Peripatetic pets: the sequel

In case you’re on tenterhooks to find out how things are going with the peripatetic pet I’ve already talked about here, I thought it only fair to bring you up to date on what’s been happening in the life of Sooty, our occasional cat. Not that Sooty’s only occasionally a cat, you understand, just only occasionally ours. 

And not even that anymore.

As a bonus, I’m going to tell you about another member of the peripatetic community around here, Nameless the dog. Who is no longer nameless.

Sooty first. She came back again after the last incident I talked about, and we took to keeping a bowl of water outside for her, together with a bowl that we’d fill with cat food when she showed up. At other times we left it empty, because our own cat, our dog Luci and, above all, the rascally other dog Toffee, would certainly leave it empty if it weren’t empty already.

When Sooty came back to see us again

Sooty would still only turn up from time to time, giving no notice of her arrival or information about where she’d been since her previous visit. Treating the place like a motel, quite honestly. Not that we minded: that was always the deal. She was peripatetic, as I said.

We would have been happy to take her in, but we have a daughter-in-law and a daughter-out-law both of whom suffer from allergies. It’s bad enough exposing them to one cat already, plus the two dogs, without making things still worse by adding a second cat to our menagerie.

But  then we got to chatting about all this with our neighbours and good friends Maria José and Santi. 

“We’d take her in and keep her,” they said.

They’ve been as good as their word. A couple of days later, they spotted Sooty in the street near their house and tempted her into their home with cat food, just as I had done. But they went a step further and opened their front door too. In shot Sooty. She shows no sign of wanting to leave again anytime soon. Indeed, she reacts with suspicion if they try to get her out into the garden. It seems she’s afraid to find herself abandoned outside again and unable to get back in to the food. 

Or the warmth.

One of the things they did was take her to the vets for all the standard shots and things. There’s fortunately not anti-vaxxer movement among cats. I suspect their attitude would be, “Bill Gates wants to control me? He’s welcome to try. But just as long as there’s a full bowl in it for me, I don’t care anyway.”

One of the things that the vet confirmed is that, as I’d feared, we’d got Sooty’s gender wrong. She’s actually a he. So please re-read all of the above with the pronouns correctly adjusted.

Meanwhile, we had another visit from a peripatetic. Again, someone we first met last year, when she attached herself to my two dogs when I was taking them out for a walk. She followed us all the way around a fairly long circuit in the woods and then, like Sooty, came back to our house to be fed. We were quite concerned about her owner – apologies, her human – and rang the number on the medallion on her collar. He seemed pretty relaxed about it all. His daughter came around later to collect the dog, apologising for leaving her with us so long (which wasn’t a hardship: she was lovely). She then made me feel guilty by telling us that her father had no legs.

That turns out to mean that he’s in a wheelchair. We’ve seen him since. He has legs, he just can’t (sadly) walk on them.

We also saw the dog a few times afterwards. By then, though, we’d lost any compulsion to ring him. Clearly, they couldn't fence their garden sufficiently well to prevent her getting out when she felt like going visiting. But if they weren’t worried, why should we be?

Then she disappeared, however, and when I asked, we learned that she was living with one of the daughters (possibly not the one we met). We were a bit sorry. We’d had fun playing with her.

But then, just a week ago, she reappeared. In the same way. Attaching herself to a walk by our dogs, only this time while they were out with Danielle. She came to our place afterwards and we enjoyed her company again for a few hours. It was just like old days. And afterwards we took her around to her actual home, so everything worked out just fine.

Behold the nameless one
and tremble?

I’d decided we ought to give her the name ‘Nameless’, because that’s the kind of thing that amuses me. It turns out that her real name is ‘Puza’, so I’ll have to learn to call her that. But at least, with her, I don’t have to change any pronouns: short-haired as she is, it was far easier than with Sooty to get her gender right.

Later, I called in on Maria José and Santi to see how Sooty was getting on. He was just fine, I’m glad to say, and fully settled into his new place (note the correct pronouns). If anything, he seemed a little stand-offish towards me, keeping at a certain distance most of the time and only occasionally letting me stroke him. Now that he’s no longer begging for food, and instead is worried about being locked out in the cold again, I totally get why he doesn’t want to run any risks with an outsider, even an old friend like me.

I respect that.

Sooty with Maria José
and eying me balefully, as a possible intruder

They’ve renamed him Suerte. Which is perfect. It’s close enough to Sooty for that to be his nickname. Besides, Suerte means Luck, which is highly appropriate.

After all, he’s fallen on his feet, hasn’t he?

Luckily.

In memory of the White Knight

The 27th of January 2022 was the 190th anniversary or the birth of one of the most remarkable writers I’ve come across, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.

