Skipping along the wilder shores of madness

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I think the deadline and all that other stuff might be getting to me. I like to think of myself as a politically engaged citizen of the world. As a young person, I was given a stupid amount of education. I am a book writer. Surely I should be deconstructing Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour Conference, or discussing the potential Greek default? I should be bending my mind to serious matters. Things of vast import are happening out in the world, and what am I going to do? I am going to give you a photo essay about my dog.

I know.

I can’t really say any more about it.

Cat people: look away NOW.

So, the story of One Dog and Her Ball:

Here is how it goes with me and The Pigeon. We go out to the garden where I gaze minutely at the plants and think of the ones I want to photograph. I get down on the ground and contort myself into curious positions in order to achieve the angle I want. Then I swear at the camera quite a lot, because it won’t focus. (I like getting in very, very close, and I really need one of those macro pancake lenses or whatever they are called.)

While I am doing this, The Pigeon waffles about in the undergrowth, looking for rogue rabbits, sniffing for squirrels.

After a while, she gets deathly bored. She picks up her ball, and thinks of clever ways to get me to throw it for her. She is far, far too cunning an operative to try the direct approach, which would be to bring it over and deposit it at my feet.

Oh no. What she does first is her best Dickensian orphans in the snow look.

No, really, don’t mind me. I shall just sit here dying of melancholy until you choose to remember I exist:

No, no, it’s quite fine. I’ll just do some, you know, sniffing:

Although, if you could take your eyes off those bloody plants for a single second, we could play a little game. Just a little one. I’m not asking for castles in Spain, or anything like that:

If I just sit here and look preposterously beautiful, would that help at all?:

At which point, I give in, and throw the thing for her. She brings it back, and gives me this look. Which says: YEAH YEAH, you see how much fun that is?

I’m having such a good time that I don’t even care I have a pine needle stuck to my mouth:

One more time?:

And then we throw and chase, throw and chase, and I, idiot that I am, even laugh and clap. I really am impressed when she leaps high in the air and catches it in one go. She is like a shark.

Then, she flops down, exhausted, and gives me this look -

You see how much fun that was? I told you it would be more diverting than those boring cyclamen:

I mean, it really was FUN:

Look, the people over there enjoyed it:

And then, just to show me she is not a one-trick pony, she demonstrates her winking skills, which are, you must admit, considerable:

And finally, she catches her breath and reverts to her Grace Kelly look, which always makes me think of that moment in High Society when Grace comes out in her New Look dress and says: ‘I’m fine. Is everybody fine? Oh, look, there’s Uncle Willy.’:

And that is the end of my story.

Part of me thinks: oh God, the thin end of the wedge has now been so far inserted that there is no hope for me at all. The other part of me, which has been working like crazy all day and has no sense left in it thinks: that’s so damn good maybe I should publish it as an e-book and make my fortune.

I think I probably should stop now.

 

Some quick garden pictures for you:

In honour of yesterday’s Good Day I naughtily went and bought myself a little selection of roses and arum lilies:

And there, above it all, is, as always, the hill:

A good day

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

As I walked through the woods and past the hill this morning, in the dazzling September sun, I listened to Van Morrison, and wrote the blog in my head. Oh goodness. it was a dilly. It had everything. It really was dancing girls and pom-poms, which I am always promising you, and which never quite materialise.

Now, as the sun lingers and sets, gilding the dry stone wall and dappling the beeches outside my window, I cannot recollect one word of it.

Bloody lucky you are such forgiving readers, as well as Dear.

In the end, it was a flat-out work day. The Co-writer called, for a massive editing conference. Oh yes, I had said; it will only take a couple of hours. I was blithe and impatient. On, on, yell the voices in my head. In the end, we did three hours of hard graft and thought and discussion, and we are not even one third of the way through.

No matter. This is the nature of the thing. I ended up galvanised, and more hopeful than I have been since I can remember. The Co-Writer said some wise and understanding and kind things. She surprised me, a little. I am used to being very slightly misunderstood. It is not so much in a dramatic, I am so enigmatical and mysterious that no human may ever plumb the mazy depths of my convoluted psyche way. It is more that I make mildly odd choices, which most of my cohort have not. So sometimes there is a very slight distance between what is assumed, and what is.

