Mega pegs and puppy tales

In my last post I made fleeting reference to the joy and wonder of the phenomenon of the jumbo peg, which elicited a deep-felt and earnest request from dearest Hen to know more about such things, and thus I feel impelled to elucidate.

Once again furry friends are involved and the tale smacks of shaggy dog, but loyal readers, surely you know me by now, and realize that I prefer the convoluted to the brief and succinct.

I am a Scottish terrier, and dour by nature

(I am considering Twittering, but even confining myself to 150 words seems awfully concise, so measuring my outpourings in characters of that order (I can never remember if it is 140 or 160, and I am bound to find myself cut short in full flow) seems almost an impossibility. Some of you may say that I am already twittering quite enough, and quite possibly you are in the right.)

Spot the collateral damage

The jumbo peg is an object of potentially infinite use about the household, and I am sure you will find Mrs A from West Wittering (yes, she is wittering as well as twittering) in the Lakeland catalogue telling you that she uses jumbo pegs to hold her curtains off the floor while she vacuums the carpet, and Mr B from Havering (I do that often in fabric shops) explaining that he is a new man since he discovered jumbo pegs, and that his workshop is incomplete without them.

Interesting

Personally, I have always found that there is an almost magnetic attraction between puppies and children and the mega pegs. In fact, I think that singlehandedly I have supported Lakeland on the peg sales front, so many have I bought over the years, and I was beginning to think, now my big boys no longer make camps with tarpaulins and climbing frames, or dens festooned with camouflage netting, that the mega pegs would cease disappearing out of the peg basket and into the farthest reaches of garden and orchard, never to be seen again.

Would I?

But I was wrong.

Possibly

That is one of the eternal knotty problems of family life. No sooner do you think that you have solved one of life's little nurturing issues, than another pops up in its place.

Not me, guv, no not at all

No sooner has one naughty dog stopped stealing the jumbo pegs from the basket and masticating them to smithereens as soon as your back is turned, then a Little Stranger comes scurrying into your life to snuffle in the basket and snaffle them away behind the greenhouse or under the chest of drawers outside the back door.

Chewed pegs and new pegs

(You may wonder why we have bedroom furniture in the garden - well, so do I. The Head Chef put it there to hold the shoes that were rapidly breeding and multiplying by the back door and constituting a major trip hazard for the clumsy one of the family. All I can say is that those warm dark drawers are conducive to breeding and multiplying as there are still herds and flocks of shoes around the back entrance, and now a family of footwear has set up camp in a big cardboard box next to the chest of drawers.)

So, if you remain unpersuaded of the wonders of the big, chunky peg, just buy some for your children and dogs. I can promise you that they will derive much enjoyment from them, and you could even write to Lakeland and tell them of all the interesting and life enhancing uses they have put them to. As for me, I just use them for pegging out big chunky bath mats and quilts (that is, if I actually can find the pegs when I need them).