I have to admit that I’ve never really got to know the impressive works on logic of this fine Victorian mathematician. On the other hand, throughout my teens, and into young adulthood, I made a point of reading each year the two books he wrote under his far better known pseudonym, Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are right up there with some of the finest novels ever.

One of John Tenniel's original illustrations for Alice
She's with the White Knight, who’s falling off his horse. Again
The knight is the projection of Carroll into the novel

At each re-reading, I made surprising new discoveries that I’d missed before. I found myself enchanted, amused and intrigued by his way with words and his words of wit. And it did no harm to the humour that it was often underpinned by his skill in the field of mathematics he made his own, logic. To say nothing of his wisdom.

Here’s Alice talking to the Cheshire Cat:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. 

“I don't much care where –” said Alice. 

“Then it doesn't matter which way you go,” said the Cat. 

“– so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation. 

“Oh, you're sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

Over nearly forty years in business, I gave up counting how many times people felt that hard work was the answer to any problem. After all, do enough hard work and you’ll certainly achieve something. Whether it might be better to achieve something different is a much tougher question, and it’s far easier just to keep working harder and harder than to stop and ask it.

But Carroll also addresses issues more central to logic itself. The problem of ‘null classes’ for instance, a question that was very much a subject of study and controversy in Carroll’s time. A null class is a set that contains nothing. You know, like the set of all cigarette brands that are good for your health. Or the set of all Boris Johnson statements you can trust.

Putting it another way, it’s treating ‘nothing’ as though it was a positive thing. You know the rhyme by William Hughes Mearnes?

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there!
He wasn't there again today,
Oh how I wish he'd go away

It’s that kind of thing. 

There are numerous examples in the Alice books. One comes when the White King asks Alice if she can see either of his messengers on the road.

“I see nobody on the road,” said Alice. 

“I only wish I had such eyes,” the King remarked in a fretful tone. “To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!”

It astonishes me that Carroll could have written books with so much to puzzle and amuse the minds of adults, and still make it a work of charm and magic for children. The kind of children, in fact, to whom he first told the story. 

Ah, children, children. That’s the problem with Carroll. Because, living in the early days of photography, he became an excellent and enthusiastic photographer. It’s been calculated that he took some 3000 photos in his life, about a third of which survive. A few dozen of them are of children, and a small number show them in a state of some undress.

Carroll’s photo of Alice as the beggar maid

In the twentieth century, that led to people asking whether Carroll was, perhaps a paedophile? Was he attracted in a sick way to kids? After all, there’s far less evidence of his attraction to adult women.

Well, there’s little real evidence of paedophilia on his part. The lack of traces of his attraction to women may well be down to his family’s having destroyed a lot of material on his death to defend what they saw as his reputation. It has also emerged that parents gave their permission for him to take pictures of their daughters and were present during the shoots.

Besides, one of the most famous of those pictures is of the real Alice, the inspiration for the books. She was the daughter of Henry Liddell, Dean of Christchurch College, Oxford where Carroll (or more accurately, Dodgson) worked. Her family and Carroll decided that the photo should show her dressed in rags because, in a very Victorian way, they wanted her presented as a character from literature, the girl beggar from The Beggar Maid, a poem by the eminently Victorian poet Tenyson.

Julia Margaret Cameron’s Young Astyanax

This was something of a fashions in photography at the time. One of the most significant early photographers in Britain was Julia Margaret Cameron. Compare Carroll’s photo of Alice with Cameron’s ‘the young Astyanax’, which shows a barely dressed boy representing the son of Hector, the Trojan killed by Achilles in Homer’s Iliad. I don’t think anyone has ever accused Cameron of deviant attitudes towards children. Perhaps both were simply serving the conventions of their time.

Still, I can see that there will be some who still feel convinced that Carroll was a paedophile. After all, if they can’t prove beyond doubt that he was, I can’t prove he wasn’t. I can imagine that some may feel he needs to be cancelled.

On the other hand, it’s beyond to me to see how that does anyone any good. After all, it will change nothing in him. The only people it can harm are ourselves, by cutting us off from a source of pleasure and charm. Even a certain sad wistfulness, that other quality of Carroll’s, the quality that marks the White Knight in the books, the character into which he wrote himself. 

To wrap up, and show you that wistfulness, I’m going to give in full the poem with which he closes Through the Looking Glass, the second and final book. Read it or skip it as you like. It recalls a boat outing on a river (and what a metaphor for life that is!), during which Carroll first told the story to Alice and her two sisters. It’s a delicate expression of longing for a life slipping by, leaving a past that can’t be recaptured, but only recalled in fading memory.

