cogsmogsblog

Nancy my Familiar and Pocket the Author have decided they want this to be called a mog's blog. I have reluctantly agreed as Rocket or was it Beezle had his own cog's dog's blog a while back. We agreed it could have pictures of birds on (I said no to the little mice)

Above are the four adorable swallow babies in the stable. Their parents or relations come back every year and produce a brood. What I didn't know until I watched them closely was that when they fledge they return continuously to the nest. They go on flying expeditions and then when tired come back. They've been doing this for a week now. They are probably consulting a map of how to get to Africa which must be taped inside the bottom of the nest.

The birds in my shade tunnel are doing the same thing. Above is the crow with the white feathers looking like a magpie. There are now three jackdaws and two crows - all other birds have departed. BUT I left the doors open when the time was right last week and one of the other crows and the three jackdaws flew out. I had to encourage them and eventually they soared off into the trees. After a while I heard a plaintive crying from the smallest jackdaw who was sheltering in the hedge so I picked him up and popped him back in with the other two crows who I had moved from their inside houses to the shade tunnel. I shut the door and said good night. In the morning there were two jackdaws sitting on the branch. I shut the door and went away to bring back a bird table and when I returned there were all three jackdaws looking very pleased with themselves in a line on the branch. This has been going on for a week now. I leave the door open for all and sundry to fly away, shut the door at night for fear of predators and in the morning the jackdaws have squeezed in under the door because they can and I offer a very good buffet.

I am chief corvid woman at the wildlife hospital now and most weeks come back with one in a box which eventually finds freedom. Like Wendell Berry's beautiful poem the Peace of Wild Things, I find a wonderful tranquility when despair for the world grows in me, just sitting in the shade tunnel with the door open being with the birds. As he would say they do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

Pocket says he's fed up with writing best sellers. "Works of Art are an infinite loneliness" he said "Rilke?" I said. He scratched his ear and told me he is going to become a diversity reader. 

.He's going to read all the books that have cats in them to make sure they are saying the right things, feeling the right things and behaving in a manner appropriate to cats. The authors, he tells me, aren't from that marginalized group and often don't have direct experience of the topic they are writing about and so a sensitivity reader like him is hired to assess the book. Are cats marginalized? I ask but he chooses to ignore the question and tells me he is working on some Shakespeare. I don't think there are any cats in Shakespeare are there? I say. He stares at me with that look that conveys that I am utterly ignorant. Of course there are and if there aren't any I'm putting them in.  I ask him which ones and he stares into the distance "Well there's Mogbeth, The Merry Cats of Windsor, Two Cats of Verona. The Taming of the Shrew and my favourite A Mogsummer's night dream."

So you're not altering The Taming of the Shrew then I say. He glares at me in exasperation. Do you know how to tame a shrew? I shake my head. Well there we are then perhaps you should read it - it's a self help book.

Here he is discussing the contents of his mog's blog with Rocket

I had a word with Harry the horse about the drug smoking incident (see last post) and he assures me it was only grass.

Dear Scout having a let sleeping dogs lie moment.

This year has been amazing for roses and sweet peas, I love bringing them into the house where their perfume fills the room.
 

So I asked Pocket  what photo of himself was going on the dust jacket of his books and he showed me.

I said that's not a photo and he said he'd commissioned it as they only had paintings in Shakespearean times and I said but that's not you it doesn't look anything like you and it's taken from The Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks. Yes he said and the cat shall lie down with the kid. That's taken from Isaiah 11.6. I said, it inspired Mr Hicks to do the painting and it's a leopard shall lie down with the kid. He gave me that don't you know anything sort of look and told me a leopard was a cat and as a diversity reader he could change want he jolly well wanted.

Love After Love by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

the animal hotel

When I was a child I created an animal hotel in the old chicken house down in the pit at the bottom of the garden. This was my domain - my parents had no idea what I was doing down there - I could have been keeping a baboon for all they knew. As it was I had a couple of mice (later rather a lot of mice as they were not of the same sex) and a few stick insects. And a snail.

It crossed my mind now, as I was cleaning out the crow with white feathers and putting in a fresh towel at the bottom of his house, that not much has changed. As I tucked the towel in I found myself saying "there we are clean sheets." Indeed - Not much has changed. 

Above are the three amigos - two crows and a jackdaw who have palled up with each other in the shade tunnel. I've taught them to feed themselves, to fly and soon they'll be off after the naughty magpie who left last week without paying his bill. The crow with the white feathers which came from the wildlife hospital like all the others looks very like a magpie - for some reason most of his wing feathers are white. Hopefully when he grows new ones they'll be black - otherwise out in the wild sadly he will be attacked for being odd. This could happen to any of us at any time.

