dogs

tell tails

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

A drive out to see Alistair for another dog walk. It’s been a while since I was here – August, in fact – and even though it’s still something of a building site, they’ve accomplished a lot. He shows me the brick reservoir they’ve renovated in the middle of the land, how they’ve organised things so that everything drains into it. He shows me the pipes they’ve run from the tank to the raised vegetable beds off to the side, and the solar pump that’ll keep a trickle supply running. It’s all very organised and admirable. He’s even using rocks they’ve scavenged from all the clearance to landscape the area around the tank and make it good.

‘You have to use your imagination’ he says, but really, it’s not such an effort.

We head down to a gap in the fence at the bottom, and out onto the neighbouring field where a dozen horses in quilted jackets stand and stare at us, their breath steaming around them in the brisk morning air. Ailsa lies down and stares back, obviously wanting to round them up, but Alistair whistles for her to come, which she does, so quickly it’s as if she materialises from one spot to another.
‘Good girl’ says Alistair.

Meanwhile, Lola has chased after Dexter, heading for the woods. Lola would’ve caught him a few years ago, but these days she’s slowing up. Dexter leaves her behind, galumphing into the undergrowth and disappearing.
‘Dexter’s staying for a while,’ says Alistair discreetly, like he’s describing a guest at a rehab facility. ‘There’s something going on at home,’ he adds, darkly.
Ailsa has already overtaken Lola as they both chase after Dexter into the woods. Lola’s in love with Dexter. It wouldn’t surprise me if a little later we found their names carved by claw into a tree. A heart with an arrow, initials, kisses.

‘I’ve been getting into coding’ says Alistair, ducking under a wire fence. ‘It’s amazing how everything’s come on. It wasn’t so long ago you’d be struggling with a big old text book that was out of date as soon as you opened it. Now you can log onto forums and watch people explain it all on YouTube. It’s so much easier.’
‘I know! When I think how hard origami used to be, trying to figure out those drawings – dotted lines for a valley fold, a kinked arrow for a squash fold. Half the time I’d give up. Now you just watch a clip on YouTube. We had a whole series of origami books written by Robert Harbin. Is that how you say it? Harbin? It’s funny – I’ve never said it out loud before. It sounds made up.’
‘No, no. I think Harbin’s right.’
‘I bet no-one’s publishing origami books anymore.’
‘Or code books.’
‘Or any books!’

It suddenly strikes me. We are almost certainly the biggest nerds ever to walk through these woods. It’s probably a good thing duck season hasn’t started.

Alistair yawns whilst I stop to take some pictures of a derelict railway bridge, the tracks IMG_6633gone, the brick parapet breached by thick stems of ivy.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I got up so early this morning.’
‘Why? Couldn’t you sleep?’
‘No – it was just that when I went to bed I was trying to figure out a tricky bit of code, and then about four o’clock, I sat up straight from a dream, and I was convinced it was telling me the answer. So I went downstairs and tried it out.’
‘Did it work?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Complete garbage. I’ve been yawning ever since.’
‘I remember reading about this chemist who was trying to figure out the molecular structure of benzene, and he had a dream about a snake with its tail in its mouth, and that’s how he figured it out.’
‘I read that, too’ says Alistair. ‘Bastard.’

The dogs appear again, Dexter first, closely followed by Lola and Ailsa. We come to another stile. There’s an elderly woman the other side, rattling a bag of treats and shouting Arthur! All three dogs leap through the gap and sit around her.
‘You’re not Arthur,’ she says, but they carry on sitting anyway.
‘Lost your dog?’ says Alistair, climbing over.
‘I’ve only had him two weeks,’ she says.
The woman is strangely dressed for the muddy conditions. She’s wearing a red two piece suit with a fur trim, soft leather boots, and a pointy, green velvet hat. In fact, it’d be easier to think she she was on her way to an audition for Robin Hood than taking a dog called Arthur for a walk. But who knows? Maybe this is all a last minute decision.
‘Are your dogs okay with other dogs?’ she says.
‘Fine’ says Alistair. The worst Ailsa will do is round him up.’
‘And Lola’s too busy with Dexter to notice anyone else.’
The old woman cuts across us.
‘There!’ she says, pointing with the treat bag. ‘Arthur!’
We all turn to look (including the dogs).
Arthur turns out to be a heavy Alsatian, warily hanging back on the brow of the hill. I must admit I’m shocked. I was expecting something smaller. I can’t imagine the woman being able to hold onto a hound as substantial as Arthur. She’d be safer throwing a saddle on his back and riding him home.
‘Arthur!’ cries the old woman again, shaking the bag of treats in the air again. The dogs – giving up on the treats as any kind of prospect – jump to their feet and race up the hill to intercept him, Dexter and Ailsa making the running, Lola tagging on behind.
‘Are you sure they’ll be alright?’ says the woman.
‘Of course!’ says Alistair. ‘Just look at those tails!’

sig

larry

~ jim clayton ~ 5 Comments

Mrs Waring has been diagnosed with BPPV – Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. One of those conditions that’s as difficult to pronounce as it is to treat.
‘Her husband’s been admitted with a stroke,’ says the Coordinator, ‘so the stress of all that isn’t helping matters. I think she has a good network of friends, but she’s eighty-odd and vulnerable.’ She hands me the paperwork. ‘Retired district nurse,’ she says. ‘Watch out.’