At the same time, it's another bit of cleverness from him. It’s an acrostic. The first letter of each line spells the name Alice Pleasance Liddell, the Alice of the photograph, the Alice of the books.

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July —

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear —

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream —
Lingering in the golden gleam —
Life, what is it but a dream?

And this is a character who deserves cancelling? Really?

Nacho's niece

“Latin’s a dead language,” the ditty I learned at school announced, “as dead as dead can be. It killed the ancient Romans and now it’s killing me.”

The reality is that Latin’s anything but dead. In fact, with over 850 million native speakers in the world, it runs Mandarin Chinese a close second globally. If that surprises you, it may only be because we don’t call it Latin anymore. The language has come a long way since the collapse of the Roman Empire a millennium and a half ago, and it has evolved in different ways in different parts of that Empire. 

German-speaking Franks swamped Northern Gaul and, even when they learned the local language, they learned it with their accent and their stress patterns, causing syllables to vanish or to change beyond recognition, so fidem become faith (that’s how the Normans pronounced the word when they introduced it to good old conservative England, which never changed the pronunciation) and then foi in the branch of modern Latin we now call French.

In other branches of Latin, it’s stayed closer to the original. Fede in the Italian form of Latin, barely changed, or fe in what we like to think of as Spanish, where a whole syllable (as in French) has been chopped off.

Modern Latin is a massively widespread language. Of course, that owes a great deal to its use in the aptly named Latin America. There are nearly 400 million Spanish speakers there, plus a further 40 million – nearly as many as in Spain, with its population of 47 million – in the United States. Brazil is home to 184 million speakers of another variety of modern Latin, the type we call Portuguese.

In any case, the picture’s similar when we look at the world’s third most common native language, English. A massive majority of the native speakers of the language live in North America. Indeed, there are far more speakers of Spanish, Portuguese and English in the Americas, than in Spain, Portugal or England.

America. The great melting pot. Where, in particular, two of those languages, English and Spanish, are increasingly meeting and mixing. John McWhorter, my favourite linguist, quotes a sentence from a New York street scene: “Why make Carol sentarse atrás para que everybody has to move para que se salga?” which roughly translates as “why make Carol sit in the back so everybody has to move to let her get out?” 

I thought of all this recently when Nacho, one of my neighbours – we have excellent and extremely interesting neighbours – told me about his brother. Incidentally, this is unlikely to be the last Nacho story I shall tell, since he has some really good ones.

Nacho, fount of great stories

Like Nacho, his brother is a Spaniard from Valencia. However, he married an American and moved to the US. She’s of Irish extraction, which is hardly unusual there. I believe more people claim Irish ancestry in America than in Ireland. 

Her father was from one of those enormous Irish families and was sent across to America as soon as he was old enough to make the trip. He was met there by two of his brothers. He knew neither of them. Both had made that same trip westwards before his birth, or when he was too young to remember them.

When Nacho’s niece was born, the parents sensibly decided that the father would speak only Spanish to her, the mother only English, so that she would in time grow up bilingual.

The thing about language, though, is that it defines us. There is an ease about being in the company of someone who speaks the same language as you. Partly it’s because you don’t have to search for your words, you don’t have to worry whether you’re stringing them together correctly (that’s the process known as grammar, that dynamic subject so often reduced to soul-destroying boredom by schools), or whether you’re so butchering the language as to be completely unintelligible

There’s more to it than that, though. When I meet another Englishman, I know there are things I don’t have to explain. We almost certainly both know that “the tube” isn’t anything to do with toothpaste but the London Underground. It’s likely that we also share a whole set of connotations – the smells, the sounds, the crowded carriages, the voice telling us to “mind the gap”, the tube map with its black Northern Line and yellow Circle, and so on. It’s shared cultural background that binds us together.

But language can also, and far more often, cut us off from each other. It creates walls as well as bridges. I’ve seen an English shop assistant treat a foreigner with aggressive rudeness for communicating badly in broken English. I see someone like the hard-right politician Nigel Farage saying how little he likes hearing foreign languages spoken in a train in which he’s commuting. That’s an attitude that can slip into the views held by a frighteningly large English minority, who would rather see illegal immigrants drowning in the Channel than allowed ashore.

So bilingualism is much a bigger deal than it may sound. Nacho’s niece was taking a on a far more challenging task than something we could dismiss as “oh, what a nice thing to do.” And there were bumps along the way.

One day, her father asked her in Spanish to fetch him some “leche” from the “nevera”. Dutifully, she went to the refrigerator as requested and came back with the bottle. But she slammed it down on the table in front of him.

“Milk,” she said emphatically.

See? It’s not just a bunch of words. Or even words and grammar. Language touches our very identity.

