#2 Terry, The Greyhound and The Graveyard

Years ago my Uncle Terry used to race Greyhounds. In my lifetime I can remember two separate dogs At two sparate times in my history. One was called Timmy and the other who is part of our story was called Shadey. They both lived in the same pen in the back garden at different intervals in Terry's youth. The pen is now a cubby house called Orchard Cottage but that's another story. One Saturday night, one late saturday night as it must have been after 12am, Terry rolled in from the Queens Club after several pints and decided to walk the dog. As i said Shadey was here name and she was beautiful and silvery. You have to understand that a greyhound needs plenty of excersise and Terry had probably already walked her several times that day. One thing I remember about my Uncle Terry from my childhood, apart from the fact that he had( and I guess still has) lot's of tattos and used to watch cartoons with me well in to his late teens whilst slumbering on my Nannas couch was the fact that he was totally devoted to animals, especially the ones he kept as pets. At one time or another he had owned everything from fish to ferrets.

So there he was (Terry) I guess walking Shadey around Thornaby on Tees late at night eventually finding himself about half a mile away from home, alone, in the dark and cold...... just outside the railings of Thornaby Cemetary. Thornaby Cemetary is a very large place. It's also a very spooky place and supplied us with many scarily happy hours in our youth. One Halloween night we all went for a scare in there only to be greeted by a voice from the dark which said "please get out" It scared the shit out of us at the time because we thought it was a Satanist. In retrospect it was probably the caretaker but a noise in the dark is a noise in the dark. A face in the dark or rather a face AND a body in the dark is a totally different kettle of Kettle Chips though and it is that which brings us to what happened next.

The terrifying moments that followed started with The dog staring over (to the other side of the road) at the cemetary gates, standing dead still with her ears pricked up.

TBC.