Things They Don't Tell You About Dalmatians

If you are the owner of a Dalmatian, you will be well-used to hearing passing comments aimed at undermining your dog and, indirectly for having chosen such a vain canine specimen, yourself. For a start the Dal is supposed to be stupid, although nobody will ever say to your face that your dog is a retard. That only happens behind your back. Euphemisms are used, so that your Dal will be ‘not very bright’, perhaps ‘daft’, also ‘not blessed with intelligence’, or maybe ‘a little bit slow’, very often ‘particularly goofy’, sometimes ‘not really there’, naturally ‘difficult to train’ and finally ‘with a bit of a small brain’. I am sure you can add your own variations to the stupid theme; over 10+ years of Dal ownership, I’ve heard them all.


Dals in their natural habitat

Despite their supposed intellectual deficiencies, my Dals understand the following commands: sit, stand, lie down, come, go, paw. Pretty standard non-deficient dog fare there. They also understand: find!, find Richie!, let’s go for a gravy bone, where is Richie?, inside, outside, dinner, breakfast, stop, off, back, leave, what do you think you are doing!, to your bed, let's go, come ooooooon, pee, pooh, pizza, fucking hell William!. Can your dog also stand on two legs and understand the difference between inside and outside when given as a command? No? Oh.

My Dals (William especially) are so in tune with us people that they will come to the bed in the morning as soon as they hear an ‘awaken’ sound, such as a stretch, a yawn or a deep sigh. William is an absolute master champion at this. He does it at night too; if anyone is awake, chances are that William will come over and have a sniff, especially if he is considering a trip to the toilet. Catching you when you are awake makes it infinitely easier.

But that’s not all, because my Dals are also mind readers. Whenever I consider moving off the bed and surreptitiously reach the kitchen, they will be right on my back. They don’t do this if I go anywhere else, I must be thinking KITCHEN. A subtle change in my heartbeat at the thought of food followed by slight over-salivation sets them off. Your dog can’t read your mind as well? That’s odd, maybe your next one.


Alien Dal

Of course other things they don’t tell you about Dals is that they could be right in the middle of a bark-off and then sound asleep, complete with dreaming and yapping to themselves, within fifteen minutes. Victoria is a big dreamer, William is a big snorer.

The Dal rarely sulks and never holds grudges. It will always want to be right in the middle of the action, even when it looks like it’s gone away to its bed. Don’t trust a sleeping Dal; unless it is snoring, it is wide awake while keeping his eyes closed, ready to leap out of bed and rush across the house taking ornaments, tables and chairs with it whenever your thoughts of food, fridge, drink, lead or garden waft in the direction of the invisible canine satellite dish pulsating on its head.


Dals activating satellite food tracking system


Dal activating stronger satellite food tracking system


On paper, the Dal needs many miles worth of walks per week; in reality, you could end up with a Dal (or two) that barely acknowledges your departure at the front door, especially if it is wet and miserable, or warm and humid, or nippy and frosty, or anything in between. The Dal likes to rest, even when all it does is resting.


Busy Dal, only seemingly decapitated

The Dal likes to eat. A lot. Pizza and bread are favourite things, although radiator caps, stones, golf balls, hats, gloves, books and bedding are known to satisfy the appetite under the right circumstances. If you want a slim Dal, feed it very little and ensure that fridge and cupboards are shut at all times. If you want a miniature cow, feed the Dal often and lots.


Blinded Dal

The Dal is fitted with an internal biological clock that goes off every day of the year at breakfast, dinner and pee time. The Dal can be left alone around these times, but be prepared to deal with extreme situations upon your return, most notably full-venom requests spitted at you while jumping on the spot until you snap to the job. You won’t be able to talk nor think when this is happening, but that’s the price you have to pay for having left the house at the wrong sort of time.

Finally I should suggest that, if you want a companion that is reliable, constant and does what is told each and every time no exceptions, get yourself a BMW.

