However dark it seems, Spring will come
IT’S a long story, but we’ve unintentionally got a young Jack Russell in the house just now – making a pack of four of the blinking things. It’s a lean, muscly little urchin, full of vim and vigour in that very satisfactory way they have, although it thankfully hasn’t yet discovered bunnies.
It currently likes nothing more than to be around people, and I’m one of its favourites. And nothing pleases her better than finding me in the living room of an evening, resting peacefully on the sofa in front of the woodburner – perchance watching TV through my briefly closed eyelids.
She hops up on to my lap, thence quickly on to the back of the sofa, from where she can slink on to my shoulder and lick my neck and ears with a laudable dedication. When she tires of this task, she usually decrees I’m paying too much attention to the TV. What she thinks I should be watching is her… really close up. Instead of television, I have to endure terriervision as she plants herself on my chest, right in my line of sight.
It doesn’t last long, as her atten
tion span is pretty short, and she’s soon bounding off to annoy someone else. Her grandmother is boss terrier in the short-statured yappy little pack, and around the house is a languid, soppy thing. She’s mostly interested in tucking her nose somewhere warm, and getting 20 hours shut-eye per day.
She likes to sit on a lap, but only if someone picks her up off the floor. She cannot possibly hop up herself, what with being the queen and all. It’s a mind-game we play most mornings at cuppa time, where she might get as far as putting her front legs up on my knee, imploring with big, begging eyes to be picked up. She assures me, in doggy words, that she’s very old now, and can’t jump up any more, and is so cold… please pick her up!
If I callously refuse, she usually steps down, and slinks away to her basket to die quietly of neglect. I remain unmoved, knowing damn well that if a mouse/rabbit/mole should scuttle behind me along the window ledge, she’d leap over me and the chair in a single bound, teeth gnashing. For, outside, she’s a different dog, into everything, endlessly on the hunt for small critters to dismantle. Half-grown bunnies are the favourite, eaten outside the back door, crunching them up from the head back. She’s got more scars than ‘Switchblade Harry’, the enforcer for the local loan shark, evidently tangling occasionally with something with sharper teeth than a bunny.
Back in the house – and it’s been so raw up here this last week that the kitchen has a much-increased attraction – we’ve been assaulting the north face of a half-eaten turkey, and are slowly making progress. Santa bought an obliging supply of tasty comestibles into the house, including – for my much-beloved little wife – a wheelbarrow full of gorgeous ice cream from the fabulous Taw River Dairy.
Like Roskilly’s down on the Lizard, it’s made from Jersey milk, and is firmly in another league. Domestic brownie points… and I get to help her eat it. Double bubble!
The lovely Alison has been struggling womanfully with a giant Christmas crossword over festive cuppa times, which reminds me of a tale that I reckon will stand a retelling.
We had a highly intelligent young man helping around the place backalong. Over his sandwich, he’d borrow yesterday’s paper to attack the crossword. I’d let him get 20 minutes in, getting bogged down, before asking: ‘Go on, Matt, give me a tough one’. He would dutifully read out the craggiest cryptic clue he couldn’t master, which I’d ponder for a few moments as I read my paper over a second mug of tea. I’d wrinkle my brow before coming up with a suggestion that miraculously fitted exactly. Genius!
Matt was highly impressed, and it was fully three to four days before he clocked that I was reading today’s paper… with the answers. Like the cut of a gemstone, brilliance can have many different facets.
Right, I’d best get on ‘foddering’ some cows, as our Irish cousins would say. I’ll kiss 2020 goodbye, and hope we don’t meet again, although I’m afraid it’s going to be an uphill struggle for a month or two. I’ve a simple mantra I give to friends who are in dire times. The sun will keep on rising in the morning.
However dark it might seem, another day will dawn tomorrow. And I think we can scale it up today. The sun is going to keep on rising over the eastern horizon, each day bringing us closer to a better Spring. Chin up.
‘The Jack Russell thinks I should be watching her, close up. I must endure terriervision, not television’