left my sister guarding a building site one night with a dog.\u201d He was still talking. \u201cShe\u2019s my partner in the business. She was in the site caravan and she got mugged by an electrician.\u201d<\/p>\n This was getting surreal, and I didn\u2019t know what to say. I decided I would say \u201cElectricians, eh?\u201d and shake my head.<\/p>\n \u201cElectricians, eh?\u201d I said, and shook my head.<\/p>\n \u201cI said to her \u2018Where was the dog during all this?\u2019 and she said he just stood there and watched it happen. So I borrowed her gun, and shot the dog.\u201d<\/p>\n I said he certainly dealt out prompt and summary justice.<\/p>\n \u201cToo bloody right\u201d, he said. \u201cSo then, of course, I had to get her a new dog. We went shopping, and she picked one, and I bought it for her. Horrible ugly looking thing it was, but you know what women are like.\u201d<\/p>\n I said oh Lordy yes, I knew what women were like.<\/p>\n “I left her with it at the building site the next night”, he said. “I dropped in a bit after midnight to see if she was OK, and I went to put the kettle on, and I walked between her and the dog, and the dog went for my throat. I put my arm up, but he ripped it open and I needed twelve stiches.”<\/p>\n I asked him if he shot that dog, too.<\/p>\n “Nah”, he said. “That’s the kind of dog I wanted her to have.<\/p>\n \u201cIt actually wasn\u2019t a bad dog\u201d, he went on. \u201cUntil I had a customer with a car yard that said people were breaking in at night and vandalizing his cars, so I locked the dog in the yard. A couple of nights later the cops at Arncliffe called and said \u2018You\u2019d better get down here. Your dog\u2019s put someone in hospital.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cSo I race down to Arncliffe to the car yard, and there\u2019s two wallopers and a Dickless Tracy there, and they\u2019re laughing. I said \u2018What happened?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the wallopers said \u2018You know when you\u2019ve got a hose and you play with the dog, and he bites at the water and then works his way up to the hose? Well, some guy broke into the yard, and was taking a piss on one of the cars.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cSo we all had a laugh, and then I said \u2018Wait a minute. I know that dog, and there\u2019s one thing I don\u2019t understand. What made him let go?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the Dickless Tracy said \u2018You ever tasted one of those things?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHeh\u201d, I said.<\/p>\n \u201cHo ho\u201d, said the security guard.<\/p>\n I glanced at the steel rule on my desk. \u201cWould you like a cup of coffee?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n \u201cNah\u201d, he said. \u201cGotta be going.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cElectricians, eh?\u201d I said, and shook my head<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[221],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5258"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5258"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5268,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5258\/revisions\/5268"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}