Seven days and counting...

... for Knots in the string

You know, last weekend could have been Christmas for me. The kind I might write to ask Father Christmas for. This is how it went:

Saturday:

My husband and son are heading off in the boat to fish (it being good sea conditions at which my ears prick up). I ask if they could drop me off at a jetty down the coast so that I can walk home. I’m not mad on fishing and at least a short boat run to a jetty would give me my boating fix.

Son: ‘We can drop you off on Maria Island…’

Me: ‘Oooh, really?’

‘Sure. We won’t be that long…’ (Ah, the confidence of the fisherman…)

Me, thinking… Pup to arrive in a month. After that no boating until the dog has grown old enough to be left at home on its own - 2026! Merde! ‘Fabulous. Thank you!’

I quickly throw a bottle of water, sun cream, nourishment, a pair of shorts, some lip balm, and my phone into a small daypack. Completely forget to change shoes from boatshoes to runners, but at least I have a hat! Within half an hour we are out in Mercury Passage, chatting to a pod of dolphins who chase our bow-wave as they follow bait fish up the coast. In minutes they are gone, diving at angles beneath us and leaving one young chap to arc alongside before dashing after the others.

I walk along the large jetty at Darlington, watching the two fishermen head north. There is no one around and the day is perfection, sky blue with a gauze patina of soft white cloud here and there, the sea covered in silver discs that glitter and jostle in the early morning light. I walk nor’east, heading to the Miller’s Cottage, so that I can sit on the sandstone step, gaze at the circle around which the horse would have walked as grain was crushed for flour.

I stare at the same northerly view that he and his family would have observed in the nineteenth century, feeling the same warmth. Listening to the mournful crow-cry and the chittering of the little ground-birds, spying a gunmetal-grey skink sunbathing, and hoping to the stars that no tiger snake might appear to warm itself. Because if it’s sunny enough for me to slip off my jeans and pull on shorts, to rub in suncream and be glad I have cold water to drink, then it’s sunny enough for snakes and I’m phobic. But I have Christmas shortbread, and the sugar gives me courage.

Shouldering the pack, I walk on up the hill and a mob of taupe-coated wallabies watch me. There’s an arrogant indolence about them. Snorting down their noses, a fierce sound halfway between husky cough and nose-clearing – a warning. I leave them alone because I’m the interloper. Over the lip of the hill, I look down to the Fossil Cliffs where a dozen tourists mill around, so I strike away toward the Engineer’s cottage, down the inland slopes and hidden amongst trees in what is almost a dell. It’s very quiet as I walk…

…with only birdsong, but then I’m pleased to hear water running and a frog chorus – at least it hasn’t dried off to summer crisp yet. I check my phone, almost 10,000 steps in the wrong shoes, the balls of my feet on fire – nowhere near enough padding for septuagenarian soles. I phone the men and they say they’ve been successful and are on their way back to the island so I walk on.

Soon, I’m back in Darlington, desperate to soak said soles in the cool seawater but as I pass the beautiful Georgian Commissariat, I hear a boat and must hurry to the jetty. I jump on board between waves, as the chop threatens to bash our lovely navy hull against the timber pylons.

And so, despite the rough trip back (baaaaad for my balance), I’m nevertheless complete. I have had my day away on the boat and on the island. If I wish hard, and tell Father Christmas I’ll be really good, maybe in the next four weeks I can get a trip to the southern end of the island where I can swim, dive, pootle – as much as I can squeeze in before the new baby arrives.

And so to Sunday…

We have of course, been counting the days to the Pupdate. It’s been an odd time – filled with such longing for our boy, with occasional weeps, and not feeling guilty for that longing because the grief for a lost family pet is as strong as grief for lost human family. But the bright sparkle has been the knowledge that we would have our next visit with the pups – those pups that were born 3 days before H died. That birthdate matters.

We drive for three hours. A pristine day where the canvas has been spoiled by nothing that isn’t perfection. Fields are filled with round bales of grass hay, lucerne and straw. There are paddocks of golden barley and oats, of flowering blue lucerne, fields of medicinal poppies, of pyrethrum, and irrigators spraying arcs of silver water across the crops. Cattle, sheep and gloss-coated horses stand under the shade of oaks and elms or against the shadows thrown by tall hedges of hawthorn.

As we near Westbury, our destination, my heart beats faster and there is a fleeting moment when I think ‘No! Turn the car round, it’s wrong!’ Tears prick my eyes and then suddenly we are outside the gate to the property and all my doubts and fears vanish as we walk around the corner and the six mature Roxham dogs all greet us with smiles on their faces as if they are saying ‘Hi, we’ve been expecting you.’

We greet them, they smell us, deem us okay and we go in to see the pups. There is a pen of four new little ones, tiny poppets. Then another of the super top-notch ones the breeder bred via IVF from the Crufts winner who is now in China, and then the pen of our lot.

The butterballs are just waking and venturing onto the puppy pads to wee and then they come barrelling over to see what is happening. There are two for us to choose from as the breeder is keeping the one female and one of the males, and the really petite last-born in the litter is going to a family friend. I sit on the floor as the pups are put down near us to explore.

I wait. My husband, who can’t sit on floors, takes pics and rubs fat bellies and asks sensible questions. I of course am goo-ing and gah-ing and loving every sweet puppy-smelling moment. Waste of time talking to me really, as I’m effectively in the zone!

They have short little legs so that their bellies are almost perpetually on the ground and when they sit, I keep thinking they are wee-ing, but it’s just their baby shape. They doddle everywhere – pootling, coddiwompling.

The darker one takes his time, observing, almost Yoda-ish in his approach to life. We call him P2. P1 climbs onto my lap, makes himself at home, sniffs my jeans, licks my fingers and just wags his tail joyously the whole time. Eventually P2 decides to place his forelegs on my legs, his tail beginning the wiggle-woggle. He loves his back being rubbed and I sniff his adorable crown.

Any decision is impossible as they both have qualities we like. And besides, they’re only 4.5 weeks old! Their personalities are still developing and what we see at this Pupdate could change by the next visit on the 27 December.

(As it turns out, the breeder said that after we left, P1 crashed out and P2 began to party! But on a further bulletin, P2 is definitely Yoda.)

In any case, that next visit is Choice Day – so seven days from today and counting.

We feel we’ve made contact. That there are threads reaching forth that might tether one or other to us. Do we want two? If we were 10 years younger, probably. But we’re not, and Jackies are renowned for their energy. It will be enough for us to fulfil the needs of one and do it well, than having two and maybe running out of puff. I have to consider too that my husband travels overseas frequently with his job, and thus I will be chief cook and bottle washer, so one it will be. I think…

We talk of them constantly. Toss up names. Buy puppy things. But we have a huge stash of goodies from The Terrier and I am hoping that his spirit will share. Not just his toys but us as well.

I think he will. Like I say, there’s a couple of signs already and I’m never one to ignore signs…

Can I say too, before I finish, that I’ve taken enormous comfort over the last month from Elizabeth’s…

Susan’s…

Tom’s…

Sue’s…

Rebecca’s…

and Alice’s…

… regular posts. How lucky I am to have found their beautiful writing. 11/10!

Can I also say how thrilled I am to have met Kim at my grandson’s school? And how grateful that she introduced herself to me. I value what she said to me about Knots in the String greatly. Thank you so much, Kim.

Song for this week? Something NOT Christmassy and NOT doggy… well kind of not. Stick with it if you can. It’s a long intro but worth it…