No dogs allowed in here

And I am so cold, tired and windswept that I have had to cake my face in mud and lie in the bath for three hours.

I went to the beach to take my dog for a walk, to take in giant lungfuls of ozone and look at some fossils.

The first mistake I made was that I took the dog; the second was that I hadn’t really eaten before I started, my third, we got lost and my fourth, I had no cigarettes on me.

The thing is a heart-pounding ten mile hike, which is what my gentle amble turned out to be, in the end will, inevitably, end up at a pub or a cafe or tea room. I mean, that is the point of it after all, isn’t it?

Anyway, after clambering up vertical cliffs, running to escape charging bulls, running to escape angry land owners, running after the dog before he gorged upon a headless seal before rolling in fox, I was pretty exhausted.

By the time I reached a cafe, I was perilously close to dehydration, I was so hungry I could feel my body eating itself and I was also desperate for a cigarette to calm my jangled nerves.

The sky was turning blacker and the wind was whipping up. I was getting cold.

Now, because I had taken Jarvis with me, I could either have tied him up outside in the cold, leaving him to shiver while I toasted my feet by the fire inside or I could shiver outside with him.

For one thing I love him and cannot be parted and another, he cannot be trusted to keep quiet.

So we both sat outside shivering, while I tried to keep warm by holding a chip.

The thing is dog-friendly places are becoming few and far between and I don’t really understand why a faithful hound lying harmlessly under the table is offensive.

EU rules say that dogs are not allowed in areas where food is being prepared.

But there is nothing that says they shouldn’t be in places where food is being served.

I mean in Europe it is quite usual to eat with the dogs at the next table but here, customers, cafe owners and publicans turn grey when they see so much of a glimpse of a canine through the windows.

What happens in people’s houses? Surely if we were going to be contaminated from our dogs, we would already be quite seriously ill. No?

It gets on my nerves. Most of the people I saw today were walking with their dogs.

Are all the customers of various eateries really going to have to undergo an immediate medical investigation just because Barney is sitting under the table in the same place that toast is being served? To be honest, as a smoker and a dog owner I feel most marginalised.

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