-oOo-

If the bungalow is quiet when I walk up to the door, it changes the moment I ring the bell. A dog starts barking somewhere deep within the house, and a second later hurls itself against the door, repeatedly impacting the frosted pane like a hairy brown and white football being kicked against the glass.
Larry! Larry! says a woman’s voice, but the dog only interprets that as an instruction to try harder. He changes tactic and starts trying to rip out the letterbox, presumably to make a hole big enough to squeeze through and reach my throat.
Just come straight in! the woman calls. He’ll be alright.
It’s an act of faith to do it, but Larry’s obviously a small dog, and even though I know the smallest dogs have the biggest complexes, I’m reasonably confident I can handle anything he throws at me. Still, mindful of the sharpness of little teeth, I slide the rucksack off my back and hold it low in front of me as I slowly open the door.
‘Good boy! There’s a good boy!’
Larry backs up, adding a few apoplectic sneezes to his barks, and starts turning wild circles on the spot, like he’s winding himself up to helicopter the distance between his jaws and my throat.
Mrs Waring appears round the sitting room door on all fours.
‘Oh! Hello!’ I say, putting my bag to one side (Larry jumps on it, grabs hold of one of the straps and begins shaking it from side to side, flipping me looks between each thrashing, as if to say: You’re next). ‘Are you alright?’
‘Yes, I’m fine’ she says, in a clipped tone, as if there’s absolutely nothing in her behaviour to suggest otherwise.
‘Have you fallen? Are you hurt?’
‘Not at all,’ she says. ‘Larry! Will you stop that, please?’
Amazingly, Larry lets go of the bag, looks at Mrs Waring for a moment, then trots over to sniff around my trousers.
‘He likes you,’ she says. ‘That’s a start.’
I kneel down on the carpet.
‘So tell me how you ended up on the floor,’ I say.
‘It’s very dull,’ she says. ‘I had another dizzy episode so I lowered myself down before I fell. I’ve done it before.’
‘Are you in pain?’
‘No. Just a little woozy. Now look, could I ask you to do something for me?’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s a bit cheeky, I know, but you see – Larry needs his breakfast and I think that’s why he’s being such a pest. If he doesn’t get his breakfast he won’t leave us alone. So if you wouldn’t mind, could you give him some of the meat that’s on the top of the fridge? You’ll find a pink bowl on the draining board and a fork with a broken handle. He doesn’t need much. His stomach’s the size of a mouse.’
Larry has obviously recognised some of the keywords here, because he stops sniffing and sits on his haunches to stare up at me. He’s a funny-looking dog, a cross between a Chihuahua and a Jack Russell, with a few chromosomes of Fruit Bat sprinkled on top for good measure. He’s obviously as elderly as Mrs Waring, a wiry, lopsided sneer to his muzzle, like a grizzled old gunslinger deludedly thinking he can still outdraw anything that rings the bell.
‘He’ll be in a better mood when he’s had some breakfast,’ says Mrs Waring.
As if to demonstrate, Larry starts barking again when I stand up to go into the kitchen, and doesn’t stop until I’ve finished scraping some meat out into the bowl.
Meanwhile, Mrs Waring has crawled into the kitchen, too.
‘Show me how much you’ve given him,’ she says.
I bend down to show her the bowl.
‘Too much,’ she says. ‘He’ll be sick.’
I scrape out a portion and present the bowl to her again, acutely aware that if anyone took a photograph of this scene through the kitchen window, it wouldn’t read well in the press. (Broken Britain: Nurse treats elderly woman like a dog).
‘Still too much!’ she says. ‘Lose a third and you might be right.’
I do as she says, and finally get the go-ahead.
Larry clears the bowl in three furious snaps, then starts barking again.
‘I don’t think it’s worked,’ I say.
‘Nonsense,’ says Mrs Waring, turning round to crawl out of the kitchen and into the living room. ‘He just doesn’t like strangers watching him eat.’

daisy d.

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

‘Are you alright with dogs?’ says Clara, throwing open the door anyway. It’s not a great risk, though. Daisy is the cutest dachshund I’ve ever seen. With her long, lugubrious expression and sad brown eyes, she could be a circuit judge passing sentence even though it breaks her heart to see, once again, what humanity has been reduced to.

‘Hello little one!’ I say, bending down to reach out my hand for her to sniff. She does so – with such a tragic air – then reverses so awkwardly you’d think she was being remotely controlled by someone in the next room with a poor view of the action. Somehow she manages it, though, and leads me through to the living room, her tiny legs making heavy weather of the three carpeted steps up to it.

Even if Clara hadn’t immediately explained her relation to Peggy, I would have known they were sisters. Whilst it’s apparent that Peggy is the one with all the health problems, still, they share the same square face, the same way of holding themselves, lightly upright, their hands just-so on the armrests of their chairs, the same level, mildly amused sparkle to their eyes.

I have to say, Daisy fits right in.

‘I don’t live here,’ says Clara, heading off any questions I might have on that front. ‘I make it over as often as I can, though. Which reminds me, Pegs – you’re almost out of washing tabs. I shall have to pop out and get you some more.’

‘Righto,’ says Peggy – and the matter settled to the satisfaction of both, they both turn to stare at me.

Daisy has temporarily absented herself from the room, but she soon comes bouncing back with something squeaky in her mouth – a well-chewed plastic hamburger – which she places neatly and carefully at my feet, and then backs up.

‘Who wants it?’ I say, picking it up and waving it in the air.

‘Well – Daisy, I should think,’ says Clara.