Yes... it's a miracle! I found love with the boy next door: LIZ JONES spends Christmas with the man who dumped her 30 years ago

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•     Liz first met David in 1983 when they lived on the same street in Brixton
•     David 'rejected' Liz's advances and she spent years getting over him
•     Couple were reunited in August after she wrote a column about her exes
•     Liz also spent Christmas with her rescue dogs Hilda and Spot

I am writing this on Boxing Day, resting on a grey, lozenge-shaped wrist support as I type. The support is Hilda who, the moment I’m prone, clambers on to my lap, or my head, and envelops me in a warm, doggy scarf of gratitude. She keeps letting out little moans of pleasure. Her eyes are closed, and I imagine she’s thinking to herself: ‘I lived for 13 years on a rubbish tip. Now I have a pink fluffy basket by a log fire, and human food from M&S. Isn’t life serendipitous?’
When I first came across Hilda, in a state pound in Romania, she had just, at the grand old age of (about) 13, been spayed. She was starving and suffering from hypothermia and a life-threatening infection.

I picked her up and smuggled her out of the pound in my ethical sweater because she would not have survived another night in such conditions. I took her and another street dog who had caught my eye – Spotty, a black and white puppy who was thin, and frightened, and reminded me of my border collies – to a local vet. Hilda could not lift her head, and was placed on a heat pad and a drip. Spot had an infection, and distemper.
Starting over: Liz and David with her Romanian rescue dogs Hilda, left, and Spot at home in North Yorkshire

Starting over: Liz and David with her Romanian rescue dogs Hilda, left, and Spot at home in North Yorkshire

After nearly four weeks, both were vaccinated, made stable, and given passports. In Hilda’s blue Romanian passport, next to the box marked ‘Breed’, it says ‘Grey Fur’. They then embarked on a four-day journey by van, before joining my three rescued border collies at my home in the North Yorkshire Dales.

The transition has not been entirely smooth. I took Hilda to my local vet, who took one look at her and said: ‘You really do love heartache, don’t you?’

Hilda had to have extensive dental work, while both dogs had infections from being spayed by a brutal vet who worked in the pound, known locally as ‘the Butcher’.