Walking The Dog

'The way I mean to go on' ... what does that mean? At New Year, we ask ourselves and each other, 'What are our resolutions?' I have written about this before. Hundreds of people have written about this before; every minute of every hour of every January 1st ever since someone first had the bright idea that on the strike of midnight when December 31st trips over into January, it would be a bright idea to recalibrate; to promise ourselves that we would change. And we all know what happens to most promises. They get broken; most of them before the end of January. No, strike that out and let's be honest, most are broken by the end of the second week of January; sunk with everyone else's broken promises into the murky gloom of dying resolutions and dark mid-winter. So for a moment, let's break this ramble down, reiterate a bit, and return to where I started - resolutions are pointless promises made out of desperation when we look at the lives we have created...

Sometimes, when I visit an art exhibition, it is enough to spend an hour or so getting lost in the paintings. Sometimes, the paintings are not to my taste and rather than getting lost in the art, it loses me and I leave feeling that I have walked through a sweetshop and failed to eat any of the sweets. I have been to art exhibitions where every picture is a wow - Turner, Lowry, the 2017 BP portrait award - and to some where none is - Rauschenberg at Tate Modern. And I have been to some unexpected gems - Ernest Shepherd's illustrations at the Winnie the Pooh exhibition at the V&A and a marine art exhibition in 2016, in a small maritime gallery in Mystic, USA. Special exhibitions or event exhibitions are expensive and I have devised a private, retrospective is-it-worth-it score. If there is one picture that makes me stop and stare. And stare again. That pauses time. And takes my breath away. If there is one of these - there only needs to be one - then the is-it-worth-it wor...

I can't believe I've let #WinniethePoohDay pass without posting something about the bear of little brain who is and always has been my favourite literary character. Were I ever cast away on a desert island, the collected tales of Pooh would be the book or books I would choose to have with me. Alan Alexander Milne created a character who has universal appeal. Whether we are young or old, in China or Dubai or Greenland or a windy village in a wintry England, we all have Pooh days. Days when we 'stop to think and forget to start again.' And days when we fail to 'pay attention to where we are going and without meaning to get nowhere.' I have those days all the time. There is Winnie-the-Pooh thinking or philosophy or whatever-you-want-to-call-it in all of us. For a birthday treat this week, my big children invited me to London. It was one of those 'I'll come down* to London and spend the day with you for your birthday doing whatever yo want to do'...

Ok - so I fail at the first hurdle: of course I can't list all the D words in this post. Well, theoretically I could, I suppose, but it would create a dull, dreary and not particularly daring blog. I'd lose my readers quicker than a duck, diving for dragon-fly larvae, in a duck-pond. But incase you missed it, I'll pick up one of those D words again: daring. That's the one. Daring - adjective: definition - to be adventurous, fearless, unafraid or bold. Origin: Old English, durran - to brave danger. So ignore the " All the D words " bit of the title and insert ' Some D words; one D word in particular; a bit of a rant and a doggy catch up. " Huh! I hear you cry - actually I don't, but I like to delude myself that you noticed; that there even is a you to notice that I inserted another D word. The canine, four-legged, lick-you-in-the-face-if-you-get-too-close D word, that is, after all, appropriate for a blog called Walking the D-og. Dogs! It...

It could be argued that I watch too many films. Arguably - and more accurately - it is not the watching of too many films that I am guilty of, but the  purchasing of films in abundance: more per month than I could ever watch, apparently - or so I have been told. But this is probably accurate, as I frequently have to explain myself, when asked have you seen such-and-such a film and find that I have no option but to reply yes, sort of. By 'sort of' I mean that I have seen bits of the said film. Sometimes, enough to get the gist of plot and theme and story, but more often a taste that is puzzling and unsatisfactory and teasing in a cruel you-can-see-me-if-you-can-catch-me sort of way. And I never have time to catch it. It is the lot of a mother - she who washes and cooks and clears and cleans and finds the odd socks (sometimes) and walks the dogs and feeds them and wrestles the ironing-mountain and answers the phone and waters the garden and bakes the bread and never sits still ...

