Rising early: the pain and the joy

How sad, I used to feel, that old people woke up so early. What a shame, I used to tell myself, that they couldn’t sleep in as I did, till 9:00. Or 10:00. Or even 11:00.

These days, as I move further into my eighth decade, I’m having to come to terms with the idea that being that old isn’t something happening only to other people, but that I’m one of them myself. Just like those old people I once felt so sorry for, I also find it increasingly difficult to sleep late. If I wake up and it isn’t yet 5:00, I try to fall asleep again. If it’s approaching 6:00, it could go either way, but I generally get up. At 7:00, well, these days that’s beginning to get into lie-in country.

There is, in any case, now a new motivation to get up when I wake. Two motivations, one might say. Each has a name: Luci and Toffee. They used to sleep on our bed, but it’s extraordinary how much space a pair of toy poodles can take up. And how little opportunity they can leave to us to get any rest. We finally decided, a few weeks ago, that this had become much too much of a good thing. These days, they get banished downstairs, a harsh decree we reinforce by closing the stair gate installed primarily as a safety measure for the grandkids, now adapted to serve as an escape-proof fence for the dogs. Against the dogs, they’d no doubt correct me if they could.

So when I come down in the early hours, these days I’m greeted by two whimpering poodles bursting with enthusiasm to overwhelm me with welcoming affection.

Despite being retired, I still find that my time just fills up with things to do. Some of them are, of course, simply leisure activities. For instance, we recently went for a walk in the hills with a group of friends. The plan was to hike 14km and end up with a paella. In the end, having spent too long enjoying coffee and cakes before we even set out, the hike became a bit of a stroll and, though the paella plan was unaffected (an amazingly good one by the way, in the Valencian hill village of Serra), we only walked six kilometres, indulging more in conversation than in serious exercise. Even so, that took most of the day. The changes in altitude, the conversation in a language I still haven’t fully mastered, the consumption of a large meal, all left me worn out by the time we got home.

When I woke early the next morning, therefore, I didn’t plunge straight into work. And I really mean work: keeping up my English history podcast (wittily entitled A History of England), now at over 180 episodes, has proven quite a task. I find myself having to read book after book, because for every authority I consult, I always feel the need to consult another, to try to cancel out bias in either and get to something like knowledge underneath. Writing the episodes is no small task either, above all the (self-imposed) obligation to keep them short. Remember Blaise Pascal who once apologised for writing a long letter, because he didn’t have time to write a short one.

Recording the episodes isn’t a brief job either. What with editing, correcting, correcting the corrections, the production of fifteen minutes’ worth of material can take several hours.

On top of that, there is of course this blog, though I write fewer posts these days. Then there are the other projects, including a third novel and booklets to accompany the podcast. To say nothing of the various jobs that keep cropping up, around the house, around the car, around administrative authorities.

So the other day, I decided I was going to have a quiet moment with the dogs. With a coffee in front of me, Toffee on my lap and Luci by my side, I put aside for the moment further study of suffragists, Home Rule campaigners and their Ulster volunteer enemies, or the steady, accelerating descent to the First World War. Instead, I chose to relax into the day by chuckling my way through the last few chapters of Lessons in Chemistry.

Between my slippered feet and the collar of my dressing gown:
Luci (left) and Toffee making my (early) morning speial

Do you know the book? As you’ve no doubt spotted, I like to think of myself as a bit of a writer. Not a successful one, I’ll admit at once. But one who enjoys churning out the stuff. And one who knows enough about writing to bow his head in humble admiration when he comes across someone with real mastery of the art. And in writing this, amazingly her first novel, Bonnie Garmus has provided an object lesson in how to do it well. It’s full of life, dynamism, humour, but also occasionally grim tragedy, with an extraordinary set of messages on how one should live and how one should treat others, between women and men, between adults and children, even between humans and dogs. 

The TV series differs from the book in many respects, but not at all in its ability to entertain and intrigue. It’s as well worth watching as the novel is worth reading, and the novel is well worth reading. 

