Four Legs Good - Cassie and Crombie

We’d had cats, hamsters and gerbils when the children were small. What they really wanted was a dog. When the last of the gerbils passed away, the pleas began again.  It wouldn’t be a problem, after all, I was a stay-at-home mum. Well, that’s how it looked because I was home when they were. The five days a week I spent working in the infants’ school had clearly gone over their heads. A dog. A responsibility. Another family member. My husband and I thought about it.

A lot had been going on in our family. The children had been faced with both parents having serious illnesses which had turned their lives inside out and upside down for the best part of a year. I was convinced that we weren’t both going to make it – we did, there we were and here we still are. The experience changed my attitude about some things. Should I become ill again and not survive, didn’t want the children to have a lasting memory of me, a mean mother never letting them have a dog. There were conditions, discussed between ourselves before involving the children. Firstly, no puppies. We would find a rescue dog. The chosen one had to suit everybody because it would be a family pet and looked after by all. Everyone had to feel comfortable taking it out for a walk. We studied the traits and behaviours of likely breeds and decided to approach Spring Spaniel Rescue. Before going ahead, we involved the children.

We sat round the table at tea time. Everyone had a small piece of paper, placed face down. Stay with me on this, I don’t need to explain how (daft) we are sometimes. It’s just family stuff. With much giddiness between the four of us, it was time to reveal our ‘words’, starting with the children. I had the last turn. Child 1 ‘We’, Child 2 ‘Are’, Dad ‘Getting’, Mum ‘A Dog’. Delighted, excited children.

Cassie was the perfect dog for us at that time. She was an old lady of a Springer Spaniel, thought to be ten years old, taken in by Springer Spaniel Rescue after her time as a breeding bitch ceased. They couldn’t tell us much, except she had been in sad, neglectful circumstances. The rescue centre had looked after her, restored her health and ready to be rehomed, she was ours. Love was all she needed and we had an endless supply. She was too old and infirm to chase balls or do much running about, but she loved her daily walks. Four legs nearly good. We know we gave her the best we could in her twilight years. It was heart-breaking for all of us when despite the efforts of our vet and our constant care, Cassie couldn’t recover from what we believe was a stroke and we had to say goodbye.

The level of grief was enormous. No more dogs.

The ‘no more dogs’ didn’t last very long. Our son helped a friend out by having her dog stay with us for a few days. She wanted to rehome him, but unfortunately he wasn’t a dog for us. Having him around showed me what we were missing. A compromise. We couldn’t keep this dog as he was too big and strong for me to handle, but if everyone agreed, we would approach Springer Spaniel Rescue again.

Crombie joined us as if he’d always been part of our family. Four years old and full of beans, he spun me round and round in the kennels car park before leaping into the hatchback, eager to get strapped in and make the journey to his new home. Bursting with energy and always raring to go, this was a springer behaving like a springer. Cassie had paved the way, building our confidence, preparing us for Crombie. He was a perfect dog for us, as Cassie had been, but in a different way. Springers are intelligent dogs, needing lots of exercise and challenges. Crombie, trained to Kennel Club Gold standard was exceptionally good company. Our children and later, grandchildren adored him. He must have covered every blade of grass on the field close to our house every day. He learnt his way round Dumfries and Galloway, instantly recognising where he was when we turned off the main road and followed the lane to the lodges where we like to stay. He wasn’t best friends with the vet in Kirkcudbright, but he knew he needed help and was respectful. We both whimpered with seasickness on the long journey to the Isle of Barra, but soon recovered to run on the beach. Part of the family he really was and we took him everywhere. Four legs good. Old age and infirmity began to compromise him. We knew what was coming. I couldn’t face up to it until we really had no choice.

Three years on and we still miss him, but I really mean it when I say ‘No more dogs’.

I found this,

The Power of the Dog

“There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie –
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To rick your heart to a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns
Then you will find – it’s your own affair –
But, you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still)!
When the spent that answered your every mood
Is gone – whenever it goes – for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear.

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ‘em, the more we do grieve.

