BEFORE I forget, I want to tell you what happened the other day when I took my dog Brian out for his evening constitutional.Brian and I always take the same route - down our street, through the ginnel and along the narrow path which runs parallel to the motorway.

Before the motorway was built, it were all fields and I remember escorting my wife home across those fields in our courting days. We can't do that any more because (a) I never take her out these days and (b) we'd probably be struck down by a great big artic because it's all motorway now.

Anyway, I was walking our Brian through the ginnel when I met an acquaintance coming the other way with his pooch.

"Hello, Dave," he said.

"My goodness!" I exclaimed. "A talking dog!"

Sorry, that's a terrible joke, but I couldn't resist it. That's why I don't take my wife out any more. It's not crossing the motorway that's the problem. It's just that she won't go anywhere with me because of the lousy jokes I tell when we're in company.

I've even offered to take her somewhere where there are no people, but she says if nobody's going to be there, there's no point in her being there either.

My wife's a bit of a social animal, you see, and she says I'm an animal, too. So what was I telling you about? Oh, yes, this man I encountered in the ginnel said to me: "Hello, Dave, would you be interested in joining our pub quiz team?"

I was in a bit of a dilemma here because (a) I'm useless at quizzes and (b) I didn't want to let the man down by saying "No way am I joining your team!" and thus appear to be rude.

So there was an embarrassing silence as the man waited for me to reply and our two dogs sniffed at each other.

"Er...could you repeat the question?" I asked eventually.

"Forget it!" the man in the ginnel snapped. "If you can't answer a simple query about joining our quiz team, how are you going to cope with the big stuff like 'What's the capital of Peru?'" And off he stalked, dragging his dog behind him.

"What's the point, our Brian?" I asked my mutt. "You try your damnedest to be polite to folk and all they do is get the hump."

Brian stared hard at the man as he disappeared down the ginnel.

"Don't stare, Brian," I said. "I didn't mean he literally has a hump. It's just an expression we humans use."

Brian continued to stare.

"And his dog hasn't got a hump either," I pointed out. "If the pooch did have a hump, he'd be a small camel."

Brian was totally bewildered at this point, so I took him home and put him to bed.

"Your editor phoned," my wife said.

"Have I been fired?" I gulped, high on self-esteem as usual.

"He said he needs your Saturday column by yesterday if it's not too much trouble."

"But I've nothing to write about," I whimpered.

"I agree your readers need a rest from you," my wife said. "But if you don't do a column this week you'll get writer's block and I won't be able to stand your self-pitying whining for more than a couple of hours and I'll have to pack my bags and leave you forever - if not longer." "Is there any cooked food in the house?" I asked.

"Not a sausage."

"Is there any beer?"

"Not a drop."

"Then don't leave me!" I begged.

"Why don't you write about your grandmother's pickle chaser?" my wife suggested. "Who's interested?" I grumbled.

"Your readers might be if you told them what it was."

"All right, then," I said. "I'll write about grandma's pickle chaser..."

My grandmother was born in Lithuania but she settled here when she was a young lady.

She first met my grandfather when she went to the market to buy a chicken to pluck - and it was love at first sight.

And it was a love that certainly lasted because grandma bore grandpa five sons, one of whom grew up to be my dad.

Although my grandma's full name was Golda Silver, she owned nothing of monetary value. She lived in a rundown terraced house in downtown Salford, which flooded every rainy season when the Irwell burst its banks.

When I was a little boy, my dad took me to visit grandma every Sunday. Such was the damp problem, I sometimes had to wear flippers.

"Tell me about Lithuania," I would say, clambering on to grandma's lap and resting my young head on her ample bosom. "Vot's to tell?" she sniffed. "Poverty and Cossacks - dat's all dare voz."

"It's no wonder you got the hump and moved to England," I sympathised.

"Hump?" cried grandma. "Vot hump? Nobody had humps. Vot is dis child talkin' about? Of all my grandkids, he's definitely de dumbest!"

"Tell them about the pickle chaser," my wife interrupted.

"Oh, that," I said. "Well, the first thing that attracted grandpa to grandma was her beautiful smile. But the years took their toll and by the time I first knew her, grandma had only one tooth in her head.

"Anyway, she loved to snack on those big jars of onions, but she had trouble chewing them," I went on.

"So guess what nickname we gave to her solitary tooth..."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.