. . . and Dog

I realised recently that it’s been a while since I wrote about Ellie even though she’s an important part of this blog, not only because of its name, but also because she arrived to live with us at about the same time I started it.

Ellie at 10 weeks old, shortly after she came to live with us

She looked like an angel, but actually she was a devil, the most difficult of the three dogs we’ve welcomed into the family. She’s a mixture of border collie and springer spaniel, both super-intelligent, hyper-active and crazy breeds. We didn’t choose her that way but we were looking for a dog as it had been about six months since our last dog (Penny) had died and when a friend said that the sister of a colleague had an accidental litter looking for homes we decided to go and have a look.

We’d been to the rescue centre but they no longer allowed you to meet the dogs in person because they felt it was disturbing to the dogs. Instead you had to look through a folder with pictures and descriptions which meant that you chose your dog with your head not your heart and that didn’t work for us. With Penny for instance, Frog and I went to the rescue centre looking for a Staffordshire bull terrier cross but saw a lurcher with her feet on the fence looking at us and fell in love, both convinced she was asking us to take her home.

Penny, shortly before she died of a brain tumour, aged only 9. She melted our hearts from the moment we saw her.

Neither of us is however sentimental about puppies. We know how appallingly difficult they can be. (‘Worse than a child,’ says our neighbour, who’s had both.) So we didn’t ooh and ah over the outrageously pretty litter. Instead, we bonded with Ellie’s mother, a large placid spaniel who came over to inspect us and pronounced us fit to take over the care of one of her offspring (or so both Frog and I felt).

After a few months of hell with puppy Ellie, we sought professional one-to-one help. ‘She’s a control freak,’ said Leanne the trainer. ‘She’s a PhD dog, not a GCSE one.’ And I could tell she didn’t think we were up to it. Nevertheless we muddled through, refusing to admit defeat, and after about two years Ellie became just about bearable.

Ellie at one year old, still trying for upper hand at every moment of every day

Now she’s nearly ten which in dog years makes her roughly the same age as me. This is a great relief as, much as I love walking, a good two hours every day for the past nine years has played hell with one of my knees and in the last year or so I’ve been able to cut that walking down and my knee has started to recover. Soon she’ll be older than me though and I’ll be the one dragging her further than she wants to go.

She’s still a control freak however – not with us but with strangers. Unlike Frog and me, she’s very gregarious, and greets everyone she meets. She doesn’t just greet them however; she tries to make them her slave. She lets them pet her, rolling on her back to let them rub her stomach, pretending she’s submissive, but when they stop she grabs their hand in her mouth – which for obvious reasons can be a bit of a problem. She always spots the people who will fall for her wiles (usually non-dog owners). ‘Oh what a pretty dog,’ they say, catching her eye. We call them her victims. We’re contemplating buying her a harness with the words, ‘Please ignore. In training.’

Ellie in the courtyard of the Rainbow's End cafe in Glastonbury on Thursday, looking relaxed.

Oh dear, she's spotted a victim (who succumbed to Ellie's charms, as they all do) 

Another of her quirks – or should I say vices – is reverting to wolf. I have written about this and how terrifying it was. Now I can deal with it, but it still makes me jump to be ambushed by a snarling snapping creature with wild eyes. Because it happens so rarely now I forget and don’t heed the warning signs – wide open spaces, wind and Ellie getting more and more excited.

On the Somerset Levels on Thursday and Ellie a speck in the distance, wildly excited by the combination of wide open space and wind. Luckily floods forced us to turn back before she went 'wolf'.

I love her dearly of course in spite of everything, and she’s a wonderful – obedient – companion on our long wild walks. I wouldn’t be able to do them without her. She makes me feel safe, and when I sit down in some forgotten patch of woodland or on top of a hill, to meditate/affirm/visualise or just be, as I try to do every day, she sits next to me, leans into me and keeps me warm.

In a forgotten patch of woodland: Ellie turning meditative in her old(er) age, like her human companion

Sewing Bee*

I’m fighting blackness at the moment, for lots of reasons: finishing (the current draft of) The Novel and waiting for professional report on it before I can go any further; winter and this bloody rain which seems to have been going on forever; the dreaded coronavirus and the threat it brings of not being able to go out or travel; as well as the usual – the state of the environment and the state of me. And one of the ways I’m distracting myself is sewing.

I’ve always sewn, even when I was a child. I don’t remember playing with dolls but I do remember making them clothes and lining them up proudly in their new outfits. I made everything in an ancient book I found on the shelves at home called One Hundred Things a Girl can Make and every 'Blue Peter' project. Then, when I was a teenager and already way above average height as well as anorexic, I started making my own clothes and altering those few I found in the shops that vaguely fitted. And I’ve done the same ever since, in part now in reaction to Frog who’s always in the shed or garage or his music room busy on some practical project or other.

Last time Frog’s niece K came to stay she gave me a pair of her jeans. I thought she was chucking them out so I took them to pieces, intending to turn them into a bag. I’d told K about my fondness for customising clothes and keeping old clothes so as to use them to alter new ones so I wanted to show her that I was putting her old jeans to good use. Before I did so however, I emailed her to check that she was OK with my plans.

    ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I thought you could turn them into shorts for me or trim them with leather or lace.’

    Bother, I thought. Why didn’t she say that before? And what am I? Some sort of servant? Her mother?  I did feel a bit guilty though. She’d admired a green dress I was wearing in the summer and asked if I could make her one to the same pattern, but when she tried it on the shape didn’t suit her, and anyway I was busy writing so didn’t want to embark on such a long project, especially for someone else, and how I was I going to fit it to her shape when she wasn’t there? So I demurred.

The (much-faded) green dress

Perhaps, I thought now, I could turn The Jeans into a dress for her.

I have a beloved 2004 pattern that I’ve used for summer dresses many many times (including for the green dress), in many different fabrics and lengths.

I’ve made a version for a neighbour and most years I make a new version for myself.

Last year's version - in purple batik

A blue linen version I made in January this year

I’ll adapt the pattern for her, I thought. It’ll be a challenge.
    I told her of my plan and asked her for her measurements.

    ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Can we review this later? I've not been training for 2 weeks due to an injury and I didn't behave on my diet and relaxed . . . ’

    I remember the feeling well – buying/making clothes that would fit ‘when I lost weight’, wearing the same thing over and over again because it was the only thing that did fit, not having any clothes at all. (My anorexia having metamorphosed into compulsive eating.)

    Too bad, I thought. I need to do some sewing now. I’ll guess the sizing. That'll make the project even more of a challenge.

And here is the result so far. I’m pretty proud of it.

Especially the red topstitching, courtesy of my new sewing machine which replaced the 45-year-old one I had to abandon with much sorrow last year.

I plan to put the jeans’ back pockets over the bust and use the jeans’ waistband (with its loops) as a belt to cinch the loose waist of the dress (which is what didn’t suit K). All with more of the red topstitching.

And to use the skirt material to face (line) the top.

And I’ll probably put more topstitching around the neck and armholes and down the front button-panel.

I haven’t yet decided on the colour of the buttons – probably black, as red (or purple) might be a step too far.

Whether K will like it and whether it will fit her, I’ve no idea. I hope so.

* 'Bee/B' is my nickname but the title of this post is also a homage to that excellent TV programme 'The Great British Sewing Bee'. I hope they do another series.

   I wrote another post on this subject seven years ago (help!). Click here to read it. You'll also find posts by clicking on 'sewing' in the category list to the right.

A good day out: Glastonbury and the Somerset Levels

We started in Glastonbury where we had a delicious, wholesome, generously portioned and reasonably priced meal at our favourite Rainbows End Café. It’s always full of interesting people, as is the town itself which is a delightful mixture of locals and ageing hippies (in varying degrees of sanity). Everyone is friendly and no one minds what you look like and dogs are always welcome. Ellie adores the place and leads the way to the café, tail high, with the assurance of a regular. Today however because it was cold we were able to leave her in the car and have some time off.

