It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Things on the computer front have more or less returned to normal, with some glowing exceptions. Actually, “glaring” is probably more accurate a description. I still haven’t managed to connect up my mobile phone to my laptop, and I have discovered that Adobe Pagemaker 7 no longer works with Windows 7 (or at least the program works, it just won’t let you create a postscript file at the end of it, which is probably even more annoying.) I am also still discovering missing cookies and passwords, and Smart PDF creator doesn’t seem to be working properly. Apart from that, everything seems to be working again. Apart from the Iceberg, the Titanic wasn’t a bad ship, really. Still, in a world where 800 million people don’t even have fresh water, I don’t know what I’m complaining about, really.
We, of course, have had fresh water a-plenty this week. So much so that I was busy looking online to see if I could source some gopher-wood. An ark three hundred by fifty by thirty cubits would require a fair bit of gopher-wood, I am guessing. I have no idea what gopher wood even is. It’s a good job Noah took two gophers in the ark, otherwise we wouldn’t have any left today, when we really need it. I could quote Genesis 6: 13-22 at this point, but I do occasionally get emails from people who say they prefer the Epiblogs when there is more poetry and less Bible-bashing, so I might just leave it at the reference and move on to Stanley Holloway instead:
One day Sam were filling a knot hole
With putty, when in through the door,
Came an old man fair reeked i'whiskers
An th'old man said good morning I'm Noah.
Sam asked Noah what were his business
And t'old chap went on to remark,
That not liking the look of the weather
He was thinking of building an ark.
Not exactly T S Eliot, but much more appropriate to this last week than “The Dry Salvages” [actually, the Dry Salvages themselves are pretty wet, since they are rocks off the coast of Massachussetts.]
It rained and it rained for a fortnight
It flooded the whole countryside,
It rained and it still kept on raining
'Til th'Irwell were fifty miles wide.
The houses were soon under water
And folks to the roof had to climb,
They said t'was the rottenest summer
As Bury had had for some time.
The rain showed no sign of abating
And water rose hour by hour,
'Til th'only dry land were at Blackpool
and that were on top of the tower.
Which just about sums up the past week. On Friday, the day when we had a month’s worth of rain in 24 hours, there was actually standing water in our garden, the first time I have ever seen that particular phenomenon. We’re half way up the side of the Holme Valley. At the front of the house, the road is higher than the house, and there was already a river of water running from Huddersfield towards Netherton by mid-morning. But the standing water was really startling. It was actually raining faster than the water could drain away out of the garden and down the slope. And not just for a few minutes, either; it went on for hour after hour, and I’ve never seen anything like it, for rain.
It’s gone way beyond what my Uncle Ron used to call “freak weather”, it’s now so weird it’s almost boring, so I’ll shut up about it. Everywhere’s flooded, it’s pissing down all the time, and everything, including Summer, is cancelled. The climate is screwed. Which is a shame, because we’re supposed to be setting off in the camper van, soon.
The animals don’t like it either. Zak and Freddie have been bored shitless by sitting watching the rain fall hour after hour, in the vain hope that it will break for long enough for a quick walkies. Freddie in particular hates being turfed out into the garden to do his “necessaries” and scuttles off with bad grace, grumbling and muttering as he goes. Kitty (who was once memorably mistaken for Russell by Debbie and told in no uncertain terms to get out of that ***** tree, when she was still "Colin's cat") just stays by the fire and sits it out until she can’t wait any longer, then makes a mad dash through the cat flap. She came back the other day absolutely soaking wet with a glistening raindrop on the end of every hair, and proceeded to have an elaborate wash which lasted for hours in order to dry herself! That’s cat logic for you – only a woman would understand it. Actually, my mother used to dry Ginger, our old cat at home, with kitchen-roll, when he came in out of the rain. Not that he was spoilt or anything.