For when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-term loan is as bad as a long.
So why in Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?”

Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Antimatter

In the mid 1800s Michael Faraday gave public demonstrations of his experiments with electricity. It is one those great stories of science that may well be true, William Gladstone, then British Chancellor of the Exchequer, had been present at one of these demonstrations and had asked Faraday: “But after all, what use is it?” Faraday found an excellent answer: “Why, sir, there is every probability that you will soon be able to tax it.”

However, the point of those demonstrations was that the audience could actually see what was going on and the results. The chances of being able to see an experiment to demonstrate anti-matter are remote to say the least. For instance, all the anti-protons that have been created at Fermilab’s Tevatron particle accelerator add up to only 15 nanograms. Those made at CERN amount to about 1 nanogram. At DESY in Germany, approximately 2 nanograms of positrons have been produced to date. But making a whole 1 gram of antimatter would require approximately 25 million billion kilowatt-hours of energy and cost over a million billion dollars.

Now comes the bit where some sort of explanation of antimatter must be attempted. Regular matter is made up of regular atoms. Regular atoms are composed of regular subatomic particles such as protons, neutrons, and electrons. Antimatter, on the other hand, is composed of subatomic particles that have the opposite charge and spin of regular subatomic particles. For example, anti-electrons, also known as positrons, behave just like electrons, except they have a positive charge. Likewise, antiprotons have a negative charge but act like protons.

Many scientists think that in the first few moments after the Big Bang, which created the universe both matter and antimatter mixed together. If the Big Bang made equal amounts of matter and antimatter, then the two would annihilate and become energy. There would be no matter and no antimatter left, just energy. But our universe today looks like it is almost all matter and hardly any antimatter.

Physicists do not yet know for sure that equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created, and because of this, they are also wondering where the antimatter went, and if any was left over from the beginning of the universe. One explanation is that there was just a bit more matter than antimatter in the beginning, so that whatever was left over after most of the matter and antimatter annihilated into energy became the mostly-matter universe we see today. Another theory is that there is lots of antimatter on the other side of the universe. They could have formed their own antigalaxies and antisolar systems too. I’m not going to mention that their time could go backwards or gravity could be up.

So why does antimatter matter? Faraday had no idea that his experiments would lead to high speed trains or the lights at Blackpool Football Club but fundamental research aims to understand the internal arrangement of nature and is not directly related to the present-day needs of civilization. So, it may sometimes look like a futile waste of time and money, with no tangible outcome. The benefits of fundamental research are usually revealed only after many years.

Electricity may have looked like a purposeless source of amusement to a few scientists just one hundred fifty years ago. Today, it has become a solid foundation of human civilization. It is likely that the study of antimatter will also produce such results, sooner or later; its outcome impossible to predict but whatever it is, it will be taxed.

I don’t have any poems about antimatter but here’s one about Physicists.

A Lecture on Quantum Mechanics

Remember the old joke

a vet goes into the waiting room
there’s good news
and bad news
Mr Schrodinger

Standing front and centre
he can watch polite chuckles
ripple along waves of Physicists
spreading out from the lectern
at the Conference Centre

he always starts like this
something predictable
to settle them down

but there’s a problem
with that one from CERN
second seat from the left
on the fifth row
who he knows is going to challenge
a line in his equations

he’d heard her say as much
over a gin and tonic
in Planck’s Bar last night
and now he’s only looking at
that one person
and even though she’s chuckling
along with her colleagues

he knows he’s affected his own talk
and wonders if it is ethical
to arrange for her
to be back in her hotel room
and here at the same time
which might solve his problem
but not with any certainty.

(First published in Acumen, 2017)

Thanks for reading, Terry.

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Colours: Yellow

So: (which is my favourite way of starting anything) I had lots of ideas when I signed up for a guest blogging spot on the theme of Yellow. I made copious notes, in my favourite way: a bullet point list.