It may be a tad early, 6:30 in the morning. But earliness is the curse of age. Though, with a coffee in your hand, two dogs pressed up against you, and a good book to enjoy, it can turn it into something more like a blessing.

Rebel poodles

Our smaller toy poodle is a bit of a rebel.

You might call her downright bolshie. Or perhaps not entirely bolshie. Simply a troublemaker. Not so much a full-blown red as inclined that way, which I suppose would make her orange. Appropriately, since that’s her colour.

I always say that we call her Toffee because she’s toffee-coloured. And, of course, her black companion Luci is Luci-coloured.

Luci in front, Toffee behind her
Innocence personified. But they can be mutinous. If not very effectively

Both Toffee and Luci are connoisseurs of the mouldy piece of bread or rotting bit of bone found lying around in a park. Good at sniffing them out. Enthusiastic in making a beeline for them.

That, though, is as far as the similarity goes.

Luci, when called, at least has the decency to look up from the tasty morsel she’s getting ready to enjoy. Keep calling and she’ll take a step or two towards you. Call ‘drop’ and she might even drop the mouldy bread or bone that she’s picked up. And, eventually, with obvious reluctance, she’ll trot – not run, mind, just the least speed more than a walk to give the impression of obedience – back towards you.

With Toffee, things are nothing like that. Sure, she’ll look up from her piece of rotting meat if called. But with her it’s not with any intention of heeding a call. No. With her it’s perfectly obvious what she’s doing. She’s judging the distance between us. If it’s far enough to give her the time, she’ll take a bite or two. Too close for that? She’ll pick up the whole piece ready to make a dash for it.

She’s quick on her pins too. More than once she’s made me look both slow and stupid around a park, as I chase after trying to get her drop a piece of evil-looking pasty, with her darting away every time I got anywhere near close enough to pop a lead on her.

With this track record, her behaviour the other day failed to surprise me, but certainly left me amused.

In the morning, the dogs get Kibble. Biscuits. They’re not that fond of them, far preferring the wet food – actual meat – they get in the evening. That’s hoovered up in seconds. The Kibble, well, sometimes it hangs around several hours, with them eating a mouthful or two now, another mouthful or two then.

But the other day Toffee tried a novel approach. She simply ate none of it. I realised that she’d graduated, from mere bolshie troublemaker to full-blown trade unionist. Not just any trade unionist, but a shop steward, a convenor even, organising and leading the workforce.

Of course, the workforce was pretty limited, consisting entirely of Luci. Who, I noticed, in any case had a surreptitious mouthful or two, on the QT, whenever Toffee wasn’t looking.

What made me really laugh, though, was the lousy choice of tactics. It may have been a strike but, for pity’s sake, it was a hunger strike. And it was they who were going to be hungry.

So I’m afraid I behaved like the callous employer responding with a lockout to his employees’ strike. I simply gave them nothing else to eat.

Boy, did the strike collapse fast. Dogs cope even less well than men with hunger. Faced with not being fed at all, our two quickly developed a new appetite for Kibble.

By the evening, their bowls were nearly empty. And I gave them a rather smaller portion of meat, mixing the remaining Kibble in with it. Lo and behold, both meat and Kibble were hoovered up in no time.

The rebellion was over. Order had been established once more. The seat of power was not shaken.

Orange she certainly is. But a red? Toffee certainly isn’t an effective one.

The making of Eurodogs

It’s been a tough rite of passage, for Toffee and Luci, being turned into European toy poodles. A process not without its bright moments – indeed, there have been quite a few – but difficult all the same. Adaptation to change is never easy, is it?

Still, I’m sure it’s done them good. Neither had previously been out of Britain. In Toffee’s case, one could feel a certain incipient xenophobia, perhaps an infection from the toxic effect of Brexit. Certainly, where in Luton she’d always been prepared to be friendly towards selected dogs (small, unaggressive, with a certain je ne sais quoi, though I don’t know what that is), in France she barked at every passing dog, irrespective of size or attitude.

Which isn’t wise when you weigh not much more than a Great Dane’s evening meal and are barely shoulder high to a Pomeranian.