Actually if you walked into the porch of our house you'd think I was running a subsidiary to Boots the chemist. Scout the dog (above right) takes three different sorts of pills and sometimes a fourth each day and Harry the horse is on drugs. Every day I crush twenty paracetamol and give them for his sore leg and I have hundreds of packets. Shops will only sell you two packs at a time which only does the day so every time I go into a shop I pick up a couple of packets. I think the village shop are growing suspicious and I'll have to wear a wig or a false beard next time I go in. Someone told me they thought they'd seen Harry smoking a joint behind the bike shed which is ridiculous. There isn't a bike shed.

I love it when there are babies at the hospital - here's one rolling over to give itself a good lick.

And dear three pills a day Scout wearing her crown of leaves

I have purposely left a strip of grass in the lawn to encourage wild life which you can see has worked very well.

Pocket said he'd been busy writing television series. Oh really? I asked -what are they then? He told me he'd written something called Holby Kitty. Don't you mean Holby City set in a hospital? No he glared at me it's about cats in a hospital. Anything else? I asked. He looked a bit shifty and said Downton Tabby.

You mean Downton Abbey and you nicked that from a cartoon on facebook. He told me he wasn't saying any more until he had a solicitor present or better still a barista. Don't you mean a barrister I said.  No he snapped. I want a coffee with cream without the coffee.

I have over 78 different varieties of roses in the garden - and here is one of them - the beautiful climber Awakening. When we first moved into the cottage all those years ago the garden was just part of a field and over the years I've collected all these roses - some of which I can't distinguish from each other. A lot of the pink ones although they have different names look remarkably similar. Still, I'm not expecting to do an open garden and have people quiz me on them.

 

Our neighbourhood runs ads for help in the community. I have strung some of them together and not changed any of the wording.

Help Page

Dementia man missing.

My father broke out of the house

during the night.

Please can you check your gardens.

Has anyone lost a sheep?

Dog found.

Wanted a ladies bicycle.

I need a piano removed.

I am looking for someone to strim my edges.

Found - a key in the roadside.

Plumber wanted to fit W.C.

Has anyone picked up £30 this morning?

The window cleaner has just announced

he's no longer cleaning windows.

Missing - heavily pregnant Jack Russell.

Do you want a bungalow?

 

one for sorrow

I have been given a baby magpie that needs to be hand fed as it is so young.

One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told.

She is quite needy as you can see. I have called her Joy.

There has been sorrow though. The rook that had been found down the rabbit hole (last post) that I resisted calling Alice - I named Percy Button. Don't ask me why - I think it had something to do with haberdashery - the cat Pocket being called pocket. I seldom name the rescue birds for attachment reasons. For two months I bathed his closed eye every day and gradually he began walking around but was never able to fly. We all hoped that given time he would be able to because what life is it to be a wild bird that should fly who has to remain in captivity. Then one day for no apparent reason he began to die. He could no longer hobble around but kept falling on his side. I would help him up and he would take a drink of water and even a morsel of cheese (his favourite food) but as the day wore on he grew weaker and finally at five o'clock in the afternoon he died. Sadly and oddly he looked at me and his closed eye had opened, appearing as bright and shiny as the other. Then he closed them both.

Rocket was so sad he had to go to bed.

And here, where Percy Button's inside house was (he had an outdoors house too) is a vase of flowers in his memory. Scout  is honouring his memory and you can just see the triangular ear of Pocket like he's in some kind of Jaws scenario at the bottom of the picture. He is just checking that Percy Button isn't hidden round the back of the vase.

Not all rescues end sadly though. The lovely fox I put up on my blog post the time before last who'd had a fight with another male and come off worst was eventually returned to his territory. He came from Bournemouth and was a much loved urban fox. On his return all the locals who had fed him and his families over the years lined the street to cheer him back. He immediately leapt onto the seat of a parked motorbike, triumphant that he had returned to his patch as if he were James Dean in a Rebel without a Cause.

I couldn't resist this photo opportunity of Nancy( my familiar). We had friends stay with us once who had a funny little dog who barked madly at the Black Cat sign but completely ignored Nancy in the flesh.

Pocket says he's exhausted writing all his books, plays and poems.(what poems?) He told me his latest novel had been adapted for television and called The Purrrrrrsuit of Love. I said I thought Nancy Mitford had written that and when did he get himself an agent? He shut his eyes and told me he was opening his own literary agency called The Pocket Book Agency. He ignored me when I suggested I might join it but said in memory of Percy Button he might produce one called The Pocketbook of Birds. I told him that had already been done ........

ahhh - the joy of the sweet peas - now flowering in the poly tunnel

and this beautiful tree peony in the garden.