And then I started feeling quite poorly, overall poorly, but also involving coughing. And once I was with it enough to properly notice this, I ordered a COVID test, online. It took some time, filling in all the pages of that form, while feeling poorly, before I got to choose how I wanted to get my test. And there it was, finally, the option: have it sent to my home. So I clicked. And then very early this morning I got a message to one of the many contact details I had to give in the first form: your test will be delivered between 10:32 am and 2:32 pm by Royal Mail. So, not knowing what to expect, I got showered, dressed (not necessarily everyday achievements for me) and even had a face mask handy next to the front door in case I had to sign something or be photographed. Being prepared for all eventualities – I call that being a good OT (occupational therapist), others may call it fussy, anxious, or negative. 

And then the slim purple parcel came through the letterbox, without needing a photo, or signature, or anything. And so I thought, I want to do the swab before I eat lunch – in case it makes me feel sick. And so I unpacked the slim parcel. And started panicking. Different bits, the swab I expected and the plastic tube that the swab would go back in, plus several bags, some with print on, a pad, a sticky label, and the 22-page booklet with instructions. I don’t know what it was, I’ve got two university degrees, but the contents of that parcel made me feel like a five-year-old in a grown up physics lecture (I am not really a physics genius to put it mildly), like I am definitely too stupid to have a test for a potentially deadly disease. At that moment, I really wished I had tried to drag myself through the walk-through test centre in a Blackpool car park yesterday (why do you have to walk if it is in a car park?).

Reading the booklet, it said to swab your tonsils for 10-15 seconds. I don’t have tonsils anymore. Mine were removed when I was five or six years old, and I have no idea where they were located before that. It also says to do this with the help of a mirror and a torch, and not to touch any of the structures before you get to the back of the throat with the swab, like the tongue, teeth, gums as this would spoil the test. It also mentions that the procedure could be uncomfortable. So, if like me you start to shake when nervous, like when you want to make sure you haven’t got a potentially deadly disease, and your maths is shaky at the best of times: how many arms do you need for swab and torch and potentially mirror, while not shaking and definitely not touching anything you shouldn’t, while counting to 10 to 15 in an orderly fashion, and presumably continue breathing throughout in order not to faint/move/touch etc. You get the picture? Oh, and all this is part of a particular order of actions, all leading to the sample being sent off for analysis correctly, and timely, and all that. First you find a priority post box by searching for it online (couldn’t I have done that yesterday when I ordered the test? I could have if they had told me about it), and find out when the last collection of the day takes place, and you make sure that you or someone from your household can get the finished sample parcel to that post box at least one hour before the last collection (why? Do they come to collect the post from such an important post box up to an hour early? Again, why?), so in my area, that’s at 4 in the afternoon. If you can’t get it there before 4, you can’t do the sample that day – but of course, you need to get the sample done and sent within 48 hours of: ordering it? Receiving it? Another thing I am not sure about. I am sure though that I can’t make it to the post box, and that my husband is working flat out until 4:30 today, so he can’t take it there – except the last collection isn’t until 5, in theory, but the instructions are clear, it has to be in the box at least one hour before last collection.

As well as all that, you have to go online to let them know that you are about to do the swab, but only if you’re sure that you are going to send it off that day. So today is not that day. Today is another day of trying not to panic about the potentially deadly disease, trying to get some good sleep in case I have the disease – sleep is so important for the immune system (!) – and of not being able to do the activity that has kept me sane in the head for almost a year now, the morning walk with the dog. Lately through rain and mud, and at times beautiful sunshine and ice and a tiny bit of snow, to see the trees and the birds and the top of Blackpool Tower, last lit up like the Electric Cowboy in red-orange lights, that was yesterday morning, but feels like longer ago already. Tomorrow will be another such day, and the day after that at least, until the hopefully negative result comes through on one of the many communication channels I have provided in that first form. By then, the dog will likely have stopped speaking to me, as the garden replaces the park, and he doesn’t like the garden when it rains like it has done all day today, and there is mud, and long grass. The rain and mud and long grass in the park are clearly of a different quality, a better quality. But tomorrow my husband will help me navigate the process and the instructions and the swab itself, and at least that part will be over and done.

