Last updated at 16:29, Tuesday, 22 December 2009

I WAS lying semi-somnolent in bed the other night, when I became aware of a alien presence in the room.

The perfect Christmas gift: Read more Hextols in Hexham Courant deputy editor Brian Tilley's book, The Hextol Collection.

As well as the comforting curves of Mrs Hextol, I sensed another person in the room.

“Burglar!” I breathed silently to myself, and then through slitted eyes, I spotted a tall, dark figure looming over the bed.

With a roar, I launched myself at the intruder in a whirring blaze of deadly karate chops and scything kicks.

At least, that’s what I thought I was doing, until consciousness fully dawned.

I was abashed to find that instead of a laid out bloke in mask and stripy jumper, the room contained only Mrs Hextol and our youngest son

“What on earth are you waving your arms about like that for, you silly man!” said Mrs Hextol.

“Are you trying to swat a fly?”

It turned out that the junior member of the family, home on leave from the Royal Navy, had found his bed occupied by a visiting grandchild.

He had crept into our bedroom to ascertain where he was supposed to lay his weary head.

He had in fact been in the room for several minutes, engaged in a lively discourse with his mother, when the slumbering giant which was his father suddenly burst into Claude van Damme mode.

The Hextol master bedroom’s status as a place of slumber and relaxation has suffered something of a set back in recent weeks, when we were visited by another intruder.

I was in the deepest of slumbers when I was again defibrillated into startled life when the house was shaken by thunderous footsteps on the stairs at 2am.

Then the bedroom door slammed back on its hinges, and the room was filled with heavy breathing.

It wasn’t a rampaging lunatic, but the Hextol Hound in panic mode, soon to be joined by me and Mrs Hextol.

“She needs to go out, she needs to go out,” screeched Mrs H, as I put two legs down one underpant and fell over.

“Hurry up, she’ll do it in here,” wailed Mrs H, as I tried to reason that a little domestic accident could be preferable to her husband being locked up for indecent exposure.

I managed to shrug on some trousers – which turned out to a rather snug pair of Mrs Hextol’s – and followed the hound’s helter skelter progress down the stairs and out of the front door.

My heart was doing its best to hammer its way out of my chest, and adrenalin seemed to be squirting out of my ears as I once again completed the waking up process.

However, once out of the house, the dog showed no inclination to let nature take its course, but just stood there, watching me expectantly.

Late night revellers seemed a little surprised to see a man wearing women’s trousers, only one slipper and no shirt, shouting obscenities at a dog in the frost, but mercifully the police were not called.

After some five fruitless minutes, the dog shook herself, abandoned the greyhound like speed with which she had shot down the stairs, and shuffled arthritically past me to collapse in a flaked out furry heap in her bed at the bottom of the stairs.

“Has she been?” quavered Mrs Hextol when I shivered my way back into bed, but she was already asleep before I could answer in the negative.

I seemed to have barely closed my eyes when I felt hot breath on my face, and opened one eye to find the dog standing at the side of the bed, puffing away, and looking imploringly at me all over again.

It was in fact two hours later, at 4am, when she was once again let out, and once again just stood their dopily.

Just as I was looking for a heavy object to hurl at her, the source of her anxiety was revealed.

Lying on the kitchen bench was Mrs Hextol’s mobile phone which emitted a single loud bleep in the rude and overbearing way of such implements, to indicate that a text message had been received.

The effect on the dog was astonishing, as her eyes rolled back in her head, and she sought somewhere to hide.

She reacts in a similar fashion to the bleep which indicates the battery is running low in the smoke alarm.

Curiously, high pitched sounds like these never used to bother her – until she went deaf.

First published at 09:38, Friday, 18 December 2009
Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk