Existentialism for Labradors

The Professor has become keenly interested in the general well being of the dog Slobber. For those to whom his name is unfamiliar, he is (probably) the hero of a strip called ‘Tottering by Gently’, in Country Life. The garage began stocking this periodical, and it has gradually morphed into a must-see, essentially because of the cartoon. Slobber’s life is not, in general, very problematic, but this week, he was to be found on his cosy beanbag in front of the Aga with his brow wrinkled in unaccustomed thought, pondering the question; ‘who is a good dog then?’ – as well one might, were one a dog. Our own Miss Dog, of course, is a stranger to speculation of this kind. Born and bred in Aberdeenshire, she is met not with ‘who’s a good dog, then?’ but with, ‘I see you’ (which, to all but the most advanced thinkers, offers few challenges), and ‘what are you saying?’, to which the answer is basically, ‘woof’. Neither we, nor our visitors, throw her existential Yorkers of this kind. And thus, when you pat her handsome head, it remains reassuringly hollow.  She is exceptionally pleased with things this week, in fact. For one thing, the sun has come out, so she can bask on the gravel outside my study. For another, her pet sea slug (a stripey holothurian,  surreal triumph of the dog-toy-maker’s art) has mysteriously become plump and regained its squeak – i.e., she has taken it to bits so often, it has been confiscated and replaced – and, since from time to time the holothurian has to be disappeared in order to be sewn up again, I have also bought her a second toy so there should always be one in play at a given moment. It is a vulture, and is called Gloria. I wonder about people who design dog toys, I really do.

One thing after another

The Baritone exited stage left, in his courtly fashion, on Thursday morning, ensconced himself in Gordon’s taxi and vanished out of our lives for the time being. We then found ourselves faced with a social problem of unknown dimensions. The previous evening a cheerful American voice on the phone had announced ‘Hi, it’s Jeff’. Jeff being the Professor’s father’s brother’s second wife’s estranged son, thus a man in a vestigial relationship with us, of a kind spawned by the modern world of today. The estrangement, as far as we knew, related to the lady in question having left her first husband when the aforesaid Jeff was three – whatever she was like then, viewed in her latter years she struck one the kind of person who made you realise that whatever its faults, the women’s movement had been a Good Thing.  At the time when her second husband died, the Professor had met the lady exactly three times, since his Mama wasn’t keen on her, so there wasn’t much of a relationship there either. However, she was much given to complaining and seemed to take a general view that if she was bored and unhappy it was the business of the most proximate male to sort things out for her (i.e., for want of anyone better, the Professor, who she didn’t even like), so when she died some months ago, we were sufficiently lacking in finer feelings to be rather relieved. But estranged or not, when someone dies, their offspring end up doing the mopping up, and so Jeff had come over to get his mother decently buried, then had come over again to sort out matters concerned with the estate. We couldn’t get to the funeral because the Professor was ill, so it seemed only decent to invite Jeff up when he came over for the second time, accompanied, as it turned out, by his family, wife and two children of unknown age and gender. What we hadn’t particularly expected was that this general invitation would be taken up immediately on the heels of a domestic Marathon. However, at least it meant there were flowers in all the rooms, so after a quick sort-out-and-turn-round, we stood by with more resolution than enthusiasm. Suffice it to say that the very distant relations turned out to be absolutely charming. The estrangement between Jeff and his mother might have been caused by just about anything, but as it turned out, she must have disapproved of him for many of the same reasons she disapproved of us: Mrs Jeff worked (they had in fact met as colleagues), none of them were racist or sexist, or prone to apocalyptic religiosity, and the boy had put in time with the Peace Corps, all of which must have enraged her. We enjoyed their company, they enjoyed ours, and even though the very last thing I wanted this week was yet more entertaining, it was fun, and I hope that for them, it was a pleasant change from grubbing about in a suffocatingly respectable suburban town on the fringes of Glasgow. But nice though they were, we are rejoicing in having the house to ourselves once more.