 “Hope” is the thing with feathers 

BY EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

acronyms are us

Here -Trude the beautiful Friesian stands up to the gale that whips around the field

Friesians are the most beautiful horses - and are the breed they use to pull the funeral coaches. The other day I sadly had to attend the funeral of a dear friend and sat practically in the road, as you have to these days, having a cup of coffee beforehand when four of them trotted past with their red plumes on their heads, pulling an ornate coffin (not my friend's)in a glass cased carriage. They were so beautiful they almost took my breath away and I was for running after them all the way down the road to the cemetery. Friesians traditionally have very long flowing wavy manes as if someone has used curling tongs on them but sadly Trude's mane is short. This is I believe because Harry chews it. In all the years we have had her it never seems to grow whereas  Harry's mane is most luxuriant.

In a complete change in the weather here is Harry and Rocket appearing through the mist. I know the English always talk about the weather but really - wind, rain. hail, coldness - heating on? heating off? Pocket has complained and asked why are the pipes that run under the floorboards in the bathroom where he likes to have his morning nap turned off? Really it is quite bitter lying there now.

 Now this BTW is not the same fox from the wildlife hospital that appeared in my last blog. This is a vixen that was involved in an R T A . I find the use of acronyms slightly annoying  but this one is AKA  Road Traffic Accident. At least it wasn't a GSW  AKA Gunshot Wound or we'd have had to call in an FI  AKA forensic investigator and put her in a VPU. I shan't go on and no I didn't watch Line of Duty on the BBC.

Although I would dearly have loved to have taken the fox home with me to recover I was given a crow without a tail and another rook without an eye. The rook bless it was found down a rabbit hole on Watership Down. Its left wing and leg and eye have all been damaged but there is hope given time it will recover. As it was found down a rabbit hole I was tempted to call her Alice but as yet have resisted naming her/him. No one knows what it was doing in the hole but probably trying to escape something that had wounded its left side. The other rook with one eye successfully flew away and I have to admit after transferring the crow with no tail to my shade tunnel it hopped out the door so fast I couldn't catch it. It can't fly without a tail but boy can it hop! I followed it to a tree and watched its spectacular ascent up the branches to the very top. I hope it survives - its obviously hopped down as its no longer up there but they are so intelligent I think until its feathers grow back it will do very well. When I first put it in the shade tunnel I was worried about it getting up to the branches that I put in there. I leant a small ladder up to the table top and within minutes it had worked out how to hop up each rung, onto the table and from there onto all the branches.

Dear Rocket - no wonder he doesn't hear me as he chases after a deer and I try to call him back. When we got him I hadn't realised his ears came in a separate box.

And on the weather front we are still looking for that pot of gold as seen from the bedroom window.

Pocket says when he finds it he's going to use the gold to launch his new book. I thought you were opening a casino I said, but he stared at me as if I didn't know what I was talking about and told me that he'd gone back to writing novels. What's it called I asked. He flicked his tail and told me it was called The cat who came in from the cold and was a very exciting spy story. Sounds a bit like The spy who came in from the cold by John le Carre  I said but he assured me he had no idea what I was talking about and perhaps I was suffering from PTSD on account of having trouble with my own novels and would I put the heating back on.

Lovely Scout on the same windy day wondering if the rainbow led to a pot of biscuits by any chance.

The tulips this year have been glorious - here is one of my favourites Estella Rijnveldt

Below is a poem I wrote about another friend who'd died - seemed appropriate as I've mentioned death already

A dying man.

 

 

Today I saw a dying man.

You look well I said.

I’m dying he said, how can that be?

I’m too young to die.

I enquired as to his age.

Eighty two he said.

My mother died in this bed too

 and she was older than me.

What a bummer

I said.

What a bugger

He said.

Would you like a sherry?

I have to drive I said.

Would you?

No thank you he said.

I thought you’d come on a horse.

Today I saw a dying man.

How long ?I asked

Between 6 and 12 weeks

And I’ve already had three of them.

We look out at the view.

A hospital garden shrouded in mist.

What will you do with it? I say.

These weeks you’ve been given.

I’ll get on with the dying  he said.

We’re all dying I thought but didn’t say.

His sister had summoned the priest

And brought holy water for the ill from Lourdes

Though he didn’t believe 

When she’d gone away

He put it on the poinsettia by the window sill.

The nurse brings in lunch.

We couldn’t tell the icecream

 from the mashed potato.

I should go I said.

I couldn’t bear to say goodbye.

I’ll see you again I said.

