Walking The Dog

What do I want for Christmas? Apart from dinner with the cast of Sherlock, prepared by Jamie Oliver, with Miranda Hart, Sue Perkins, Julie Walters, Steven Fry and Ian McKellan as additional guests, serenaded by  all-the-kings-men  and with a private viewing of the Paddington movie to follow. Which is not asking for much, is it! Really? Improbable wants , yes - but not absolutely impossible, in that theoretically my dinner could happen, even though it almost certainly won't. Sadly. Although bits of it could ... is the Paddington movie out on DVD yet? More improbable wants would include a fist edition of my own book under the tree; a Christmas morning not started at a ridiculously early hour because Four-legged-friend and Bertie Baggins decide it's time to get up; snow - just enough to dust the world with the spirit of Christmas, but not enough to prevent cars from travelling bearing family and friends and presents; an all-you-can-eat Christmas dinner that doesn't leav...

On Thursday 19th December 2013, I wrote and posted a blog titled Inner Sheep Dog. It was about skiing en famille. I wish to revisit all that I wrote then, only this time 'with bells on' as I now have an entire family of sheep to worry over and count in safe at the end of every day. Last year, I only had half a flock to round up. This year, the entire flock answered the call to disturb their sheep-dog-protector. The mother of a friend recently described skiing as "that holiday when the best bit is the journey home." That is just so true. I couldn't have described it better myself. I can think of other activities that would stress my inner sheep dog more - bungee jumping and sky-diving spring to mind and if any of my flock ever think it's a good idea to base jump, I hope they never tell me - not even after the event. I think the catastrophists who broadcast news of disasters both natural and man-made are largely to blame for the worry-fest that infects t...

Roughly (or should that be ruff-ly) 7kg of solid shouty muscle, with teeth, the Jack Russell is a small terrier with a furious 'someone-lit-my-touch-paper-and-I'm-about-to-explode' temper and a belligerent 'you-think-I'm-small!-Tell-that-to-my-face' attitude. We share our home with two not very well behaved but loveable labradors. They are friendly, somewhat lacking in intelligence, funny and gentle. They lie at your feet; lie waiting at the foot of the stairs; lie in doorways; lie anywhere inconvenient and in the way to force some interaction from their human co-habitees; and they also 'lie' about whether or not they've been fed by one of the other human co-habitees. Perhaps, it is all this unexciting idleness that turns some people to the Jack Russell. Variously described as stubborn, energetic and aggressive, this is a working breed used to flush out foxes and definitely not prone to lying around. But why would you want to welcome into your fa...

The Broadway lyricist E Y Harburg correctly, in my (too rapidly ageing) opinion, observed that even when one’s body is  ‘bent and bowed and cracked, it is too soon to give up the ghost if one’s follies are still intact.’  Does this perhaps mean that as we age, we should ensure that we notch up a number of follies, the resolution and eventual correction of which will be as long and as arduous as it is possible to be long and arduous, in order to keep us going; to keep us young?  Or if not young , then to keep us determined, single-minded, driven and old?  Is this licence for a deliciously naughty, disreputable old age?  Or another anxiety to add to the ‘to do list’ as the years pass?  What about a bucket list of follies? Permission to  wear  purple and behave badly. Aided and recorded by an overly sensitive finger on the button for taking 'selfies.' In fact, as most selfies are in fact follies, a selfie diary of the elderly years would...

Oh dear, let me apologise for the title. Not my usual style. I know. If I shocked you, I'm sorry, but trust me, I was shocked too and not for the reason you might think. If on the other hand the title made you think "Hmmm ... edgy?!" and brought you here for the first time then apology revoked. Welcome! Time to explain myself. Perhaps. After a short story of a mouse ... Remember Aesop's fable about the town mouse who visits his cousin in the country? And finds it all a bit too quiet in a disturbing lack-of-traffic-and-noise-and-bustling-crowds-of-people-sort of a way and backward in an absence-of-theatre-and-cinema-and-24-hour-shops-and-instant-hot-running-water way, well ... whenever I leave my internet and mobile signal vacuum of rural tranquillity and travel to the city, I am reminded of the country mouse whose brief sojourn at the residence of his sophisticated cousin was terminated abruptly when flustered and frightened, he fled back home. Like him, I am ha...

Hello, Four-legged-friend here, hijacking this blog. It  is  after all about me and Baggins, so in our opinion, it's only fair if  we  (that  we  being me, as the founding dog of Walking The Dog) get to contribute sometimes. One small matter that I need to get off my big, barrelled chest, before I continue, is that  we  (Baggins and I) are, as a pair of dogs, plural, and I have always considered that it should be called Walking the Dogs - unless one of us is perennially forgotten, which isn't the case, whenever we go for a walk. Ah ... that feels better. As spokes-dog I feel a responsibility to strive for canine correctness in all things writerly and grammatical. It would upset our sensibilities to give the impression that we are a pair of languid, loll-abouts with no regard to proper English. We do understand what you are saying - yes! Even when you are cooing at us in baby-language. Why do you think we look so cute? It's because our brain...

Apart from Putney. And unless you live there or wish to visit the place and write poems about expensive London suburbs and rivers and bridges, it is probably artificial and contrived to insert Putney into a poem simply to make it rhyme. Why rhyme anyway? Why, indeed. Some modern poetry hasn't encountered a single rhyming word, hasn't flirted with structure, verse or form, and wouldn't know the difference between a couplet and a romantic dinner for two.I exaggerate but I admit to being a traditionalist. "All along the backwater, Through the rushes tall, Ducks are a-dabbling, Up tails all!" - Kenneth Grahame made me smile as a child and he still does today. His poem trips off the tongue and its rhythm is instantly memorable. I write poems that rhyme when the auditory leaps and jumps compliment the subject - but rhyme can equally sound laboured, can force the poem in the wrong direction and for the poet desperately in search of an elusive rhyme can become agonising...