If you want your breakfast in bed, the slippers brought to you at the door and the paper fresh from the printers in the mornings like they show you in the movies, get yourself a butler. The added bonus to that is intact news and no dribble.


Laughing Dals

Limping

This week has gone swoosh, like weeks do sometimes. I began work on something that had to be put aside on Monday as another book needed a good purging in no time at all. I delivered it earlier today, a full day ahead of my schedule, which means I should be able to rest my back now. I find it so annoying to have to regulate what I do and how much I do it for, lest my discs will make every other single activity, no matter how insignificant, impossible. In fact, I believe not to have recovered completely from the last bout of acute pain that crushed me sometimes at the end of September. Gosh, that feels like such a long time ago.

My physical ineptitude stroke again only a month ago as I sprained a toe for no particular reason. Yes, you read that right. I was changing my trousers and hit a dog’s bed. I wouldn’t call that a cause for A&E concern but it bloody was. I soldiered on instead and this stupid toe is still sore, still swollen and still high-heel unsuitable, even though I persist, oh, how much do I persist! I limp from car to Starbee to shops back to car because I haven’t got flat shows anyway, not unless I want to go out in a pair of wooden clogs. And I don’t. I’ll tell you what, there are ridiculous people around in plastic flip-flops in November but I am not one of those. On we shall limp.

The best thing about this week so far has been this pic I took the other day:



Note how gigantic and lean I look, my shadow stretching ahead forever. That’s another fab thing about autumn and winter around these parts: the light hangs so low that you can find Dahl-esque proportions at every corner. You just have to keep your eyes peeled to the possibilities and it is easier to find stuff when you limp along instead of rushing, which often makes me wonder... why is everyone always rushing? Where are they all rushing to? The same place maybe? I don’t have anywhere to rush to and it’s the best time of my life (after the uni, of course).

Frosty

The smell of winter hadn't been in the air until this morning, when I run out with my phone for a couple of frozen garden shots. Man, how great is it to get up and find a pink sky and the light slicing low, kissing aged grass and late roses? The leaves are very nearly all on the ground and in no time at all, the whole of nature will be asleep for months. Well, I like it, as I told you many times. I like it because winter to me means regeneration and a flurry of activity, even when it all looks dark and still. In fact, I am one of those people whose bio clock ticks along with difficulty between April and August. But I needn’t worry about it now. We’re in the depths of autumn and it's just fab.

End Of Weekend

I spent the weekend doing middle-aged things. I swear, sometimes I think that I am getting prematurely middle-aged by a good twenty years. Spending a raining Saturday under the duvet, gushing over a calendar and then doing some of my crochet blanket with lots of tea by the side seems like a very decent way to while away the day.

Actually, I did have a bit of a zip around on Saturday morning as I needed a few more things for that advent calendar I want to make, but other than that, it was just down to doing nothing. Same on Sunday. I highly recommend doing nothing and if you can do nothing more often than just once, or twice a week, well then, good for you.

Ignoring Everybody

Today I found another piece of inspirational writing, although this one is hilarious too. I am reading Hugh MacLeod's very excellent Ignore Everybody, a little book about the creative process. Part of it is on Hugh's own website, and I urge you to go and take a gander, but I would like to reproduce a snippet right here, so that you don't have to scroll all the way when you're there. This is one of the truest oblique descriptions of corporate life I've ever had the pleasure to come across. Thank you Hugh; you're, once again, spot-on.

Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with com­panies that champion creativity. Nor can you bully a subordinate into becoming a genius.

Since the modern, scientifically-conceived corporation was invented in the early half of the Twentieth Century, creativity has been sacrificed in favor of forwarding the interests of the “Team Player”.

Fair enough. There was more money in doing it that way; that’s why they did it.

There’s only one problem. Team Players are not very good at creating value on their own. They are not autonomous; they need a team in order to exist.

So now corporations are awash with non-autonomous thinkers.

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

And so on.

Creating an economically viable entity where lack of original thought is handsomely rewar­ded creates a rich, fertile environment for parasites to breed. And that’s exactly what’s been happening. So now we have millions upon millions of human tapeworms thriving in the Western World, making love to their Powerpoint presentations, feasting on the creati­vity of others.

What happens to an ecology, when the parasite level reaches critical mass?

The ecology dies.

If you’re creative, if you can think independently, if you can articulate passion, if you can override the fear of being wrong, then your company needs you now more than it ever did. And now your company can no longer afford to pretend that isn’t the case.

So dust off your horn and start tooting it. Exactly.

However if you’re not paricularly creative, then you’re in real trouble. And there’s no buzz word or “new paradigm” that can help you. They may not have mentioned this in business school, but… people like watching dinosaurs die.

The Pursuit Of Being Well-Rounded

I don't often use my diary as a publicity vehicle for others' writings. Yet, when I do, I know it is because these writings are going straight into my scrapbook under the Things Worth Re-Reading heading. I have done it in the past with Twyla Tharp, Danny Gregory and others and today I am doing it with Danielle LaPorte, whom I have been following since her Style Statement days and whom I think is one of the most inspirational female entrepreneurs around. So go and read Danielle's excellent piece on being well-rounded. I nodded in appreciation and chuckled in recognition. I mean... who wouldn't?

Ticking Off

I have a love-hate relationship with lists. Part of me thinks that lists look so pretty, especially if you write them down in a spanking new notebook with a spanking new pink pen. Equally, I think that they can soon become monuments to your own ineptitude and inability to stick to a set of tasks. All in all, I think it is vastly better to get on with your stuff, rather than listing it all out (a bit like that plan thing you know...).

As per usual, there isn’t very much on my list, if not a few, very vague entries which read a bit like new year’s resolutions. Talking of which, only the other day I was reviewing my resolutions for the year 2006. At that point I wrote ‘to swear less’. Whatever possessed me to write down such a thing, I really do not know. Quite frankly, swearwords are to me what dreadlocks are to Bob Marley; a fucking-free life is too grim even to contemplate. I shan’t write that one down again.

So yeah, I was saying that there is nothing on the list, or pretty much nothing, but I should also add that today I ticked something off it, even though it wasn’t written down to begin with (are you following? This is sounding like an absurdist piece of experimental writing. If you don’t get Beckett, stop reading right now). This something is book number two, which I finished late in the afternoon and whose demise to the land of the fully edited I toasted with a bastardised Irish coffee which was really a latte with Bailey’s and Tia Maria. But that’s fine anyway.

Now I am sitting in the bedroom with my mouth watering at the smell wafting from the kitchen: parsnips, potato and carrot crispies crackling away under the grill. It’s time to be over and out.

Peculiar

It’s a fact of life that pets are a bit like little people; their quirkiness, behaviours and peculiarities mean that each single owner can associate specific qualities to family members long after their departure for Rainbow Bridge. I remember visiting someone in San Francisco years ago; her eyes filled with tears as she pointed at the faded picture of one of her dogs still stuck to the fridge door. I am telling you, that dog had departed before I was born, but his specific memory, and the melancholy associated with it, was pungent still.



My dog William is one of those particular characters, and I mean this with a capital PARTICULAR. I have never known an animal as chilled out as William. William lives in his own world, a world of which I only see glimpses sometimes, for he mostly keeps himself to himself. What I say and how I say it doesn’t matter to William one iota. When he goes out in the garden while it rains, he does his stuff as quickly as possible so that he can rush back inside to towel-dry himself against the soft sides of my duvet.

And, mind you, this happens regardless the towel-drying I give him on the back step and regardless the blast of hair-drying that I go through the trouble to administer once he is inside. Crucially, whether I say anything to him or not, and more often than not I do, and at full vocal blast to boot, William doesn’t care. He shuffles along to his bed until he thinks I am not looking and then returns with a vengeance, damp sides pressed hard against the fabric, swishing back and forth like a snake slithering someplace.

Sometimes he seems to take notice; that’s when he walks away, stops wagging his tail and looks up at me with a frown corrugating his one black eyebrow. On a few occasions I have seen a thought bubble condensing above his head, the words: ‘What was that?’ spelt out in glossy gravy bones.

Treating my bed as a bathrobe isn’t his only peculiarity, as he also likes to mess about as a general rule. Most mornings I go to the office (Starbucks) where I work for three hours straight, at which stage I up sticks and come home for lunch. Upon my return, I am greeted by sleepy eyes and wagging tails, as I reward well-behaved dogs with a treat or two. There’s nothing like returning to an immaculate home that makes you appreciate dogs that don’t like to exercise when it’s cold and/or wet and/or autumn and/or winter and/or humid and/or warm and/or hot. When I am not in they sleep. Victoria gets up to check the post; I can tell by a light scattering of spiky white hairs on the dark wooden floor in a straight line, bed-to-front door. William doesn’t move at all.

After that treat or two, I take them to the toilet. Victoria does all she needs in one go, including having a drink on the way back, while William starts off with a wee. I close the back door and return inside. By the time I’ve sat down at the computer to resume work, he is by my side, emitting low-volume sounds not unlike those of a creaking door. This continues until I say: ‘Drink?’. Ok, so he didn’t dare disturbing Victoria while she was at the bowl and I understand that he may feel safer on his own. After all, he almost lost an ear once. I go back and let him out again.

Back in the study I can hear him lapping away. By the time I’ve blocked all noise I see him passing by, oscillating right and left like a watermelon on legs. He has, once again, drank the bowl dry. At this point he places a paw on my leg, with another squeaking request. He has realised he now needs to poo. So I go back, re-open the door and take him to the garden where, on lead, else he will eat all the pears, he performs.

Back in the study I say: ‘Enough now, go and play with Victoria!’. My word is now gospel. I hear him trotting away and soon after the bark-off begins, as Victoria has taken over his bed and he doesn’t want to lay down next to her. This goes on and on and on until I can bear it; eventually I make it to the bedroom, shuffle Victoria to the opposite side of his bed (William won’t take the right side, he only takes the left) and eventually he throws himself in growling, I am not sure at who. Could be her, as she is always in the way, but it could be me too because why the fuck did it take so long to come and assist?

William is the reason why certain people, especially those who have never had dogs, make me smile when they dismiss their behaviours this way and that. You just don’t realise how much of a character animals can have (and how much of a character they can be), until you meet one with a personality bigger than your own. That’s when you become forever enslaved to your heart and that’s why your eyes go liquid even thirty years after they have departed.

In The Middle

In the middle of many things today. For a start, in the middle of Autumn, which has truly crash-landed in the back-yard, taken all the leaves off the pear tree (I swear, they were all there only yesterday) and tinged every corner in mellow light. Fabulous.



In the middle of lots of work as you can see. I must have about a ream of paper worth of editing and corrections and more reading. But this too is fabulous, beats any other work I've ever had to do ever.

In the middle of day-dreaming too, like I haven't done in ages.

In the middle of preparing a tasty soup. Parsnips, carrots, potatoes, leeks, red lentils, onions... super-thick and very easy, I really ought to give you the recipe.

In the middle of thinking about Christmas. I am going to do everything silver and white this year, with the tree in the hall instead of the lounge.

In the middle of the crochet blanket. I swear my hook was frigging smoking the other day...

In the middle of writing something completely new. A bit weird after the whole PhD thing, but exciting all the same.

Shouldn't Have Been It

Back in June I was really sad. Now I am so pissed off you cannot even imagine. And being pissed off is not a sentiment usually associated with death, is it? November went off with a watery bang (oxymoron there) which is just as well as both September and October were extraordinarily dry and bright in my neck of the woods. The September-to-February stretch is my favourite half of the year as I’ve said many times but in truth... I cannot wait for this disgusting year to go away for ever, taking disappointment, emotional upheaval and sadness with it. If only it could also take the memories... if only!