Wilfred De’ath

the days that followed, Betty and I went a little barmy with grief. She ordered more than 300 iphone photos of Lupin off the internet. I blubbed to anyone who came within my orbit, including the postman, who Lupin had terrorised for over a decade. He seemed genuinely upset: ‘Funny little dog – used to wag his stub when he was giving it large.’

The day after his death, the Aged P phoned. ‘Is Lupin there?’ she asked, as though calling him up for a chat. ‘He’s dead!’ I said, appalled. ‘I know that – but is he there?’ I was nonplussed. Did she think we had left him on the sofa? Or that he was in an open casket in the front room, with neighbours filing in to pay their respects? ‘Is he there?’ she repeated. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ ‘Have you buried him in the garden?!’ The answer was no. It took Mr H F two days to dig a hole big enough for Pearl the rabbit (London clay). So a grave for Lupin would have taken him up to Easter. Neither did we ask for his ashes to be returned in a commemorative box. We did that with Lupin’s predecessor, Beulah. But the scattering of her ashes on a blustery day on her favourite hill at Polesden Lacey felt somehow contrived.

My sombre eulogy was cut short by Mr H F complaining, ‘Never mind all that – just scatter the bloody ashes!’ So I threw Beulah’s remains to the wind, only for a gust to blow what felt like a tail’s worth back into my face.

So many lovely people have consoled me over Lupin, though I still feel secretly aggrieved that the fellow dog-walkers of Surrey are going about their business as usual when everyone should be in full Victorian mourning. At the very least, Mole Valley Council should erect a statue of The Colonel at the entrance to his beloved Bookham Common.

The only plus side to the rubbishy lifespan of dogs is being able to provide a home for another one. Yesterday, we registered with Battersea Dogs Home.

When the house feels too empty, I find myself scrolling through an online pet forum, where ads from reputable sellers feature alongside more dubious ones (eg ‘Staffy for sale – does high five, sits ’n’ that, only one ear, hence £250’). But this feels like a betrayal. And Betty tells me off for only ever ‘favouriting’ the ones who resemble The Colonel.

Oh, irreplaceable Lupin! The funniest, most devoted companion, who waited up for me long after everyone else had gone to bed. Who always treated me like Deborah Kerr on the red carpet when I felt more like Olive from On the Buses. RIP, dear old friend. A long time ago, in the early 1970s, I rented a holiday flat, for myself and my family, overlooking the sea in the little town of Aldeburgh, in Suffolk.

The music festival was at its height in those days, presided over by its founder, the composer Benjamin Britten, and his lover, the singer Peter Pears. The two of them ruled the roost.

One day, out for an early-morning ramble through the nearby woods, I came upon Ben and Peter, both stark naked, gambolling hand in hand through the misty glades… Ah, those were the days!

The following Sunday, Edward Heath, the Prime Minister, arrived by helicopter at neighbouring Snape Maltings for a Britten/pears concert. As I say, those were the days!

Other famous people who inhabited Aldeburgh at that time included the writer Laurens van der Post, Prince Charles’s godfather, with whom I was on good terms (I had an affair with his secretary). Also there was Imogen Holst, daughter of Gustav. I once asked her if she thought Ben Britten would give me an interview for the Sunday Times, for which I was then working. (She was also working as Britten’s amanuensis at the time.)

‘Do you know anything about music?’ she asked me haughtily. ‘Nothing at all,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Well then, certainly not…’ Recently, I returned to Aldeburgh to find it changed and not for the better. It is no longer the storm-tossed fishing village of Britten’s imagination in his great opera Peter Grimes. It has become, not to mince words, gentrified. Forty years ago, a room at the Wentworth, the best hotel in town, cost £50 (we thought that exorbitant, even in those days). Now the same room costs £150. Who, apart from a very wealthy oldie, can afford that?

My ramshackle holiday flat has been turned into a bijou apartment. Billy Burrell, a friend of Britten’s, some say the model for Peter Grimes, was once the only fisherman in Aldeburgh. He used to sell his fish from a broken-down old hut – my son Charles, then aged four, was thrilled to make his acquaintance. Now there are rows and rows of posh huts, all selling many different kinds of fish at inflated prices.

It’s the same thing with the Aldeburgh lifeboat. It used to be just a tatty old boat. Now, along with other boats, it’s been painted in bright colours and there is a huge RNLI gift shop attached to it.

I could go on and on, but the fact is that Aldeburgh has become twee. Ben and Peter have lain side by side since the 1980s in the churchyard of St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Aldeburgh.

In the unlikely event they were to rise from their graves to find Aldeburgh so gentrified, they would undoubtedly dive back in again. Who could blame them? The great days are over.