Strawberry blond afghan coat

Two things you never see these days; Afghan hounds and Afghan coats. Is it the war on terror? Is it fashion? Maybe it is just one of those tricks the memory plays, letting you think powerful events from your past were ubiquitous or represented the norm. So either my memories of these two Afghan items are artifacts of my mind or indeed they were very common in 1970s Fife.

The lad down the road from me on Main Street had two Afghan hounds. The three of them seemed to be everywhere. I guess because I lived opposite the park I saw them a lot, coming and going. He would take his dogs up the fields at the back of the park and onto the hill towards Blythe's tower.

He must have been in his mid teens and seemed the kind of kid everyone described as 'a guid lad'. That meant he wasn't a punk or a homosexual and didn't sniff glue. People would see him walking his dogs up the road to the park and say, "Aye there goes Jimmy and his dugs. He's a guid lad". I never actually spoke to him and didn't actually know him but he is a figure of legend in my memory.

One hot summer day I remember a kind of kerfuffle, an atmosphere. Something was amiss. Voices were calling out and people were gasping. I looked up over my front gate and there was Jimmy wearing what looked like a strawberry blond Afghan coat. Strange for the time of year. His flooding tears were also a bit of a signpost towards the drama that was unfolding in front of our eyes. His coat was in fact his dead dogs, lying limp and lifeless, slung across his shoulders. Stained with blood their long golden coats had become a matted bloody mess. Jimmy walked across the road in front of my house crying his heart out as he carried his dead dogs home. It seems the hounds had got too close to some sheep up on the hill and the farmer had shot them both dead. 

From that point on, if you were to fast-forward through the rest of the DVD of my life, Jimmy had gone. No further appearances, no honourable mentions, no late cameo at a football match ten years latter. No, he was gone, not even to be found as sone long forgotten 'deleted scene' in the extras menu of my memory.