This was all some years ago, though. Now, in young adulthood, she appreciates the value of having mastered the world’s second-most widely spoken language, Spanish, alongside the third, English. She’s taken out Spanish nationality. She likes to spend time in Valencia. A fine place for its setting, its beach and, I suspect, its boys.

In the end, she’s made a bridge of language, rather than a wall.

Terror unleashed on Spanish roads

It was a big step for the family. Possibly a bad step for other road users in Spain.

Strictly, there were two steps. The first came when my middle son Michael passed his driving test, at the age of 38. Why so late? Well, I can only blame the parents. 

We should have got him through his test before he went to college. Twenty or so years ago. The extent of my failure comes home to me every time I watch one of those US shows where kids of about eight are getting their licences and driving to class in high-end SUVs bought for them by their doting parents before they even get to High School.

I may have exaggerated that last part a bit, but you get the picture. 

To be honest, at the time we lived about ten minutes’ walk from his school and most of his friends. And since then he’s tended to live in city centres (Madrid right now) so he’s perhaps not been under a lot of pressure to get a licence. But at least, and at last, he’s done it now and been unleashed onto the Spanish road network.

That may be bad news for other drivers in this country he and I both call home now, but it was a cause for celebration for us.

The second exciting step for the family was my own. Danielle and I had French driving licences. The old-style ones, on thin card, much the worse for wear. In any case, whether in good or bad condition, to stay legal we had to exchange them for Spanish ones within a sensible timeframe.

Old. Battered. And soon to be out of validity in Spain

That turned out to be less straightforward than we might have imagined. I’ve mentioned before that terrible combination of words in the Spanish language, ‘cita previa’. They mean ‘appointment in advance’. To me, they’re words of dread if I see them on my way to any administrative measure I need to undertake. I’ve learned that, though what I see on a government website looks like a convenient way to book an appointment, it usually isn’t. 

Often I go through several screens filling in information. That can be a long job, because I may have to quote reference numbers from certificates I was sent months ago, put somewhere safe which I wouldn’t forget, and promptly forgot. 

Eventually, though, I get to the ‘Submit’ button. I press it. And the system fails.

Nicely, I have to say. Courteously. With deep regret, the system tells me, it has been unable to save my details. Instead, it invites me to try again at some later date. In the meantime – no cita previa.

When it came to changing our licences, the problem was a little different. At least it didn’t make us fill in any forms before failing. This time, again and again, day after day, for several months, we could get no further than the screen asking for an appointment, on which we were presented with the message “no appointments are available in the next few days. Please try again later.”

A mercy that they told us that at the outset of the process and not at the end.

But how could it be happening for so very long? It took us ten months before we could get an appointment.

As far as we can establish, it was another of the consequences of Brexit, that bold, or reckless, step by Britain that has delivered so much damage unimagined, or at any rate denied, by its supporters, and so few of the benefits they promised. 

Quite a few Brits live in Spain. Many have – or had – British driving licences. While the UK remained in the EU, they could exchange them the way we were planning to exchange ours (Danielle is French, and through her I was able to get that citizenship as a second nationality, making us both still EU citizens). After Brexit, the Spanish authorities offered a long transition period in which Brits could exchange their licences without retaking a driving test. Still, they wouldn’t be able to do that forever. Eventually, this right would become one more on the long list of those lost by Brexit. 

To accommodate the flood of Brits wanting to change their licences before the deadline, all the resources of the Transport Ministry were focused on them. Inevitably, the rest of us had to wait. Until October, in fact, when, at last, slots became available for the rest of us again. The system worked perfectly when Danielle tried it, and she called out to me, “I’ve got an appointment! In a couple of weeks. Be quick and you could get one too.”

I hurried on to the system, but just too late. While Danielle had an appointment early in November, mine was for mid-January.

Still, at least I had an appointment.

Danielle attended hers. She was obliged to undertake what they call a ‘psycho-technical’ test. It checks hand-eye coordination, blood pressure and various other factors, including eyesight.

Danielle sailed through. But I was worried. It was that last test that seemed daunting. My father had cataracts. My mother had cataracts. And now I’m developing a cataract in one eye. Would I get through the test? I mean, I can still play badminton which requires decent eyesight, so I knew I could see well enough to drive. But would the test confirm that?

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to keep driving too long, as my mother did, to the point where it was a terrifying experience to be a passenger in a car with her behind the wheel. I don’t know how many times we passed close enough to a car going to the other way that I could have touched it by simply extending a finger. So I hope I’ll know when to stop. But I didn’t feel that moment had come and hated the idea of failing a test.

