I nearly called this blog Sailing Blind or Lost at Sea because those titles were more resonant with my mood when I started writing this poem a few days ago. “How can I steer a true course when the compass of my heart is broken?” I thought. But something shifted in me as I dwelt with the images that arose: a fog bank; slack sails; and the sorrowful sounds of gulls and warning buoys.

During the day, I spent hours writing and re-writing the few lines of verse that follow. Gradually, I realised that I may be lost but that I’m getting ready for a change. The journey that Chris and I shared is over but my voyage is not yet done. In the midst of desolation, a sense of possibility is also arising.

In less than a week it will be a year since Chris died. I’m coming to understand that while grief is not ruled by calendrical time, there is wisdom in the old practice of mourning for a year and a day. The mortbrod she made as a memento mori still hangs in the window by the front door, but it will not stay there forever.

Perhaps a fresh breeze will spring up, blow away the fog and fill my sails once more. If it does, I’ll know where it’s coming from. Chris lived her life as creatively and joyfully as she could. She would expect nothing less from me and even now I can hear her egging me on. As I listen to her voice, my attention shifts from the past to the present and I sense the possibility that the winds of change are coming soon.

The world is shrouded in grey fog:
no line of sight; no landmarks
by which to set a course.
The only sounds are screeching gulls,
and the dismal clang-clang clang-clang
of a distant marker buoy.

The broken compass of my heart,
knowing it is useless now, calls out:
Whither shall I steer if not toward you –
my beacon and my guiding star?
Look to what is truly yours, you say.
Find your own way to the shore.

So, I’m waiting for the fog to lift
and a fresh breeze to fill my sails;
for I have untrod islands to explore
and untold tales to tell;
a few more chapters yet to write
before the book of life is done.

26 November 2015

Today is Thanksgiving Day in USA and our friends Karen and Dick have come over from New York to spend it with me in Lyme Regis. This time last year they came to England to be with Chris and me at Folly Cottage during her final days. She was struggling to get around by then, but made it to the kitchen table for a fine dinner of salt marsh lamb and roasted vegetables.

Chris always had a lively sense of gratitude for the bounty of life and she loved the whole business of Thanksgiving. It was typical of her that the last words she spoke before she slipped into unconsciousness just five days later, were “Thank you.”

One year on, and I’m pondering the many things I want to give thanks for since last time. First, of course, I thank Chris for loving me and allowing me to love and care for her until the very end. She taught me so much when we were together and she teaches me still, to live artfully and to love life.

Next, I thank my children Nicky, Jamie, Georgie and Tom and the many friends who have rallied round for the ways in which they have demonstrated that, even though Chris has gone, I am not alone. To list them all would be impossible and to exclude any would be invidious, so I shall not attempt to name them here. You know who you are and I thank you sincerely.

Star prize, of course, goes to Teddy (aka Captain Midnight) for his unremitting, unconditional, animal love especially when I’m distressed. It is truly humbling to receive the gifts of his solicitous snufflings and his bounding, canine energy. He doesn’t know that I know that he sometimes borrows my laptop to write a blog, but I forgive him this foible and happily acknowledge both his moral and his literary superiority. As one Facebook friend put it, #capmidnightrules.

This evening, Karen, Dick and I will be eating locally-caught, fresh brown trout and drinking some of Chris’s favourite white wine, a few bottles of which I found in France this summer: a 2008 Clos de Papillon from the village of Savennières in the Loire valley. When Chris and I visited the secluded vineyard together a few summers ago, she dropped her trousers and peed between the vines, “to improve the terroir.”

Maybe that’s why the wine is so good?

This is how Chris’s memorial looked during the celebration of her life in June. It looks very different now. During the high winds last weekend, a single tree 15 metres away crashed down on top of Sassy Bear. Her head and right fore-leg broke off fairly cleanly and stone carver Lucy Churchill who made the memorial is going to examine the pieces to see if the sculpture can be repaired. I’m keeping everything crossed!

It was a terrible shock to see Sassy Bear so badly damaged and it threw me into a tailspin of grief and crazy, misplaced guilt (if only I’d visited it more often, kept it cleaner, etc. etc.) as if I had somehow caused it to happen. Teddy had to work overtime to get me back on an even keel but was up to the task, as ever. Our lovely friends Miche and Flora rallied round and descended on Folly Cottage with food and wine for supper, lit the fire and generally coddled me all evening.