I think we wrote something in Backwards about how what women really want is to be got. (Almost certainly men too.) When someone really gets it, it is not only a comfort, but also a great compliment, because they have taken the time to observe and take in the wanderings of your inexplicable mind. This morning, I felt got. That is a very short, and not particularly elegant sentence, but it is a potent one.

Then I wrote 1097 words; did some reading; did some thinking; and completely forgot to eat my lunch. This is not healthy, but it is the sign of a good work day. I had to rush into the village at five o’clock and buy a lovely Aberdeen Angus steak for strength, which I ate bloody, with garlic and parsley, and some watercress on the side, just to make sure that I really did feel like Popeye afterwards.

Then the Pigeon and I went outside to look at the evening light and smell the flowers.

I hardly dare write this because of tempting fate. Because it may not be true tomorrow. Because I am not so daffily sanguine to believe that everything changes just because thinking makes it so. But I woke early today with a sense of shift, a return of determination and optimism, a hope for better things. It may not last. Not everything in the garden may remain lovely. But it can be marked: today was a Good Day.

 

Some quick pictures now, of this evening’s garden:

The Pigeon was looking particularly majestic in the light. Sometimes when I take her picture I just shoot away, fast as I can, so that I occasionally catch her like this, all blurry and blinky:

Then we settle down and do some serious posing and composition, so we get the serene profile:

The elder stateswoman face, as if she is a cross between Dame Mary Warnock and Baroness Shirley Williams:

(She really should be in the House of Lords, with a face like that.)

And the I-suspect-there-is-a-rabbit-in-that-bush look:

Hill is especially elegant today, in the astonishing light:

History

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

A low, silent day. Sudden gusts of wind come up out of the south, which is rare, because our winds normally howl down from the north-west. This southern wind carries warmth with it; it is a high, dry, buffeting wind, with no hint of winter in it. I remember vaguely something about three years ago, when the winds came all the way from the Sahara, and left tiny particles of red African sand on the Scottish fields. I remember thinking it was poetic, and extraordinary.

My current policy is not to think about The Thing. I am putting sorrow to one side, for the moment. Yeah, yeah, go the voices in my head: you’ve got all your arms and legs, you’ve got a book to finish, get on with it.

I quite like this voice, actually. It is not a the critical voice, but the practical, prosaic, stoical one. It is the one that stops me falling into solipsism and self-indulgence. It remembers the war, when brave Londoners got through the Blitz, and the doughty Britons sang roll out the barrel as the bombs fell. It’s almost a cultural voice, the one drawn from the cussed, won’t be beaten by the buggers streak that runs through the British character. It’s a phlegmatic voice.

I think one of the things about learning to be a grown-up is discovering the balance between griefs that must be honoured, and wallowing and dwelling. One cannot pretend that every day is Pollyanna day, but nor can one fall into a brown study and write oneself a three-act melodrama. I feel as if I am searching for that balance with my very fingertips.

Things are stuttering towards normal; there are still small glitches. My sleeping patterns are wildly unpredictable. I find it hard to keep up with the news. Most alarming of all, my rampant fascination with politics has gone into abeyance.

This is very odd. My usual geekish treat, after a long day’s work, is to catch up on the minutiae of American politics, via the brilliant MSNBC website, where I may watch Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell. Primary season is hotting up; I should be glued to what strange Mr Rick Perry is going to say next, and how stary the staring eyes of Michelle Bachman are.

I should be on the edge of my seat, wondering whether Sarah Palin is going to run or not. Instead, I think: oh, what a bunch of showers. Can someone just say something sensible about unemployment and stop grandstanding for a single second? I have a suspicion that contemplation of mortality makes one impatient with egregious silliness.

This side of the pond, it is conference season. This is usually pig in clover time for me. For a political anorak, it is the equivalent of Fashion Week for the fashionistas. But this year, I have no interest in what Mr Ed Miliband is going to tell the gathered faithful. Yada, yada, I think; same old same old. If one person could just come up with a sane idea for economic growth without scoring party political points, I would send them a bunch of flowers.

