Empathy

I’ve always been a sponge. I find it all too easy to understand other people’s points of view. Other people's emotions wash through me. When talking to people I put myself in their head. I see me through their eyes. I’m them talking to me, not the other way round. This has caused serious problems in my life, not least with my family, and means that I now do everything I can to avoid human contact. Human contact is painful for me. It knocks me off my perch. (Except for Frog. With Frog, for some reason, I’m OK. Just about.)   

    Last weekend is a case in point. I decided a month or so ago that as my mother is 85 and not in the best of health and that as I hadn’t seen her since November it was time to pay another visit to the South-East where she and my four siblings live. Rather than stay with any of them however in their valley village as I usually do, I booked Frog, Dog and me into a cottage high in the North Downs above. I was thinking of them as well as me – we’re quite a handful to have to stay – and they all thought it was a good idea too.

    It worked well. It was a lovely spot – in spite of dubious neighbours. Rumour has it that all the villains-made-good retire there and judging by the plethora of expensive-looking properties guarded by six-foot-high metal fencing, CCTV and outsize dogs (two of which leapt over their fence and tried to have a go at me and Ellie as we walked past*) that could well be true. I saw almost everybody in the family, some more than once, but nobody for too long, and on Saturday it snowed and Frog, Dog and I had a magical walk. (I mention that so that I can include a couple of the photographs I took.)

    Nevertheless I arrived home in my usual ragged state and it’s taken me several days of solitude to recover my equilibrium.

    Lately however, with my sixtieth birthday looming and now that I've started to apply myself to writing fiction, I’ve realised that empathy does have a point and that in fact for fiction writers it’s absolutely essential. Putting ourselves into other people’s heads is what we do. And thereby hangs another tale.

    Ellie and writing, as I’ve said before, are incompatible. She does not settle between walks when it's just her and me in the house. (When Frog's around, she's a different dog, but when Frog's around I don't usually write.) She whines, she barks, she paces, she races up and down the garden chasing cars and people on the road. And for the last month, as the dogminder reorganises her business, I’ve been dogminder-less. Ellie and I have been alone at home together for three to four days a week.

    It’s been hell.

    The problem is, I so want her to be happy. And Ellie knows that. ‘Entertain me,’ she says. ‘Feed me, walk me, play with me. Pay attention to me, not that silly old screen.’ I can feel her pulling at my life essence like a dementor.  

    ‘She’s a control freak’ said the trainer.

    ‘Shut her in her crate’ says Frog.

    But I can’t.

    Yesterday I thought I was going to have to give up writing.

    Today I’m looking for a new dogminder.

    So, even though I’ve at last found a way to make good use of empathy, I haven’t yet got to grips with its downside.
    I need the mental equivalent of six-foot-high metal fencing, CCTV and outsize dogs.


*By some extraordinary stroke of fate, the owners drew up in their 4x4 as the lead Alsatian's teeth were a foot away from my calf. They (the owners) were charming and couldn't have been more apologetic.

Tree creatures



Brontosaurus



Prawn




Baby elephant



And on the coldest day of the year so far . . .

Ploughing. I love the seagulls and the contrast in colour between the ploughed and unploughed stripes.

A lamb keeping warm. As soon as I tried to get closer it jumped off but I think the picture's worked out rather well as it is.

And just so that you don't think country life is all sweetness and light here is a dead animal (lamb?) that I discovered because Ellie was rolling on it.

And here is another dead animal (rabbit?) that Ellie is tearing to pieces and devouring.

This day two years ago I started this blog and this day two years ago I wrote about hearing the first yaffle (green woodpecker) of the year. As I walked home today I heard a yaffle in the weeping willow beside the lane, the first of the year.

Love is . . .

When I first met Frog thirty-five and a half years ago I’d renounced deep human relationships, especially those with the opposite sex. They were too complicated, too painful. My life had fallen apart because of them – or perhaps because of one in particular – and I was concentrating on putting it back together again. I wanted to get my degree and then a proper job, and live a sensible, ordered life. Meeting Frog put paid to all those plans, much to my chagrin, and I gave him a year.

    Ellie is unlike any dog we’ve had before. She doesn’t lie at my feet in a companionable doze after our walk together so that I can get on with some writing. She flops around my work-room sighing, making it perfectly obvious she’s bored, or lies up against the wheels of my chair so that I can’t move for fear of running over her, making as much of a nuisance of herself as possible so that I have to notice her. If down in the kitchen/conservatory she whines for me to join her or barks loudly out of the window at anything that moves (insects, thistledown, birds, aeroplanes, rabbits, the horses in the field opposite, cars in the lane, clouds). She won’t go out in the garden without me – not because she’s frightened but because it’s boring on her own.

    The only way to get her to relax is to shut her in her crate in the alcove under the dresser – if necessary with a towel over the front so that she’s in the dark. I feel cruel doing that for long periods so, when Ellie is at home and I want to write, my day is a constant battle. I am up and down every hour or so, walking her, taking her for trips in the car to the post office and the farm shop, taking strolls round the garden with her, playing catch-the-bouncing-ball or tug-of-war.

    Recently I’ve been leaving her with the dogminder two days a week instead of her usual one in order to have some peaceful time on my own and really get into my writing. Unfortunately The Novel (and the blog, as you may have noticed) began to gutter and die. Last Sunday I had one of the worst migraines I’ve had for a long time and on Wednesday when Ellie went to the dogminder I missed her.

    Yesterday, when Ellie was at home, I planned a day of writing but I didn’t hold out high hopes. We went through our usual restless rigmarole but because I was still feeling the effects of the migraine I wasn’t strong enough to kick against it. And suddenly I found that The Novel was taking off again. Rather than interfering, the breaks were doing good.

    This morning at breakfast I was trying to explain this to Frog.

    ‘She keeps me human,’ I said. ‘She makes me laugh and she makes me cross.’

    ‘When I’m not around to do the job you mean,’ he said.

    How I laughed.

    Love’s never how you expect, is it.

Ellie as a puppy, two and a half years ago (and Frog, of course)

Spring

What can you say about spring – about the light, the sudden warmth of the sun, the breakfast birdsong, the uncomfortable stirrings that make you want to do more with your life than eat, the fact that the ground no longer feels like a sponge and the mud doesn’t reach to the top of your wellies – that hasn’t all been said before? So perhaps I won’t say anything and simply show you these pictures of the first frogspawn that I spotted in the ditch up the lane about ten minutes ago.