Whatever you call your pet, make sure you can shout that name in public without fear of embarrassment.

Don’t ask me why, but I named my first cat Doris. Daft, eh?

Years later, when I was moving around too much to give Doris the secure home she deserved, I popped her in a cat box and took her on a National Coach westwards, to live with my father, a man not greatly enamoured of cats. He could never bring himself to call ‘Doris’ out loud.

Consequently, disenfranchised, virtually disowned, Doris acted out, went on wild killing sprees, regurgitated half-eaten mice in the house, scratched his furniture and generally misbehaved. Theirs became a kind of love/hate relationship. He would shout, ‘Gertcha, you bugger!’ and throw cushions at her. Over time, the ‘you bugger’ evolved and softened into a name. Doris became ‘Baggers’. Eventually, when she was granted lap privileges, she even condescended to answer to it.

A friend of mine once had a cat she dubbed ‘Durkheim’ - yes - after the French sociologist, Émile Durkheim. She was from Manchester. ‘Durkheim’ was fond of wandering off.  Those two facts are not directly connected, but anyone who caught an early-evening chorus of ‘DUURK-KEIIIM! Pud! Pud! Pud!’ as it was bellowed up and down our street accompanied by the frantic shaking of a Cat Crunchie box, may have thought so. It was an unforgettable sound.

My in-laws tend to dispense literary pet names. One of their cats was named Jeoffry, after the poem by For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry by Christopher Smart. Their Jeoffry was just a moggy, but sometimes, in the slight upward tilt of his nose, they imagined the cat had some sense not just of odour, but of the Ode; his name gave Jeoffry pretensions.

Our dog has many names. As well as his real, public one, at home he answers to: Mr Stinks, Ebeneezer Stinks, Eeezastinks, Fizzy Drinks, Tubbins, Snouty, Is-he-snouty? Farty McLarty…

Some of his dog friends have excellently embarrassing monikers: there’s Royston, Merlyn, Angel and Tarquin, to name just a few. Royston is a German Schnauzer. His redoubtable lady owner is German too, and many a doggy heart has quaked to hear the start of the rolling ‘R’ at the top of a good lungful of ‘RRrrroySTON!’

The male half of the couple who own the near-deaf Pekinese, when failing to get a response from a plain, ‘COME HERE!’ is usually forced to holler the dog’s name. He ends up mumbling asides to the other dog owners, ‘It was my wife who wanted to call him ‘Dalai’.

So, prospective pet owners, my advice is, choose that name with care.

(Dog names indeed. Sorry. It’s been a slow week. Cough. Sniff.)

‘Is he one for shoes?’ she said.

I think she meant chewing.

Nope. Nor trousers either.

(What a summer.)

A creature whose fur looks like the result of a drunken one night stand between a guinea pig and a hairbrush, with a hide spotted like pure toad, is never going to appear noble, or elegant.

It will never achieve a state of decorum remotely approaching one of those cute little handbag dogs - it’s a Jack Russell Terrier - it’s scruffy, wilful, and it behaves as if life is one long circus. Fine. We half expected this when we got it.

But what I fail to understand and will not accept, is its habit of rolling in fox shit.

Why? What possible…?

And why, when it (all right, he) has done ‘rolling’, does he think that a) he smells great, b) this is some kind of achievement, c) I will be delighted with him?

All the way back from the field today, sporting a nasty brown smear up his left side, the fool grinned up at me, pleased.

And who should break stride for a ’stop and chat’? Who should stoop to make a fuss of him? None other than Mrs G, the chic, smart, immaculately ironed, always made-up, non-dog owning, pharmacist’s wife. (Who, like me, has a thing about germs.)

Perhaps it was me muttering, ‘You bad dog. You stinker,’ as we approached the house a few minutes later, but Dog had got whiff of his destiny. The grin disappeared.

I tied him to the spike in the garden and went inside for my marigolds, the dog shampoo and the dog towel. He barked a short protest, then stopped. He knew really. No defence. Guilty as charged.

By the time I returned, Dog had entered the penitent stage. He had his head between his forepaws, chin flat on the grass, a picture of misery, looking at me now as if to say, ‘Please. Not again. Don’t put me in the rain barrel.’

I like to spice it up. Rain barrel? No. Hose? No. Today it will be the… watering can.

What fun we had. Non-dog owners will have little idea how throroughly one small dog can soak a human being.

But we soon got over it. (He looks quite cute when he’s all fluffy and rubbed up the wrong way.)

By the time he’d torn around the garden three times with crossness, and I’d made a cup of tea, cordial dog/owner relations were restored. I even gave in to a good beg and threw him a piece of Jaffa Cake.

Hopeless business, eh?

The garden has gone wild.

It rained so much in May that there’s been an outburst of exponential growth. The shrubs have billowed, paths are impassable, weeds are rampant and there’s couch grass everywhere. Every year I’m amazed by it; it’s like I’d forgotten, or been born again. Nature is a force to be reckoned with.

Walking back from the field, I’m assailed by scents - wild honeysuckle, briar roses - and further on, the yuccas lining the road are in full bloom, each spindly stamen exuding an ineffable, exotic perfume.

The sun is shining and I’m walking along with Dog, when I see, by the side of the road, curled up, a dead badger cub. Oh. It’s so small. There’s not a mark on it. No blood, nothing. I prod it gently with my foot. Yes. It is dead. Completely stiff. No chance of rescue. Wild animals strive so hard to rear their young, and then this… Something about it just makes me cry.

I’m fine by the time I get home - I’m wearing sunglasses, fortunately - just one of those things. Looked like it was quick, but even so.

Coming up the drive, I see the house sign is completely overgrown. The reckoning. I shall smite the shrubs with a power tool. This means going in the shed, of course, climbing over all the junk, getting hot and sweaty, sunburned, taking time out from writing. But it will do me good. Yes.

Sometimes I wish nature would give it a rest, don’t you?

*Exponential growth:

Example: If a species of bacteria doubles every ten minutes, starting out with only one bacterium, how many bacteria would be present after one hour?

After six ten-minute intervals, there would be sixty-four bacteria.

(Jnr has been revising for G.C.S.E. papers. We are all sorely tested.)

dog in love,

1. ‘By their tools shall ye know them.’

[Spoken to me whilst I was gaily swinging the metal hand-shovel which serves as a) poop scoop, b) dog-fight splitter (better than my arm), c) hefty, flat-sided deterrent to any (imaginary) potential cliff-top assailant.]

2. ‘They don’t care about the weather, do they?’

[One drenched owner to another]

3. ‘Don’t vorry if he nip you. He’s onlee makin’ frentz.’

[Owner with a strong German accent.]

4. ‘She had a cyst and then she split her stitches. Cost me a fortune.’

[On sight of a dog with two metal staples fixed across the top of its daft-looking, half-shaved head]

5. ‘He’s lost his squeaker. Have you seen his squeaker?’

[Owner, mumbled from the undergrowth]

Dog ownership is a hopeless business, isn’t it?

…………………………………….

‘I’m a firm believer in trees, myself.’ I actually said that. This morning.

Every day, on my way back from the field with Dog, I walk along the edge of the grounds of one of the large hotels, towards my house. In Spring, the hotel gardener is usually somewhere in the line of shrubs near the road, pruning and clearing the hydrangeas, looking for an excuse to stop work (I would, wouldn’t you?) and chat with passers-by. But, like Larry David, I’m not a big fan of the ’stop and chat’, so, I brace myself, try to look purposeful, like I’m in a hurry, walk briskly, and hope for the best. It doesn’t usually work. Usually, he ambushes me.

This chap has been gardener at the hotel since he left school, he’s now in his mid-thirties and I would guess he’s not seen a great deal of the world at large. He’s friendly, cheerful, enjoys a joke… pays all his bills on time, is not keen on those who don’t… loves his mum (lives with his mum, actually), is less than impressed by the ’standards’ of Eastern European hotel workers…

Still, over time we have established a kind of banter. He’s not shy of expressing his opinions to me. I know, for example, how much he considers the ideal amount to spend on a good night out, how many times his shed has been broken into, what he thinks of - teenagers, binge drinking, the borough council, tourists, ‘this government’ - any number of other issues.

This morning I learned what he thinks about trees.

Every major city should have a forest in the middle of it. Trees are oxygen. Trees are the future of the planet. People who cut down trees are worse than liars.

It’s not that I disagree with him, although I might have put it slightly differently (and I was confused about the liars part) it’s just that I can only hear a view about an aspect of trees expressed once in a given conversation, before feeling like my head has been stuck in a blender… After several reiterations, I had to cut him short.

‘I’m a firm believer in trees, myself,’ I said, ‘Oh, look, you’ve got a friend.’ I pointed to a robin perched on a fence-post close to where we were standing.

‘That,’ he said, ‘That’s Doris. There’s another one, comes and sits by me too, I call that one Cleo, after my aunt. She had her hair cut like Cleopatra once.’

I scattered the vision of a robin in a black bobbed wig with kohl around its eyes and said, ‘They don’t seem scared.’

‘Every morning I have breakfast in my shed, tomato soup and a bit of bread. I give them some. Tomato soup and a bit of bread. Can’t beat it. Every morning.’

…………………………………

Dog had a good Christmas. He had a new toy, a ridiculous fake Christmas pudding dog treat to hide, and a fine new blanket. We were all around at home to take turns walking him, and all available to play games and run tricks. Dog is big on games and tricks.

Jack Russell Terriers, the ‘breed’ to which Dog belongs, used to be popular circus dogs. They are disobedient, stubborn little dogs, but they’ll do anything to please a crowd or earn a biscuit, things like this:

1. Hat

If anyone sits down in the house with a hat on, a beannie, say, or a beret, Dog will jump up, take it carefully in his teeth, gently remove it and run off. The game is a variation on the chase game, ‘Get That Dog!’, which we play in the garden.

2. Scorpions in the Blanket

Dog approaches his blanket with suspicion, sniffs it and jumps back as if afear’d of scorpions. At this point anyone who wants to play, sticks their hand under the blanket and affects to grab his paws until he makes fierce and play-bites them.

3. Bog Roll

J and Jnr have trained Dog to do a very useful thing to earn himself a biscuit. If the upstairs loo runs out of bog roll, the unfortunate captive has only to holler down and ask a third (human) party to hand dog a new roll, point him to the stairs with the command ‘Take it to… J!’, or ‘Take it to Jnr!’ and Dog will oblige, running back downstairs as fast as his short legs will carry him, for his reward.

killed_it,

4. Malt Loaf (or ‘The Rotten Trick’)

Someone gives Dog a small piece of malt loaf with butter on it. This promptly becomes stuck to his teeth. Five minutes of dog gurning and hilarious tongue lolling follow as Dog tries to dislodge the sticky lump to eat it.

On Boxing Day we ran out of dog biscuits, so all these games and tricks were rewarded with bits of mince-pie crust, half a digestive, a twiglet…

But Dog’s favourite game, by far, is the one we call,

5. The Stone Game

When J comes home from work, after a quick greeting, Dog will give him no rest until he has played ‘The Stone Game’. Dog runs to the kitchen and does a ‘good beg’, at which point J takes a medium-sized rounded stone from a dish on the window sill, goes to the front door and throws it into the hedge at the top of the garden. Dog always finds it somehow, runs around to the back of the house and barks to be let in. At this point, he takes his stone and hides it (yes, from himself)in his blanket. Then he pretends to look for it. After a bit, he’ll retrieve it (he always knows where it is), roll on it, roll on his back with the stone in his mouth, pounce on it, before taking it to the wood flooring, and doing one-paw circular skating on it (absolutely true) like it’s an ice hockey puck. Sometimes during the rolling-around stage he loses his stone under the furniture, and will scrabble and scrape until one of us retrieves it for him.

Finally, Dog scoots the stone against the skirting board making enough noise to prompt J to ‘Get that Dog!’

Once caught, the only way to make Dog release the stone, short of anaesthetic, is to suspend him over the kitchen sink and/or put his nose in water. Sounds cruel doesn’t it? But Dog loves this game in all its parts.

J then chucks the stone out of the front door, again, and the whole game begins, again. This happens three times.

Well, the other day, this ridiculous pantomime was going on in a familiar fashion, accompanied by all the usual scrabbling, dibbling and skating noises, when we heard a frustrated whining sound and more scrabbling. At first we took no notice, but before long the whining became increasingly pathetic. What could be the matter? He must have lost his stone somewhere inaccessible.

We went into the living room. No sign. I heard a scrabbling noise by the sofa. Odd, Dog can usually get his stone out from under there. I knelt down. Sure enough the stone had gone under the sofa, but this time, the Dog had followed it, propelled by his enthusiasm for the game. Without momentum, however, he had no purchase on the slippery wood flooring. He was stuck. Sideways.

Guess who ate too many biscuits this Christmas?

Fat Russell Terrier.

J had to lift the sofa to liberate him. It was so funny.

……………………………………

I have to apologise to non dog-lovers for that post. I know it’s toe-curly, unforgiveable tosh really, but that’s life with a pet dog… and it is January. Fresh material is a bit ‘thin’ on the ground at the moment.

Er. Maybe you had to be there?

And yes, we’ve put Dog on a strict regime so he doesn’t get stuck under the sofa again. The Doggie Detox Diet; aka raw carrots and Winalot.

……………………………………

sunriseonsea,

December 13th: 8:30 a.m.

I took Dog for a walk in the field shortly after this was taken; there were three large circles of light, like giant coins, on the surface of the sea. They stayed there, shining the whole time, as I crossed to the gate on the other side.

This may not be a mind-flipping tropical sunrise, it may not even be particularly spectacular British one, but - on a cold, blowy, winter morning, in the middle of December - it lifted my spirits to the sky.


……………………………………

Whenever I see or hear of a motorcycle accident, my heart misses a beat.

My father was a motorcyclist in the years after the second world war, before car ownership was widespread and the roads in Britain became congested and dangerous. He always told me that his motorbike gave him, a Londoner, the freedom of the road, an opportunity to see parts of the country he would never otherwise have experienced. He used to take my mother out in a sidecar on trips to the North Kent Downs and, eventually, they bought a car and moved there.

By the time I met J, I would be distorting the truth if I said that the motorbike, the smell of motor oil and the roar of engines, played no part in the chemistry. He had been a despatch rider and survived, so I squared the statistics (it’s a dangerous job with a high fatality rate) with evident experience and skill, factored in my desire for adventure, and bought myself a crash helmet.

But gradually the roads have worsened, the statistics have crept closer and so has my fear. Last year, one of J’s friends, a motorcyclist, disappeared. It was thought that he had gone to Liverpool to visit his ex-wife, but, in fact, he had come off his bike on a sharp corner and both he and his motorcycle disappeared into the undergrowth. His body was found by walkers a fortnight later. Nobody wanted to say it, but all the motorcyclists were wondering; had he survived the impact? How long had he lain there injured and alone? They waited for the post mortem with trepidation. (He was killed instantly, it was discovered, so that was some solace, at least.)

Earlier this week, we were watching the news when a chilling item came on; there had been a motorcycle accident in S*uth Dev*n. The young rider had been struck by a car coming out of a turning and pushed into the path of an oncoming lorry. His motorcycle caught fire. Unbelievably, the ambulance taking him to hospital was involved in a second collision and although the casualty was transferred to another ambulance, he was dead on arrival. They showed footage of the charred machine. We watched in sober silence. The thrill of the road palled a fraction more.

This afternoon, when I was out walking Dog, my mobile rang. It was Jnr’s [other] grandmother. She was upset. She had some bad news. Her first grandchild, Jnr’s cousin, who is 24, had been killed in a motorcycle accident on his way to work. It wasn’t his fault, the police believed. The car coming out of the turning hadn’t seen him. His motorbike caught fire… there was a second collision… we might have seen it on the news…

I told her I was sorry, so sorry… if there was anything I could do…

J knew the young man when he was 10 and a rising teenager. The last time Jnr saw his cousin, he was very small and probably wouldn’t remember. I met him a couple of times on family occasions, but some while ago now; I thought he was quirky, funny, and bright. For a family already touched by tragedy, it is a terrible loss.

For us, the circumstances are simply too close to home.

For Julius.

………………………………….

Coming back from my walk on the field with Dog this morning, I noticed a man sitting in a car. He was on his own, going nowhere, reading the paper. I’m sure we’ve all seen them, these quiet, almost-invisible men, sitting in their cars. We walk past them all the time. Unless it’s a battered white van and you happen to catch a sinister eye in the wing mirror (Remember The Butterfly Collector and The Silence of the Lambs?) seeing a lone man sitting in his car is nothing remarkable. This man was nothing remarkable either, middle-aged, plump and balding, with glasses and hairy forearms, squeezed into the squashy front seat of a family saloon. I don’t know why I noticed him, unless it was lack of other stimuli. Men often sit in cars near the hotel.

If he’s asleep, it’s a fair guess that he’s driven all night from London or the Midlands, frazzled and thirsty, determined to have a holiday, dammit, but he’s arrived too early for check-in.

If he’s eating, it’s a good gamble that he’s working on a nearby building site and just having a break from the boss and the brutal banter before wading into the next load of cement.

If he’s jumpy, he’s most likely half living in his car - an eastern european hotel worker perhaps, or one of the recently-chucked-out-by-the-wife.

If he’s besuited, with a portfolio on the passenger seat, looking in the mirror and brushing the dandruff off his lapel - he’s a sales rep.

If he’s hard to categorize, I imagine him waiting - with hope in his heart - for another car draw up beside him; on a secret hotel rendezvous.

But it’s not just near hotels. City streets are full of these men, too. When I lived in Bristol, I’d be walking home from the bus stop after a twilight evening class, long past tea-time, when baths were running and homework was being done inside the terraced houses; and I’d half notice a lone man sitting in his car listening to the news or sport on the radio, reading the paper. Three cars up, there would be another one, and then another one, each man sealed off in a private tin box, just a few yards away from his own front door.

When I lived at home, my father did this sometimes. If we were having a ding-dong, my mother and I, my father, who hated conflict, would lay low. One of us would eventually whirl around to try to rope him in to adjudicate or bear witness, and we’d find he’d quietly disappeared. He’d be tracked down sitting in the car, listening to Johnny Cash on the car stereo, reading one of his Radio Ham books, nonplussed.

The car was a kind of mobile shed.

So what about the the balding man? Was he lost? Geographically? Existentially? Had his emotional GPS system failed him? Was he indulging in some unfulfilled shed dream? Or was he on the cusp of an ambition about to be realised, poised at the edge of sexual transgression?

The man looked up from his paper as I passed. He looked tired, disinterested. He hadn’t noticed me approaching, hadn’t seen that Dog had peed on his tyre. He had no expression.

I think he was just killing time.

I gave a polite nod and walked on.

…………………………………….