Instead of obsessively watching The Daily Politics, with Andrew Neil, I have gone back to history, with Simon Schama. I am finding something soothing about returning to the grand sweep of the story of this island race. Ah, I think, the Wars of the Roses and The Field of the Cloth of Gold and The Dissolution of the Monasteries; that’s more like it. Years ago, I chose to read history rather than English at university because I thought I’ll always read Keats and Yeats for pleasure, but I won’t necessarily be glued to AJP Taylor and Professor Plumb. Oddly enough, twenty-five years on, I find that I have returned to history, rather than poetry, to soften my jagged soul.

It’s not just that it is so interesting, which it is, or that it is helpful for my work, which it also is, but that it is the big stuff. I want big stuff, just now. I have no time for petty political posturing or internecine party rows. I want battles and dynastic clashes and rebellions and sweeping electoral reform.

Outside, the wind whispers sinuously  at the window, and the sky turns the colour of pigeons. I shall do some work, and make some soup. And then I shall read something fascinating about The Long Parliament, for a special treat.

 

Today’s pictures are of our walk:

Autumn leaf action. The horse chestnuts are the first to turn:

Whilst the beeches remain green:

I found a perfect pigeon feather, and stuck it on a tree and took a picture of it:

And then contemplated the moss on the old stone wall, because I love contemplating moss:

Up at the end of the avenue, the Pigeon thought she saw a rabbit. Did it go that way?:

Or that?

Ah, well, never mind:

Then we got back to the house, after some excellent stick-throwing, and the dogs looked like this. Visiting poodle:

Happy Pigeon:

And the hill, rather ethereal in the low light:

All about the dog

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

It’s a beautiful, sunshiny day. The Pigeon is lounging about on the lawn, refusing to come in, just as the dear old Duchess used to. I had a terrible yearn for my Duchess yesterday; it came out of nowhere. It wasn’t shouty tears, or anything overt or showy, it was just a huge tide of emotion that rose in me like a swell at sea. She was such a fine dog, and my heart still aches for her loss.

I had sat down to write some more about books, after the tremendous response from the bookish readers yesterday. I was not intending to talk about dogs at all, because you know I never do that, but since we are on the subject, a really interesting thing has happened to The Pigeon. As the regular readers will know, she was very doleful and melancholy after her sister died. She made heartbreaking little sighing noises as she lay beside me on the sofa at night. She gazed at me with baffled eyes, as if to say: where is she? It was one of those awful things where I really wished that dogs could speak English, so I could explain and be understood.

I actually thought she might give up the ghost and fade away, from grief. Then she had her awful pancreatitis, and I thought that might finish her. But it turns out she is made of stern stuff. For all her excess sweetness and gentleness, she is a tough, robust little creature.

Her groove has come back like gangbusters. She is dancing and energetic and filled with life and spirit. She bounces up and down when it is time for the morning walk, chases sticks as if she were a three year old, and canters through the woods, her tail swinging in its signature circular arc.

Her character has slightly changed. She is more confident, more settled in herself, calmer, less needy. I wonder if she were not cast slightly into the shade by her grander, more regal sister. The Duchess was not called the Duchess for nothing; she was alpha all the way. So the dear little Pidge seemed to accept her beta status, her secondary place in the pack. Now, she has her moment in the sun, and like a flower reaching for the light, she is expanding and unfurling and holding her beautiful face up to bask in the warmth.

It is why I have decided not to get a puppy. She deserves her glory years, with all the love and adoration focused on her, undiluted. Now she is the queen, and even though her innate modesty prevents her swanking about it, one can tell she is enjoying her new ermine.

 

Pictures of the day:

As you can see, almost everything is still green, but there are sudden, vivid flashes of autumn:

The Sister’s poodle, who is staying:

And, of course, the heroine of this piece:

I took these at quite the wrong time of day, with the sun high in the sky, and blazing into the camera, which is why they have come out slightly bleached and odd. But I quite like the effect, even though it is not what a professional would do.

Then we went into the dappled shade, under the Scots pines, and got a rather better shot:

I mean, really. What is there to say about a face like that?

And, the hill: