Brent was hoping for a personal best in that morning’s park run,
in the beautiful city of Bath.

He was trying to ignore his partner Nimicent’s mindless chatter,
as she held onto Sophie, the all-seeing dog, who looked at them both,
and thought, ‘Every morning she gets me up, to watch him run, or is it jog?

‘Oh what a bore this is, in my day I’d watch my owner,
Niall Neverstops, run cross country, fell races and even short races on the track.

‘I wonder what happened to him, is it true he ended up in a me­ntal hospital?
We used to have great conversations, about politics, religion and philosophy.

‘He could run, no park jogger he.

‘I couldn’t join in of course, being half whippet;
I’d have shown them all up, so I contented myself with chasing a rabbit.’

Meanwhile Sam, a know-it-all former soldier, trembled on a warm morning,
as the owner of an itchy finger in the Kremlin, pondered whether it was time,
in that prophet Bob Dylan’s words, to deliver ‘hard rain’.

‘I hope it doesn’t disturb the run, and our breakfasts afterwards in the pub,’
thought Sophie, who loved to scoff left-over sausages and bacon,
as she hovered with her tongue out, at the dining tables where the
fitness freaks stuffed themselves after their exertions in the park.

‘If I was in charge of the world,’ she reflected, ‘there wouldn’t be all this hate.’

Then, spotting a tramp waking up under a bush, her canine antennae sensed a kindred spirit, so she licked his face.

‘Thanks,’ he told her, ‘I needed a wash.’

Sam, nicknamed ‘Colonel Blimp’, due to his pompous interfering, muttered, ‘Where’s that Brent, the bleeding wimp?’ Thought he recognised the homeless guy as someone from his regiment.

‘Was he the ‘Paddy’ who’d punched an Ulsterman for singing that Loyalist song about a wearing a sash?’ but convinced himself he was mistaken.

However, the chap’s beard and broken nose had deceived him.
He was in fact corporal Mickey McQueen of county Donegal, in the Irish Republic.

A hell of an athlete, he’d won the regimental mile, and loved to play his banjo and sing Irish songs, like Whisky In The Jar, and that old Victorian ballad, Come and join The British Army, about a countryman who took up arms to defend the Empire, and escape poverty.

He didn’t like officers, but got on with Lieutenant Harold Hope-Osgood,
who was regarded by the other soldiers as ‘Stuck up’.

Why, Harry even passed a few words with him in the Gaelic, and Mickey cried when he was killed by an IRA bomb.

His last memory of him was saying, ‘Jasus, Mick, you’re a quare one,
I’d love to take up your invite to meet your Ma in Donegal.’

As the runners finished, moaning about missed times and injuries,
and Brent celebrated his 100th park run, Sophie reflected on the vanity of man, and woman.

Later that day, being dragged around the shops, she recognised a busker as the tramp from that morning, who was singing We Shall Overcome, the anthem for the Civil Rights Movement.

But Sophie suddenly started barking, when an American tourist accosted the performer, shouting, ‘My father served in Vietnam, he had to listen to songs like that on his return.’

Then Sophie wagged her tail, recognising a familiar smell.

It was her former owner, Niall Neverstops,
who told her he was visiting the city to banish bad memories, a form of therapy recommended by his therapist.

‘They’ve let me out of the asylum,’ he laughed,
‘I’ve even started running, and might try a park run.’

Seeing Brent, he said, ‘Hello, I used to be a runner, like you, but I got obsessed with fitness and personal best times,
and had to be sectioned.’

The bemused chap looked at him, and in a flash saw a future vision of himself,
but Nimicent just laughed when he confided in her, and gave him a list of household chores to do.

Then everyone shivered, as the clouds grew heavy and forbidding.

Sophie mused, ‘Is that a hard rain about to fall?’

Shortly after, as the media speculated about that itchy finger in the Kremlin,
a theatre, which strived to ‘Increase well being in a world that’s falling apart,’
advertised a new double act, ‘‘Nutty’ Niall and his talking dog, accompanied on banjo by the Comical Corporal Mickey, an ex-British Army veteran.’

When the local newspaper asked for an interview, Niall said, ‘I’m busy rehearsing, your editor says you’re an athlete, why don’t you join me and Sophie my press secretary, on the park run?

‘She’ll tell you what you need to know.’

The reporter scratched her head, ‘Isn’t she a dog?’

‘Yes, but she’s all seeing.’

She laughed, then suggested, ‘Maybe they should send her to the Kremlin.’

‘Indeed,’ he laughed maniacally, and she recalled that this man had once spent time in a mental asylum.

‘That’s if,’ he continued, ‘she could get there through the nuclear fog.’

The day suddenly grew prematurely dark, and Sophie whimpered a lonesome bark.