how to turn your dog into a seeded loaf

Rocket is seen here considering how to save the world.

    

Now lockdown is over for a while I’ve stopped baking bread. Unfortunately I didn’t shut the cupboard door where all the bread flour is kept – spelt, wholemeal, wholemeal with seeds, white with seeds, white without seeds, rye…. And also unfortunately the cupboard is in the same room that Noa sleeps in at night.  When I came down in the morning she and the floor were covered in flour mix – all the packets had been dutifully chewed  and their contents scattered to the four corners of the room. What made it worse was that she’d gone outside in the rain and had turned herself into a pastry dog. It took a lot of clearing up and washing her down. At least she didn’t find the yeast or she might have turned into a large seeded loaf.

                    

                Here she is sitting stubbornly in the stubble. Too late for the wheat 

                  to add to her flour collection.

All the birds have gone now but there was a time when there was just one crow left. I left the door wide open so it could leave whenever it wanted but for ages it didn’t. Sometimes it would wander off outside but always returned. However one of his jackdaw friends would come back daily for a chat and a bit of grub. I’d find them sitting together. Discussing this and that. Here’s a picture of when two crows remained and the jackdaw came back the first time. So now as Autumn approaches they have all flown  off to make new lives for themselves. The jackdaw though still appears in the eucalyptus tree in the garden and chatters away. He/she can see the chimney from there and I daresay is planning a takeover come Spring to make a nest up there.

 And in the horse's stable a swallow's second brood have just hatched

 I asked Pocket how his play writing was going and he told me he was considering writing one called The Mousetrap. I said that had been written a long time ago by Agatha Christie and was still running in the West End (the butler did it.) He curled back his upper lip and said that didn't matter as he’d had one accepted already called Pocket on a Hot Tin Roof. I said don’t you mean Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams?  Exactly he sighed and did I know any actor managers because as well as penning it he thought he would star in it. You're getting too big for your boots I told him. Mmmmm - he replied - good title for my original new pantomime then - Puss in Boots.

Here are Harry and Trude having an early morning kiss.

The lilies rescued from the garden before the lily beetles could get them have cast their intoxicating smell throughout the house.

Rosa Mutabilis - an ever changing rose from red to pink to orange
 

 The Just

 

A man who cultivates his garden, as Voltaire wished.

He who is grateful for the existence of music.

He who takes pleasure in tracing an etymology.

Two workmen playing, in a café in the South, a silent game of chess.

The potter, contemplating a color and a form.

The typographer who sets this page well, though it may not please

     him.

A woman and a man, who read the last tercets of a certain canto.

He who strokes a sleeping animal.

He who justifies, or wishes to, a wrong done him.

He who is grateful for the existence of Stevenson.

He who prefers others to be right.

These people, unaware, are saving the world.

 

Jorge Luis Borges (translated by Alastair Reid), in Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Poems 

a wolf in rabbit's clothing

I told Noa that the rabbits wouldn't be fooled by the disguise but looking closely at the picture now

 I think they were her antennae homing into signals from the mother ship that landed her here.

Of course here she is looking like a normal sort of dog - all big paws and long tongue and wet nose  and wanting to eat everything from biscuits to socks to pencils and notebooks but Rocket and I are beginning to think otherwise.

 She's been trained well in all things dog so we won't suspect. Those sweet pleading loyal looking eyes, the ability to turn the back lawn into a combination of Gardener's Question Time (" what do we do with the large holes in our lawn?") to the back yard of Toys R Us. The tiger has his limbs in all four corners now, the squeeky sheep's squeek is down one of the holes, the teddy's ears are nowhere to be seen  and the blue rubber sausage dog which we affectionately call the blue penis no longer has any legs. But Rocket and I are suspicious.

He thinks if he closes his eyes it will all go away. Naturally she hasn't stopped growing and is now twice Rocket's size and no one at the puppy training classes likes her playing with their puppies because they're all the size of her head.

 Although Rocket likes biting her ears I think he secretly hopes the mother ship will come and collect her and I've seen him peering over the horizon at dusk in the hope he can see some flashing lights which are not our Lights R Us twinkling solar fairy ones strewn round the decking. He got very excited one day when he heard a sort of whirring noise and thought the ship had come for her but it turned out to be our neighbour's son's drone.