I’m a bit more together this morning and trying to make sense of it all. The accident seems like a bizarre echo of the night Chris had her seizure in Portugal: a sudden, catastrophic injury to the brain/head. But I don’t want to latch on to some false analogy. Maybe there is no meaning to be found, other than the fact that shit happens.

As I write, some words of WB Yeats are going round and round in my head: “For nothing can be sole or whole that has not first been rent.” I’m coming to think that a re-made Sassy Bear would be a fine testament to Chris’s determination to live and love beyond catastrophe.

In any case, I’ve cancelled everything and I’m staying at home this weekend to be close to my poor wounded girl and to remember Chris’s glorious life as well as her outrageously early death.

Captain Midnight here, moonlighting as your rural correspondent.

Before my country sports report, I should say that having been tried and condemned in the court of public opinion, himself eventually purchased a belated but delicious marrow-bone for my birthday. Thank you to all of you who petitioned to establish my entitlement to a proper present.

Now, see that fellow in the photograph? There are lots of them about at the moment, flaunting themselves in the fields and woods around Kingscote. They’re just asking to be chased and I’m only too happy to oblige. It’s a good game, though I do think the way they jump into the sky and don’t come down is cheating. They wouldn’t stand a chance on the ground!

On the whole they’re pheasant little pluckers and I like ’em.

The trouble is that lots of unpheasant, tweed-clad, human pluckers keep taking potshots at them. Bang! Bang! Lead shot flying everywhere. Smell of death in the air. It’s enough to ruin a chap’s daily walk.

If it happens nearby, I demonstrate my disapproval by tucking my tail between my legs and bolting for home, in case one of the silly sods shoots me. Himself says that pheasants taste good but it still doesn’t seem right to blast away at unarmed creatures. Apparently it’s called “sport.” Doesn’t sound very sporting to me. Give them guns too, I say. Make a fair fight of it.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind humans killing animals for food.

As long as they do it properly.

With their teeth.

Captain Midnight here.

All I can say is that he had it coming…

We had a nice walk on Charmouth Beach this afternoon. Except that himself kept chucking tennis balls, which meant that I had to do a lot of running around to make sure they didn’t get lost. Sometimes they went into the sea and I had to swim for them. He’s either a rotten shot or he does it on purpose. I think he likes to see me get wet!

Every time I brought one back to him he chucked another one. Perhaps he’s just a bit slow to catch on? We got back to the car with a full quota of balls and then we drove to Bridport where we went into a hat shop and three women made a fuss of me. Himself says I’m a babe magnet but I’ve no idea what that means.

When we got home he looked at my belly and said I had fleas. The cheek of it! The next thing I knew, I was standing in the bath tub covered in lather with the power-shower at full blast. He said it was for my own good but I didn’t like it much. I jumped out and he chased me round the flat waving a towel. That was fun.

Then he undressed (not a pretty sight, I can tell you) filled the bath with hot water and got into it. Why he’d want to do that is beyond me but he seemed happy enough. He lit a stinky-candle and lay back, eyes half-closed, with a glass of red stuff in his hand.

That’s when I used my ninja powers to sneak back into the bathroom and liberate a sock. It’s a bit of a mystery why I’m drawn to his socks. I may well be the only living creature not utterly repelled by them. I took it into the sitting room and gave it a serious nibble. I thought he’d be amused by the avant-garde new design but judging by the fuss he made he’s not got much fashion sense. In the end, I told him he and his sock had it coming for covering me in soap and turning the fire hose on me.

He called me a vandal and a sock thief.

Can you believe it?

Captain Midnight here, reporting from the trenches of domestic life at Folly Cottage. Yesterday – 5th November – was my second birthday (as you humans calculate) thus proving once and for all the superiority of the canine race. Himself was still crawling around at that age, barely house-trained, certainly not a fully-fledged superhero like me.

He’s put me in the slammer today while he goes off to London to “earn-some-money-so-we-can-both-afford-to-eat-and-you-should-really-be-grateful.” The slammer goes by the name of the Hydegate Pet Resort but I don’t suppose you’d want to go there for a holiday. He’s left his laptop behind so I thought I’d write another dispatch to while away the time (as you might imagine, there’s bugger-all else to do here).

So, I’d like to thank all the fans who celebrated my birthday last night by setting off fireworks. For future reference, they’re not exactly my cup of tea: a bit too showy and inclined to assault my super-sensitive hearing. But I appreciate the gesture.

Himself decided to celebrate by having a birthday dinner with a couple of his female friends (apparently “bitches” means something else to humans and he’s told me I mustn’t use the word). They had bio-dynamic chorizo stew with fresh spinach and wild mountain rice from Borneo, followed by home-made sorbet.

What did I have?

Dog biscuits with a “tasty topper.”

Not even a hint of sausage.

O.K. there were a few pieces of four-day old roast chicken but he made me dance for them on my hind legs, to show off to his [bitches] female friends. Then there was the birthday present. A stick with ribbon tied round it. Not a bone, a stick! The trouble they must have gone to…

Actually it was a rather nice chewy, crumbly, messy kind of stick but don’t say anything as I wouldn’t want him to think he can get away without shelling out for a bone. I shall look soulful and hurt every time he looks in my direction until he gets himself down to the butcher’s shop and does the decent thing.

He’s due to come and get me soon from my luxury (not) Hydegate penthouse suite, so I should put the laptop away now in case he catches me using it. I think he’s got issues about “the freedom of the press.”

Bye for now super-dog fans.

Captain Midnight here. You’ll be pleased to know that my tail is out of its sling and that I’m back on active service. I’ve got important duties this week because he’s got a cold (man-flu) and is feeling very sorry for himself. Sore throat, blocked-up nose. What a wimp!

My first job is to make sure he gets out of bed in the mornings which I do by threatening to pee on the floor if he doesn’t take me out. Then there’s the frequent, dewy-eyed “you’ll be alright master” look, which took years of practice and an abundance of natural talent to perfect.

I sit by his side during the day, trying to look interested while he’s being a writer. At mealtimes, I bark to remind him to feed himself when I eat. Then I drag him up to bed and sit on his head to make sure he goes to sleep before midnight.

Of course, I slip out sometimes when my superdog powers are needed elsewhere. I saunter into the garden when he’s not looking and go under the Shepherd’s Hut to my secret Captain Midnight cave. He thinks I’m burying bones but we know better, don’t we?

You may have noticed that my coat has been cut. I’d just like to say that it wasn’t my idea. I much preferred having long hair: it organised itself nicely into knots and retained the mud really well. But himself dragged me back to the G.R.O.O.M.E.R.S. on the pretext of re-visiting the scene of the tail-wounding incident and left me there for the white-coated operatives to resume their villainous games.

“Do you expect me to talk?” I asked, as they fired up the laser-clippers.

“No, Mr T. We expect you to look ridiculous,” they replied and made good on their promise.

Pussy Galore got me out of there by coughing up fur-balls to distract their attention. It was too late to avoid the clippers but I lived to fight another day. I don’t generally like creatures of the feline persuasion, but she’s an exception. Damn fine girl. We’re currently plotting the downfall of G.R.O.O.M.E.R.S.

I can’t quite work out whether himself is actually on their side or whether he sent me in undercover to destroy them.

Either way they don’t stand a chance.

Do you remember the Road Runner cartoons; how Wile E. Coyote chased his nemesis – that pesky bird – and kept on going even when he’d run out of road; how he’d end up suspended in mid-air over the canyon until he realised that there was nothing keeping him up? With that realisation, gravity caught up with him and Wile E. Coyote would plunge to the canyon floor far below.

Well, that’s rather how I feel at the moment. Since Chris fell ill in July last year, I’ve not had a single ailment. Friends, sounding surprised, have often said: “You look well.” It has surprised me too. Bereavement often brings illness its wake and I’ve been waiting and wondering if and when it would happen to me.

Last week in Italy, to bury some of Chris’s ashes at La Luna nel Pozzo, I had a few days to rest. I went to bed early, I got up late, I strolled in the late Autumn sunshine, I dozed in a hammock. And my body finally caught up with me.

After a late flight back from Bari I climbed into bed in Folly Cottage at 3.30am. By the next morning, my joints ached, I had a headache and a raging sore throat, a blood blister had sprung up on my lip and I reached for the Echinacea and the Lemsip. OK, so it’s only a cold. It’s still an insult to my over-stretched immune system.

I’ve re-arranged or cancelled everything for the next few days, turned up the heating, got the coal and logs in for the fire, and planned a menu of healthy, nourishing food. I’ve decided to look after myself. Not just while the cold runs its course, but as a way of life. Less work, more exercise and fresh air, more time to write. I owe it to myself and it’s up to me now.

The good news is that Wile E. Coyote always picked himself up and carried on after he had fallen to the canyon floor. Unfortunately, he didn’t learn from his misadventures and carried on chasing Road Runner as before. I intend to do better than that, but I’ll need to remember that old habits die hard.

Beep beep.