This just in from someone at Harry’s Place. If you have a weak stomach, turn away now.

A friend of mine was walking his dog in the local cemetery some years ago. This is a pretty busy cruising area. This guy is gay, but was genuinely walking his dog, and in any case could do rather better than the fairly desperate sorts who hang around the graves.

Anyhow, this old and shabby bloke sat down beside him on a bench, and started to pet his dog, while mumbling something.

After a bit, my friend realised that this guy was muttering “nice pussy, nice pussy”. And on looking down, he realised that this guy was fingering his dog’s vagina.

My mate asked this guy to stop (although the dog was chilled about it).

The guy said:

“You have a nice dog. Do you fuck her?”

I told you it wasn’t nice. It did, though, remind me a little of an experience I had in the same cemetery some years ago. I wrote it up on my old blog like this:

Apart from being a pleasant detour on the way to the Auld Shillelagh, Abney Park is perhaps the most tranquil spot in London. Originally a combined cemetery and arboretum, the trees soon conceded room for thousands of graves and monuments to people from all over London. Then space almost completely gave out and, predictably, Hackney Council left it alone until the place became ramshackle, the vegetation had crawled over the graves and people congregated to drink lager and shoot up in the chapel.

Nowadays there’s a Trust that has a go at preserving it, giving the public a chance to wander round and inspect graves belonging to Salvationist William Booth, Chartist James Bronterre O’Brien, music hall star Champagne Charlie and the renowned Talbot Baines Reed, author of school stories such as The Fifth Form at St Dominic’s and Cockhouse at Fellsgarth.

Nothing could be more appropriate. The other day I was taking a few photographs when a bloke emerged from behind the tomb of some heroic fireman and addressed me in broken English:

“Iss Snice. Iss Snice.”

Well, yes, it was a pretty nice day and I said so, moving on to see if I could find Champagne Charlie’s grave (sadly, I still haven’t). But then I heard this disgusting slobbering noise from behind me:

“Iss Snice. Iss Snice. Grrrk. Grrawkwk Knah. Grrk. Sshnn. Iss Snice.”

And there was the bloke pointing at his crotch in a most enthusiastic manner.

Naturally, I did the bold thing and ignored him but, after the fifth time of turning round to check this slobbering perv wasn’t still following me, I resorted to sign language, pointing to him and gesturing in the other direction. He took my advice. Then began to relieve his tension in the bushes.

He’s probably still there now.

How much is that doggy in the window?
The one with the waggly tail.
How much is that doggy in the window?
I do hope that doggy’s for sale.

I’ve never been able to understand the British dog fetish. If I really wanted someone to fuck my leg, shit on my carpet and nick all my tinned food, then I’m sure a carefully-placed advert would attract hundreds of people offering these services - and more - for free. Better still, there’s a chance that one or two of them wouldn’t have foetid breath or lick their own genitals whilst I was trying to listen to Book at Bedtime.

These are just some of the reasons why I am a fervent admirer of the chap in the photograph above. Originally known as Count Henri de Laborde de Monpezat, he now goes about under the pseudonym of Henryk, Prince Consort of Denmark. But I’m no title-snob: what I like is the fact that this man combines his presidency of the Danish Dachshund Club with a taste for sautéed dog, picked up from the time he spent growing up and studying in Vietnam (or, as it was at the time, part of French Indochina).

Better still, he sees nothing inconsistent with combining a habit of snacking on puppies and writing tender poems to his pet Dachshund:

I love to stroke your coat and to see how it shines
You dear, you special dog….
You receive me with papal pride.

More than a shade of My Lovely Horse in that. But the thing that appeals to me is the fact that Henryk can combine ridiculous sentimentality for his pet woofer, whilst happily tucking into specially-reared canine meat and churning out a cookbook called Ikke Altid Gaselever [Not Always Goose Liver].

It’s not an attitude that’s likely to endear him to dog lovers, and particularly not those in predominantly Anglo-Saxon nations. A shame really, especially as Henryk whipped up an earlier controversy by suggesting that parents could usefully use dog training skills to bring up their children.

Could you imagine what would happen over here if we started treating children like dogs?

No. Of course you can’t. The dog owners would march on Parliament. Treating children like dogs would mean we’d have to treat dogs like children. And that, of course, would be inhumane.

If we actually allowed small children to run around in all our city parks, safe in the knowledge that dogs were banned from pissing and crapping all over the grass, then we’d have to restrict the dogs to tiny “child free areas” (only in selected “green spaces”) so the four leggers had at least some space in which to socialise and learn about the great outdoors.

That would only be the thin end of the wedge. The minute we started believing that children had more rights than dogs to use local amenities, we might have to start giving the latter stupid names. Imagine what would happen if we started calling children things like “Ben”, or “Tom”, or “Georgy”, or “Abby”, or “Sally”? The very idea of calling dogs by these names would become so repulsive that we’d have to start referring “Kyle the Keeshond” or “Tyler the Toy Poodle”.

With names like that, we’d be too worried to let the dogs out of the house, just in case they got bullied. Out of guilt we’d buy them LED-encrusted bones to play with alone in their kennels whilst we tramped miles over open fields with happy and breathless kids.

No: that would be stupid and cruel. Dogs need to be protected. That’s why I suggest we all boycott the Chinese Olympics. Those filthy people slaughter dogs for food, when we all know they should concentrate on producing battery farmed hens and allow turkey baseball to be recognised as a sport. Why can’t they follow our example and spend a fortune on luxury pet food and pare back spending on school dinners to a few pence per head?

Thank God we live in a nation of animal lovers. Now, if only we could find some way of stopping those feral teenagers from roaming the streets. Those scum aren’t fit to own a dog.