We are finding it hard to believe that both Little Nell and Magnus will be a year old next month. In comparison to dogs, cats seem to grow up and get sensible and independent so quickly, whilst dogs seem to take for ever; charm and frustration in equal measure whilst exhausting you in the process. We were in our late twenties the last time we house-trained and socialised a puppy, and I remember how we relished taking Ben our beautiful wall-eyed Border Collie out at every opportunity. Perhaps it's the house training and socialising three children in between that makes the difference, but sadly now it shows..
BH :'She wants to go out....'
Silence...
BH: 'Oh you're asleep in the chair...I'll take her....'
Me: 'Don't let her eat the cat food.'
BH: 'Oh you're not asleep...'
So Little Nell from this... to this...
and with a great deal of this because we picked the one that shows the dirt...
and now, we think (and hope) almost fully grown, to this... A nice petite size and we have emerged on the other side of the house training / chewing phase with much of the house intact.
Her days are now spent snoozing out in her kennel and run, next door to the boys (which includes her dad Rusty at the moment,) or dashing around the garden 'helping' Bookhound while he does logs and things, or the daily walk to the woods and several jaunts up and down the lane, before coming in for the evening with us, and then sleeping indoors. We keep thinking we'll leave her out in the kennel to sleep at night...but then go all soppy and worry she might be scared.
The puppy crate at night was such a success, but quickly outgrown, so Bookhound constructed a sort of gated bed area in the space under our stairs (I let him out occasionally). In goes Nell at about 10pm and we don't hear a peep until we get up the next morning. One or two things have become essential items and this is one of them...
Ghastly isn't it, and I daren't wash it because I think it might lose its magic attraction.
It was a stuffed fox which rather surprisingly is called Foxy, she learnt the name very quickly, bonded with it instantly and then proceeded to carry it round with her and take it to bed every night. We just say 'Find Foxy' and she does, heading off to her bed like a very well-behaved toddler with her cuddly friend. Nell is most definitely a 'carrying' dog and is happiest out on a walk with a ball/frisbee/dead rabbit (DROP!!) in her mouth. She certainly knows the difference between right (goooood girl...waggy tail...biscuit maybe) and wrong (baaaaad girl...squirms on floor and slinks off to bed...biscuit no chance hurrummmph).
The other essential item is this... I am sure you would all agree that if there is one thing a girl doesn't like it is her ears dangling in her dinner. Searching around for a bowl that she couldn't tip up I came across this, billed as a Spaniel bowl. And blow me down the ears hang either side and we have said goodbye to the crusty-lobed look.
And finally, quite by chance this week, we discover that we have a singing dog (we've always wanted one), keen to channel her inner Dame Nellie Melba to the sound of Bookhound's harmonica. The Sprocker Operatics have us in stitches...
Anyone else out there doing, or remember doing, the first year of a puppy thing??
'In a land as densely populated as Britain, openness can be hard to find. It is difficult to reach places where the horizon is experienced as a long unbroken line, or where the blue of the distance becomes invisible...'
So says Robert Macfarlane in his chapter entitled Moor, in The Wild Places..
'Openness is rare but its importance is proportionately great...whenever I return from the moors, I feel a lightness up behind my eyes, as though my vision has been opened out by twenty degress to either side.'
A copy of Crossings Guide to Dartmoor, all 500 pages of it, has sat on our shelves for as many years as we have lived nearby, which is heading for thirty-seven now.
We quickly realised when we decided to settle here after marrying in 1976, that Dartmoor was going to become a favourite place, and though it has waxed and waned in our attentions, and the time we may free up to go walking there, we do drive across high Dartmoor frequently and always love it for its remote beauty and vast open spaces.
For many years it was of course my working patch too, hours and hours spent driving to see new babies on remote farms along muddy tracks in that pouring rain so unique to Dartmoor (very wet, very windy, instant death to any hairstyle) opening and shutting umpteen gates only to find no one home.
...or having to be towed out of muddy ditches which didn't seem to be there when I parked up, but an hour long visit and a torrential storm later and my car would be surrounded.
... or fending off the very eager attentions of the farm dogs as I load up with my baby scales and bag and other clutter, thus arriving at farmhouse doors with a succession of muddy paw prints, or worse, up my trouser legs.