    After lunch we wandered round the town. In summer it’s buzzing but today there was hardly anyone around, perhaps in part because of the biting wind. Two vaping locals sat outside a cafe and watched us.
    We’ve done the touristy bits such as the ruined Abbey and the Chalice Well Gardens, and climbed the Tor many times, so today we explored the shops, which are mostly New Agey, outside one of which we saw this board. I took a snap for one of Frog’s nieces who’s having a tough time at the moment, realising as I did so that all the good advice I give her is exactly what I should be telling myself . . .

I’d seen on the map a marshy area surrounded by public footpaths a few miles outside Glastonbury. There was no way they could stop us walking there with the dog, I thought, so we set off. The roads got rougher and rougher until at last we were wobbling along a track more pothole than tarmac with deep ditches either side. The sat nav lady had given up and showed us falling off the edge of the world. Next to some woods a little way off I could see an encampment of caravans. I felt as if we were venturing into a lawless, wild place. This is more like it, I thought (better than our most recent experience of walking on the Levels).

When we arrived at the parking area I’d earmarked we discovered that this was a nature reserve. What’s more, a national nature reserve. Oh dear, we thought. Will we be turned away like we were before?

When we pulled into the carpark however two women with dogs were getting out of cars and both species greeted us effusively. I rushed over to the information boards and they said nothing about dogs being banned. They didn’t even say that dogs had to be on leads. Hooray. (Having a dog on a lead means that I’m on a lead too.)

Westhay Moor National Nature Reserve

As this was our first time in the area, and because Frog had a slightly iffy foot (from wearing steel-toe-capped boots at a day learning how to lay hedges), and because the signs did ask that you kept dogs out of undergrowth and water so as not to scare wildlife, we kept to the main path.

The countryside was a mixture of pools, reeds and scrubby woodland. It had been reclaimed, the boards said, from old peat-workings and restored to what it would have been in the Stone Age. Rare creatures lived here, including otters, bitterns and Cetti’s warblers.

The day was quiet and wintry and we didn't see or hear any of the rare species listed (not that we were trying very hard) but we saw some birds (a red-beaked heron (?)*, a white egret, geese, ducks). We met only one other person and the views were lovely. I thought again of my vision last summer of joined-up reserves covering the country, so that wild nature was the norm.

We arrived at a small road, passed another enclave of what looked like people living semi-wild in caravans and then turned on to what we hoped was another footpath to take us back. We did begin to have our doubts however as it became muddier and muddier and we had to climb through a smallholding with very friendly goats. 

A smelly and noisy diesel pump spewed out water - presumably from the land to a 'drain' (drainage ditch). A white kid squeezed through the fence and followed us so Frog took it back. Luckily the route was his choice so he couldn’t complain.

Deep peaty holes (which we were careful not to fall into) appeared in the track . . .

. . . and then we arrived at this.

This was the peat-workings before restoration, we realised.

Work was obviously taking place to make banks and I wondered how any human, let alone a digger, could survive in such a morass. (Frog said that they would use wooden boards.)

Back at the carpark, vehicles were piling in and a man asked me if we'd seen the starlings, by which I presumed he meant the roosting displays. Again we were in the right place and now - unlike before - we could have stayed to watch, but we had an hour's drive home and didn't want to do it in the dark, and anyway I'd had my own private display a couple of weeks earlier.

As we drove along the road, we passed a man walking towards the reserve laden with camera equipment. That confirmed our decision. Who wants to do the same as everyone else? (Not Frog and me, anyway.)

Back home, I did some research. According to my 1980 bird book, the bittern had almost ceased to breed in Britain and Cetti’s warblers were occasional visitors. On the internet (I can't remember where) I read that large-scale restoration at Westhay started in 1990 when Fisons donated their peat-works to the Somerset Wildlife Trust, and according to Wikipedia it’s part of a 2009 scheme to create a network of reserves and join them join up, 'one of an increasing number of landscape scale conservation projects in the UK'.

How quickly nature can recover, given the chance, and how good to know that others share my vision and that it might one day come true. (It might have to.)

* A knowledgeable neighbour says this could have been a stork. Apparently a few have have turned up on the Levels of their own accord, which I find incredibly exciting.  Unfortunately ( for me) it was Frog who saw it, not me.

