Coming Home to Story

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.

26 October 2015

I’m staying at La Luna nel Pozzo in Puglia, Italy. It’s the theatre school, run by our dear friends Robert McNeer (above with Chris) and his wife Pia Wachter, where Chris trained and taught clowning for many years. We often came here together to play and laugh under the sun. It’s also the second stop on my long peregrination with Chris’s ashes. I’m here to join Robert, Pia and their daughter Angel to say goodbye to Chris the clown.

There’s a wonderful stone amphitheatre in the grounds that “called to me” as I walked around looking for a place to receive the container of ashes I had brought with me. Behind the open stage, is a small self-set pine tree that, according to Robert, “just appeared one day.” We decided that it was the perfect spot for Chris: up-stage and centre, in full view of the audience. Pia and Angel watched as I scraped a small pit under the tree and carefully decanted the ashes.

Robert poured libations of olive oil and wine on my hands as I mixed the ashes into the soil together with some olives, grapes and almonds grown in the garden. We topped it off with a red nose, back-filled the remaining soil and smoothed it over. Then we put on our hats and our own red noses and made our clown farewells.

We took some pictures and finally, sat side by side under the pine tree, reading poems and other words we had written for Chris. This is my poem, written an hour or two before our little ritual. In the tradition of clowning that informed our training, a rope is used to denote the boundary between on-stage and off-stage.

Exit

Farewell sweet clown, no longer bound.
Some spirit plucked you from your cage;
you crossed the rope and left the stage.

Red nose and hat you left behind
but took your laughter and your tears,
delighted grin, and madcap leers.

Now we must learn to fool alone,
for you have gone away betimes.
No duos now. Just solo mimes.

With angel wings you mirror-dance
while we on Earth your praises sound:
You are the clowning and the clowned.

Then Robert read a poem he’d written whilst walking the labyrinth at Matara in June during the celebration of Chris’s life, and Angel finished with something she had written when she’d heard that Chris was unconscious and moving toward death back in December last year.

Robert: Within you/Without you

How do you orient yourself
In a labyrinth? “Orient”. East.
But the sun can’t always be rising…

But look, here’s a single oak,
At this turning,
A rock that looks like a bear, there…

Walk with me, just a few steps.
See! A blue bench here!
And another, similar but different,

As we are, similar, but different.
Each landfall awaits our arrival,
Each leaves, at our departure.

How do you orient yourself
In a labyrinth? Only by letting
Things

Go…

Angel’s Dream: When I knew she was in a coma I dreamt about her waking up and she said hello to me. I said it’s alright you can go, and you’ll always be in my heart. And I hope I’ll see you again in my dreams. That’s how I remember Chris, always smiling, there when I need her…

In the evening, we drove out to a resort called Torre Canne to eat at Dal Moro, a fish restaurant on the coast. Chris and I had been there several times over the years. Sitting round the table, just a few yards from the sea, with Robert, Pia, and Angel,  enjoying a bottle of white wine and some locally caught sea bass, was exactly the right way to end the day. How Chris would have loved it.

Thank you Robert and Pia and Angel.

Thank you La Luna nel Pozzo.

Thank you Chris.

I rarely remember my dreams on waking, which I regret because when they do make the crossing from my unconscious to my conscious mind, they often appear like gifts: cryptic messages from the soul expressed in images and sometimes in words.

Yesterday morning (having gone to bed late the night before) waking was a slow, dream-filled process. For an hour or more I drifted in and out of sleep, walking along the shoreline that both divides and connects night and day.

The substance of my dreams sank back into my unconscious, leaving the faint memory of Chris speaking and a single phrase echoing in my mind. The words seemed to have vital significance and even as I dreamt, I searched for a way to hold on to them.

What came to me within the dream was the image of taking home a handful of pebbles from the beach, each one chosen for its glistening beauty and vibrant colour, each one representing a single word.  So often, the allure of such stones evaporates along with the film of sea water that gives them their lustre. Very occasionally however, we find treasures that survive the journey undimmed.

As I sat up in bed, I was speaking aloud the words from the dream:

“The heart of acceptance is joy”

It says somewhere in the Talmud that a dream that is not interpreted is like an unread letter, but interpreting a dream seems to me to be merely an attempt by the rational mind to impose its discipline upon the unruly soul. I am content that the meaning will be revealed (or not) by what happens if I pay attention to the message.

For now, I’m off with Ted to walk on Charmouth Beach.

The Victorian cast-iron footbridge at Kemble station is wrapped in tarpaulins and supported by scaffolding as it awaits repair over the next few months. In the meantime, according to the official notice, there’s a temporary replacement bridge at the “Country End” of the platform.