You look well.

 

 

 

 Linda Coggin

 

the thought fox

 This lovely young male fox was in a territorial fight with another - he came off rather worse for wears. Here he is recovering at the wildlife hospital. He is a reminder of Ted Hughes's wonderful poem waiting for inspiration called the Thought Fox. I could certainly do with a fox here as I struggle with the new story I am writing.

Two weeks ago they gave me this jackdaw to look after instead. They reckoned it had bumped its head as it was very quiet. Oddly it took cheese from my hand which is strange for a wild bird but has now come to its senses and refuses all morsels unless they are in a bowl. I've moved it into the shade tunnel now so I can make sure it can fly before I open the doors and let it go. I think - but can't be certain - that the two jackdaws I hand reared last year are the ones who have made a nest on our chimney. I can hear the babies and the parents swipe all the food off the bird table which is nearby before any of the other birds can get it.

Spring is certainly here now - here is Pocket admiring the pussy willow

and again exhausted after his gambling antics. He's suggested to me that we open a casino. Not sure that would go down well up here though we did once want to show films in the barn and call it Flicks in the Sticks.

Scout has settled in well - she is so sweet and loving and feels very at home on the sofa. In spite of her age and her heart she loves to gallop in the Nature Reserve whilst Rocket goes crazy running up and down the hills after his new toy.

Unfortunately Rocket also likes to run up and down chasing the horses. This is a new excitement for him and if he's not careful one of them is going to kick him in the head. I blame the owner - they should have more control over the dog.

Scout in the Nature Reserve. We can only be in there for a few weeks in the year as normally it is filled with sheep which would be much more fun than horses to chase.

The tulips are now opening which is a joy and always a surprise.

The Thought Fox

by Ted Hughes

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:

Something else is alive

Beside the clock's loneliness

And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:

Something more near

Though deeper within darkness

Is entering the loneliness:

cold, delicately as the dark snow,

A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;

Two eyes serve a movement, that now

And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow

Between trees, and warily a lame

Shadow lags by stump and in hollow

Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,

A widening deepening greenness,

Brilliantly, concentratedly,

Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox

It enters the dark hole of the head.

The window is starless still; the clock ticks,

The page is printed.

the curiosity of the black cat

 

My new book which as a matter of fact I've been working on for years is finally published! Available as a paperback and kindle you can get it at Amazon.

It is a modern day nature fable about life and death, friendship and love.

"People don't usually see me until the last moments. In that time I reckon I bring comfort. They often smile and stroke me and I feel good about that."

This blog post is about nothing else - no amusing photographs of the cats and dogs, no witty anecdotes from Pocket or images of him playing cards, no poems and pictures of beautiful flowers. But ...below is the first chapter to make up for it - 

 also a glossary of  terms used in book reviews. I can spot several potential ones for my book and have put little stars by them. If you get the book yourselves you can work through the others.

Enchanting                                                there's a dog in it    *

Heart-warming                                          a dog and a child     *

Moving                                                       child dies

Heart-rending                                              dog dies

Thoughtful                                                  mind-numbingly tedious

Haunting                                                      set in the past

Exotic                                                           set abroad

Audacious                                                     set in the future    *

Award winning                                              set in India

Perceptive                                                      set in North London

Provocative                                                    infuriating

Epic                                                                editor cowed by author's reputation

From the pen of a master                                same old same old

In the tradition of                                            shamelessly derivative

Spare and taught                                              under researched

Richly detailed                                                over- researched

Disturbing                                                       author's bonkers             *

Stellar                                                               author young and photogenic

Classic                                                               author hanging in there

Vintage                                                              author past it

Chapter 1

Five days before what was later to be referred to as The Fall, the toads all abandoned their breeding ground.

The day before, a herd of cattle, which were grazing peacefully at the edge of the town, bunched together at the far end of their enclosure.

That morning a black Cat and his Master were visiting an old lady in the house next to the fish and chip shop.

And fifteen minutes before - the birds stopped singing.

Only Stella Feather notices. She sits on the beach in the dusk and talks to herself.

“The birds are quiet but the land is talking to us,” she says. “And no one listens do they?”

She stares out across the ocean and wonders at its stillness.

She feels a rumble and a shifting under the land. She stands, her eyes scanning the horizon for the boat.

Far beneath her feet the earth coils like a gigantic spring.

It splits and tears apart. It tips people out of their beds.

It causes roofs to cave in. It traps people in their homes and on the roads. The lights go out. All communications go down.

Car alarms are set off which pierce through the sound of crashing, tumbling buildings and the trees shake as they bend from side to side. The wailing sirens from broken shop fronts sound like a fairground ride announcing the start of its terrifying journey around the helter skelter. All the sounds splinter and crack and crash through the air.

