Triggered thoughts: gentle sailor, exasperating poodle

We’ve finally been able to move what is, perhaps, our most distinguished piece of furniture into our home: an eighteenth-century wardrobe inherited from Danielle’s mother. It’s a fine addition to our living room.

A grand old wardrobe

Still, it could only be added at the cost of losing some shelving. That meant careful reorganisation, in particular of our books. I like to keep them in roughly alphabetical order by author (I don’t bother with ordering the titles within each author). ‘Roughly’ means that I’m a bit careless and I’m sure that over the next few weeks I’ll be moving Taliaferro in front of Tremain, or Austen after Armstrong (not those specific errors – obviously I checked immediately after writing these words and, no, I hadn’t got them wrong – they’re just illustrations of possible errors, rather than ones I’ve actually made).

It was while I was doing this work that I was struck by the letter combination ‘Sh’. Partly that was just because I was surprised, as I am every time I look, by the sheer number of books by Nevil Shute that I’ve accumulated down the years. You see, while I’d be the first to admit that he was a lousy writer, he has to have been one of the world’s great storytellers. If you don’t know The Checkerboard, you have a joy awaiting you – one of the great stories (four stories, actually, though well connected with each other) with a fine ending, including an excellent last line.

Ssh in our library, where Sh is well represented

But as well as Shute, there was Shreve and Sheridan and Shields. That’s without even including Shakespeare (shelved elsewhere) and Shelley (only included in anthologies). Or, for that matter, Sherlock Holmes, who’d be under ‘C’ if we had any.

That simply underlined for me the difficulty learning our language must present to Spaniards, amongst whom we now live. They just can’t cope with the ‘Sh’ sound, which doesn’t exist in Spanish (Spaniss? Or, since they dislike ´Sp’ or ‘St’ without a leading ‘E’ either, perhaps I should say Espaniss). 

Only a few weeks ago, Danielle and I went for a snowshoe walk in the mountains. Today it’s hard to believe there was snow around such a short time ago, as the sun’s back out in a clear blue sky, but then it was definitely winter. 

In the list of people due to take part, I noticed one person called ‘Sheila’. 

“Ah,” I thought, “must be an Englishwoman. It’s such an English name.”

Nothing of the kind. Spanish to her core. It turns out that the name is pronounced – or perhaps I should say she pronounces the name – ‘Sailor’. 

Still, what’s in a name, as our great playwright Ssakespeare once asked? Sailor turned out to be extremely kind, as did her husband, and stuck close to Danielle and me, helping us out as necessary, no doubt as the oldest people on the walk. It’s a good sailor who helps you through rough seas, and she and her husband were two of the kindest.

Back in our sitting room, once I’d finished dealing with the books, a job that takes a lot longer than one might imagine, I decided I needed a rest. A siesta, perhaps? I know siestas sound terribly self-indulgent, but what on earth’s the point of being retired if you can’t indulge yourself from time to time? 

That idea triggered another thought.

One of the more endearing habits of our toy poodle Toffee is to accompany me each time I decide to have a siesta. If I start walking upstairs to our bedroom in the afternoon, I’ll soon hear the click-click-click of her claws on the stairs behind me. She’ll jump up on the bed or, better still (from her point of view) look at me meaningfully until I pick her up and put her on the bed myself. As soon as I’m lying down, she’ll scratch the duvet a bit, spin around a few times, and then lie down next to me, usually with her head lying on my knee.

Toffee has developed a taste for sharing my siesta

Like I said, endearing.

On the other hand, she likes to keep an alert ear out for any kind of unusual sound. If she hears the neighbour’s dog, she’ll start barking her heart out, with all the ferocity a toy poodle can muster (just imagine just how frightening that is).

Her hearing’s just as acute upstairs. And her instincts as lively.

So what happens is that after twenty minutes or half an hour, she’ll hear a sound, deliver herself of a volley of barking and then disappear downstairs at speed to deal with a supposed threat to her territory.

However ineffective a tiny dog’s bark may be when it comes to intimidating invaders, it’s highly effective in bringing a siesta to a sudden and conclusive end. So I get up again. To be fair, rested enough, even if I’ve not had as long as I might have liked.

Recently, though, I’ve become a little suspicious of Toffee. After all, it always takes twenty to thirty minutes for this to happen, each time. That’s too systematic, I feel, to be down to mere chance.

Is the reality that Toffee herself has decided that, though there’s pleasure to be had from the companionship of a shared siesta, it really mustn’t be allowed to last too long? That would explain why she always does the same thing, bringing the pleasant interlude to a juddering end, after just so long on each occasion. Certainly, she’s quite diabolical enough to have worked that one out for herself.

Useful, I suppose, in that it keeps my siestas short. Infuriating, though, in its brutality. Endearing perhaps, that Toffee, but a little devil all the same.

Still, it’s the kind of thought that’s fun to play with. Which makes it a pleasure to be reminded of such moments. Especially when it’s in the course of sorting and shelving books, a mundane task badly in need of lightening up.