Postcards from the Edge

Mary Kenny admires the pet that mastered Ulster’s bus routes

In Germany, the government has declared ‘a dog’s right to walks’.

Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner has devised a new law, making it compulsory for dog-owners to walk their pets twice daily. She’s been much mocked, but the lady insists German dogs need more walkies.

Dogs, actually, can learn to take themselves for a walk. In Chris Ryder’s biography of the late Gerry Fitt – that bonhomous Northern Irish MP – the author writes about Gerry’s dog, Mickey, who organised his own walks in Belfast. Mickey, a foundling mongrel, was a much-cherished pet. But, as nobody ever found the time to take him for a walk, Mickey discovered for himself how to get his daily exercise.

He worked out that if he hopped onto one of the buses that passed the Fitt family home, it would take him to a nearby park. Mickey became known to the bus drivers and conductors – they had conductors in those days – and the bus staff ensured the doggie alighted at the correct stop. Mickey took his own walk in the park and returned home, similarly, by his familiar bus route.

The Germans are a clever people. Surely they can train their mutts to be as smart as Mickey Fitt?

When I left London two decades ago, I did so reluctantly.

London was where everything happened – the galleries, the theatres, the clubs (be it the Groucho or the Reform), the restaurants and the buzz. I’m a city person and migrating to a small town was exile to la vie de province.

A French colleague referred to life outside the metropolis as ‘ l’atmosphere Balzacienne’ – as in a Balzac novel of overheated introversion. But I agreed to the move for the sake of marital duty and, in time, I came to see the virtues of this provincial life: the kindly people, the convenience of localism, a friendly, nearby high street and the internet’s ever-growing facility to deliver global communications.

And then along came COVID and all its nasty, unwelcome restrictions on our lives. But one compensatory element has emerged: life outside London has acquired a new status. As more people discovered they can work from home, they also discovered the pleasures of not having to commute daily, spending vast amounts in the process.

Life isn’t as expensive outside the capital, but most of what’s available in London is now accessible outside the capital. Online shopping has changed habits. And while budget shops like Primark have been losing trade in London, they’ve been thriving outside the capital.

The loss of the theatre in London over the course of this year has indeed been catastrophic. But some theatregoers also remember how ruinously expensive a West End show was – and how much, now, can be performed via Zoom. Last month, a table reading of Noël Coward’s Private Lives attracted an audience of 1,400 via Zoom, at the cost of £35 a ticket.

I’m sorry to see how much London has been drained of its pulsating life, and I hope it recovers. I’m also sorry for Paris.

My relations there tell me it’s become sadly ‘subdued’ – they’re now moving to the Bordeaux region.

I’m sorry for my native Dublin, too, and fear it may return to James Joyce’s description of it as ‘the centre of paralysis’, with its pubs continually closed.

I hope our grandchildren will see the great cities revived. But events, chance and technology have surely combined to revive life outside the metropolis.

I don’t want to assume the role of Mrs Scrooge. But I won’t be joining the general lamentations that ‘Christmas is cancelled’ because of our new social rules and regs.

Isn’t this a good opportunity to reboot the festive season – make it a less raucous, panic-stricken and insanely stressful season? Not to mention a chance to cut back on Christmas decorations, available in the shops from August.

There are strict Protestant sects that disapprove of Christmas – they claim a Christian remembrance has been changed into a Pagan bacchanalia. I see what they’re driving at. Yule will be somewhat downsized this year, and that could lead to a more reflective Nativity season.

Yet the hullaballoo over Christmas must have been exciting when it was a novelty. My late husband was evacuated, as a young boy, to New York in 1940. An American Christmas seemed wondrous: English children had never before seen merry chaps dressed as Father Christmas or giant Christmas trees festooned with lights, or heard Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer.

Poignantly, he and his brother were plied with gifts by Jewish New Yorkers as a special thank-you for Britain’s war effort. That was a Christmas he remembered with a true sense of the magical.