Winter into spring

About this time of year I start getting excited about spring and wax lyrical about things I’ve seen and heard.

    Frog however always says lugubriously, ‘False dawn. There’s plenty more winter to come.’

    ‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘You’re probably right, but that’s what spring is. Two steps forward and one step back. You have to enjoy what you can while you can.’

    A bit like life really.

    So here’s my week (and a half), good and bad.

Friday

Two days after I wrote the previous post and when I was still feeling good we went for another of our magical walks along the coast.

The sea had the translucency of recycled glass.

Ellie didn't care about that. She was more interested in tracking the movements of small mammals in the undergrowth.

Catkins jiggled in the silent woods . . .

. . . their buttery yellow echoed by toadstools hiding on an ivy-covered tree-stump.

Out in the open again, gorse flamed against the dead landscape.

Tree skeletons clung to the cliffs.

Thursday

Six days later however, winter was getting to me.
    I felt numb, inhuman. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t write – and without writing I find it hard to believe in anything.
    I sat in a field with the dog and tried to do my affirmations. I tried to list the things I had to look forward to. I shed a few tears. I prayed for help.

    On my way back I saw my first celandine of the year, nestling in a tiny patch of wood. I hadn’t been to that wood for a while as it involves a scramble down a steep bank which hurts my bad knee. I felt as if I’d been led to it, as if it was the answer to my prayer.

Saturday

On Saturday I slumped again.

    I went with Ellie to our local National Trust park and walked off piste, making my way through gates marked ‘Private’. (I'm with William and his gang of outlaws in the books by Richmal Crompton: part of the fun of walks is flouting rules.)

    I followed Ellie across a gravel ridge in the swollen river and sat on ‘my’ island, buffeted by wind, my mind as churned up as the water.

The view from 'my' island - a tiny patch of land in the middle of the river which I visit when water-levels permit

On the way back to the mainland one of my feet slipped off the gravel into deep water, soaking the inside of my boot. I squelched back to the car, avoiding a quagmire by cutting my way through thickets of brambles. (I always carry secateurs with me for just such occasions.)

    

I wondered if it was Brexit as well as winter that was bringing me down, so that evening Frog put our European flag up at half-mast. We’ve only flown it once before as we didn’t want to be divisive, but we decided that to express sorrow now was OK.

Sunday

That night I slept heavily until 5.30am when I woke with a start after an intense dream where I’d cried and told the story of my life at an inappropriate time and place (as I saw it).
    I felt like me again and after breakfast, after I’d been out to photograph the flag, I had the idea for this post.

The birds

I’ve been feeling ashamed of the previous post (‘Anger management’) and wanting to remove it, but Frog insists I keep it there. Instead therefore I’ve written this sequel.

The debris

On Monday I passed again the debris from the fencing business that’s piled on a nearby public footpath. I’ve been waiting recently to see if I could catch the man concerned and have a word with him, but I haven’t had so much as a glimpse of him, not even in one of the outsize vehicles of his that hurtle around the narrow lanes endangering Ellie and me as we walk. I’ve had enough, I thought. I’m going to report him to the council.

I decided to ring rather than filling out an online form as the behaviour didn’t fit into a ready-made category such as fly-tipping as the material's been there for ten years or so ever since the business arrived. I got through immediately. The woman I spoke to was utterly charming and professional. She took me seriously. She listened to everything I said and promised that the council would investigate, and as soon as I put the phone down I received an email acknowledgement of the call with an incident-report number.

I felt light-headed with relief. I was a real person after all. I did matter. I might even be able to have a small influence on the world. I didn't feel angry any more. I felt powerful.

The novel

It’s been a wonderful experience serialising my novel on the blog. I don’t know who you are, but I know you’re there in that I get a daily report on the number of page views and the posts that people read. Knowing that people – in quantity - are out there reading the novel has improved my writing a hundredfold and given purpose to my life. But I baulk at the thought of taking the novel further and publishing it as a book.