Luci, I’m glad to report, behaved in exactly the same way to the foreign dogs as to English ones: she backed away from them all, as she does with any people or dogs she doesn’t know. At least she was consistent across the Channel. So it seems she can’t be accused of xenophobia – she’s scared of everyone equally.

Exploring the Loire at Tours
When it comes to water, Luci still leads the way

What went better was that we visited some places they liked. They went bathing, at least at the paddling level, in the river Loire at Tours. They went paddling in the Atlantic at Mimizan, where Toffee developed a glorious technique of sideways jumps whenever the sea, in a devious and brutal manner, sent a larger wave than most to sweep her from her feet. Luci just enjoyed the water but Toffee, less brave with waves, preferred to keep out of the way.

Luci enjoying the Atlantic with Danielle
Toffee had decamped...

What they enjoyed least was the actual travelling bit. Twice we had to lift Toffee bodily into the car. In fact, the only thing that prevented her making a break for the long grass was, I suspect, the dread that we might actually leave her behind, a fate even worse than being forced into the car yet again.

She made her desire for freedom particularly clear when we stopped overnight in Lumpiaque, a town of 900 souls outside Zaragoza in Spain. It’s surrounded by fields and orchards – we were invited to help ourselves to figs, there were huge fields full of tomato plants that made Danielle sigh with envy, and excellent long walks along country paths. Toffee felt that we’d found a place after her own heart and could see no purpose in further travel in that nasty, smelly, wobbly thing we call a car.

Lumpiaque was fun for the humans, too. We had a meal in one of the three restaurants in the town. They weren’t really restaurants so much as bars that also did food. The kind of place where the proprietor proudly shows you her menu and then tells you which three of the fifteen or so dishes on it she can actually provide.

So the trip was a rite of passage for both dogs. But I think it coincided for Toffee with a coming of age, too – not always in the best way. For a long time, she has been a fierce defender of what is hers: Misty, our cat, or Luci were not allowed anywhere near her food, for instance. It was quite amusing watching that tiny bundle of fluff seeing off the massive Misty, twice her size and with claws as deadly as his teeth, whenever he had the gall to approach her bowl.

Now, though, she’s become a fierce defender of not just her own, but also of things that certainly aren’t hers. These days, when two bowls go down on the floor, she likes to move to the one that’s closest to Luci and start eating. If Luci then approaches the other one, Toffee moves back to it. She’s clearly worked out that making sure of your bowl is great, but having two to yourself is even better. I imagine she’d be blocked by a kind of glass kennel roof, but otherwise I could see her enjoying a glittering career on some board of directors in the City of London.

To be fair, she often leaves Luci her stuff. Say if they have a chew each as a treat. But then what she often does is to wait for Luci to finish while Toffee just toys with hers. Then, as soon as Luci’s finished, she’ll deliberately, ostentatiously and slowly nibble her way through hers with every sign of pleasure.

It’s cruel but so refined in its cruelty that I find it hard not to admire. Guiltily.

Luci does get her own back. The best way to get her to pee on a walk is to wait for Toffee to relieve herself. Then Luci will hurry to the spot and pee on top of it. I think she feels this gives her a certain superiority. I believe Toffee, who by then has generally gone off to look at something more interesting, doesn’t give a damn, and who could blame her? Still, if it makes Luci happy, who’d begrudge her that?

There are lots of things on which they see eye to eye, of course. They like Valencia and they like the flat, into which they’ve settled admirably. They enjoy defending it, too, against the Yorkie next door and the other Yorkie downstairs. They seem to have no linguistic barrier over communicating with Spanish dogs – both sides have a great time barking at each other.

Not that this kind of territorial defence had to wait until we got to Valencia. They were both engaging in it on the way. Though, honestly, it was a little hard to understand what they hoped to achieve. Defending a café terrace as their territory? A patch of beach? The space around a picnic table? I don’t see it.

So it’s great they now have something of their own to protect. Their flat. What’s more, it has a couch, just like the place in Luton. They’ve settled down on it and that makes it home. Doesn’t it?

Well on the way to being Eurodogs, both of them.

Settled