Captain Midnight here: super-dog, protector of the weak, scourge of the wicked, reporting from the front line. Quite literally, as you can see in the picture of me at the BBC Media Café.

Ah yes, dahling, I am so W1A these days. Mwah, mwah.

This week, Himself had some important work to do, abroad. He slipped away one morning, before daybreak, without a sound, left no trace. Didn’t even tell me the slightest detail of his mission. Not that I mind, being left in the dark. Clearly he has an important job to do and the less that’s known about it, the better.

Mind you, I did overhear him talking to Herself in hushed tones about ‘action’, ‘research’, and ‘agents for change’ so I assume he’s gone undercover again in some capacity or other, to change the world for the better.

Naturally his departure for Europe left me in charge of matters here in the UK. To ensure I had a proper alibi, I had to take Herself with me when I went snooping – erm, ‘newsgathering’ – around the BBC today. She did okay, considering she’s new to the work.

She hung around the café for a bit, chatting to some louche types over a coffee, pretending to chat earnestly yet nonchalantly, occasionally laughing gaily as if she hadn’t a care in the world, so as to leave me free to get on with the investigative work.

There’s all sorts one can smell out! Take those cigarette butts for instance. The ones on the pavement, right next to me. What? No, no they’re not mine! They were there already. The casual passer-by pays scant attention to these sorts of clues lying around – but as a proper news-hound I can tell you: that fine nose of mine immediately put me on the scent of what’s brewing at the BBC.

Absolutely. But that’s all I can tell you. The meat of it is confidential. Top secret.

Nope: I’m staying mum till I can debrief with Himself.

Just a few more sleeps and He’ll be back…

Hello Fans.

Captain Midnight, super-dog and literary critic here.

Himself has been getting a bit classical recently, writing stories based on Homer’s Odyssey. He tells me that it’s one of the great stories: a foundational narrative of the Western canon. But what does he know? He doesn’t even understand Ancient Greek. I ask you!

Of course, I’ve read the Odyssey in the original Dactylic Hexameter. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a tragic tale about a dog named Argos. When he was a puppy, he had a human called Odysseus who went away to war and didn’t come back for 20 years. Argos was a hunting dog and when he grew up there wasn’t a wild beast in the forest who could get away from him once he was on its tracks. He fell on hard times when the household servants believed his human was dead. They kicked him out of the palace to live on the dung-heap. When Odysseus returned, Argos recognised him, wagged his tail in greeting, and then died on the spot.

That’s the whole story. Well all the important stuff, anyway.

There are hundreds more pages about Gods and Goddesses, monsters, and sea journeys etc. but who cares about those? Himself is a bit obsessed with it, but from a canine perspective, I’d say that the Odyssey is considerably overrated.

Watch this space for more insightful literary reviews.

Captain Midnight, PhD

Wednesday 10 January 2017

Back to work this week after a wonderful Christmas and a New Year break with Hedda in Dubai for a family visit. Today I am at Ashridge Business School for the start of a two-day workshop facilitated by a hugely talented group of doctoral students (ADOC5, for those who know the system).

For the opening circle, we were invited to select an image from a collection of postcard-sized pictures and speak to it. I chose the picture above: a bridge in an ornamental garden of some kind. My choice was instinctive rather than rational but I have plenty of time to think about its meaning and significance as I wait for my turn to speak.

The photograph is taken from the point of view of someone standing at one end of the bridge, but whether they are looking ahead to a bridge they are about to cross or looking back at one they have already crossed, is a matter of conjecture. Perhaps, in some way, both possibilities exist at the same time: a sort of Schrödinger’s Bridge.

As I muse on the ambiguity and complexity of this apparently simple image, it occurs to me that the now in which we live our whole lives is in constant transition; always moving from one temporal shore to the other; an infinitely repeating fractal of bridges upon bridges that constitutes at every scale (moment to moment, hour to hour, day to day, year to year, birth to death) the span of our existence. What lies on either side is a mystery: the future is unknowable; the past soon dissolves into memory and stories.

As I contemplate the image, I feel a rush of gratitude. How extraordinary it is to be alive, to have incarnated during this brief tick of the cosmic clock – the stellar age – when life in our universe is possible.

I try to explain these grand existential thoughts to the group, using hand gestures to illustrate an infinite number of bridges stacked one upon another but I can tell from their puzzled expressions that I’m not doing a very good job. I need another metaphor.

You know how it’s Turtles all the way down?

There is laughter and some people nod as they recall the old joke.

Well it’s Bridges all the way up!

1 January 2017

Yesterday evening, Hedda and I joined friends for a New Year’s Eve dinner party in Lyme Regis. After a spectacularly good meal, followed by bonfires and fireworks on the beach at midnight for those who wanted to go (we had Ted with us so stayed behind) we re-gathered for a quiet hour contemplating the old year and the new.

Looking back, we discussed the implications of Brexit and Trump and grieved the loss of so many fine creative talents in 2016. We also asked each other what had been personally important during the year and I realised that completing certain cycles in connection with mourning Chris’s death had been hugely significant.

I concluded my long peregrination with her ashes on 3 December, the second anniversary of her death. Coincidentally, I finished writing a book based on the experience of bereavement and sent it off to a publisher just before Christmas. Fundraising in her memory for Penny Brohn Cancer Care came to a close after reaching the target of £5,000, and the story that I wrote for her when she was ill in hospital was accepted for publication as a children’s book.

As all these endings were coming together, I also experienced wonderful new beginnings: meeting and falling in love with Hedda, who brings me such joy; dreaming together into a shared creative life of story and song; committing to my own life as a writer with many more stories to tell and books to write; singing with a choir for the first time in my life; and on a practical note, starting the badly-needed renovation and extension of Folly Cottage.

When it came to considering what we wanted to achieve and how we want to be in 2017 we turned to a miniature oracle, created by our host artist Hugh Dunford Wood, in the form of a branch with paper leaves each bearing an injunction. We took it in turns to pluck several leaves, sight unseen. I ended up with three:

Don’t fail your hopes
Be vulnerable
Persist

At the time, we laughed that they seemed rather morose compared with some of the more upbeat messages others had received, but they have lodged themselves firmly in my mind. Stay open to the suffering of the world, they seem to say. Work to create that for which you hope. Above all, in the year of Donald Trump, persist in your belief that love ultimately trumps fear.

On reflection, it strikes me that the injunctions of the oracle offer a way to light a candle in dark times and I decide to take them seriously as a rubric for 2017, to hold them as touchstones for right-living as I go about my life. Thank you Hugh for this gift.

Love and light to all from me and Captain Midnight.

Happy New Year!