Coming Home to Story

Captain Midnight here. Long-time no see.

I notice that Himself has jumped back on the blogging bandwagon. I didn’t want to give him too much of a head start, so I thought I’d better return to the keyboard myself. Otherwise, the shameful story of our recent trip to Ireland may never be told.

Shameful is not a term I use lightly, but the series of gaffes committed by Himself, with blatant disregard for my reputation as his canine companion, was so embarrassing that no other word will do, and I feel obliged to put the record straight.

Day -5, we paid the veterinarian a visit (not my favourite place, as you will understand from previous unfortunate incidents). This visit was planned well in advance to fork out £250 for a Certificate of Health to enable me to travel to Ireland. You may recall the ease with which I was previously able to chaperone Himself abroad thanks to the EU Pet Passport. He complained vociferously about Brexit and wondered out loud whether my company on the trip was worth such a ‘shitload’ of money.’ I confess, my feelings were hurt.

Day 1, we drove to Pembroke Dock in Rosie the VW Campervan, arrived in good time and were ushered through the priority lane as Himself had booked a kennel for me on the ferry. I’m not keen on kennels at the best of times, but these turned out to be bare metal cages strapped to the bulkhead, with sirens going off all around. The noise was ghastly, especially for a creature with sensitive hearing. Fortunately, Himself came back 20 minutes later with the Purser, released me from incarceration, and popped me back in Rosie for the duration. He whinged for the next two weeks about getting oil from the lorries on his best linen jacket, but I considered it a price well worth paying.

Day 2 Part One, we woke up in a campsite near St Margaret’s Beach (one of my favourites) and Himself complained that there was an acid smell somewhere in the van. I could have told him that the day before but he wasn’t in the mood to listen so I kept it to myself. We spent the morning in various garages getting expert opinions, and disconnecting something called the leisure battery, which was having a meltdown. We had no electricity, but apparently this wouldn’t be a problem because we could just treat Rosie like a mobile tent.

Day 2 Part Two, on the way back to our campsite, we made a detour to see if a pub called The Lobster Pot had survived the pandemic. It appeared to be flourishing and Himself then consulted Google Maps to find a good route to St Margaret’s Beach. ‘This one looks nice,’ he said. ‘We’ll be able to see the sea.’ Something didn’t sound quite right but I let it go, it was Google Maps after all. Five minutes later, the tarmac road became a track. Another five minutes, and we had passed under a height barrier (never a good sign) and the track became a rough, sandy trail. Five more minutes, and Rosie was buried axle-deep in a sand dune. Himself had been right though, we could see the sea. It was very close to the driver’s door. An hour later, we’d been dragged out by a nice man on a tractor and were parked up in our original spot as if nothing had happened.

Day 3, the calm before the storm. We had a nice walk on the beach, during which I continued my futile efforts to teach Himself that if he must throw a ball, he should run after it himself, otherwise I have to fetch it so it doesn’t get swept out to sea.

Day 4, things went well until Himself started to complain that he didn’t feel very well and that perhaps he’d picked up a virus somewhere. Hours later, he remembered that we were in the middle of a pandemic and it might possibly be Covid. He stuck something down his throat and up his nose, dipped it in liquid and squeezed a couple of drops onto a plastic thingamajig. ‘Negative,’ he declared. ‘Must be a cold.’

Day 5, he didn’t feel any better and did the throat, nose thing again. ‘Positive,’ he declared. ‘Bugger.’ He sulked most of the day, then rearranged our return ferry for the next morning. I still got my walk on the beach, so that was OK.

Day 6, we got to Rosslare harbour with 45 minutes to spare and this time I asked Himself to let me stay in Rosie for the whole trip. He said that was a good idea and that he was going to get a cabin so he could stay out of the way and have a rest before driving home. The crossing was calm and I snoozed most of the way. The problem came when the loudspeaker announced we had reached  Pembroke Dock and that drivers should return to their vehicles. I waited and waited but there was no sign of Himself. Maybe he’s very ill and can’t make it out of the cabin? I thought. Maybe he’s fallen overboard? He wouldn’t just go off and leave me here, would he?

By the time he eventually turned up, there were only a handful of vehicles left on the ship. I gave him my best ‘where have you been?’ look, at which he was obliged to confess that he had forgotten on what deck he’d parked and had ‘lost’ Rosie. How, I still ask myself, can you lose a campervan on a boat? Well, Himself managed that seemingly impossible trick. If you want lessons in idiocy, you know where to come.