...or parking up with my lunch at one of my secret places and just staring at the view.
The year of the foot and mouth was terrible... just knowing we couldn't stop and have a leg-stretch even if we wanted to made us appreciate it even more.
So over the years we have accumulated a good collection of books about Dartmoor and no collection is complete without a copy of Crossing's. Published in 1909 it is still considered to be one of the few definitive topographical Dartmoor guides, and I imagine it to be the walkers' equivalent of the Bradshaw's train guide that Michael Portillo has been using in his recent TV series.
William Crossing was born in Plymouth in 1847 and from an early age fell in love with Dartmoor and clearly couldn't ever be far from it. Emigrating to Canada to work, the young Crossing was back home by the age of twenty, and for the rest of his life lived and breathed the moor, walking or riding across it and recording his journeys in close detail whenever he could and in all weathers. Poor as a church mouse and barely making a living from his writing for local newspapers disaster struck when in mid-book all his papers were inadvertently destroyed. I weep enough about a lost blog post when I somehow press the wrong button...poor Crossing must have been distraught. William Crossing died in 1928 and is buried in nearby Mary Tavy churchyard in a grave with a view of the moors which are less than a mile away.
But what a revelation the book has been. I have barely glanced at it since we've had it until now, but on a recent outing we parked just above Peter Tavy and walked up to White Tor which meant we passed Stephens' Grave and I needed to know more, so Crossing's was the obvious place to start.
'Stephens' Grave marks the site where a suicide was buried with the barbarous rites once customary. George Stephens was a youth of Peter Tavy, and was driven to take his life by the unfaithfulness of the girl to whom he was betrothed. It is said that at the moment he was laid here some linen that was hanging out to bleach at Higher Godsworthy was caught up in the air and never more seen.'
Other sources offer variations of that explanation with added extras such as George was really called John, that it happened in 1762, that he killed the girl with deadly nightshade first and I am guessing that discrepancies will always be the case with Crossing's. But how unusual it is to come across such obvious human traces, and a memorial out on the moors too. Jay's Grave is another with an equally poignant story attached. I like a bit of legend so I am going to stick with Crossing's for our re-discovery of Dartmoor, and with a bit of Eric Hemery's High Dartmoor mixed in, another book I will write about soon.
The views from Stephens' Grave (you'd pay good money and still never get permission to be buried there today) and White Tor looking across to Roos Tor and Staple Tor (I think) were breathtaking. That ridge is the one we have in our sights to walk very soon. Vast and limitless, ours and ours alone for an hour or two, not a soul in sight and easy to let your spirits soar as you walk... ...and of course, need you ask, Nell loved it too.
Final words to Robert Macfarlane quoting Wallace Stegner..
'...we need wild places because they remind us of the world beyond the human....they can give people a sense of bigness outside themselves that has now in some way been lost.'
It is certainly good to be finding them again... any vision-extending 'openness' out your way??
Just this week I had unwisely said to a friend that at last I could knit again because Nell now ignores it. Well yes, when I am in progress, but clearly not when I leave the bag of temptation on the floor. My fault... and Someone Else's for falling asleep on watch when I was out of the room.
There was a bit of a meltdown, I was everso nice and understanding about it.
And it could have been worse, imagine a lovely set of Lantern Moon needles...
However I was on my beam ends with the wool as it was (thank you for it Cheryl, your guilt and donation of the stash is finally assuaged) and the downside is that the clever little critter had chomped up the edges too, so a lot of unravelling of short bits of wool later and it is clear that though I should have enough to finish this final sleeve of the cardigan (Noro Designer Mini Knits Pattern 1 with a bit of length added) there will probably not be enough for the button bands and the neck. A scouring of the internet reveals not an ounce of Noro Kochoran Shade 55 to be had in the UK, so I am now looking at equivalents that might do the trick as a plain contrast. The wool needs to knit to approximately 12sts x 15rows on 6mm needles, and the nearest I can find is Rowan Cocoon, which does 14 x 16 on 7mm, in shade 813 that might just work, what do you think ...all suggestions welcome.
I am completely convinced that we sang Noye's Fludde at school but I could be wrong, perhaps I dreamt it, however I do know for sure that we sang Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo because I have the LP to prove it... and I am playing on it... Actually nothing more exciting than the guitar and there is a terrible, terrible moment when I very loudly and obviously strum completely the wrong chord, and I remember doing it and cringing, so I am quite relieved in the absence of a turntable not to be able to listen to it.
Rummaging through the LP cupboard fatal. Half an hour of acute nostalging and I found Teaser and the Firecat by Cat Stevens which I suddenly and inexplicably really did want to listen to that minute... To my surprise, (though why, given that this is me and I keep everything) when I took Captain Noah out of the cover there were the local newspaper reviews of the concert where we first performed it in amongst a varied programme that I see also included Mahler, Kodaly, Shostakovich and Haydn along with pupil compositions. We are described as 'a particularly musical institution' with the 'wheel of the girls' musical ability' spinning on 'the hub of genius of one or two individual names'...I'd go with that and I definitely wasn't one of them...
I can't somehow imagine this being written now though...
'There are not enough composing members of the fair sex. So what a nice surprise to know that three Nonsuch girls had each composed the music of one or more of the pieces...'
The orchestra came in for a bit of flak though...
'...not all were up to scratch, the foundations were sound enough and quite enjoyable renderings were given... plenty of 'pep' but a little lacking in colour and contrast.'
Things were apparently 'pleasingly sung', and someone's solo voice was 'sweet', and there was some 'exceptionally attractive part singing by seven young ladies.'
1972 and there we were all on the brink of taking such...dare I say slightly patronising sexist praise out into the world and stirring things up a little perhaps.
Anyway, talking of Noye's Fludde, which we may or may not have sung at some time, what reminded me was that we could have made good use of an ark this week, and I do hope all those here in the UK have remained damage and flood-free, especially on Thursday. The day was so dreadful that Nell and I wimped out and cancelled a much-anticipated meet-up and walk with a friend at Lanhydrock House down at Bodmin for fear of falling trees en route and floods. Bookhound went off to help the Gamekeeper with his shoot (which is never cancelled) and Nell and I hunkered down in the kitchen for the day.
Magnus, in contrast took himself off out for some of the action and reappeared a few hours later looking ...well, like a drowned cat, before drying out and taking up his station with Rocky. Remember this tiny stray scrap found out on the lane just five months ago, a fur-covered ribcage with a pipe cleaner on each corner, and we were not in the least bit certain he would make it?? Nell meanwhile is bursting out of the puppy-sized bed fondly known as Base Camp and which is actually one we use for cats out in the shed. She wriggled and jiggled and just couldn't get comfortable, eventually falling asleep like this...
The weather raged on outside and the electricity flickered and then died, and she and I sat there like lemons in the gloaming for half an hour before thinking perhaps it was only us and our famously hyper-sensitive trip switch, which of course it was.
A day of respite on Friday, clear skies and a chance to assess the damage... just a roof panel off the kennel, bit of downpipe absent without leave, nothing major thank goodness. Further across the Shire things are much worse and the West Country currently cut off by train from Taunton down, with lines washed away. We nipped out to get some essentials before the next storm heads our way over the weekend, and stopped off at Pets-R-Us, or whatever it is called, for a bigger dog bed which we quietly substituted only to be faced with this perverse but demonstrative protest of an even smaller cat basket variety. The cats are now sleeping in the dog bed which they think is lovely, the dog is happiest in the cat bed and it's a mess that they will have sort out between themselves
The lane was awash...
and the Tamar was audible from home, and no surprise when we went to look... As I walked out with Nell at dusk I could hear the river roaring in the near distance. The field felt saturated and boggy to its limits, soft and spongy underfoot, and even the rising moon looked wet... a pale, watery imitation of the bright clear moon we have become used to in recent weeks.
We brace for more this weekend, so how's the weather your way??
If someone could report on sun and warmth that would be nice... stay safe and dry everyone else.
Hard to believe that Little Nell once looked like this... but now just four months on and a lot of hard work later looks like this...
Right, so this puppy thing is almost exactly like having a baby... bar the giving birth obviously.. and the choosing her from a litter in a garden shed... and putting her out in the kennel for an hour or so when we all need a rest (her as much as us)
But the mess around the house, the bag of toys, the teething, the house-training, the disappearing 'spare time' and the 'having to think about something else' have all taken some getting used to given it is thirty five years since we have had a house puppy etc.
However we are making grand progress with it all including now Dartmoor. just a few miles away from us here.
There is nothing better than Dartmoor with a dog.
Well, no actually Dartmoor with children is fun too, and ours were raised on it. Snowsuits and boots on at 6am if they were all awake and raring to start the day and Bookhound would take them up there with their breakfast for an 'adventure' .. while I turned over and went back to sleep.
And a wonderful place to meet up with friends and children years ago and let them all run off steam. One memorable day up on Pewtor with a friend and her children who lived in a cottage just below. Their water supply came from the tor and we happily picnicked and let the chidren romp about in the leat while we chatted our way through a glorious summer's afternoon. When her water ran dry that night, and she walked back up to the top to investigate, there was a beautifully constructed but child-like dam.
For a start the views from Dartmoor are predictably stunning... this is a camera zoom towards Brentor from the top of White Tor (if you click on the picture it should also display as a larger size) ...and you generally have the place to yourself, vast acres of it, especially in November, this the view across to Roos and Staple Tor from White Tor on Remembrance Day last Sunday. But Dartmoor with a dog can actually be very stressful.
All that wide open space and of course our first-born dog Ben, a handsome and very intelligent Border Collie, who we bought at six weeks old from a farm up on the moors, would spot a sheep ten miles away and be off across the horizon to round them up with us in mad pursuit. He had a wall-eye (one blue, one brown) which apparently makes for excellent sheep fixing, and frankly we should never have let him watch One Man and His Dog, because then you have to do all the 'getting cross' when you finally catch them for doing something that is instinctive, and seemed alright for Meg and Shep on the TV. You feel a bit bad trying to reverse their genes and hope no farmer has your precious puppy in his gun sights...well within his rights. Ben learned it all eventually but it took time.
Nell, a Sprocker (Cocker/Springer blend) has entirely different instincts and just likes to run with her nose along the ground and sniff things, and best of all to stay close. This all makes her a dream to take up on the moors and so we have started some serious Dartmoor walking again. Boots, rucksacks, waterproofs, map, compass, the lot. Nell is bagging Tors right left and centre (and we do have to go to one called Baggator) including Great Mis Tor which at 1765 feet is our highest so far. It was windy up top but seemed to display her ears to best effect..
Bookhound's years of experience in the Dartmoor Rescue Group are useful as well as comforting. He generally knows where we are, in which direction we are walking and what that Tor 'over there' is called, where the nearest pub lunch can be found, as well as what to do in an emergency.
So we are reacquainting ourselves with all our 'old ways' as well as discovering some new paths, and of course we will be taking you all along too.
Looking at that picture of Ben again I feel and remember all those seventeen years of faithful hound that we shared with him, but Nell is shaping up that way in our affections too, and I think you can see the ears are coming along very nicely.
Predictably for a Sprocker Little Nell has boundless energy and is now proving to be wonderful company on our walks around the fields and, off the lead for most of the time unless we are on the lane, she never strays far from our side. We had almost forgotten the joy of a puppy that is not being trained to work and though she is taking up hours and hours of time she is giving us a huge amount of pleasure, as well as limited wardrobe options...it is never worth wearing anything remotely smart at the moment.
These rules of possession are actually those of the toddler, and always cause much mirth and head nodding in the health visitor workplace, but it occurred to me that with a bit of tweaking they currently also apply to a five month-old puppy, probably a toddler already in dog years.
The toddler's puppy's rules of possession:
1. If I like it, it's mine. 2. If it's in my hand paw it's mine. 3. If I can take it from you, it's mine. 4. If I had it a little while ago, it's mine. 5. If it's mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way. 6. If I'm doing or building chewing something, all the pieces are mine. 7. If it looks just like mine, it is mine. 8. If I saw it first, it's mine. 9. If you are playing with something using something and you put it down, it automatically becomes mine. 10. If it's broken, it's yours. 11. If it's broken, but you are having fun playing with the pieces, it's mine again. 12. If there is ANY doubt, it's mine.
The one that we always add to the toddler list for added amusement is
13. If it's broccoli it's yours.
I would change that very slightly because there is nothing this puppy won't eat so...
14. If it's dead it's mine....and just you try and get it off me.
Currently everything must still be chewed to within an inch of existence, and Nell's most favoured item??
The equivalant of the puppy's treasure basket... a pair of Bookhound's very old work trousers that she took a shine to whilst his legs were still in them. Eventually she had gnawed her way through and around half a leg so he surrendered them to their fate, and these are now known as the Teething Trews
Biscuits hidden inside the velcroed pockets, close them and fling the trousers her way.
Guaranteed hours of peace and quiet as she figures it out.. Barks at the trousers...
Chews the trousers...
Gets very cross with the trousers...
Chews the trousers...
Makes friends with the trousers again...
Chews the trousers...
Throws the trousers around the kitchen...
Watches the trousers carefully in case they move...
Kills the trousers... until eventually out pops a biscuit onto the floor and we all cheer.
And it starts all over again as she looks for the next one.
Pet shops should sell these....I really should take this to the Dragons Den
I can think of a million and one reasons why I should not have enjoyed Clare Balding's recently published autobiography, My Animals and Other Family and yes, it is a deliberate play (with the family's permission) on Gerald Durrell's book My Family and Other Animals.
But firstly, and for those who have been on Mars through the summer, Clare Balding is the national treasure who guided the TV ship through the vast oceans of Olympic and Paralympic coverage and basically left many of the other anchors dead in the water...oooh I didn't realise where that analogy was going... I'll quit while I'm winning, but anyway, our Clare was just brill. Never knowingly under-prepped, and with highlighter pen, swathes of paper and all the right info at her fingertips, Clare Balding has been crowned the new Des Lynham (he was the last one who had the gift of the perfect sports anchor) Plenty of us who may never have watched horse racing in our lives may well switch onto it now because Clare will be doing that next.
But I generally don't enjoy autobiographies.
And I generally don't enjoy celebrity autobiographies.
And despite my best efforts and all that ancestral ostling, I have never been that keen on horses either since that one in Horseguards, Whitehall, sneezed on my new ankle socks when I was about six. If I am honest horses scare me a little too.
I mean they are big, right??
I was walking back down the field with the dogs the other day and suddenly sensed something at my shoulder... in fact it was two 'somethings', riderless horses that had appeared silently out of nowhere, and I jumped at least a furlong. Little Nell couldn't be seen for dust and Barney the Brave squared up to take them out, and I just looked a complete idiot and yelled 'Go away' very unhelpfully when they started a bit of a charge. Clare would have gone and stroked their noses, produced sugar cubes out of her pocket, whispered soothing words in their pricked ears and probably ridden them bareback from whence they had strayed.
And My Animals and Other Family is horses and dogs, Clare's best friends all, front cover to back cover... Valkyrie, Volcano, Frank, Hattie, Ellie May, Lily, Quirk, Stuart, Henry et al and Clare's equine heritage clearly far stronger than mine, her father Ian Balding champion horse trainer to Royalty and also the trainer of the famous Mill Reef. Though not trained by Ian Balding Shergar gets a mention in passing too. I now feel I must own up that we've always made awful (really awful) jokes about Shergar here (he was the prize racer who was horse-napped and never heard of again) and tried to work out how many tins of priceless dog food a horse that size might equate too, and I feel a bit bad about that now.
I hope I can be forgiven because I am warming to horses now that everything has been explained, and you have no idea of the mysteries that needed unravelling. I have several horse-loving friends and have always dozed off when the conversation comes around to laminitis and colic.
But I now know about laminitis (too much grass eating = nitrogen-compound overload = poorly feet) and hoof oil, and riding short and upsides. I know you must keep your line and kick on and take a pull now and then, and above all you need a strong, steady lower leg for dressage.
Then there are the bits. Not to be confused with what we euphemistically call Magnus's feline manhood, and his bits which are for surgical intervention and removal next Friday, but I mean who knew there were that many bits, as in the things that go in a horse's mouth... Pelhams, Kimblewicks, Dr Bristols and Waterfords, even a Balding.
I know officially that a furlong is 220 yards whilst a hand is about four inches, as in the span of a flat hand, and it was Henry VIII who standardized that measurement in 1541 having ordered the destruction of all stallions below fifteen hands, and all mares below thirteen hands because Britain's war horses were getting a bit puny. Horses won't stand still to be measured with a tape so hands are quicker and easier. Clare's desk is ten hands wide (Shetland pony sized), mine is seventeen (probably big enough for the Grand National my desk) ... my computer screen is six hands (no messing with tiddly screens here)... my chair is five hands off the ground, yes I like this. I might start measuring babies and toddlers in hands in future, instead of all that fuss pinning them down on a measuring mat ... a newborn baby would be about five hands, so much easier, surely parents wouldn't mind.
The intricacies of polo are also explained, and though I didn't think I really wanted to know this I was actually very interested, because it might all come in useful when I meet up with my student nursing best friend at our Great Ormond Street forty year reunion next weekend. She has just taken up polo ( Wiz, if you are reading this...why?? Wasn't the competitive rowing arduous enough??) so I can ask her what her handicap is and ensure that she knows to be decisive and strong and 'ride off each other' and never to yank her pony's mouth. She has just bought a mallet so I can be interested in that too.
But Clare Balding's humour, and there is plenty of it and all charmingly self-deprecating, is leavened with some harsh reality.
Clare's father, and to some extent her mother, and most definitely her grandmother, are so deeply involved with their horses that Clare and her brother must just get on with life, be self-contained and put up or shut up. Family holidays are a rarity, though horse riding opportunities are plentiful, and Clare was up on Mill Reef almost before she could walk by the looks of it, and even I can tell that is one fine horse... ...but it would have been no good fancying a turn at BMX racing or ballet or violin lessons or something, it would have to be horses or nothing. When Clare arrives at Downe House school as a boarder (the writer Elizabeth Bowen was an alumna) and sans pets and horses, she feels completely out of her depth, both socially and academically and the harsh realities of life start to take their toll with events taking several desperate turns as Clare tries hard to fit in and be one of the gang. In fact when she stops doing that and decides to be herself it's all a whole lot easier, but to this day her father remains notoriously difficult to impress and more especially if you are a woman.
Surely he loved that interview with Chad's dad??
Surely he was overflowing with pride when Clare presented the flowers at an Olympic medal ceremony in front of 80,000 cheering fans who were actually cheering for her??
In fact there is one very touching moment of redemption in the book when Clare's father does recognise her achievements, whilst along the way Clare recounts, self-effacingly as always, her successful years as a jockey and the trials of making the weight, a near mash-up in the last furlongs of a race with Princess Anne, breakfast with the Queen chez Balding and plenty more. The book ends with Clare's acceptance to read English at Newnham in Cambridge, though she will need time off in the first week to race at Chepstow, and for which she will have to ask Director of Studies, Mrs Gooder...
'You would like to go where?' asked Mrs Gooder ...You and I shall make a deal. There is one page in the newspaper that I do not understand and, if you promise that you will explain this to me, you may ride at Chepstow.' She opened a copy of the Guardian to the racing page and gestured. 'Might as well be gobbledegook. I do not like to feel ignorant.'
I feel much less ignorant now too and have really enjoyed my canter through My Animals and Other Family in the company of Clare Balding, and so did Little Nell who one minute was sitting quite peacably on my lap as I read and the next thing had chunked a complete corner off the book (witness that picture above) which sort of felt forgiveable in the end, because Clare's dogs would probably have done that too, and she wouldn't have got cross either.
All this talk of family and animals feels like a good excuse, if ever I needed one, so here is the latest Nell and Magnus Do Battle clip, and as you can see the rate the non-identical twins are going Magnus might not be needing that trip to the vets next Friday...
Bit of a cheat there on the tail grab but two falls and a submission seems to clinch it. Magnus never uses his claws and always comes back for more, and aren't those Sprocker ears coming along gorgeously too, Little Nell now all of three hands. Magnus possibly two.
Don't miss My Animals and Other Family, it really is a treat of a read.
I have managed two cheering chapters of Clare Balding's My Animals and Other Family and that's it, but I know the feeling... animals everywhere.
I have done nothing but tug my wellies on and off and do field circuits with the dogs while Bookhound has been away, in between trying to sit at my desk and get my online work hours done... I should be on Puppyternity Leave I think.
And then there is the sort of relay of feeding in order to get the Dowagers and their bowls together without canine interference. One Dowager is fine, having lamped Nell a corker on the nose, embedded a claw and set clear no-nonsense boundaries, Muffy now sits bolt upright assuming the role of a very strict governess and Nell is a completely different puppy, quiet, well-behaved, crawls along on her tummy, no messing.
The other Dowager is most definitely not impressed.
Tess was just coming round to the idea of a Magnus-sized third cat when Nell arrived and that was that. Once the gentlest of cats she has undergone a complete personality transplant and now sits imperiously on the verandah, scowling and most unforgiving, and prefers her food to be brought to her. She has that 'How could you do this to me.. I shall just sit here and starve myself to death' look in her narrowed eyes, and laden with guilt I scurry back and forth with Go Cat and tempting bowls of succulent Felix Tuna in Jelly all the day long. Tess will be the size of a barrage balloon by Christmas.
And historically something ALWAYS goes wrong with major systems when Bookhound is away...always. This time it is the electricity. Off went the trip switch late one evening, pitch black and I trip and stumble my way to the torch and the candles, and then who's moved the matches (me probably).
Then I have to find a chair and peer into the fuse cupboard and decide what's gone wrong where, out of twelve fuses and four big switches.
Huh, no hope.
Out had gone a selection of plug sockets when I finally switched it back on, including the washing machine in mid-cycle, so there is a fault somewhere and we are just going to have to be the great unwashed until Bookhound's return, because I am not messing with any of it. And I am now walking around with a torch in my pocket because I am not going through that again.
But the upside is all this lovely walking around Rocky's field behind the house. Views across the Tamar Valley that take my breath away every single day, and for one circuit we were joined by the gathering swallows dipping and swerving around us as if scoping the lie of the land ready for their return before making their farewells and the off. By the time I had found my camera and dashed back out to capture the fleeting moment, with dozens of them queuing up on the telephone wires, they were gone.
Cue melancholy.
Cue Autumn.
Meanwhile the grass in the field has just been cut for silage so it is now very walkable through and Nell is having a fine time doing Fetch.
Having had working gun dogs for the last fifteen years, throwing anything for the puppies has been absolutely forbidden until they are ready for training, and then you have to throw a special thing a certain way and distance and insist they do it properly. Bah to all that, Nell is a pet so we are allowed, and if she happens to figure out how to chase a pheasant good on her ... just don't tell the Gamekeeper will you, and that pink ball on a bit of rope the best £3 I have ever spent at Tesco's.
Then of course, being a girl, she knows her own mind... and notice sage old Barney, who has always refused to demean himself by fetching anything or bringing it back and now well beyond all this playing stuff.
Nell is growing legs and suddenly that little plump puppy tummy is much further off the ground than it was, and she is also sprouting the most delectable set of ears. The inseperable terrible two get up to all manner of mischief in the garden... Magnus meanwhile has brought in his first livestock, a tiny vole which may or may not still be behind the freezer. He is slowly growing into his ears and also learning the gentle art of the verandah repose...
The non-identical twins (now both about twelve weeks old) have had a very busy day.
Cat-flap wars... Magnus sits outside the back door, just biding his time and plotting... Little Nell gets the lie of the land... Let battle commence... Then off out into the garden where Nell has discovered apples... ...and Magnus has learnt how to climb a tree. We are all now absolutely exhausted.
We might have the only labrador in the world who is less than keen on water...or perhaps is is just the connotations of the B-A-T-H word which will send him to the very back of his straw-filled kennel for days. Now who can know how this may have come about, but we have decided to expose Little Nell to as many of these things in the nicest possible way while she is still a nipper.
I am afraid we have swiftly entered the realms of enchanted adoration with this plumptious puppy, and she responds accordingly, latching onto one or other of us and shadowing us with precision whilst finding things to snaffle and drag to her basket for a good chewing along the way. The oven glove is winning hands down at the moment, quickly followed by rogue socks from the laundry basket whilst the squeaky purpose-built thing from the pet shop holds no allure whatsoever.
The woman in the pet shop told us we weren't feeding her enough if she was chewing things... what do you think??
Surely all puppies chew??
So on a sweltering hot day last week we walked across Rocky's field behind the house to do some dunking and cooling down of the canines in the cattle trough. Barney as usual had to be 'assisted' in but once submerged realised how blissful this was, and then we had a heck of a job to get him out, but looking quite the Elder Statesman of the dog world as he basked. Little Nell on the other hand took one look (she adores Barney and follows him everywhere too) and couldn't wait to take the plunge, the paws were doing air doggy paddle at the first sight of the water. In she went, swimming from the off and with Bookhound promising to jump in and save her if she sank to the bottom when I asked the 'What if...' question. Thankfully life-saving not required.
We seem to be cornering the market in cute here but had thought the puppy wouldn't be arriving until after the Olympics... wrong, and so last Tuesday evening we set off to collect Little Nell.
This you may recall is the litter of Sprockers (Springer x Cocker spaniel) that the Gamekeeper's dog Rusty has sired, three sisters and we had pick of the litter.
Well how impossible is that because what on earth are you supposed to look for.
In the end we agreed we wanted one that looked like Rusty.
But after years of Alpha Male dogs we wanted the little girl that looked really quiet and un-boisterous...
Perhaps a little over-awed by us and by life...
So not the one that leapt into our arms the minute it saw us and squeaked 'I'm yours'
We'd look for the one sitting at the back...
The one getting crawled over by the others...
It wasn't hard. Two completely brown ones looking uncannily like Tag, the Gamekeeper's new acquisition, and one predominantly white one with a few brown markings (more Rusty-like) getting trampled on by her pushy sisters.
Yes. I know it's going to show the dirt and we'll regret this after a muddy walk...
And there will be white dog hairs everywhere... We had the meeting to sort too so we decided to get that done and dusted immediately.
Bit of skirting around by Magnus who quickly decided Nell could be his mum, whilst Nell quickly decided that Magnus could sub for her sisters left behind, and to our complete surprise they curled up together in the dog crate and slept like little angels.
That angelic pose didn't last of course and they now spend the day bundling and slam-dunking each other whilst the classic impasse involves each grabbing the other's tail between baby teeth and not letting go. We are having huge fun just watching them, but, at eight weeks old the pair, it is a bit like having non-identical newborn twins. To the vets on Monday for injections for both of them...and we'll just have to put them together into the old Trago Mills cat box done up with bailer twine because we only have one.
And do you remember another cat who used to do this on the kitchen table?? Isn't it funny how cats just know exactly where they want to be.
And only four weeks since his arrival as a shivering bundle that could sit in the palm of the hand, don't kittens turn into proper cats so quickly.
Gillian Clarke: At the Source: A Writer's Year 'On the first day of January I open a new journal and mark the clean page with a date, location, a first sentence...it is always an unlined, hardback black book, three inches by five..The first words print the field of snow...'
Robert Macfarlane: Mountains of the Mind: a History of a Fascination 'Contemplating the immensities of deep time, you face, in a way that is both exquisite and horrifying, the total collapse of your present, compacted to nothingness by the pressures of pasts and futures too extensive to envisage...'
Tony Judt: The Memory Chalet 'Thus I realize that as a child I was observing far more than understood. Perhaps all children do this, in which case what distinguishes me is only the opportunity that catastrophic ill-health has afforded me to retrieve those observations in a consistent manner... I have a variety of uses to which I can put them. For this alone I consider myself a very lucky man.'
Inspiring...
Text by Simon Martin: Mark Hearld's Work Book 'The artist Mark Hearld takes his inspiration from nature, creating bold, enchanting visions of the landscapes, plants and animals that surround us...'
Listening...
Virginia Woolf: To The Lighthouse “Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow,” said Mrs Ramsay. “But you’ll have to be up with the lark,” she added.
To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled, the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night’s darkness and a day’s sail, within touch...
Team Tolstoy A year-long shared read of War & Peace through the centenary year of Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's death, starting on his birthday, September 9th 2010.
Everyone is welcome to board the troika and read along, meeting here on the 9th of every month to chat in comments about the book.
Team Tolstoy Bookmark Don't know your Bolkonskys from your Rostovs?
An aide memoire that can be niftily printed and laminated into a double-sided bookmark.
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If you think I have breached copyright rules in any way please let me know.
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