Dogs and tablets and slaves.

Out running first thing this morning, in the bright autumn chill, I stopped and had a chat with Jack, one of the gentlemen with whom I have a nodding acquaintance around here. His little dog Rosie, who usually waddles, came running to meet me. Jack, a stiff but fundamentally fairly fit 78 year old, is delighted with his dog's reaction to seeing me.  Now that she knows me, he says, she gets a new burst of energy when she sees me. This is just as well since he has been having to cook, or have his wife cook, fancy bits of meat in which to bury tablets so that Rosie will take them.

She has now finished her course of medicine but Jack has discovered a new problem: she has a wobbly tooth. When he consulted the vet about this, asking if the vet could remove the tooth, the animal expert checked up on which dog they were talking about before committing himself. Reading between the lines, we understood that the vet is quite prepared to put his hand in Rosie's mouth to extract the tooth as she is a small and mostly quite docile old creature. His willingness to do the same with a younger, larger and fiercer dog seems to be in doubt.

Rosie has finished her course of tablets. Jack has also run out of his regular dose, he told me, and was off to the chemist to see if his repeat prescription had arrived. In the event of there being no prescription, he has an arrangement wth the chemists that they will "lend" him a few tablets to tide him over until the prescription arrives from the surgery. They will then deduct the same number of tablets from the lot they plan to dispense to him. This is the kind of arrangement you can have in a small place where the chemist knows the regular customers. 

On the BBC Radio 4 arts programme this evening they were talking about Barack Obama opening the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington on Saturday. One report I read said it has been planned since 2003 but the radio report suggested that the idea goes back a lot further than that. I wonder if it can go some way to make things better for African Americans.

Oddly enough, since that museum will inevitably have a lot of stuff about slavery in there, I came across an article about an earlier bunch of slaves in America: Irish people. Back in the 17th century Irish people were being sold as slaves and sent off to the West Indies and the New World. Here's a link to an article about it.

Apparently, Irish slaves were cheaper and, therefore, less valued and less carefully looked after than the African variety.

Odd facts that I knew nothing about!