When she feels the first tremble Stella Feather throws herself onto the ground and grabs hold of tussocks of marram grass. She feels it course through her body and digs her hands and feet deep into the sand. She covers her head with her hands and shuts her eyes.

Amongst the chaos that results the Cat loses his Master. There were so many dead, so much work to be done. He’d been in disasters many times – The Great Plague, The Great War – The Great ...oh

something or other.... now his head hurts and he can’t think anymore. How could he have been so careless as to lose him?

When the explosions happen the Cat leaps into the air. The earthquake severs the gas pipes and causes a fire which feeds on the timber houses like a ravenous tiger, it’s orange and black stripes leaping from house to house. At Hastings Rd and the Folsom Junction fifty panic-stricken cattle, their fence destroyed, stampede down the street as they see the flames, knocking over anyone left standing in their path.

The Cat knows his Master must be there but the dust stings his eyes and when he looks back it’s too late.

The quake lasts for only two minutes but the destruction is incredible. Rising out of the rubble stands the remains of the magnificent City Hall, its picturesque dome standing loftily above the structure like a skeleton stripped of its skin. An old woman with a green parrot in a cage hurries along the street followed by a man dragging a hastily packed suitcase, its contents spilling along the pavement as he goes. Some young lads run into the liquor store and carry out bottles of beer and spirits. Then seeing the jeweller’s shop torn from its foundations, drop the bottles and pick up necklaces and bracelets that twinkle through the dust.

People flee towards the ferry only to find that there is a lack of boats to carry them across toVernditch. The big ferry building is ruined. When the quake stops a man with a loud hailer summons whoever is still alive.“Evacuate! Evacuate! Move along quick we all need to get away from here.”

People crawl from collapsed buildings and others wander in a daze and those that can, make their way towards the man with the loud hailer.

“Someone grab that girl,” the man orders, “there’ll be a tsunami – get her away from the beach.”

But when she sees people coming towards her Stella Feather runs away, crossing over the sand dunes and sliding down onto a further beach until she is a fair distance from the town.

As the tremor returns, the second shock wave splits the earth, a huge crack zigzagging through the land. The buildings still standing, collapse. The fire fanned by the falling, continues to roar along the streets. Fire fighters try to put out the fires but the water pipes have been damaged so there is no pressure and then no water. There is talk of trying to pump water up from the sea but the fire fighters’ vehicles are mostly destroyed too. Some who are left secretly hope that a tsunami will put out the fire. But now the flames light up the sky in shades of red and pink and orange and will not be put out until the whole town disappears under the waves.

the essential scout

I admit - it has been about three months since I wrote the last blog but quite frankly not much has happened. This will be of no surprise to everyone else who has been in lockdown.

                                 

But now I have something to report! The huge space left by our lovely Noa has been partly filled by Scout. Scout is six years and has a heart problem. She is very gentle and quiet and for any of you that might be thinking why's she gone and got another wolfhound when she got knocked over by the last one she must be mad

you can stop thinking that. Scout is unlikely to knock me over - she is very calm and gentle - and we are so lucky to have her as she was given to us by the very people we had our first wolfhound - Jai - from because they felt sorry for me and they are kind. Just to boast of Scout's achievements she's had nine puppies and won top IW bitch at Crufts 2019. Jai once won Best on Sofa and top bitch at the village dog show and I thought I might get a t shirt made with Top Bitch on it but wasn't sure how that would go down on the farm.(There's competition).

Meanwhile in lockdown Pocket has taken up gambling - he likes the cards best - he says he's invented a game called Baccaratcat. I wondered if he might take up bridge with Rocket.

I have kept going to the wildlife hospital where this beautiful owl was (I am a key worker and haven't yet been stopped by the police)

And of course we had all that SNOW which was exciting

Rocket is jealous of all the pills Scout has to take so I pretend his little biscuits are special pills. What are they for do you think Rocket ? I ask and he tells me he might have a touch of gout. I told him he certainly suffered from wind but he denies that. I said it was very effective with his social distancing.

                                          Inessential things

What do cats remember of days?

They remember the ways in from the cold.

The warmest spot, the place of food.

They remember the places of pain, their enemies

the irritation of birds, the warm fumes of the soil

the usefulness of dust.

They remember the creak of a bed, the sound

of their owner's footsteps

the taste of fish, the loveliness of cream.

Cats remember what is essential of days.

Letting all other memories go as of no worth

they sleep sounder than we

whose hearts break remembering so many

inessential things.

 

Brian Patten