TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES

Sir,

I have it on good report that the Internet has been invaded by kittens. Their gurning faces appear on social media 20 million times a day. This electronic invasion could not have taken place without deluded human collaborators spending half their lives posting photographs of their fiendish feline friends.

One might be inclined to forgive such a habit were it kept private but many of these twisted souls then see fit to inflict these ghastly images on the rest of us on the grounds that they are (and the very word is ash in one’s mouth) – “cute.”

Having a respectable portrait of oneself with one’s dog hung in one’s club is one thing but the wanton display of these alien creatures in public is quite another. It is an affront to decent society. Those who perpetrate this calumny are to be castigated and shunned as unworthy of canine affection. As that perceptive dog-lover Ogden Nash once wrote:

“The trouble with a kitten is that eventually it becomes a cat.”

Yours faithfully, Edward Midnight, Capt. R.N.

17 December, 2016

Captain Midnight here.

OK this is a bit of a tricky one.

Technically, I’m guilty of criminal damage. At least, I would be if I were human. But – and it’s a big but – I’m a dog.

I tried explaining to Himself why I chewed a hole in his Pendleton blanket last week and (even trickier to explain) why I also chewed a hole in Herself’s favourite handmade Shetland Jumper yesterday. The conversation went something like this:

Him: “Look what you’ve done you blankety-blank, good-for-nothing, useless excuse for a mutt. You’re a bad, bad Boy!”

Me (lowering my head and looking pitiful): “But I love you.”

Him: “That’s no reason to ruin our things, is it?”

Me: “I only took a couple of small mouthfuls. How can that be “ruined”?

Him: “But they were precious and expensive. We wanted them 100% intact.”

Me: “Well, that’s just greedy! Besides, now there’s 110% of them because I’ve added an extra 10% love.”

Him: “You call that love?

Me: “Doggy-love.”

Him: “What!?”

Me: “If we dogs like something, we lick it; if we love something, we chew it. It’s pretty basic canine psychology. I love you both but you wouldn’t like it if I chewed you, so I chewed your stuff instead.”

Him: “But why holes? Couldn’t you just have given them a good suck?”

Me: “Suck? I love you both much more than that!”

Honestly, he’s so dim-witted sometimes.

Saturday 3 December 2016

Over the last 18 months, I have scattered Chris’s ashes in many parts of the world: Crete, Italy, Africa, United States, Mexico, Ireland and some special places in the UK. Today is the second anniversary of her death and time to complete my long peregrination by laying the last of her remains to rest in Kingscote, the village she called home for 20 years.

Friends come to call: Miche and Flora for breakfast; Ben Bennett our ex-neighbour for a cup of coffee; Carole and David for tea and cake. During the day, we visit Chris’s memorial and peek under Sassy Bear’s winter covers; mix some ashes into the earth beneath the stone Buddha in the garden at Folly Cottage; and place the remainder into the heart of a hollow tree in Kingscote Woods by the light of a crescent moon.

Among her ashes, deep in the soil, I bury a fire opal that I’d brought back specially from my trip to Mexico in June. It’s said that the Romans believed opals to be the most precious of all gemstones because they contain the colours of all the others and that the Bedouin used to think that they contained lightning and fell from the sky during thunderstorms. I want Chris to have some of that opaline fire to keep her warm in the cold, cold earth.

As I say farewell to her material form for the last time, I feel a deep sense of peace and satisfaction. I remember a much-loved volume of poetry by Rolf Jacobsen called The Roads Have Come To An End Now and the thought comes into my mind with a smile that though this road now is ending, the journey of my life is not yet done.

Tuesday 29 November 2016

Chris loved her work at Schumacher College. She felt at home there: nourished, appreciated, and given licence to work at the juicy edges of her practice as a facilitator and teacher. She adored the long walks along the River Dart that she took each year with her MSc students, so when I spoke recently with her dear friend and collaborator Toni Spencer, we decided to go there together to spend some time reminiscing and to put some of Chris’s ashes in the river.

While Ted chewed fallen twigs and splashed in the water, Toni and I made a fire on the bank, drank from a thermos of tea, and talked about Chris and about what was happening in our own lives. I spoke about finding new love in the midst of grief and Toni told me about her own journey of transition.

Only then did I understand why I had been called so strongly to this place. It was time to say goodbye to the woman that Chris was becoming before she died: a woman claiming her power and place in the world; painting, drawing and clowning with great gusto; writing boldly and creatively; and bringing her unique practice of artful inquiry into being.

Toni and I took it in turns to step into the Dart and release Chris’s ashes into the water. When I got back to shore, Toni pointed out a Robin that had been dancing on my abandoned jacket while I was standing in the middle of the river. It reminded me of the Robin that had made its way into Folly Cottage just after Chris died, but before I had a chance to get misty-eyed and sentimental, it defecated on a nearby stone and flew off.

Amusez-vous. Merde! clown teacher Philippe Gaulier would say to his students. Chris quoted it in her PhD thesis to stand for a “tenacious, non-sentimental insistence on life within loss that is honest, ready to risk failure, and absolutely courageous.”

It’s how Chris lived her life and it’s how I’m trying to live mine.

Captain Midnight here, reporting from the home front in Acton.

I must say that London life is very exciting. There are many new things for Himself to get his addled head around. For example: on Monday evening just after I got back from a hard day at the dog minder, Herself said:

“It’s choir night. Do you want to come?”

I thought she was talking to me so I wuffled about in a generally excited way to show that I was definitely up for a bit of a singsong. It turned out she was suggesting that Himself (he of the tin ear and eccentric vocal chords) might like to go with her to the West London Community Choir to sing some Christmas songs and carols.

There was a long pause as Himself scraped together a rather unconvicing smile.

“That would be… er… nice.”

Herself decided to take that as enthusiastic assent, picked up a bundle of sheet music, and marched us all out to the car. Before you could say Handel’s Messiah, we were inside St Peter’s Church, Notting Hill being greeted like long lost friends by lots of women he and I had never met before.

Himself looked a bit shell-shocked, though being a babe magnet myself, I’m an old hand at that sort of thing. I advised Him to stand back and let me handle the onslaught of patting and chin-chucking while he gathered his strength for what was to come.

Soon it was time to take our places. Himself turned white and clutched the sheet music (which by the way He is quite unable to read) like a drowning man holding on to a lifebelt.

“Are you a Bing or a Bowie?” the conductor asked Him.

“Er…”

“Bass or tenor?”

“Er…”

“Sit with the basses. They’ll look after you.”

Looking after Himself is really my job so I went with Him. There was much whooping and hollering to warm up and then they were off: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Brutal is the only word for it.

Plum. Plum. Plum. Plum. Plum. Fa la la. Fa la la. Plum. Fa la. Plum. Fa la.

His eyes wandered desperately over the staves searching in vain for something resembling a note while he croaked random syllables in a voice that was more Banshee than Bing or Bowie. I wagged my tail to help him find the beat but he didn’t seem to notice. When it finished, he grinned triumphantly across the room at Herself like a man who against all the odds had just survived a train wreck.

I’m glad to say that things got better when we got onto the carols, though I still don’t understand why they don’t have dogs in them. You’d think shepherds would have had dogs wouldn’t you? But apparently not. No mention of dogs anywhere near the baby Jesus.

But, I digress. As I was saying, things got better when we got onto the carols. Pretty soon Himself was belting them out and by the time we did The Twelve Days of Christmas, he was actually laughing with pleasure.

I suspect we might be going again.