After all the excitement of last week I will be happier for this one to be routine. I will even be relieved to find I am going to dog training tomorrow. I wonder if I am old enough to start to do anything more exciting than walk round a ring and put up with my mistress pretending to be an aeroplane. My mistress did explain to me that it would help if I would actually behave and do all the things on command that I can do at home. Oh yes that might get me to do other things but it would so spoil the fun of showing her up. You see all these goody two shoes (or possible four shoes) dogs, doing everything their owners tell them to and thinking they look really cool, but how can it be cool not to have a mind of your own and make your own choices in life? How would it have been cool to sit in a large pool of water, when it had been raining, except in the literal sense of cool? Every week I set out thinking ‘Alfie lad, this week you are going to behave.’ Then every week it’s like the ‘fun gremlins’ get me and I just can’t resist being naughty. But there you are. What did I actually do yesterday? It was one of those days that’s hard to remember. I took some breakfast down to hedgehog on a tray. I managed to balance the tray on my head as I had seen on television on Michael Palin’s ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’ (which incidentally I wish my master and mistress would hurry up and watch the end of as I want to know if he makes it) and walked really slowly down the garden. It turns out that hedgehog quite likes yoghurt but isn’t so keen on Frosties which will be a great relief to my mistress who eats them religiously. Then when squirrel came round we asked whether he would tell us his plan. It’s funny how people say they have to sleep on an idea to see if it is any good, you would think they would want to be awake and think it through. Anyway it turns out that hedgehog has been wondering about setting up a youth club for all the young animals to get together and keep them out of trouble. He has no idea where it could meet, but he wants to do something that would help any young animals that like him otherwise end up falling in with a bad set and getting into trouble. Well both squirrel and I thought it was a great idea and immediately offered to help him set it up. I spent the rest of the day napping by my window in my mistress’s office checking on the progress of the world every so often out of the corner of my eye and dozing in between. I wanted to give hedgehog time to arrange things the way he wanted without having me accidentally bounce on them.