Barking dogs even taint sunlight.

That sounds like a cryptic clue from one of our more abstruse broadsheet newspapers and there should be a pair of brackets containing the number of letters.  But it is actually a simple statement of fact.

The dull start to the day gave way to encouragingly bright weather; sunlight but with a fairly cool breeze.  It was after all the weekend, what could be wrong with the world?

The dogs.  The monomaniac barking of the hapless (and obviously brain damaged) canine incarcerated next door!

We tend to regard slavery as a generally disreputable aspect of the human condition.  Britain can take some pride (but not much, given what we did before abolition) in its earlyish rejection of slavery: enslavement is wrong.

Why, therefore it is acceptable for people to buy pets and then lock them up like the stupid bitch next door.  And I am not referring to a female dog.

Her pestilential life forms are kept in a fenced-in and malodorous cage under the house: captives.  She feeds them of course, but to my mind they are like the bloated degenerates who inhabited the harems of luxurious sultans: indolent and castrated!  Truly the keeping of “pet” dogs is a demeaning impulse.

The only time we got away from the barking was when we went out to lunch in the hotel that we have tried once before.  An excellent meal of cauliflower cheese, salmon and strawberries – on separate plates!  Excellent.