We rise to the occasion

Last night’s party went splendidly. Its splendour was greatly augmented by Tony, who not only polished silver, polished the piano (tuned within an inch of its life last week), took down the sitting-room curtains, rearranged the room into its summer guise, an annual ceremony delayed this year by the extreme disobligingness of the weather, cut the box by the front door and ironed the Professor’s shirts, but, bless the man, came back around seven to be a discreet presence in the kitchen washing up, putting away, and tidying, with the result that for once the Professor and I did not have to do it in great haste as quietly as possible after midnight while the musicians drank whisky and played the piano. The weather, which was supposed to be awful, wasn’t, except for a couple of tiny but vehement hailstorms, neither of which lasted more than a minute (and they had the consideration not to happen during the recital, what’s more). The Baritone was in famous form; he gave us a lot of Welsh, which was rather super: that melodious tongue’s richly sounded ‘r’s and ‘l’s got their full money’s worth, and then some. Most of the rugs had been removed so it was a bit like being inside a violin. Supper I had organized quite cunningly so that everything could be picked up; there were knives and forks laid out, but hardly anyone bothered. I’m happy to say that the box of spring flowers made it to Cambridge – and that, despite hail, gales, and the daffodils’ headlong desire to get it over with for the year, there were still enough pheasant’s eye narcissus in the garden to give me flowers for the house last night.

Assuming the brace position

As of tomorrow, life will be dominated by music for most of a week. And, inevitably, by the logistics which surround it The piano has been tuned, the fact that musicians need to be fed is in hand, if not entirely sorted. My own efforts are focused on Tuesday, when our friend the baritone will sing for us and a small but lovely audience – he’s staying for several days, but he, his accompanist who is also one of the Professor’s graduate students, and the composer will be there that night – which means on one level, that all kinds of useful business will be transacted in course of the traditional post-mortem (all three of the above will be staying over), on another, which is my sphere of operations, that as well as a buffet party on Tuesday, it’ll be Breakfast of Champions on quite a lavish scale the following morning. Preparations are quite well advanced. I have filled the freezer with rolls and suchlike, by way of advance organization, pastry and so forth are in the fridge. We’ve finished painting the garden fence, the lawn is temporarily respectable (Barry the Great has indicated that it’s 90% moss and in fact, we should kill what’s there and re-sow, but has done a decent cosmetic job on things as they are: in a fortnight from now it will look like death, and remain thus for most of the summer, alas). I’ve got so much of the domestic end of things under control off and on the last couple of days that panic is pretty much averted (unless the cooker suddenly dies, as memorably, a cooker died on my wedding morning; golly, that was a panic and a half). Anyway, fingers crossed. Things are looking very nice.  The tulips are coming out, though sadly, the daffodils and narcissi seem to be going over very quickly. We sent a box of our narcissi to a friend in Cambridge who is not the sort of person to buy flowers for himself, and who, barring miracles, will not see another spring. I hope they got to him and arrived in reasonable condition, and that they gave pleasure.

A host of mostly golden daffodils

Daffodils are not generally the merry harbingers of the first week of bloody May, but here they are at last, and we’re pleased to see them. The countryside is full of them. One thing which has struck us is that we do seem to have  an extraordinary variety – not just our favourite green and yellow archaic stripey mutants. If you go round the garden picking daffodils, once you  get over the general impression of a sea of yellow and start focusing on details, you observe there are at least  twenty varieties, and maybe quite a few more if you really went round with a notebook and ticked them off. I have personally planted some of the small size jonquils,  ex- pots in the house, ‘Cheerfulness’, also ex- pots in the house, the creamy-white scented narcissus ‘Thalia’, which remains my favourite of the whole lot, and Poet’s Narcissus. That’s all, four varieties. I’m inclined to think that most people, like me,  have fairly definite views on daffodils, if they care about them at all. The gay proliferation of doubles, singles, lemon-yellow,white, cream, orange, and everything in between therefore suggests that we have fallen heir to someone’s obsession, some considerable distance back in the day.

Creak

We have spent much of the day undercoating trellis fences. A perfectly hideous job. You look at treillage and say to yourself, ‘there’s hardly anything to it’, then forget that each bit of wood has four sides till you’re in there with a brush. This has been an absolutely obnoxious task, because, while Britain is theoretically ‘basking for the Bank Holiday’, in practice, hereabouts it has continued decidedly overcast. And, even if the sun shone once in a while, though if the wind ever died down, it was warm, since in actual fact, it blew almost without intermission, after a while it began to feel as if it was gradually removing the top layer of one’s skin. Still, the job had to be done, and for the most part, it has been done. We have used all available paint and covered, I think, just about all of the exposed wood. Surviving paint from the previous coat may have to do otherwise, unless we can scare up any more. It’s all given a degree of urgency by a strong sense of this being somewhere on the verge of the last minute; this alternating sun and rain is getting the plant life moving at last, and we need to slap paint on before it becomes impossible to get at the trellis. Then, once everyone’s great feet are out of the border, I will start trying to hack away at the weeds. What a joy that will be.