Now I discovered the depressing depth of the downside of having to wait so long for my appointment. It was a nerve-wracking burden. Every time I thought about the test, my dread grew. The night before the test I woke twice coughing (and woke Danielle too), though I didn’t have a cough. It was pure stress. To say I was terrified may be a bit of a stretch, but not much of one.

Ah, well. I needn’t have worried. My right eye was pretty hopeless, as I’d feared, though not useless. And, with glasses, my left eye was fine. I could read the bottom row on the sight test. And that was enough, apparently.

It became possible to exchange my French licence for a Spanish one. Which the pleasant civil servant who dealt with my case kept referring to as a carnet, a fine French word not used for licences in France. The French call them permis but, as she pointed out to me, the Spanish also use the word permiso. 

I’m not quite sure how to make sense of all that but, hey, I don’t suppose I need to. 

A small step for mankind.
Another cause for celebration in the family

So within two weeks, two members of the family have been released behind steering wheels – or in my case, re-released. A tremendous relief for us both. A second success to celebrate. But for other users of the Spanish road system facing such new or renewed terror? 

Perhaps not so much.

Curious visits

“I think it was the same cat as last year,” Danielle told me.

Last year we’d discovered a black cat mewling, apparently inconsolably, in the street near our house. Despite his – or possibly her – pathetic cries, she – or maybe he – looked reasonably sleek and in good form. Not so much a street cat or a cat that had been abandoned, but one who’d slipped out from home and then got lost and wasn’t sure how to get back.

Danielle took him – or her – some food and put up a note on a local website for such things. The comment we got back was that it didn’t look like an abandoned cat. And, after two or three days of being fed by us, to her (his?) obvious contentment, he she/he disappeared again. 

It was a bit of a blow. Had she/he suffered some terrible fate? Or had his/her people found her/him? Or had she/he, indeed, finally had a return of memory and found them? We had no idea.

So it was with some pleasure that a few days ago I heard the same, or possibly a very similar, plaintive mew at the end of our street. A woman had stopped to stroke a black cat who looked terribly familiar. When she (the woman) moved on, he (or she – the cat) came over to me, clearly decided it was my turn to do the petting.

When I found the same cat in pretty much the same place the next day, I decided it was time to do a little more than provide a little stroking behind the ears. By dint of stopping every few metres and making ‘psst’ noises (odd that they come to that, isn’t it? I’d find it terribly off-putting myself), I was able to have her follow me home, into the little yard we like to think of as our front garden.

By dint of providing a bowl of cat food, and then refilling it several times, I was able to persuade him (or her)  to hang around. To the point that I began to think that we might make her (or him) into a kind of outdoor cat. The position of inside cat is already taken by Misty (it’s his diary I’ve been raiding for Paws for Reflection). 

An old acquaintance not forgot

The problem with Misty is that he’s very much a retired cat. A native of France, we took him to live with us in Germany, and then to multiple houses in England, and I sense that he’s never fully forgiven us for imposing all those moves on a cat who feels, rightly, that he deserves better. Still, he seems to be more than satisfied with his most recent move, to Spain. The weather suits him. A fine place for retirement, he clearly feels. You can imagine how relieved I am to have at last find a move that actually suits him rather than putting him out yet again.

Misty in retirement

Unfortunately, however, he’s taken to his retired status rather more seriously than I had expected. We recently had a mouse hanging around, to our irritation. Misty seems to have decided that tolerance is a virtue, and that particularly in retirement, it’s important to live and let live. There are many living beings on the planet, he seems to be saying, and why not let the others enjoy their corner of it, just as long as they don’t try to limit the enjoyment he gets from his?

Now, generally, I feel this is excellent thinking. But I do believe that like most rules, there must be exceptions. And I make one for mice. I do feel that a house with a cat in residence should be spared that particular annoyance.

Well, since it was clear Misty wasn’t going to help, it occurred to me that the new cat might do just the job. Why, I even gave her (or him) a name, Sooty, which has the advantage of being applicable to either gender. It’s also a good name for a black cat, though slightly less humorous than the name we gave our last one, Chalky.

Now when you start to anthropomorphise an animal by, say, giving it a name, you’re pretty much lost. I was clearly going to be disappointed if Sooty vanished again. Still, things seemed to be going well. When Toffee, the smaller but yappier of our toy poodles, noticed the new arrival she naturally flung herself yappily into pursuit, but Sooty (wow, it’s nice not to have to use a pronoun) just jumped up on top of a shed and went no further, coming down to eat some more food just as soon the source of the noise had been removed.

Then Misty came out. That went less well. He took no action – I told you he’s become intensely sedentary in his old age. But somehow the simple fact of staring balefully at Sooty had the desired effect, after a while. This time, the newcomer didn’t just retreat to the shed, but went back out over the fence. When I came outside again, Sooty was gone.