And so: to say a few words (!) about the colour Yellow. It’s not one of my favourite colours, in fact when I was younger, and more prone to make provocative sweeping generalising statements, especially in social situations involving other people, I would have said I hate Yellow. I don’t know if it is age, but overall, and certainly in writing, I manage to be a little more specific and nuanced these days.

Someone told me a long time ago that the combination of black and yellow were the colours of Wahnsinn (that’s German, and could be translated as madness, or insanity, or literally: delusion sense), upon looking at a picture I had painted which was abstract and black and yellow. Not being exactly a visual artist to start, that stopped me quite efficiently.

I don’t have any yellow clothes, or its cousin, orange, except for a very large fluffy scarf, which was kind of cheerful as well as warm and covering my neck very well on a cold winter’s day, for many years. I still remember which friend I got it from (just not whether she gave it willingly or if I ‘borrowed’ it).

Another experience of yellow was that I painted a picture once (before the black and yellow one), while music was playing that was scientifically developed by calculating distance and size of the planets of the solar system from our planet Earth, producing specific tone frequencies to represent each planet. This was done by musical genius Joachim-Ernst Behrendt, a German music professor, and the CD I was listening to while painting the picture, unbeknownst to me, was the sound of the Sun. The whole picture was just yellow with a bit of white and a little orange, no shapes, and I was kind of surprised at my choice of colour (this was in the days of I hate Yellow), and intrigued when the person who had put on the CD told me what it was. I have bought all the ‘Ur-töne’ (Ur = German for original, but also kind of ancient, like Urwald means ancient forest, and is the word for jungle) CDs since, but have not had such spectacular results, probably because I have to put them on myself.

For several reasons, the colour yellow, as well as being the traditional colour for the sun in children’s paintings, also has a slightly official feeling for me. That may be because in Germany, my home country, everything relating to the Deutsche Bundespost, so post boxes, vehicles and probably buildings are yellow (It even has its own shade of post-yellow in colour charts). Fluorescent yellow coats/gilets also mean ‘official’ and ‘authority’ to me, and I have to suppress the instinct to salute and then hide in case I have done something wrong, a real mix of cultural references to authority from the two countries in which I have spent so much time. I have also noticed that alarm lights are often yellow/orange. The only ones that make me happy are those on the gritting vehicles out in winter because of snow and ice, more on that subject another time.

I should not forget to mention yellow as the colour of spring for me. Just after white (snowdrops, daisies) and of course green (leaves and shoots on everything), the yellow flowers of Ranunculus ficaria, also known as Lesser Celandine or Pilewort carpet the woodland floors, and banks of streams, and stays for quite some time. And dandelion flowers (Taraxacum officinale), these early food sources for still-drowsy bumblebees, in such numbers wherever they haven’t been poisoned into extinction. Those are the flowers in the park and in my garden that tell me spring has arrived.

One variation of the colour yellow – gold – has a positive feel for me. After not feeling very proudly German for many years, some of them spent here in England, I kind of like the Schwarz-Rot-Gold (Black-red-gold) colour combination of the German national flag now. Gold has also served me well as a comforting as well as energising colour in meditations and that kind of thing. And with that I give you, finally, the poem at the end of this long blog, it’s called Energy. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts about what you’ve read here. And, although I feel a certain tug to apologise for the length, and off-topic-ness of the first part, I will resist, in case it helps someone else navigate this one bit of these difficult times, I know it would have done that for me. 

Energy

Roots growing into the Earth
Through soles and toes and heel,
Drawing up golden warmth
Floating up the feet, knees, legs,
Saturating the belly,
Travelling up towards the heart;

Then: silver sparkling starlight streaming
Through crown,
And head and throat,
Meeting the gold waiting by the heart
Spiralling, starting slowly, together
Beginning to mingle
Until nebulae of gold with silver flecks are
Swirling through the chest
Growing vaster, whirling, spinning
In ever increasing circles
Until all of me, and then some,
Is swathed and rocked in light.

Angela McG January 2021 

Thank you for reading.

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Wind Farms - Illness and Holidays

There’s nothing like some morning sunshine and a glimpse of blue sky to raise my spirits and wake up some dormant energy. At least, enough energy to leave the warmth of the sick-bed and wander downstairs to flop, exhausted, on to the comforts of the rocking chair in the window, next to the radiator.  From here I can spend an hour or so pondering over what to do next and grumbling about why Radio 2 is playing so much ‘music’ more suited to Radio 1 or is it me? I suspect it is the choices of the chirpy young lady DJ covering for someone. I think I’m starting to feel better.

The last couple of weeks have passed me by as I have drifted from one illness to another, or perhaps it is different stages of the same thing. ‘Flu, pain, dizziness, rash, fatigue, blurred vision…I’ve got it or just had it and it might come back. Any medics reading this feel free to diagnose and tell me how much longer I need to rest.

During my alert moments,  I’ve really got into ‘Peaky Blinders’, something I’d promised myself was too good to miss and I’d never seen it. I’m making up for it now, but not last thing at night, bad dreams. And while I’m wide awake and can literally focus, I’ve been trying to plan a holiday for the summer and possibly a little Spring break.

We’ll be off to Scotland, of course, but other places are very worthy of a visit and a short break somewhere closer would be nice. I’ve looked at so many cottages, shepherd huts, lodges and hidden B&Bs that they are all lining up to greet me as soon as I check emails or social media. One thing that struck the cynical side of me, as I fell in love with unspoilt countryside landscapes used to advertise the properties, was, what if the lovely view isn’t real? What if there’s an army of wind turbines in the way? I’m probably over-thinking and over-worrying as I’m prone to do, but our chosen place for a summer holiday is North East Scotland and the Orkney Isles. Lots of wind farm dots on the map, but not a single blade or paddle on any promo photos. I’ll have to let you know. I understand the green energy bit, but I still think they are ugly things that spoil the countryside and it’s a shame they can’t be built from something transparent or less noticeable, if we’ve got to have them at all.

Well, wind farms or no wind farms, I expect to go back to work in a few days, after a few more episodes of ‘Peaky Blinders’ can set me up to face the outside world.

 

I found the perfect poem.

 

Windfarms by Malcolm Mackellar

 

I too, love a sunburnt country, And I love its sweeping plains. I can tolerate our years of drought, And our destructive flooding rains, But I hate the sight of wind farms, That in our rural lands abound. I hate their jerking, twitching arms, And their swishing, hissing sound. I hate the way they blight our view, Of our once proud fertile soil. I hate their ghastly ghostly hue, Where farmers used to toil. I hate the endless sleepless nights, And the headaches that they bring. I hate the ugly metal sites, Which used to bloom in spring. And instead of trees and fields and flowers, And clear blue open sky, We see slicing blades and tall white towers, Where eagles used to fly. So take these monstrous things somewhere, And build them far away, Where our deserts have more room to share, And the wind blows every day.

 Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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One Christmas Poem

Good evening all, 

This week we've been looking at numbers and feeling all festive. Not all of you? Well I have. Yesterday I rewrote the twelve days of Christmas with Lara (available on the DGPS facebook wall I think) and today, in the same- ooh, I'll make a poem mindset- I've created another one for you all. I feel it is equally cynical, as all Christmas poems should be so without further adieu, here it is. 

Christmas Poem #2

Whilst bankers guard their pots by night

all brimming full of gold

The rest of us are set to watch

on telly, in the cold.

For times like these have been a squeeze

both up and down the land

I don't suppose that Davey knows

He's been out to Helmand.

In quick like Santa, he whistlestopped

and gave a half arsed speech

Something about the job being done

no 'fight them on the beach'!

But jobs are up the figures say

look at this aggregate

Erm, Davey boy, there's more people

your sack is full of shit. 

So this Christmas I'd like to ask

just like the one before

If Cameron, dressed as fat St Nick

would stop by my front door.

I'll help him with his list for coal

add on a million more

I'm sure there'll be no greater gift

than Dave helping the poor.

Thanks for reading, and merry Christmas to you all. 

S.

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