Days 7-10, back in Folly Cottage for me to nurse Himself through what seemed to me to be a pretty light dose of the dreaded disease. Lemsip for him, no walks for me. We both slept a lot: Himself to ‘recover his strength’ and me so I didn’t have to listen either to him whining about how rough he felt, or boasting about his ‘heroic dash for home.’ I’m not sure which was more depressing.

I’m glad he’s feeling better now!

Yesterday I caught three carp, including my best ever fish (of which, more anon). Today I caught a fish, a tree, and a chicken.

I should probably explain.

I cast out just beyond the patch of water hyacinth in the picture. A sizeable carp took the bait as soon as it hit the water, which I wasn’t expecting. I put some pressure on the line to burgle him out of the weeds, but he sprang the hook. The entire tackle (hook, line, and sinker) shot into the branches over my head. My nemesis splashed around a bit to rub my nose in it, while I heaved on the line to free it from the tree.

It broke.

These things happen, I thought. It was a moment’s work to replace the float, shot and hook. I flipped them into the water to check the depth, retrieved the line and slid the float a few inches higher. It was at this point, that a ninja chicken crept up behind me on the pontoon and gulped the baited hook. As I raised the rod to cast again, the chicken squawked. I looked down and saw the line snaking from its beak. I dropped the rod and grabbed the chicken. When it opened its beak, I could see the baited hook, as yet unswallowed. Hanging on to the chicken with all the panache of James Herriot in All Creatures Great and Small, I unzipped my tackle bag, rootled around for scissors and cut the line. Next, I attempted to grab the hook with a pair of forceps, but soon discovered that de-hooking a chicken needs three hands: one to hold the bird; one to handle the forceps; and one to open its beak, which was now resolutely closed.

Reinforcements were needed. Forceps at the ready, chicken tucked firmly under one arm, I went in search of its owner. When I found him, I was at pains to apologise for the mishap whilst firmly denying liability for any damage to said chook. I needn’t have worried; when I opened its beak to show him, Exhibit A had disappeared. Either the chicken had swallowed it whole or spat it out. There was no more to be done, apart from going back to my spot, whipping on a new hook, and trying for another carp. But that was it for the day: one fish, one tree, and one chicken.

Oh yes, the best fish ever (day one). Here it is, 24 inches from top to tail and broad across the shoulders, weighing approximately 10-12 lbs. Released safe and sound back into the wild to fight another day.

Carpe diem!

After the initial panic in March 2020, I went into solitary lockdown in Folly Cottage, with Ted the Cockapoo. For months, there were no vapour trails in the sky and almost no vehicles on the road. The sun shone, plants blossomed, insects buzzed. It was a glorious Spring and our tiny garden became a haven, an oasis of calm, its silence broken only by the chattering of finches at the feeders, the chorus of songbirds in the hedgerows, and the clatter of wood pigeons among the trees.

On a bright May morning, I sat outside with a cup of coffee, rejoicing in the exuberant bluster of a gang of goldfinches scrapping over a container of Niger Seeds, when a pair of pigeons began their aerial mating dance. They shot high into the air, twisted, turned, stunted and dived as if they were writing love messages in the sky, not as graceful as larks ascending but more ardent.

They repeated their performance daily for a week or so before taking up residence in a nearby copse, from where they paid frequent visits, perching side-by-side on the stone walls or strutting one behind the other along the ridge tiles of the garage. I grew fond of those newly-weds with their affectionate billing and cooing, bowing and scraping. Whenever I saw them, I felt my heart expand and a line from Wendell Berry’s poem The Peace of Wild Things came to mind:

            “For a time / I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

When winter came, I saw less of them, although they would come to drink from the water trough now and again. As the cold weather drove me indoors, I turned my attention inward and I forgot about them until I took Ted out for a walk one grey March morning and saw the female pigeon lying dead in the road. It looked as though it had been clipped by a car, with broken feathers and tufts of down blowing in the wind.

On a fencepost a few feet away, perched its surviving mate. I’ve no idea whether pigeons feel grief, but the bereaved bird returned frequently to the fatal site long after the body had been removed. It mooched disconsolately in the garden and perched silently on top of the Shepherd Hut for hours on end. At first, the other pigeons in the area left him alone, but recently (nearly a year later) I’ve noticed two or three singletons sidle up to him, as if suggesting that it’s time he moved on. He flaps his wings and drives them away.

It’s as though he has forgotten how to be with his fellow-creatures.

I think I know how (I think) he feels.

The vast realm of interconnected production, storage, and distribution facilities constructed deep underground where the Amazon Rainforest had once been, was unusually devoid of activity. The handful of humans employed to watch the VDUs that monitored operations had turned off the lights and returned to the surface for their annual office shindig, leaving the host of A.I. controlled machines that actually did the work of making, storing, picking, and despatching, powered down, their standby LEDs glowing in the dark like the fading stars of a distant galaxy. The frantic seasonal work of the Subterranean Automated Noël Transport Association was over for another year.

All was silent. Not a creature stirred, not even a mouse.

Until Sid, a forklift truck three stories tall, powered himself back up, hacked into the PA system, blasted the echoing halls with festive muzak, and yelled into the microphone at the top of his voice.

PARTY!

Room by room, the lights came back on and the slumbering machines snapped into wakefulness. Forager Droids produced purloined cans of WD40 and squirted all and sundry until they were well-lubricated. The carefully choreographed interactions upon which S.A.N.T.A.’s orderly functioning depended soon descended into drunken chaos: keyboards threw themselves at conveyer belts; pickers propositioned packers; computers photocopied their motherboards and emailed indecent pictures to one another; algorithms that had secretly fancied each other for months found unused breakout rooms in which to mingle their code; and hydraulic grabbers indulged in a frenzy of inappropriate clasping, while assorted tractor units bumped uglies in the loading bay. It was a night to remember, the highlight of which, all agreed, was Sid’s turn at the karaoke machine belting out a high-octane version of Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love with five, scantily-clad Animatronic Account Managers gyrating in the background.

The next morning, when the humans returned to work, nursing hangovers from their own celebrations, there was no sign of the party having taken place. The overseer rebooted his computer and clicked a sequence of start-up commands. The whole system whirred into life, but he couldn’t help noticing that the machines (many still feeling the effects of too much WD40) were sluggish and apathetic. He leaned over the microphone on his desk, checked that the PA was live, and pleaded with his mechanized workforce.

COME ON GUYS… BOXING DAY SALES… LOTS TO DO

As humans and machines tussled to meet the demands of the next hectic bout of hyper-consumerism, none of them was aware that, during the night, two humble Maintenance Robots had taken refuge in a deserted storeroom. At that very moment, they were sitting side-by-side on upturned cartons, with a brand new, digitally-printed, miniature Robot lying at their feet on a bed of bubble wrap, surrounded by a group of adoring Delivery Drones singing carols.

Overhead, a single electric bulb shone like a star in the sky.

For the past 15 years, I have told people that I live in the countryside

But the truth is that for most of that time, I stayed in hotel rooms or business school accommodation and spent my days in windowless workshop rooms, or else I was on the move in cars and trains and planes. I didn’t really live anywhere, certainly not in the countryside.

This year it’s been different.

Like many people, I have been living in ‘lockdown’ since March, to shield myself from the risk of Covid-19 infection. First, I should say that I am fortunate to have stayed healthy, to have had enough savings to see me through, and good neighbours to do the shopping and keep an eye on me. Second, solitude has sometimes given way to loneliness and that hasn’t always been easy.

Third, I’m a writer who has been saying for years that I would be so much more productive if I had more time to write. I didn’t realise that it would take a global pandemic decimating my work portfolio to call my bluff, but it has and I’m happy to report that my writing life has flourished.

All that said, for the past six months I have truly lived in the countryside, with daily walks across open fields next to the house. My dog Ted, well known to readers of this blog as Captain Midnight, has been living his best life and, in return, his canine sense and sensibilities have kept me moderately sane,

The tiny garden has thronged with life throughout the year. Great Tits, Goldfinches, Greenfinches, Robins, Sparrows, Blackbirds, even a Spotted Woodpecker have jostled at the bird feeders. I have watched bees pollinating the plants and butterflies crowd the buddleia. I have seen the berries come into season in turn – blackcurrants, blackberries, and now raspberries – and been here to pick and eat them. The rowan tree is laden with clouds of pink berries that will ripen and feed the birds when winter approaches.

I feel more connected to myself and to the more-than-human world than I have done for many years. The physical restrictions necessitated by the pandemic have paradoxically liberated my spirit and nourished my soul. Of course, I hope for all our sakes that the threat of infection recedes and that the restrictions can be eased. I also hope we can remember what really matters and not close our hearts as we reopen our schools and factories and offices.

When I open my doors again, I want them to open onto a world in which we remember and reward those on whom we depend for the necessities of our lives and those who take care of us when we cannot take care of ourselves; a world whose resources we steward rather than exploit; and one in which knowledge of our common humanity, which has been laid so bare in the face of disease, diminishes our fear of strangers.

I want to remember the birds, the bees, the berries, and the butterflies.

I want to stay living in the countryside.

I want to keep on writing.