Oh, well. It was a pleasant contact while it lasted. Especially as it was probably a repeat visit. Danielle thought it was likely to be the same cat as last year. So it sees we’d had another brief encounter with the same visitor. Sad that it had been so short, but warming that it had happened at all.

Things, though, weren’t over this time. I saw Sooty again two days ago, emerging from a house at the end of the street. Since a woman who works there emerged immediately afterwards, I asked whether it was their cat.

Reappearance

“No,” she assured me, “it comes to be fed from time to time. I think it belonged to a young woman.” She said “chica”, so it could have been a girl. “But she moved away and left the cat.”

Then today, when I got back from walking the dogs, Danielle was in the front garden, having her lunch. A few metres away, Sooty was having hers (unless it was his).

Sooty satisfied with service at lunchtime

Now, Danielle has a series of skills that I’m far from possessing. She’s really good with living beings. She has green fingers with plants, more than once bringing back to life plants I thought were irretrievably dead. She establishes easy relations with little children, in a way that is far beyond me. And what she doesn’t know about household animals, isn’t worth knowing.

If she’s involved, we may at the beginning of a beautiful relationship with Sooty. It may not be adoption as a front-garden cat. It may not give us a means to inflict terror on the mouse population.

We may, though, have a new friend who comes around occasionally. I suspect the cat that I think of as Sooty is many things to many people, dropping in on different households for a meal from time to time. Our house may now be on the circuit.

And I’m fine with that.

Note to self: next time try to find out Sooty's gender

The pile of Piel

I’ve always found the notion of an ‘ancestral pile’ amusing. 

This is an ironic term for some ridiculously large residence, quite possibly a castle, but it can even be an extremely gracious, fantastically luxurious mansion, of the kind in England we like to call a ‘stately home’. That’s the type of irony people with a lot more money than the rest of us like to think of as winsomely self-mocking: you know, “My castle? Oh, that old thing.” It ensures you know they have the kind of place your average duke inhabits, alongside a nice line in self-deprecating wit. 

I got to thinking about all that the other day when I read about a way someone without an actual aristocratic title, or a fortune made in banking or such like, could get hold of an ancestral pile. Without the need even for any ancestors to speak of. 

To be honest, it wasn’t really a Pile, so much as a Piel. I think the two words rhyme although it would come as no surprise (or be particularly unusual) to discover that I was wrong. Maybe it really rhymes with Peel. Or something else.

Piel Island. On a good day

Anyway, however it’s pronounced, Piel is an island off the Furness peninsula, up in Northwest England, so close to Scotland that you can practically smell the haggis, and sticking far enough out into the Irish sea that you can virtually count the leaves on the shamrocks.

It has a long and varied history. Where the word ‘varied’, as is generally the case when the talk turns historical, is synonymous with ‘checkered’. It came under the control of the monks of Furness Abbey in the late Middle Ages. Monks, as you know, are the custodians of Christian faith, with its commitment to poverty and charity. This bunch quickly cottoned on to the fact that the castle on the island could be a great base for custom officers to prevent smuggling, or it could be a wonderful resource to do a spot of smuggling themselves.

Guess which they decided to engage in.

In the late fifteenth century, one Lambert Simnel decided to make an unfounded claim to the British throne (he was the Trump of his time, except that, being ten, he was probably more mature, and unlike Trump, he never got a second chance to try for the highest office in the land). The rebels behind Simnel chose to land with their mainly Flemish and Irish troops on Piel Island.

That didn’t work out well for him, but it did leave behind on the island a tradition that endures until today. The character in charge has the (slightly ironic) title of King of Piel. Each new incumbent is crowned in a special chair, wearing a specific helmet and carrying a particular sword. 

The ritual is so important that one of the major responsibilities of the holder of the title is to look after the various implements.

The ritual ends with the newly enthroned king having his head anointed, like all good kings do at their coronation. In this case, though, it’s with alcohol. That’s particularly appropriate these days, because being king of Piel is now a title that comes with becoming the landlord of the pub on the island, the Ship Inn. 

Another good ritual is that anyone that sits in a particular chair in the pub – I like to think it’s the same one that’s used for the coronations though I haven’t been able to confirm it – becomes entitled to the title ‘Knight of Piel’. Elevation to the knighthood then gets confirmed by the king or an existing knight.

All this came to my notice when the Guardian published a piece about the fact that a new landlord was being sought for the Ship Inn. Imagine. You get the job and you become King and can confer knighthoods. Pretty much a dream job.

I think the position is still open. Tempted? Hurry, hurry, hurry and get your application in. The post might be snapped up any day now.

