Paddy The Wanderer

My Dear Fellows & Dear Princess,

I've had a reasonable day today. I sort of acted like a Business Analyst for once. I drew up lots of diagrams featuring characters called "Ted", "Dougal" and "Jack" and then forced business people to tell me what they should be allowed to do on the new system. 

No-one mentioned drink, feck, girls or @rse, so I'm assuming I got away with it.

At lunchtime I came across this drinking fountain dedicated to Paddy The Wanderer. It turns out his name was originally "Dash" and he was an Airedale terrier belonging to a little girl named Elsie in the 1920's. She would take him down to the docks to meet her dad's ship whenever he would return from a voyage. 

Sadly, Elsie died of pneumonia in 1923, she was only 3. But Dash kept looking for her at the dockside. As the years went by he was renamed Paddy, and the blokes working on the docks grew very fond of him. They even appointed him an official night watchman in charge of "pirates, smugglers and rats".

He must have been a bit of a character, because the local taxi drivers loved him too, and took him on trips all around New Zealand. He even went to sea and visited Australia. On his return, someone took him up in a biplane. Apparently he loved it, and became a famous Wellington personality, with the newspapers reporting on his adventures.

Paddy died in 1939, in a shed in his beloved docks. He'd been taken very good care of, and the newspapers reported on his illness every day. But in the end a cortege of black cabs took him to be cremated.

The locals erected this drinking fountain in his honour. I happened upon it by chance today and it made me a little bit happy and a little bit sad. Note the doggie drinking bowls in the base. They are a bit green and yucky. See if I lived in that building they would be spotless.

Anyway, you can read more about Wellington's own "Greyfriars Bobby" here.

And now I want an Airedale Terrier.

S.