(With apologies to Aileen Paterson.)

A couple of weekends ago now, I had a Proper Weekend. For the first time in ages, a Saturday and Sunday were blighted neither by an excessive hangover nor unreasonably crappy weather and were filled just so with pleasantly engaging activities. If it didn’t feel pompous to do so, I’d have gone right ahead and called it ‘beatific’.

Ash had been invited to a barbeque on the Saturday in a small village called Dirleton, a few miles west of North Berwick, for her boss’s birthday. It was taking place at a nearby beach called Yellowcraigs, and it seemed cruel to leave Maisie the Dog behind in the flat while were off gallivanting in the dunes and munching on barbequed burgers, so we decided to take her with us in the car.

The only snag, of course, was that Maisie gets motion sick. Voluminously so. On the very first car journey we took with her, driving back to Edinburgh from the dog rescue centre in Dumfries, she lurched around the back seat like a seasick muppet and glumly yakked her way through a series of technicolour yawns. We stopped each time to clean up the mess, and as soon as we pulled away again she would start panting, then drooling, then perform another stripey laugh.

We tried her in the car again a few months ago with similar results, although by then we knew the signs and hastily pulled over each time it looked like things might go awry. I was not overly optimistic, then, about the forty-five minute drive out to Dirleton, and it was with some trepidation that we coaxed Maisie into the car on Saturday afternoon, whereupon she curled up in a pathetic ball on Ash’s lap and gazed mournfully around at nothing in particular. We opened both windows, set the fan to blow a cool stream of air over her, and set off.

And miraculously, Maisie was fine. She fairly bounded out of the car as soon as we’d arrived and fixed us with an accusatory stare from a safe distance, but within seconds she was back to normal and bounding off after her tennis ball. We found the barbeque in a hollow between the woods and the sea, said hello to the various archeologists and heritage types in attendance, and settled in for a couple of hours of random chat+burgers. It was a relaxing afternoon: Jeff and Devon arrived a while later, guests of Ash’s boss’s husband; we overdosed on burgers; we blethered about nothing in particular, and, to Maisie’s great consternation, we wandered over to the beach to throw the ball into the water for her.

We were getting ready to leave when a boy of maybe 5 or 6 came over to us and held out his hand for Maisie’s ball-chucker thing.

“You want to throw the ball for her? Sure, okay.”

He took the launcher in two hands and walloped the ball off the ground. It bounced away in the direction of the barbeque with Maisie charging after it.

“Er, you might want to not throw it quite so hard…”

Maise came trotting back and after a bit of persuasion, dropped the ball at his feet.

“Sit!” the kid bellowed at Maisie, who was a little taken aback.

“And you don’t need to shout,” I tried to tell him. “She’ll sit down if you just—”

“Sit!” he bawled again, for good measure. Maisie sat.

And so, for the next little while we tried to curb Connor’s (for that was his name) enthusiasm and minimise the psychological damage meted out to Maisie in the process. Eventually the ball was getting just a bit too wild and Connor’s demeanour was heading towards that staring-eyed, foot-stampy enthusiasm that immediately precedes someone getting hurt.

I knelt down to call time.

“We’re going to go now. Can I please have the ball launcher back?”

Connor conveniently forgot how to speak, and evaded my eyes. The adults in attendance looked at each other, foreseeing a tantrum. Not wanting to be seen to be wrestling a five-year-old for control of a plastic stick, I tried a different tack.

“Okay, how about we take turns? You’ve just had a go — can I have a turn?”

Connor fixed me with a cold, dead stare and said:

“It’s. My. Turn.”

His Mum arrived shortly after that and tutted him into handing over the ball launcher, thank God. We collected Maisie and bolted for the car.

* * *

The rest of the weekend was a genial amble through a series of untaxing but enjoyable activities. On Saturday night I watched the England-USA game over at Jeff and Devon’s, complete with Bud, snacks and snarky Eurovision-style commentary, and on Sunday I took Maisie out for a walk in the glorious sunshine before a leisurely cycle and finally collapsing in front of the box for the Canadian GP. Good times.