Читать книгу Bushell's Best Bits - Everything You Needed To Know About The World's Craziest Sports - Mike Bushell - Страница 11

I was on my way to meet some British canine stars at their training camp near Worcester, and I started thinking about that old saying, ‘never work with children or animals’. I learned years before joining the BBC that you have to treat our four-legged friends with the utmost respect.

I had a job with the Winchester tourist board as a Roman Centurion, on their guided walks of the city walls. My role was to leap out from behind a wall brandishing my sword, in a very short tunic. Over the course of a week I had been mocked by a group of punk rockers, who goaded me from the garden of a pub with their mangy looking dogs straining on the end of bits of string. One day, with the latest tour party still down the path and around the corner, the dogs moved into position. They had been let out of the pub garden and gathered on the gravel by my wall. Hearing what I thought to be the crowd of tourists, I jumped out with my sword held high, shouting my lines, but instead of intrigued faces reaching for their cameras, the audience consisted of three rows of gnashing teeth.

I recognised one breed to be a border collie and was pretty sure the others had horns and forked tails. I wasn’t sticking around for a picture and hot-footed it in my sandals the other way up the path. I vaulted up some steps, onto a bridge and past King Alfred’s Statue. The snarling of canine jaws was never far behind, until I came to a pelican crossing and realised that stopping at the lights was a police car. Huffing and puffing, I asked if the officers would do me a favour and arrest the gang hounding me. ‘The dogs, the dogs…’ I panted…the dogs which had now disappeared. They had given up the chase, probably realising there wasn’t much meat on the bone. Remarkably the policewoman kept a straight face as she reassured this pathetic excuse for a Roman and agreed to go and have a word with the dogs and their owners.

Thank fully over the years man’s best friend and I have settled our differences. I no longer dress up as a Roman Centurion, and there are numerous sports which are guaranteed to bring you and your dog together.