Meanwhile out on the corvid front - the other day I opened up the doors for them to fly away. The one that couldn't fly was first out and I had to catch him as he couldn't get off the ground and would not have survived the night or even the rest of the day with the cats around. The others kept sitting on the door frame and not wanting to fly out the door into the azure blue skies of freedom. Eventually three left and one remained along with the one who couldn't fly which I thought would be company for each other until the phone rang and the wildlife centre asked if I could look after two more. So now there are four which is one less than five.

Nancy my familiar doesn't often appear on the blog but here she is having entered a nunnery. I'm going to re-name her Ophelia-get-thee-to-a-nunnery.

 Pocket however - still cosying up to poor Rocket assures me he has no further dog jokes or pearls of wisdom and is having an Uncle Vanya moment and may start writing plays. I told him Cats had already been done. He turned up his nose, half closed his eyes, brisked up his whiskers and told me Cats was not a play but a mewsical.

 Some flowers are still blooming in the garden or rather in the jug

these glorious perennial sweet peas are a late arrival



This is the LAST of the Covid Poems written during lockdown. I will not be going to this particular subject again.

                                          Covid Days

On the first day the thrush sang in the philadelphus

there were no planes to dull his dulcet tones.

On the second day the television news crawled up the walls

and took up residence in the hallway carpet.

On the third day I baked bread

also on the fourth day and the tenth day

and the fifteenth day when I did not

buy toilet paper.

On the sixteenth day the phone rang

“Do you need a food box, anyone to do your shopping

pick up a prescription?”

The lone onion in the bowl had grown a shoot

and the three potatoes in the basket

were producing roots.

No need I said but thanks for asking.

On the twentieth day the dogs started howling

on the twenty second day the phones stopped ringing

on the twenty fifth day the rooks cloaked

in the air somewhere between the corn and the clouds

there were still no planes to override

the sound of their flapping wings.

On the thirtieth day someone knocked on the door

I did not answer.

tyger tyger and a murder of crows

OK the tiger's mine right?

Noa now at 16 weeks has over taken Rocket in size. Well she has to grow into those huge paws. He's hanging on by a thin thread though to maintain his position of head boy. He thinks he's the captain of the ship and it's his job to protect all of us which results in barking at any stranger and sometimes even showing a very fine set of teeth.
 Between the two of them they have made huge holes in the back lawn, taken any plant that happened to be in a pot and run off with half a loaf of bread that I had baked. That's what people do in Lockdown - they bake bread and I am no exception. Partly because I'm not doing my own shopping and can't rely on decent bread and also because I have so much TIME. And what a good job I have because a clattering of jackdaws and a murder of crows have entered my life.

Because of the virus I've not been going in to the wild life hospital to help with the hedgehogs but I have been helping with the young corvids (not covids) so when I get a phone call I go and collect whatever has fallen down a chimney, been left in the road or picked up by a cat and look after them at home. This time it all started with picking up a jackdaw an old man had found by the road - as it turned out miles from where I live but I'd probably go anywhere for a jackdaw. I drove and drove and met the old man in a layby where he got out of his car, left a box by the road and drove off. As I approached the box looking over my shoulder for police cars as that was when you couldn't go out on unnecessary journeys and they were stopping cars asking where they were going - it felt as if I had  suddenly turned into a drugs mule.  Imagine my disappointment when I opened the box and found a pigeon squab. Now I'm sorry but surely the old man knew jackdaws were black and this was pale grey and didn't even look like a bird. It had been hit by a car and although I took it back with me it did die which was sad but not that sad.
Currently back home there are two proper jackdaws and three crows and they all get on surprisingly well. Above is one of the jackdaws who can now feed himself and expertly fly up and down but not along yet.

He has struck up an endearing friendship with one of the crows and they sit next to each other on a branch in the shade tunnel and follow each other around. I've never had jackdaws and crows together and am amazed at how accepting they are of each other. I've never seen them squabble, argue or peck each other and they seem to have settled in well. Not so much a murder more of a sedate book club.