Of course, it’s not a job for just anyone. To start with, the successful candidate needs to have experience of running a pub. Equally, he or she (why not a Queen for once?) has to be OK with some fairly fierce weather conditions. Also to be prepared to handle a significant degree of isolation, since Piel doesn’t boast city streets alive with music and crowds at night. 

Indeed, the Ship Inn is one of just five buildings on the island. The others are three houses that are permanently occupied. And then there’s the castle. 

That’s the pile I was thinking of when I started writing this piece. The king of Piel’s pile. Or, more simply, the pile of Pile.

Think you might throw your hat in the ring? Just imagine. You might get to replace it with a crown.

The joys of beached parenthood

When my boys were still young, a friend of mine told me that she pitied them.

“Why?” I asked.

“You’ll always be imposing experiences on them.”

Well, I’ve been accused of many reprehensible deeds, but I was taken aback by that charge, because the behaviour in question didn’t seem reprehensible at all. I mean, as far as my own life was concerned, I’d found any experiences that weren’t downright unpleasant, all the more satisfying for being many and varied. So how was that an imposition?

In any case, it seems to my possibly not entirely impartial view, that the kids imposed a great many more experiences on me than I ever did on them. Not all of them uplifting. I remember clearly, with a smile, if a wry one, the moment when having placed my son Michael in the bath which we were about to share, I was shocked to see him stand quietly in the water and pee comfortably into it. I let the water out, and filled the bath again. He waited patiently for the task to be finished and then did exactly the same thing again.  

At that point, I decided that it was time to overcome my squeamishness and we had a perfectly satisfactory bath together. After all, the dilution factor must have been 400:1 or more, suggesting it was unlikely to do either of us much harm. And, since neither of us emerged any the worse for the experience, it clearly didn’t.

They inflicted plenty of other experiences on me too, many of them still more challenging. For instance, we had some interesting visits to the seaside. And I had a reminder of those fascinating moments today. Another of my sons, Nicky, now a mature and occasionally sane father of children himself, is visiting us with his charming wife Sheena and their delightful and frequently, though not always, angelic children, Matilda and Elliott. 

Each year, when we reach January, I’m reminded of the words of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia when faced with Napoleon, the apparently unbeatable general, leading a colossal army into the Russian homeland. 

“Russia has two generals in whom she can confide,” he announced, “Generals Janvier and Février.”

He was right. Those two months destroyed Napoleon’s army, on its lamentably famous retreat from Moscow.

Well, where we live in Valencia, Janvier and Février have learned some manners, some gentleness. It may be the paella. Or possibly the fine local wines. Just days after New Year’s, the temperature today is 23 degrees (OK, OK, 73 in the antiquated system the oh-so-more-modern-than-thou United States persist in using). 

To an Englishman like me, that feels like a spring day. To be honest, like a perfectly satisfactory summer day. Not at all like the depths of winter.

Danielle took Nicky, Sheena and the kids down to the beach to sample that aspect of the local delights. 

Elliott delighting in the beach
In a thoroughly angelic manner

Sample it they did. They played in the sand. They watched crazy people swimming in the sea (the temperature may be fine outside, but it takes a special temperament to enjoy the water). They went for a delicious meal with their parents and grandmother.

Matilda playing with her mother
Just as angelic

Basically, they behaved themselves well.

What a contrast to their father. We once spent an hour searching for him on the beach at Slapton Sands in England, when he wasn’t yet five. We kept asking people whether they’d seen a little boy in red shorts and a yellow top, but none of them had seen anyone like that. Which wasn’t surprising. When we finally found him, he was stark naked. 

We never did see those red shorts or that yellow top again.

The worst of it, though, is that the stripping off was an exceptional occurrence with him. Usually when he saw the sea, he didn’t waste any time on anything so dull as taking his clothes off. He plunged straight into the sea, clothes and all, without pausing long enough even to remove his shoes. 

Who’s got time to get undressed when the sea’s in sight?
33 years ago, the father of those kids also enjoying a beach
Not quite so angelically

Fortunately, we had learned always to take a full change of clothes with us whenever we went anywhere near any large body of water. It was an expensive undertaking, though, in terms of purchases of clothes. No clothes, and in particular no shoes, take kindly to being soaked in sea water.

It wasn’t just Nicky...
Michael and Nicky in the sea at Hastings, Autumn 1987

As, well. I blame the parents, personally. Clearly Nicky and Sheena are getting something right with with Matilda and Elliott that we (or at least I) got wrong  with Nicky (and Michael) rather over three decades ago.

Still, when it comes to anyone imposing experiences on anyone else, can you see why I wonder who was really doing the imposing? 