Freda and Brenda must be on their holidays, I think, but meanwhile, the birds and the squirrels have been competing for the stale bread and peanuts. The squirrels have now got the lid off the bird-feeder and emptied it, on more than one occasion. The other day, Debbie was sitting out on the decking and I heard her raise her voice, but couldn’t catch what she said, so I trundled to the door and I asked her what she wanted. She replied that she had been talking not to me, but to a squirrel that was attempting to steal some peanuts. Righty-ho, says I, in the sort of tone of voice that implies I am smiling nervously while simultaneously backing away, and am going to find the timetable and look up the trains to Colney Hatch. At which she became indignant:
“I can talk to squirrels, can’t I?” she said, in a querulous tone of voice.
“Of course you can,” I replied, “it’s when they start talking to you that you need to worry!”
“Well, I’d get more bloody sense out of them than I do out of you!” Ooof! Crosscourt winner, game set and match, Oh I say.
Our gay badinage was interrupted by a knock at the door, and it turned out to be the young relief postman. His colleague (whom he was relieving) had told him that it was OK to just open the porch door and put anything too large for the letterbox inside the porch, but neither of them had reckoned with the way in which the door had swollen grossly in the rain. He thought the door was actually locked, which is why he’d knocked on it. Between us, me on the inside pulling, him on the outside shouldering it, we got it open and I thanked him. He was sorry for disturbing me but “you can’t go round kicking people’s doors in!” Which is very true of course. If he wanted to do that, he should have joined the Police and not Royal Mail. Mind you, the way The Blight is going, their next wacky idea will probably be to amalgamate the Police and Royal Mail, so the postman kicks your door in, hits you over the head with a truncheon, then gets you to sign for a parcel.
The parcel in question turned out to be quite mysterious. It contained a wonderful pair of hand knitted turquoise and white “tadpole” socks, obviously from Maisie, since her handwriting was on the outside of the jiffy-bag, but there was no covering letter – instead, there was a compliment slip from her estate agents. Weird. I could only speculate whether, somewhere, there was an equally puzzled estate agent poring over a letter that said “Dear Ruddicles, hope you like the tadpoles!”
I haven’t really mugged up on the Liturgical Year this week, because this Sunday is Baggis Day. The actual anniversary of the death of Russell, the Baggis Cat, as he was known, for reasons lost in the mists of time and the various crinkly bits of Debbie’s brain she no longer uses, is actually tomorrow, the 9th July. Seven years ago tomorrow we were standing at the side of Kilbrannan Sound on the Isle of Arran, listening to a mobile phone call from Deb’s Mum telling us that the vets had had to let him go, his time had come.
Since that day, we’ve always celebrated his life on the anniversary of the date, or failing that, on the nearest Sunday, and today is no exception. Over the years, it’s grown to encompass also remembering the others who’ve passed the same way, Nigel, and Dusty, Lucy (Deb’s Mum’s dog) and now, of course, Tiggy. This will be the first ever Baggis Day without her. The Sainsbury’s man delivered the weekly groceries yesterday and, in making conversation with him, as you do, I happened to mention that I hoped the weather kept up as we had a celebration of sorts planned on Sunday and we hoped to sit outside on the deck.
“Oh, really,” he said, “what’s the occasion?”
It briefly flashed across my mind to explain to him about Baggis Day and how it was a celebration of all the love and companionship provided by wonderful animals over the years but I wasn’t sure he’d “get” the concept, so I just mumbled something about a “family anniversary” and left it at that. Some people don’t get it, they don’t understand pet loss, or pet bereavement. I wouldn’t be without a companion animal. The best way in which I can describe it, is that if my life is the main melody, then the various pets we’ve had have always enriched the tune by providing the descant and harmony. In fact, there have been some times when I haven’t particularly felt like singing, and thy have always picked up the music and carried it on, until I’ve finally come back round and begun to join in again.
Anyway, if it ever did come to building an ark, I’d make damn sure they were on board, but I recognize that not everybody feels that way. Whether it’s right to question the depth or sincerity of another person’s grief over the loss of a pet, of course, is a moot point; to the person feeling the grief it is real, and poignant, and at the end of the day, which if us has a piece of paper that says they have been appointed the official moral arbiter of what counts as “valid” grief or not.
