One man and his dog at the crossroads of history

PET PASSPORTS

WITH Britain leaving the EU, the Pet Passport scheme that requires your dog, cat etc to have a microchip, rabies vaccination etc if he’s off to the continent with you will need to be overhauled – if you’re going through Britain.

Back in 2001, when the original scheme was introduced, my German shepherd, Thompson, became one of the first dogs in Ireland to get his pet’s passport.

I was testing out the procedure – having Thompson microchipped, getting him through the check-points etc for a magazine article.

We duly left Ireland on the morning of September 10, 2001, crossing to Wales, and stayed at a B&B near Dover that night.

The next day, early on September 11, 2001, we crossed by ferry to France.

We set our course for the Spanish border: south west towards Bordeaux and through the French Basque country.

My French is almost non-existent, so as the BBC faded out just beyond Calais, I switched to tapes and CDs.

Thus I travelled through France unaware of the unfolding news story so big it would dominate international politics from that point onwards.

We reached the Spanish frontier by late evening on September 11. The Guardia Civil officers at the check-point were uninterested in our arrival. Had Thompson been foaming at the mouth and howling like a banshee, it seemed they would have merely shrugged and waved us on. Through.

Just north of Burgos, I pulled off the road at a sprawling service station. I pitched up on rough ground and bedded down comfortably. I lay down across the front seats, pulled my sleeping bag round me and wished Thompson, in the back, a good night. I was on the road again by 9am. Under relentlessly blue skies, I headed south on an almost ridiculously empty auto-route that skirted the great Rioja region. To each side of the highway, dusty roads led away through immaculately-tended wine estates; vineyards stretched endlessly towards the Cantabrian mountains.

I switched on the car radio. After listening vaguely to some sombre classical music on a local station (seemed odd), I settled back to concentrate on a play I’d recorded from RTÉ. Somewhere near Cantalapiedra in Castile I pulled off at a service station.

The play only had a few minutes to run so I sat on in the car. Although tending to the mawkish, the play had touched me.

I sat in the car looking very doleful for a few minutes.

A Spanish lorry driver wandered past my open window. As he reached my window he lifted his beret slightly and nodded sadly.

I bowed my head in reply — strangely touched that a total stranger should show empathy in such a trivial situation. I’d only been listening to an RTÉ play, for goodness sake, and was looking a bit sad. Maybe the truck driver had been in the same position himself once – moved by some piece of melancholy on the radio, only to be comforted, albeit fleetingly, by a stranger.

Yeah, that was likely it. Those Spaniards, eh?

I drove on for another hour or so. Just outside Valladolid, I stopped to phone my contact in Salamanca.

Thus it was that I was informed of the attack on the Twin Towers by an old Castilian vet. And, as my Spanish was almost nonexistent while the vet’s English was barely serviceable, our exchange about Al Qaida’s attack on New York was a tortuous dialogue – under other circumstances it might have been regarded as the height of arch-comedy.

When I reflected on the day subsequently, it seemed unbelievable that I’d remained blind and deaf for over 30 hours to the huge tragedy in New York. To be fair, mobile phones were in their infancy; Facebook and Twitter hadn’t even been invented. A day and a half of silence would probably be impossible today. Today, every time I hear the words ‘pet’s passport’ it reminds me of Thompson, of our two strange days on the continent, and the news story that we missed.

FLIGHTS OF FANCY

HAVE you ever dreamed of a Ryanair flight where everybody gets priority boarding – no pushing and shoving to avoid the dreaded middle seat?

A flight where there’s ample leg room and a menu in your seat pocket that promises the very best of fine dining.

One where the cabin crew will serve you a glass of champagne before they stack all your luggage in the overhead lockers to save you the bother?

Well that dream could come true this winter.

It will cost, of course – because you’ll need to hire Ryanair’s corporate jet to avail yourself of all his luxury. But should you opt for this novel, yet expensive way of getting home, the customised Boeing 737-700 offers reclining business class leather seats — and there’s only 60 of them so there’s plenty of room.

So, unlike your average flight, there won’t be any elbow fights, or arguments with passengers who have dubious views on equality etc..

ISLANDS IN THE GLUM

IT’S like an echo of how things used to be in the North of Ireland. I’m harking back to the time just about everything was banned on an Ulster Sunday ranging from soccer league matches to the use of children’s playgrounds.

It seems that that religious fervour still operates in the Outer Hebrides, although there have been some loosening of the outright Sabbath ban on some activities – for example, some pubs do open, and the ferries are allowed to dock on the Sabbath.

But overall, a stern Puritanism settles on the islands of a Sunday.

The Hebrides have always intrigued me.

I’ve visited a few times. They’re isolated, but boast dramatic scenery. Stornoway still has a large Gaelic-speaking population and the music in the pubs is ridiculously beautiful.

But the islands are ravaged by weather that can only be described as iffy.

It seems as if the people have said – right, we live on these rocks that are swept by rain and gales nearly every day so what can we do to make ourselves more miserable? Of course! Ban drink, make sure nobody can enjoy themselves on Sunday, call dancing a sin. I think they should take a trip to Valentia Island. Down there for a weekend recently I asked a barman when the pub closed. ‘Ach, round about March.’

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

NOW this is good. You’ll like this.

A square in Moscow is to be reamed after Kim Philby the member of the Cambridge spy ring who lived in Moscow after defecting in 1963. The city’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin has decided on the name change, even though it’s a move that will scarcely help foster better relations between Britain and Russia.

Still, not quite as provocative as the trick the Iranians pulled on the British. Today in Teheran, the capital of Iran, if you’re looking for the British embassy, you’ll be directed to 198 Ferdowsi Avenue.

The embassy used to be on Bobby Sands Street. Originally the result of a prank, a group of students changed the signs where the embassy was located to read Bobby Sands Street.

The name stuck and eventually became official.

But the wily British embassy staff started using the back door instead, thereby changing their postal address.

Ferdowski is a revered Iranian poet, so is unlikely to be changed by Tehran city authorities, the Brits concluded. But you never know. Should the Teheran authorities decide to rename it something like Michel Barnier Street, the Brits may well have to begin using the window on a laneway that goes down the side of the embassy, Jomhouri Road.

Meanwhile, after a short break in Paris I came across le Rue du Docteur Finlay just off le Quai de Grenelle by the Seine.

It seems a substantial street, but no clue as to the origins of the name. There were no accompany streets named after Mistress Niven or Dr Cameron, so I wandered on down the Seine none the wiser.