Pocket continues to adore Rocket in spite of Rocket's reticence.  Either that or he's planning on taking out the other eye.

Rocket much prefers being with Noa who at the moment  he can boss around.  They like it in the field, tearing, racing,rolling in the badger poo, snarling, barking, biting, rolling in the badger poo.......He's given up on his covid diary and suggests he'll start a cog's dog's blog. We'll have to see about that.

I said to Pocket I hope we're not going to have any more dog jokes and he turned his mouth down and brisked up his whiskers and asked me if I knew what his favourite colour was and I said no wasn't he colour blind? And he closed his green eyes and said Purrrrrrrrrrrple.

Afterwards

Love was a dog lead waiting in the porch

for the dog who was really love.

I stand at the door now and watch

the birds on the table that he

 would have scattered like confetti

across the garden.

There is a full moon tonight

and the wolf in him would have howled until

it landed in his feed bowl

and he could have snuffled it with his long nose

leaving the best bits till last.

I stride out alone across the fields in the dusk

the rabbits sitting in the waving grass

as if now I don’t exist

not running, panting, bobbing

to their burrows

but languishing in the knowledge they will

no longer be chased

like the pheasants who flapping into the sky

 whenever he passed

now remain in the safety of their shadows.

He was a dog that noticed things.

Sometimes as I lie in bed I feel

the weight of him in the crook of my knees

his legs twitching as he chases those rabbits

in his sleep

and I reach out a hand to ruffle his ears

but meet only bedclothes

crumpled like a fallen bird.

Linda Coggin

knowing noa

Noa bounced into our life

   a few days ago all the way from Yorkshire

At eleven weeks and being an Irish wolfhound she is already bigger than Rocket. I've heard a lot of people are getting puppies right now and lots of the rescue centres have actually run out of dogs.I hope someone creates a large slogan saying A PUPPY ISN'T JUST FOR LOCKDOWN.

We wonder what Pixie would have thought of Noa - she might have taken her under her wing and taught her all she knew about the finer foods in life, the best places in the house to find abandoned plates of biscuits, lunch or even Christmas dinner. How to open the fridge with your nose and how to snaffle anything on the kitchen worktop particularly if you can work with someone else to cause a distraction. Often the best things are the ones taken when someone's back is turned just for  moment. Work in tandem if you can,  one of the cats might oblige and get used to the cry of "Oh no!"  "Where's my ......... gone?" or "has anyone seen my breakfast?"

It's lucky I have so much time on my hands right now to concentrate on training and Rocket is teaching her a few tricks like which are the best plants to dig up, which are the best cushions to chew and where the best badger poo is to roll in. They indulge in a lot of bitey bitey face.

I've had so much time in lockdown that I've been recreating Dutch paintings in flower arrangements. This is before Noa arrived. I'm now spending a lot of time mopping up.

Rocket also has been taking an interest in flowers. He says gardening is the new thing.

The roses are coming into flower and are so beautiful

And here is Pocket's petal pillow. Try saying that quickly.
Have you any bon mots for this troubled time? I ask him. But he just stretches out, yawns and says how, by keeping a 2 metre distance from everything did I think he could have learnt anything of  interest though he had heard a good dog joke from the cat down the road.
What is it? I asked.
Dictum meum pactum he yawned.
Oh go on I insist.
What do you get if you cross a dog with a telephone? He shuts his eyes. I don't know I say.
A golden receiver he chortles. And I might tell a dog joke everytime you write a new post he threatens. Oh please don't I say but I can see a glint in his eye.

As well as the roses the sweet peas in the poly tunnel are doing well, lots of blooms to pick everyday. They come neatly after the tulips (see Sorbet below) which are now all over. Sadly few people get to see them whilst observing the stay inside dictum.

strangely - when you'd think I had all the time in the world to write something I have actually not written anything except for a few poems. So below is my second covid ode

Silence

In this time of silence

without the roar and screeching of traffic

and the soaring of planes in the sky

there lies the peace of nature

unbothered by our situation.

Clouds pass silently above the brown singing

of the thrush

the yellow buzz of bees

the green rustling of meadow grass.