Do I really want to enter the commercial world? I’ve been there and I didn’t like it. I fear rejection and criticism. I don't want to be taken over by some publicity machine. I've seen (from my parents) how damaging success can be and I fear that success will spoil the life that Frog and I have together. I've seen the pressure that my sister, a successful children's novelist, is under, and I hate pressure of any kind with a vengeance. It makes me ill. (Yes, I know. I'm jumping forward a bit here.) 

But I have to take the novel further, I thought on Tuesday. I have something to say and, as yesterday’s experiences proved, I need to be heard. Or at least, for my own sanity and physical health, I need to try.

So I spent the morning preparing material for agents and sent some off. Then Frog and I went out in the car to do some errands (Frog to B&Q for wood, me to the sewing shop for thread and buttons). On the way home I started to feel sick. I thought it was Frog’s driving but when we got back the feeling didn’t go away. I had to sit down quietly for an hour or so and do the ‘trackword’ in our new Radio Times. ‘D’you think this is the result of contacting an agent?’ I asked Frog. ‘Very likely,’ he said.

The birds

The sun was setting and I hadn’t been out all day because it was the dog’s day at the dogminder. I wanted to take some photographs of the debris in case evidence was needed. In spite of how I felt I put my coat on and hurried up the field behind the house – pasture and vineyard, cared for organically.

Even the debris had its charm in the evening light.

And as I walked back down the field a huge flock of birds swished and swooped over the field in beautiful free-form waves. I wonder what they are, I thought. (I know about wildflowers, but birds are a bit of a mystery to me.) I didn’t photograph the waves: I didn’t think either my camera or I were up to it and I wanted to concentrate on watching. But then the birds went to roost in trees in the hedgerow and I managed to get some pictures. I’ll zoom in on these when I get home, I thought, and try and identify the birds.

Roosting birds. (Note the elm saplings. Soon the Dutch elm disease beetle will infect them and they'll die and resprout - like phoenixes.)

More roosting birds

The birds sat in the trees chattering. The noise was extraordinary and I had another of those moments of joy. Even in mid-winter and in spite of everything we’re doing to the environment, here was so much life.

The drain and the nature reserve

You might remember from the previous post how angry I was that the week before last Frog, Dog and I were barred from a nature reserve on the Somerset Levels that we’d hoped to visit. On that day however we did find a walk up a nearby ‘drain’ (drainage ditch) and it wasn’t at all bad.

It was a beautiful afternoon and we had the path almost to ourselves.

On the opposite bank we could see my favourite habitat, scrub.

We could even see some reserve-y bits (old peat-working pools) through the trees.

As we walked back along the road a woman stopped in a car to speak to us.

    ‘Are the starlings here tonight?’ she asked excitedly. ‘Only I do an online update, and for the last few nights they’ve been here, at the reserve.’

    We shook our heads. ‘We don’t know,’ we said. ‘We’re not allowed on the reserve.’

    Cars were piling up on the verges and crowds of people were filing through the gates of the reserve.

    I knew about the starlings on the Levels, about their breath-taking displays as they came in to roost at sunset. I knew people came from miles around to watch them and I’d always looked out for the flocks as we drove home after days out but had never seen any myself.

    ‘I wouldn’t have wanted to see the starlings like that anyway,’ I said to Frog as I stomped up the road towards the carpark. ‘I hate crowds and I never want to do what everyone else is doing. And, anyway, I don’t think we should have to drive to see nature. We shouldn't have to keep nature in 'reserves'. Nature should be there for all of us, all the time.’ (I was getting into one of my rewilding rants.)

The sign

Sitting at my computer after my walk up the field, I zoomed in on the birds and started to feel a trickle of excitement. Judging by their shape, size and colour as well as the 'murmuration' I'd heard, there was only one thing they could be.

We don’t normally see starlings where we live, but according the bird book I was reading huge flocks of foreign birds arrive from the east in winter. This was obviously what these were, brought perhaps by the cold weather. And it was only by chance that I was in the right place at the right time as normally, when I have the dog, I walk in the morning.

So I’d seen starlings after all. I’d had my own private display. 

It seemed like a sign, a reward.