Sunday 27 September 2020

fetch, dogs and rock n roll

 


The other week we took the dogs to a Dog Festival.



I thought it might have been a dog's version of Glastonbury with headlining bands like David Bowwowie and The Rolling Bones but it was what it said on the tin - a dogstival - no sex and rock and roll just the dogs.


Here is Noa on her first proper outing which was to the dog's festival - beautifully behaved and not pulling me along as if I were a kite or a balloon flying in the air behind her. I was impressed because normally when she sees any human or other dog she is so excited she rushes up to them, rolls over, whacks with the big heavy paw and generally causes cross faces from passers by. And Rocket who normally just barks at passers by and shows his teeth didn't do any barking what so ever. I normally blame the parents. In fact it was very well organised, no barking, no one had to wear a mask and not much else happened.


Here is Pocket agonizing over his new novel.  He's obviously given up the play writing. What's it called I asked. He yawned and gave me a look of feline disappointment. Bleak Mouse he replied. There was no point in commentating and mentioning Dickens as he takes no notice. It'll be poetry next I'll be bound - he told me he thinks Charlotte Mew is a cat.




I spent a great deal of my childhood as a horse. I'm happy to announce that I managed the transition.



Back at the wildlife hospital with the dear hedgehogs. I was given another juvenile crow last week but fortunately he'd only been caught up in a football net and was very muddy. I gave him a nice lavender bath, cleaned him up, fed him and the next day he happily flew off somewhere. 

Here is Noa with her sister Maeve. They look so alike if it wasn't for the collars I might easily have taken the wrong dog home. It was so good for Noa to meet someone else her size. Other than the horses and even at the dog festival she towers above everyone. It was also good for her not to be top dog all the time. I usually blame the parents.


Rocket has been studying the art of origami. Tomorrow I may well find a swan on the sofa.







I've put this poem up before - nearly a year ago but I wanted to show Pocket that it was unlikely that Charlotte Mew was a cat. However I dread to see what he'll come up with in next month's bog. I just hope he doesn't go into politics like the social democats. I love this poem and very pertinent for today.



The Trees are Down

—and he cried with a loud voice:
Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees—
(Revelation)

They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of the gardens.
For days there has been the grate of the saw, the swish of the branches as they fall,
The crash of the trunks, the rustle of trodden leaves,
With the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas,’ the loud common talk, the loud common laughs of the men, above it all.

I remember one evening of a long past Spring
Turning in at a gate, getting out of a cart, and finding a large dead rat in the mud of the drive.
I remember thinking: alive or dead, a rat was a god-forsaken thing,
But at least, in May, that even a rat should be alive.

The week’s work here is as good as done. There is just one bough
   On the roped bole, in the fine grey rain,
             Green and high
             And lonely against the sky.
                   (Down now!—)
             And but for that,   
             If an old dead rat
Did once, for a moment, unmake the Spring, I might never have thought of him again.

It is not for a moment the Spring is unmade to-day;
These were great trees, it was in them from root to stem:
When the men with the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas’ have carted the whole of the whispering loveliness away
Half the Spring, for me, will have gone with them.

It is going now, and my heart has been struck with the hearts of the planes;
Half my life it has beat with these, in the sun, in the rains,   
             In the March wind, the May breeze,
In the great gales that came over to them across the roofs from the great seas.
             There was only a quiet rain when they were dying;
             They must have heard the sparrows flying,   
And the small creeping creatures in the earth where they were lying—
             But I, all day, I heard an angel crying:
             ‘Hurt not the trees.’

                                   



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