Penny

Our last dog Penny, the one before Ellie and our second dog, was a dear soul, a rescue animal with whom both Frog and I fell instantly in love when we went to the rescue centre to find a new companion. We both had the feeling that she was talking to us, asking us to take her home.

 

Penny, the rescue dog

She'd obviously had a troubled life and to start with whenever we left her alone used either to wreck the place (scratching all the doors and windows) or tear the catflap off the door, chew round the hole, squeeze out and charge off down the road looking for us - or, on one memorable occasion, climb on to Frog's car and walk all over it leaving scratch marks. 'The little sod,' he said. He loved her really.
    After a year however, with us gradually increasing the time we left her alone or using tricks designed to reduce the stress for her such as pretending to go and then coming back immediately, she settled down, her only vice chasing deer - well, she was a lurcher (part greyhound).

    The rescue centre thought she was about three years old when we got her but they didn't really know. We thought she was younger than that. One day after she'd been living with us for six years she and I had just returned from a walk when she started pacing and panting, obviously extremely agitated and not well at all. I rushed her to the vet 15 minutes’ drive away on to whose floor she proceeded to vomit vast quantities of blue slug pellets.
    A couple of days later, after the vet had done what she needed to do (I can’t quite remember what - stomach pumping? feeding her charcoal?) we were able to take her home, apparently cured. But she was never the same again.

    She seemed to become more and more tired, not enjoying her walks, not even getting up to greet us in the morning, and then a few months after the poisoning she started to have fits.

    ‘I think this is it,’ said the vet. 'There's nothing we can do except operate on her brain and that would be traumatic for her.'

    We brought her body home and even though it was dark and 10 o’clock at night Frog started to dig her grave: it was his way of working through the grief. As he sweated and laboured, and Penny's body lay on the grass, I looked over to the western horizon and saw a shooting star. I knew it was a sign, and the next day there was another sign when a cloud of sweetness hovered above her grave. 

Because of the large quantity of slug pellets that Penny had managed to ingest, Frog suggested that someone had laced some bait (a dead rabbit?) in order to kill perhaps badgers. A horrible thought and one that's possibly not legal so (with the encouragement of the vet who had seen several poisoned dogs around that time) I reported the incident to the police. Unbelievably, it is legal – with certain provisos - for farmers to spread slug pellets on their fields. Which is what - to my horror - has happened here recently, with three nearby fields around which I walk most days (with the farmer's permission for which I am grateful) so treated.

  

Blue slug pellets scattered over a field next to our house. With the recent rain most of them have now sunk into the mud which is why they are quite widely spaced in the picture. Whether this is better or worse for wildlife I don't know.

    

The day after I first saw the slug pellets, I found in the middle of another nearby field a dead buzzard. I didn't touch the bird (and could hardly bear to photograph it) but it didn't appear to have any wounds or reason for its sudden death - and you don't usually see dead wild creatures out in the open. I wondered whether there was a connection between the bird and the slug pellets.

The dead buzzard I found

I wanted to do something, so Frog (who works as a technician in the sciences department of our local university) told me about the Predatory Bird Monitoring Scheme which studies environmental pollutants in birds of prey. Yes they were interested in my buzzard, but they didn't want it if it was full of maggots. Unfortunately when we went back this morning, it was (and, no, I couldn't quite bring myself to photograph the maggots).

So, why am I telling you all this? I suppose I wanted to give you a more accurate picture of life in the country. Yes, we have lovely views, space, silence and clean air, but we also have death and destruction, just like anywhere else.

A writer's life in rural Devon

To call myself a writer seems both pretentious and limiting.

    I have written books and articles in the past and I hope to do so in the future. I have earned money from my writing but not for several years. Sometimes I have what I think is a good idea and do a post for this blog; at other times, I neglect the blog for days, if not weeks, if not years.

    While writing perhaps occupies a lot of my thoughts it doesn’t at the moment occupy a lot of my time. I spend a lot of time doing other things – dogwalking, tending my veg garden, doing the accounts and admin for me and Frog as well as all the other jobs necessary to keep house and self going (with Frog’s help of course).

    I suppose the answer is that writing is my core. Writing is probably what excites me most, what gives me the most satisfaction, what gives me faith in a higher world. And, as Frog says, writing is an affliction not an occupation. To call myself a writer explains – and maybe excuses - all those quirks of my character that make me feel a bit of a freak, such as my need for only the minutest amounts of input (people, activity, sensory stimulation) but large amounts of processing (ie I like spending a lot of time sitting on the hill with the dog looking at the view). Or perhaps that’s just my age.

    All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I’ve changed the subheading of the blog (from 'Walking and writing - mostly' to 'A writer's life in rural Devon'). If you’ve a better idea as to what this blog’s about, do let me know.

On the hill above the house: one of rural Devon's many lovely views

A new and slightly less imperfect way to be

Every day I think about my parents and the debacle around my marriage. (See 'Not that simple' for a brief explanation.)

I should have been more confident. I should have been more loving. I shouldn’t have cared so much. I should have cut myself off from them. I shouldn’t have cut myself off from them. I should have tried harder to be reconciled. I should have replied to the criticism in their letters. I shouldn’t have read them at all. I should have got married first and then told them. (I never of course considered not marrying Frog. That would have been suicide.)

My relationship with my parents poisoned all my relationships – with myself, with the rest of my family, with friends, with Frog. It's probably a large part of the reason we never wanted children. I’ve written a memoir about the events, and a novel. I’ve had several years of counselling and hypnotherapy. I feel as if I’ve been dragging a heavy load for most of my life.

Now my parents are dead, and I’ve still not solved the problem. There’s only one answer left: I have to let it all go.

Jung, I believe, said that he never actually cured his patients. He simply helped them to leave behind their difficulties and move on. There was no perfect way to deal with the situation. I did my best at the time. All I can hope now is to find a new and slightly less imperfect way to be.

Frog and I married 39 years ago on a beautiful early September day. As Frog ever the optimist said, because my parents didn't want to be involved we were able to do it in our own way – in the Devon village where he’d been living, with a couple of friends and a handful of family members. My lovely brother J gave me away and Richard, the landlord of Frog’s local pub, was best man. We went to Richard's pub afterwards for a meal.

During the six months between April and September when my parents tried to stop me marrying, I feared that they would kidnap me and try to ‘reverse brainwash’ me as parents were doing to their children caught up in so-called cults. Now we were married, and I was safe. Finally, I had the law and the establishment on my side.

I could, and can, start again.

An anniversary walk by the sea on Saturday. (The strange shape in the hedge on the left is Frog with a bag on his back, investigating a cattle trough.)

Just married: walking away from the church together*

 * Sorry about the strange colour of this photograph - it is very old

 

All last week

All last week throughout the daylight hours and sometimes beyond, the harvesters thundered round the fields, cutting and removing the grain while the weather was dry, and leaving behind neat lines of straw. Then came the balers, in some mysterious way able to gather up the straw and turn it into rectangles and rounds, the bales plopping from their behinds like eggs from a chicken.

I love bales. They're like sculptures.

On Sunday the swallows started gathering in their hundreds on the wires. All afternoon they swept over the garden, snapping up the insects, pausing only to perch and twitter excitedly on our roof.

And now they're gone.