Happy 2022. Or at least happier than 2021

Happy New Year, everyone!

That’s what we say to each other every time January comes bearing down on us. Hope, they say, springs eternal in the human breast. So it’s always with optimism that we approach a new year, hoping for something better than the old one.

This time, Danielle and I marked the occasion by going to a New Year concert of Strauss music in our local city of Valencia. It was a taste of Vienna in Spain, as the promotional literature claimed. 

Strauss with joy from the Orchestra of the Mediterranean
Not so wet, or so fishy, as the name might make it sound
Note the New Year's wishes.

Ah, the memories, the memories. My mother was a fan of the Vienna New Year’s concert and would watch it on TV every year, right up to her last one. I watched with her on several occasions, and we’d smile together to The Blue Danube or thrill to The Radetzky March. It was a lot of fun. Danielle and I enjoyed the Valencia concert just as much.

Of course, we felt a slight pang of guilt at having sneaked off to it and left our son, Nicky, and daughter-in-law, Sheena, on their own to look after our grandkids, Matilda and Elliott. A small pang, to be honest. Delightful company though Matilda and Elliott certainly are, it can be quite restful to do something else occasionally. Which may explain why the lunch afterwards, with two new acquaintances who I think could easily become friends, lasted until 4:30.

One of those potential new friends was an American who came to Valencia for a sabbatical. That was twenty years ago and she’s never left. 

“Valencia’s like a black hole,” she told us, “once you’re in you just don’t leave.”

That doesn’t sound complimentary, but I’m sure she meant our fine city was like a black hole in a good way. Totally.

If we sneaked out today, we will at least return the favour. We’ll take the grandkids and let their parents go out together on their own. They won’t get a New Year’s concert, of course – that ship’s sailed for this year – but they’ll get a rest, just like we did.

Now we can settle down and start seeing how 2022 can be made better than 2021. I suspect it will be for quite a few people. After all, the big annoyance last year was Covid. Now, the Omicron variant, highly infectious though it is, seems far less severe and, above all, far less fatal than the Delta version we were struggling with before.

Incidentally, it does rather worry me that we got so fast from Delta to Omicron. Was I distracted while the rest of the Greek alphabet trooped past? Were Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, Nu and Xi just skipped or was I asleep?

Actually, at today’s lunch one of the new friends explained that Xi might indeed have been deliberately skipped. It suggests the name of that painfully powerful international figure, the Chinese president (even though the name of the letter is pronounced to rhyme with ‘why’).

The other terrible threat hanging over us is climate change, which has its own whole set of deniers. Possibly the same people. After all, once you’ve spent that long denying one thing, it must get easy to deny others. 

In any case, I imagine the worst effects of climate change will still be limited geographically for the next year or two. Most of us will probably get through 2022 without seeing anything particularly awful on that front. 

Some countries, though, are condemned to having a lousy new year. Take the case of poor old Britain, for instance. There the New Year has got off to a lousy start.

I mean, even on Covid, it’s not going well. With a Prime Minister who’s been setting an unfortunate example by flouting Covid regulations, a lot of other people are ignoring simple measures that might limit the spread of the disease. What’s more, despite a glowing start to the vaccination programme in Britain, something over which Johnson still gloats regularly, he failed to see the process far enough through. There are still five million unvaccinated adults, a dangerously large pool of people in which the virus can spread and mutate unchecked. 

And it’s not just Covid. Britain is also still dealing with the ongoing car crash that is Brexit. Rules came into effect on New Year’s Day governing imports from the European Union. Last year, a lot of companies suffered when rules governing exports came in; now a lot more will suffer because of the restrictions on imports. 

What’s more, the EU has just signed a new deal with the United States, to make trade in steel easier again, after Trump applied tariffs during his unfortunate tenure of power. Britain is, of course, excluded as a non-member of the EU. But, worse than that, since the US has left barriers in place against imports from the EU if any of the steel originated in non-member nations, the deal is likely to reduce British steel exports even into the EU.

A double whammy, in fact.

It’s no surprise that the Prime Minister is boasting about having got the crown symbol put back on pint beer glasses. A symbolic achievement, certainly. But when you have no substantial ones, what else can you boast about?

Johnson’s most significant achievement

Poor old Brits. A bare majority got suckered into Brexit, and now the whole country is going to suffer the consequences. Not a pleasant prospect for 2022.

So as many of us move into a New Year that may well be better than the old one, spare a thought for those, like Britain, less fortunate than us. All I can offer as consolation is the thought that Johnson is certainly not going to last for ever. And, eventually, Brexit can be reversed.

In the meantime, I can recommend Strauss as a gentle way to calm the nerves.

Happy New Year!