The Muster of Ancient Dogs

The Muster Of Ancient Dogs

I open my eyes and roll over, the display on my alarm clock shows 1.25 am in blazing bright red
numbers in the pitch black. That dog across the road is out in the garden barking again, nearly
every night for the past few weeks it has been non stop and I've had hardly any sleep. The
problem is that it sets off the other dogs in the neighbourhood and before you know it you've got
a whole choir of dogs barking back and forth at each other. Seeing as I'm awake and with little
chance of getting any more sleep tonight let me tell you a little story about something that
happened thirty something years ago when I was eight or so on a night not too unlike this when I
was also awoken by a barking dog. My mum and dad had gone on holiday with my uncle and
auntie I'm pretty sure it was to France as my uncle and auntie used to have a converted barn in
southern France that they used to use as a holiday home. They had dropped me off at my
grandparents house on the way to the airport with a quick kiss on the forehead, a slam of a door,
a honk on the horn and a cloud of exhaust fumes. I stood on my grandparents driveway with my
little ruck sack on my back already in my pyjamas for some reason and rang the doorbell. My
grandparents were very homely people, come to think of it I don't think I ever saw them
anywhere else, not in a shop or in the street I can only ever remember them being in that old
dusty house. Their house was a typical old persons house, the kind that had Doyleys under every
ornament on the mantle piece and shelves displaying their best crockery, frilly covers on the
toilet seat and over the toilet rolls even the old settee had a frilly skirt wrapping around the
bottom. One thing I did enjoy though was watching black and white war films with my Grandad ,
my gran would make us a cup of tea and bring it in on a little saucer followed by the cake and
biscuit trolley that would be wheeled in adorned with fondant fancies and hobnobs. Later on
Grandad and I sat around the dinner table as he complained to gran about youths breaking into
his allotment shed again whilst gran dished up in the kitchen "I'll catch them this time love I've
found a foot print on my shed door, size 9" he declared. “oh that’s lovely dear” she replied in a
way that told me she was pretty well rehearsed in answering my Grandad without really
listening to what he was saying. On this particular night we had fish fingers and beans for dinner
which was my favourite and I had gone to bed early after watching Coronation street which was
my grans favourite. I'm not sure what time exactly but sometime in the middle of the night I was
woken up by a dog barking from my grandparents garden which was strange because my
grandparents didn't even own a dog. Driven by curiosity I folded down my frilly duve t and quietly
slid off of the bed trying not to make a thud on the old wooden floorboards. I made it to the
window on my tiptoes without making a noise and peered down into the garden. The garden was
pitch black you couldn't see a thing then all of a sudden the motion sensored security light lit up
the garden path and the back of my Grandad as he cast a long foreboding shadow all of the way
down to the compost bin. I couldn’t see a dog anywhere and wondered whether Grandad might
have already scared it off but then I heard it again "woof woof woof" as loud as if it was
standing right in front of my Grandad. I needed a closer look so I tiptoed across the bedroom
floor crept out of my room, down the stairs and stood in the open doorway of my grandparents
backdoor.
From somewhere in the distance maybe a street or two over another dog started barking and
then another coming from quite a way away it was as if they were calling to each other.
"Grandad" I whispered, he didn't hear me so i stepped out into the chilly night air, it was as if he
was in some kind of a trance with his eyes rolled back into his head facing up at the sky. I
approached Grandad at the same time checking back over my shoulder weary of anything that
might jump out of the bushes and attack me, I tugged at his sweater "Woof woof woof woof " he
unexpectedly barked "Woof woof woof".
Now, I will never forget the expression on my Grandad’s face as he looked down at me standing
on the cold garden path in my pyjamas, it was the combination of a naughty school boy that had
been caught smoking behind the bike sheds and a dog guilty of weeing on the brand new carpet.
I don't remember coming back inside I must have been in shock, the next thing I remember is
being sat at the dining room table warming my hands around a cup of hot chocolate and my
Grandad sat opposite with a small tumbler of whiskey. "Listen, you were not supposed to see
that, you were supposed to be asleep". My Grandad started to explain. "You see I am not really
aloud to tell anyone about this, but I guess I don't have much of a choice now do I". I must admit
that even at that young age I had thought that this did warrant a bit of explaining. I took a sip of
my hot chocolate as my granddad started telling me his story.
" many years ago I'm talking thousands of years before the birth of Christ maybe even a million
years ago a small group of noble kings secretly gathered in a small hut on a large peninsula
bounded on three sides by a large meander in the River Thames i n what is now East London. The
three kings that attended the clandestine conclave each ruled their own province on the
peninsula respectively and had seen riots and civil unrest within the boundaries of each of their
kingdoms. The purpose of this secret meeting was to devise a method of communication that
could warn each other of the marauding mobs without the mobs being aware. You see these
mobs would go from one province to another causing all sorts of mayhem from burglaries to
beatings from vandalism to murder, so it was within all of their interests to keep each other
notified of the criminals movements. This was in a time long before the telephone had been
invented, the messenger pigeon hadn’t even learned the art of map reading yet so the kings
were a little bit short of options and all agreed that they needed to invent a new secret but
efficient way of communicating. After many different suggestions from performing mime to
projecting shadow puppets on to the castle walls they all agreed that the best and most
inconspicuous way was by means of the common dog Bark. And so the three kings successfully
conversed with each other going completely unnoticed effectively stamping out any unruly
behaviour by standing on their castle turrets and barking in the dead of night. This practice
became a hidden knowledge and was only known by a select few in a secret society calling
themselves The Muster of Ancient Dogs. The fundamentals of this practice are used toda y by the
armed forces in the form of Morse code, One long bark changed to a dash and a yelp became a
dot. So now you know boy, I am a member of M.A.D. The Muster of Ancient Dogs a society of
barkers". A little bemused and not quite sure if I'd taken in everything that Grandad had just told
me I once again took a sip of my hot chocolate. " the dogs that you heard in the distance were
my friends from the allotment stood in their gardens barking back to me, I was informing them
about the foot print that I had found on my shed " explained Grandad, as if that made the whole
situation somehow sound normal. I don't remember much else about the stay at my grandparents house, the rest of the week was just a blur of black and white movies, biscuits,
coronation street and early nights. My parents picked me up from my grandparents driveway in
a cloud of dust, a screech of tires, a kiss on the forehead, honk on the horn and just like that I
was whisked away back to my normal life. Sat here now in my underpants in the dark thirty odd
years later at my kitchen table sipping from a small tumbler of whiskey I still wonder whether
that what I had witnessed that night at my grandparents house and what my Grandad had told
me was really real. But every time I lie awake and hear a dog barking off in the distance I do
secretly hope that it's an elderly gentleman covertly communicating with his chums over some
trivial matter that’s gone on down at the allotments.... Or then again maybe my Grandad was
just barking mad.