There is a silence in our solitude

a silence in our desire to stay alive.

I hear the skylarks singing

the croaking of the overhead rooks

the balance of silence and noise

where a blade of grass can silently break through

a tarmacked path in its desire to live

as man is making his own sounds

with all this time on his hands

the bellow of his mower

the howl of his strimmer

the whine of his electric drill

Yap, yap, bleat bleat he goes

as nature prevails through the endemic,

pandemic screaming of fear

though in fear itself – there is a silence

as there is in love.

the covid years

Rocket told me he was keeping a covid diary.

                                               What does it say? I asked.

Day1. Woke up. went out. had breakfast. went to sleep, woke up, had a walk. went to sleep. had supper. went to sleep.
Day 2. Woke up. went out .........

But that's what you always do I said. What's different? He told me because I was now here all the time he couldn't do the exciting bits of his day which were digging up the lawn, chewing the cushions, digging up the plants and telling everyone that passed the gate he was a prisoner and being kept against his will.
But you can still roll in all that fox shit and badger poo and get snagged on the wire fence and have to go to the vet and eat the pig shit and chase the cyclists and nip our neighbour as she went running past. 
I didn't he said. 
You did I said.
I didn't he said.
Well let's face it there's no one else to argue with in our glorious isolation.

 It's just him and me now. (not counting the cats or the ducks)

The one bit of social excitement was when the pigs escaped from the barn. It was such a glorious site and I wished they'd all just run away before the farmer saw them, finding their own way in the world, snuffling anti-biotic free acorns in the wild and empty woods.

 Harry's social distancing too

 and Rocket said he might put this meeting into his diary and how did he spell enormous?

 By the end of all this we (oh I) there is no  we at the moment - will have a lovely garden, because if you don't go out you can stay in and weed the garden and I know how lucky we(I) are/am to have a garden in the first place.

 Pocket told me he thought it might cheer everyone up if he just posted all the bon mots he'd been telling us since July 2018. (I've had to put his sources incase he gets sued as he tells me he's going to get them published.)
"Who's going to publish them Pocket?" I asked. He muttered Furber and Furber - don't you mean Faber and Faber I asked but he'd already turned away and told me he'd signed a contract not to discuss it and he wished Rocket would stop carrying a 2 metre length stick around because it brushed his whiskers every time he ran past with it.

And wisdom is a butterfly and not a gloomy bird of prey. WB Yeats

Always be yourself unless you can be a wolf. 
Then always be a wolf. 

To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at. Monet

We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression  Confucius

Scorn pain. Either it will go away or you will." Seneca

A la recherche du temps perdu  Proust

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate." Chesterton

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." Kafka

It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak."Antoine de Saint-Exupery

When setting out on a journey, do not seek advice from those who have never left home. Rumi

Give me a small everyday event and I will make it a five act play." Gogol

Expectation is the root of all heartache." Shakespeare

write a little every day without hope and without despair." Karen Blixen

In time we hate that which we often fear. And I said Shakespeare said that. Anthony and Cleopatra Act 1 Scene 3. 

It is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar." Anais Nin

All your sorrows have been wasted on you if you have not yet learned how to be wretched," Seneca

"That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet." Emily Dickinson

There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called yesterday and the other is called tomorrow, so today is the right day to live, believe, do and mostly - live" Dalai Lama

What makes a Hero is to face simultaneously one's greatest suffering and one's highest hope. Nietzche

 The tulips are coming out now and bring such pleasure with their beauty. I have so much time that I am endlessly photographing them and putting them on Instagram. (you can follow me - writercoggin)

The poem (Time)I wrote below is an indicator as to how things are in this household during these strange times.

Stay safe dear Readers.

Time

Time to do something

time to do nothing

need I clean the house if no on can visit?

shall I wear what I like if no one can see it?

have we been living our lives

through other people’s eyes

all this time?

breathing in other people’s air

filling our lungs with

 other people’s contagion.

I might stay here until the cobwebs cover me

until the dust buries my fingers

until the household bills disintegrate

into tiny fragments of currency 

that fly into the night air 

like small bats

infecting the world with capitalism.