Honestly - "Aaaaargh!" Can I really not think of a better title? No, not this morning - an alternative using the words I'm thinking would probably be unpublishable. Yesterday's blog was also entitled "Aaaaargh!" For different reasons - which I will get onto later - but yesterday's blog DESPITE SAVING IT DURING A BRIEF WINDOW WITH INTERNET IN LONDON YESTERDAY LUNCHTIME disappeared overnight. All those words and pictures evaporated off the screen. So this is definitely an "Aaaaargh!" moment. "Aaaaargh!" x2 if you like. And there's a big Grrr! prowling through my head trying to remember why I was thinking "Aaaaargh!" yesterday. It started with a benign quote with eight of the most inspirational words I have ever read - Somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known Carl Sagan I grew up watching Sagan's wonderful television series, Cosmos. It was perfect - from the velvety enthusiasm of his voice,...

Chocolate cake. Most of us who bake probably have a favourite chocolate cake recipe - the one that always works; that forgives being made in a rush or once without eggs (added to the cake tin five minutes after it was initially placed in the oven ... even I didn't think I'd get away with that one); that tolerates the fickle heat of different ovens and different tins and without fail, at first sniff of it baking, brings back delicious memories of old friends and old holidays. And picnics and sand between toes and laughter and blustery walks and holding hands and eating too much and wind in your hair and squinting in the sun and dancing in the rain and dragonflies hitching a ride and castles and hill-tops and freezing cold lochs and a long walk with a black and white cat. This is my favourite chocolate cake recipe. Written by the dearest of old friends, on this scrap of paper, over twenty years ago. (Annotated by he who should have known better and me. He was right abo...

Early morning sun and a walk with Four-legged-friend and Bertie Baggins Frosty underfoot giving way to blue sky and long shadows and sunny boys Taking 'the path less travelled by' takes on a whole new meaning here - left, right or straight to heaven? But perhaps, this procrasti-rambler needs to forget heaven and see it as up . Stepping upwards and onwards. Taking the harder choice, the brave one, the one where challenges are met and tackled and overcome. Maybe, I should see it as a metaphor for ceasing to procrastinate and doing the things that are frightening and hard to face. When it comes to writing, criticism and rejections are hard to receive; praise is seldom fully believed and there is, ever present, the niggling doubt that the only person you write for is yourself. Being a writer can be immensely lonely. Sharing your writing risks increasing the loneliness, because, once it's out ther...

According to Tate Modern - ART CHANGES WE CHANGE  I wonder if it's just me ... just me - the sufficiently pedantic one, who bothers to be bothered by this declaration? Everyone else simply walks on by. If they notice the words, perhaps they glance, read, shrug a 'yes, whatever' and walk on. Me - I glance, read and the words trigger an agitated avalanche; a silent screaming 'Whaaaaat?!' Surely, something's missing. Perhaps, a comma. Or any of the following: when, how, where, if, and, as.  All would fit. Wouldn't they? Or am I alone in my nit-picking, pernickety little world; worrying what these words mean? What the intent was behind displaying them large above the brick wall of the iconic Tate? What they are meant to say? But fail to say. Perhaps, the point is that different people will read different things into them. If they bother to read them at all. I'm still bothered, though, about what they mean to me. And what they clearly do...

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend. Albert Camus Be my friend. Just take me for a walk. Please. Or I'll have to take myself for one. And then I won't have a friend - Four-legged-friend discovered yesterday that he could hold his lead in his mouth. It happened by accident. There was something dangling at mouth level that hadn't been there before so what was a dog meant to do. It tasted leathery and smelt of friends' hands. Then, he appeared to realise what exactly it was that he had in his mouth. And having never done this before, he brought it to us looking for our hands, as if to say take it and take me for a walk.  I thought you couldn't teach an old dog tricks. Four-legged-friend proved that wrong. Even if seven is not old old, it is pretty old in big-dog years. While Four-legged-friend was happy to walk with a friend, Bertie Baggins wa...