As I’ve said many times before, with the monotonous regularity of the rain falling throughout an English summer, I’ve come to the conclusion that what’s needed is a massive re-evaluation of our relationship with animals of all types, one that puts their needs and their welfare at a much higher premium than has hitherto been the case. If old Noah could do it with pitch and gopher-wood, think what we might achieve with modern technology and know-how (although I strongly suspect that pitch and gopher-wood are, in fact, among the main ingredients of Windows 7). And, for the avoidance of any doubt, because I feel this way about animal welfare, it doesn’t automatically follow that I am going to give up campaigning against the injustices of infant mortality in the third world, or the treatment of refugees, the homeless, or asylum-seekers. It’s not either/or. I see it as all part of the same progression. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” – Or, if you prefer, George Bernard Shaw, who said “Man’s inhumanity to man begins with man’s inhumanity to animals.”
There I go, getting on my soapbox again (makes mental note to check if the soapbox is of gopher-wood). If I care not for the animals, I am a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. Last Thursday, I was privileged to see a grey squirrel closer than I think I have ever seen one before, as it sat on the decking, just outside the door, munching away on some peanuts left uneaten by the birds. It didn’t occur to me until afterwards that the half an hour or so I spent watching the exquisite delicacy with which it deftly handled each nut in turn and its cheerful little jaws munching away nineteen to the dozen, must have coincided almost exactly, time-wise, with Squigs’ funeral. And, for once, it wasn’t raining. Weird that.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a “sign” – although the medieval and 17th century Cabalists and Neo-Platonists would have had us believe that there were “correspondences”, throughout nature, and that maybe “my” squirrel was the harbinger of a perfect, archetypal squirrel, elsewhere. I was trying to find a concise example of this doctrine – perhaps backed up by a quotation from Andrew Marvell or Henry Vaughan – but I got sidetracked, as you do on the internet, and ended up reading this, on the Wikipedia article about Emmanuel Swedenborg:
Swedenborg states that there is a correspondence between, for example: thought and speech, between intention and action, between mind and body, and between God and creation. Correspondence is a causal relationship (i.e., thought is the cause of speech, intention is the cause of action).
The correspondence between spiritual and natural things extends to all objects in the physical world. Light corresponds to wisdom because wisdom enlightens the mind as light enlightens the eye. Warmth corresponds to love because love warms the mind as heat does the body. The various animals in creation correspond to the various affections in man. Ultimately, all things correspond to and symbolize qualities in God.
Which is sort of what I had in mind. The idea that everything is everything and affects everything else, and that all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well, took a step nearer scientific reality this week, with the discovery of the long-predicted Higgs Boson, and the further scientific underpinning of the idea that everything is connected and what counts is influencing the world for the better by paying it forward, and increasing the store of love and compassion, whether for an animal, a person, or whatever. If everything really is connected to everything else, then it makes assertions such as those put forward by certain Church of England Bishops, including the Bishop of Carlisle, that the bad weather and the floods are some sort of judgement on the arrogant conduct of mankind, seem slightly less wacky. When Bishop Dow says
"This is a strong and definite judgment because the world has been arrogant in going its own way," and "We are reaping the consequences of our moral degradation, as well as the environmental damage that we have caused."
He’s not really saying anything that James Lovelock hasn’t already said in Gaia. If we were more accepting and lived more in harmony with everything else, and had more respect and compassion (and I am a fine one to talk, being the founder member of the Violent Unforgiving Quakers, but hey) then perhaps the world, and all that it contains, wouldn’t be in such a bloody mess. Tomorrow, I might make a start on that ark. Or maybe not the ark itself, but the covenant of the ark (see what I did there?) A covenant to try and release a few more doves, and see if they come back with olive branches. I certainly fit the job description for Noah, just don’t make me mount Arafat.
And for the rest of today, we’ll be celebrating Baggis Day; feel free to raise a glass alongside us, to the pets of your own household, past, present and future.
If fine, outside in the garden, with tealights twinkling in the gloaming on Russell’s mosaic, if wet, inside by the fire, with incense burning and Officium on the CD player. And may he purr in lux eternam.
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