TROUBLE ON SKID ROW

"Take that dog turd home with you!" my elderly, mentally unstable neighbour screeched at me yesterday from the roof of her garage after my hound completed his toileting on the grass verge in front of her house, "or I'll call the Municipal Guard!" Her husband helped out by jumping up and down and wildly gesticulating for me to head further up the road, as if clearing the area in the face of a garbled threat of a car bomb.

When my father-in-law heard about the incident, he recommended that I greet the deranged couple with obscene gestures, but in fact I calmly went home, got a plastic bag, returned to the scene of the carnival, collected my hound's deposits and gracefully returned them to my abode, as recommended by the flipped-out partnership.

Having already poisoned another dog in the neighbourhood to death, I am keen not to provoke the wild-haired old loon further, and by maintaining a sense of dignity in the face of verbal assault, I came out of the incident without having to lamp anyone, or burst into tears. "Accept the defeat and give the victory to others," as the old sages say.

I fully intend to be rather more productive in my later years.