The Country End.

It’s railway-speak for whichever end of the platform is furthest from London. It’s how my uncle Tony (a long-retired Station Master) and my grandad Sid (who was an engine driver in the days of steam) would have decribed it. Passengers, by the way, are “self-loading cargo.”

Anyway, I’m very happy to be living at the Country End of life. Teddy and I can be walking in open fields within two minutes of leaving the front door and in woods within five. It gets properly dark because there are no streetlamps, so we can see the night sky in all its glory. It has wide open views and proper weather. It’s exactly what we two-leggeds and four-leggeds need for our well-being.

Kingscote is a pretty Cotswold village (though not chocolate-boxy). It’s off the main road, but apparently on a Tom-Tom rat run, with about 40 houses of which Folly Cottage is the smallest. Chris lived there for nearly 20 years and now it’s my turn to look after it for a while.

It feels strange without her, but Teddy and I will hunker down in front of the fire this winter, surrounded by her artifacts and paintings. Books will be read, food cooked, wine drunk and good friends welcomed. We’ll walk, talk and share stories. We’ll miss her terribly but we’ll be OK.

Last Friday night I drove down to Sussex for an event at Emerson College and stayed one night in a nearby hotel. By an Orwellian coincidence I was put in Room 101.The walls were paper thin and I was kept awake, as I lay in my narrow single bed,  by the muffled sounds of a couple making love in the next room. The experience heightened my sense of loss: I missed Chris’s physical presence desperately.

My body stirs with memories of you
and pleasures once upon a time we’d share,
in spring-time rapture like the leaping hare

and later under canvas, making love
on summer nights when side by side we’d lie
and chase the stars across the riven sky;

or waking in the chilly light of dawn
on autumn mornings half asleep in bed,
and of our bodies making one instead.

But now it’s winter and you are not here.
There is no comfort in your absent form,
nowhere to shelter from the coming storm.

On the night of 27/28 September there was a rare blood moon eclipse. Unusually, Ted got up in the middle of the night and asked to be let out, so I stood in the garden of Folly Cottage at 4.00am and saw the Earth’s shadow passing across the face of the moon. I woke up early the next morning with the first two lines of this poem running round my head. I made a cup of tea, sat up in bed and got to work on the rest of it.

Full is the moon and full my heart.
My soul, it sighs for thee.
For you are far away my dear,
so very far from me.

You’re in my every waking thought;
I bid you night and day.
But only in my dreams you come
and never do you stay.

Would you were here my darling girl
to share this empty bed;
I’d wrap you in my loving arms,
I’d stroke your weary head.

We’d watch the earth traverse the moon;
you’d offer me your lips,
and our embrace both sweet and long
all sorrow would eclipse.

And is this longing mine alone,
a solitary plight;
or do you also dream of me
beside you in the night?

[Photo credit: Tim Melling]

Captain Midnight here with another message for all super-dog fans.

I’ve been off the radar for a few weeks while I’ve been recuperating from a war wound. But I’m getting back into shape now and I’m raring to go. Today I got into training by chasing a hare. I could have caught it if I’d really wanted to. But it was only a practice run so I let the poor beast get away.

Himself stumbled after me over the field, puffing and panting like an old cart horse yelling: “Teddy come back.” Of course, I ignored him but I’m glad there weren’t any other super-dogs around to hear. He’s got no idea really. What an embarrassment!

As you can see from the picture, I’ve injured my tail. It happened as I single-pawedly saved the planet from a massive invasion of Zombie Cats from Mars. I’d seen most of them off but wave after wave just kept coming and eventually two or three hundred piled on top of me and began gnawing at my tail….

What?

Well, OK. That’s not strictly accurate.

I didn’t want to tell you but actually it was his fault. When we got back from France he said I was scruffy. Can you believe it? At least my hair’s still growing. He took me to the G.R.O.O.M.E.R.S.

No, I don’t know how it’s pronounced. He always spells it out.

Anyway as he left the building I was immediately captured by two operatives in white overalls who took me down to the torture chamber in the cellar. First came the water-boarding, which the operatives called S.H.A.M.P.O.O.I.N.G. Then out came the sharp instruments.

Snip. Snip. Ouch.

Tail in tatters. Blood everywhere.

I kept a stiff upper muzzle and told them nothing. Then they panicked and took me to a Field Hospital where some medic from Band of Brothers shot me full of morphine and put my tail in a sling. He smuggled me out and sent me back from the line for some well-earned R&R.

At first, they thought they might have to remove a bit of my tail but it’s healing pretty well now so there’s a good chance the bandages can come off soon and I can get back to my duties, in one piece.

Himself says I’ve been a very lucky dog.

Ha!