Only the cats and dog see and hear

the mewling of solitude.

I’ve tried involving them in my narrow life

but none are good at Scrabble.

The dog is rubbish at cards

and cheats at Monopoly.

Miaow miaow 

the cat has cried for years

shut up Nancy we used to say

but she’s telling us the end of the world is nigh

we used to say

Miaow miaow

 she goes

I’m listening to her now

this time

remembering pixie

This post is a tribute to the beautiful, kind, loving, funny and big hearted Pixie who must have heard the owl call her name.

Her heart gave in this week. It was the cry of the wild.

Pixie was born on the day our first wolfhound Jai died. A few weeks after Jai’s death I rang the Wolfhound Society just out of interest mind, to see if there had been any puppies born anywhere. They told me a litter had been born in Scotland  on the day that Jai had died. What serendipity – the possibility that the soul of the beautiful Jai had returned as one of these puppies. I rang and spoke with the wonderful(though I didn’t know that at the time) Fran Barnbrook of Bribiba Wolfhounds who agreed (but only after I had told her we were used to wolfhounds and didn’t have proper jobs) that we could come up and look at the puppies.

We spent some time thinking of what we would call her and whilst on a walk I suddenly thought of the name Pixie.

Ironic I thought.

Stupid said the girls.

I rang Fran.

“How are the puppies?” I asked.

“Och we have a wee one we’ve named Pixie.” She said.

I told her about our name.

“You’d better have her then,” she said.

                                                           she grew bigger.

I travelled up to Scotland and didn’t look at any of the other puppies as Fran handed me Pixie.

She was adorable, with a white fur heart on her chest and a white tip to the end of her long black tail like a magician’s wand. She waved that tail sprinkling star dust and magic every day of her too short life.

She lived by our side for nearly ten years, a great age for a wolfhound who normally average at around 7 years. Clearly coming from a good and healthy line of wolfhounds that Fran and Bill have bred.

 It was her big heart that gave out in the end and ironically, on the same morning that she died one of her sisters, Maisie, also died. But several of her litter still live on. Strange to think that the two pups could be born and die on the same days.

Since she's gone  our house seems so spacious without her. 
And cleaner and somewhat tidier.  But I miss those muddy pawprints across the kitchen floor, the tumbleweed of fluff under the chair leg. The smiling face and large wagging tail in the morning. Her excitement at the regulation dog chew which she guarded from Rocket, holding it between her large paws under the table. Her good advice on the scones.I miss the way she’d back out of a tight space between the sofa and the coffee table as if she were a small articulated lorry. I felt she should have had flashing lights attached to her rear end. I miss the way she’d perch just her bottom and tail on the sofa like a lady about to take afternoon tea. Which later she did.

 "I bet she eats a lot," people used to say to me. "Yes. She's eaten the sofa and turned my boots into slingback shoes." I replied.

Yesterday I left a half a pound of butter on the worktop and realised with sadness that no one was going to steal it. And who was I going to give my apple cores to? And the crusts from my toast and the bananas which had gone slightly brown that nobody but Pixie would eat.

 She’s buried in the horse’s field next to her dear old friend Beezle who is buried next to Jai.

 She leaves a huge hole in our hearts.

This is the last photo ever taken of her, five days before she died, by our friend Neila who had named her own dog Stanley Ruff. Her Stanley Ruff was the inspiration for The Missing of Stanley Ruff and Pixie will stay alive on its pages in the form of Mrs Melvyn Andrews who was based entirely on her.


RIP dear Pixie.

Mercies

by Don Paterson

She might have had months left of her dog-years,

but to be who? She'd grown light as a nest

and spent the whole day under her long ears

listening to the bad radio in her breast.

On the steel bench, knowing what was taking shape

she tried and tried to stand, as if to sign

that she was still of use, and should escape

our selection. So I turned her face to mine,

and seeing only love there - which, for all

the wolf in her, she knew as well as we did-

she lay back down and let the needle enter.

And love was surely what her eyes conceded

as her stare grew hard, and one bright aerial

quit making its report back to the centre.