Prisoner of War

Animals have been much on my mind of late.
'Well, there's a surprise!' I hear you cry. And: 'What's new?'
I suppose they are fair questions, as animals are never far from my mind.

It's probably something to do with the time of year.
And the state of the country.
And because some dear friends lost their dog this week, to cancer - something that besets old age in many dogs. But age is irrelevant when it comes to losing someone you love; it makes it more reasonable perhaps, but no less painful.

But I did read a lovely story this week as well.
You may already know it, but I'll share it anyway.
It's about Judy, a pure-bred Pointer, who began life in Shanghai in 1936, but by the time she was six months old had become the mascot of a Royal Navy gunboat, HMS Gnat.

A PDSA photo. Frank Williams and Judy

As dog's lives go, hers was packed with adventure, but she had a pretty rough time too. She was stolen by the crew of a US gunboat, and only  returned to her own ship when the Gnat's crew secretly boarded the US boat, stole the ship's bell and then offered the bell in exchange for their beloved mascot. She was, apparently, returned within the hour.

But life was to get much tougher for Judy than being kidnapped by a US gunboat.
In 1939, Judy transferred with some of the crew to HMS Grasshopper, but in 1942, while evacuating personnel from Singapore, the ship was bombed and the crew and passengers abandoned ship.  Judy, below deck at the time, was left behind. However, as the Grasshopper remained afloat and the island the crew were marooned on was found to be without water or supplies, a Petty Officer was sent back to the vessel to find food. He found Judy, trapped under some lockers, and made a raft to float her and the food to safety. She, in turn, sniffed out and then dug down to a spring of fresh water near the shoreline, and saved everyones' lives.

Alas, in escaping from the island - which involved commandeering a Chinese junk and then trekking 200 miles cross-country - they ran into Japanese troops and were taken captive. Judy was smuggled into the prisoner of war camp with them, and there she met Leading Aircraftman Frank Williams who shared his pitiful portion of food with her, and in return she gave the alarm when poisonous snakes or scorpions approached. Incredibly, he even managed to get the Commandant to give her official status as a prisoner of war by promising the man one of her puppies - a promise which was redeemed. Frank also trained Judy to lie completely still in a rice sack, so that when the prisoners were transferred to Singapore in 1944, she was able to be smuggled aboard the transport in a sack slung over his shoulder. Despite having to stand for 3 hours in hot sun on the baking deck, Judy never gave her presence away by so much as a whimper.

With 700 prisoners on board, conditions on board were cramped, but all was well until the ship was torpedoed. Williams pushed Judy out of a porthole in an attempt to save her life, taking quite a risk, as it was a 15 foot drop to the water. He was unable to escape and was recaptured and sent to a new camp, where he had no way of knowing whether Judy had lived or died; but gradually stories began to filter in of a dog helping drowning men to reach pieces of debris which they could grab onto, and even allowing men to hold on to her while she swam them to safety. Eventually - to Frank's amazement - Judy turned up in his new camp. In recollecting the moment they were reunited, Frank later said: '...a scraggy dog hit me square between the shoulders and knocked me over! I’d never been so glad to see the old girl. And I think she felt the same!'

During the following year of laying railway tracks in Sumatra, the two kept each other alive - Frank by sharing his food with her, Judy by giving him a reason to live. 'All I had to do was look at her and into those weary, bloodshot eyes,' Frank later said, 'and I would ask myself: What would happen to her if I died? I had to keep going. Even if it meant waiting for a miracle.' Judy nearly didn't survive this part of her ordeal. The guards threatened to shoot her, and she only stayed alive by hiding in the jungle and finding food for herself - rats, snakes - anything she could catch.

Once hostilities ceased, Judy was smuggled aboard a troopship heading back to Liverpool. The ship's cook fed her on the journey, and in 1946 she was awarded the Dickin Medal, the highest award that can be given to animals. Her citation reads: 'For magnificent courage and endurance in Japanese prison camps, which helped to maintain morale among her fellow prisoners and also for saving many lives through her intelligence and watchfulness.' Frank also received an award - the PDSA's White Cross of St Giles, for his devotion to Judy.

Judy was even 'interviewed' by the BBC for the Victory Celebrations in 1946, and her barks were broadcast on the wireless. During the following year, she and Frank visited many families of prisoners of war who had not survived the camps. Frank always believed that the dog had a way of comforting them that no person had.

In 1948 she and Frank went to East Africa on a Government funded food scheme, and it was there in 1950 that she was discovered to have a tumour and was put to sleep. Frank built a memorial to her with a plaque telling her life story. She was almost 14 - a great age for a dog who had been through so much.
But, for all the hardships of her life, was truly loved.

Isn't that a great story?

Game On!

Apart from a nasty sinus headache that has persisted all week, I've had a lovely day.
I've been in my garden since mid-morning, and, although overcast, it's been calm and still and dry.
The rather savage storm we had a couple of nights ago appears to have done no damage, and it's amazing how many plants are still flowering out there. Roses, delphiniums, scabious, achillea and that lovely scarlet thingamijig whose name I can never remember. Well, whatever it is, it's still going strong.
As is the faithful, hardworking allysum. You'd think, after six months of continuous flowering, it would have called it a day by now, but no.

We spent a bit of time in the orchard first of all, but not, alas, planting daffodil bulbs - although I have some still waiting to go in up there. The orchard is the dogs' playground, and they race about while I keep my eyes shut. I don't know how they can go that fast without crashing into something. Model Dog is very fond of playing with a ball - the first dog we've ever had who is. She has a squishy football and an endlessly renewable stock of brightly coloured solid, smaller balls. She is quite happy to throw them for herself if no one else is willing.

The TeenQueen doesn't really understand this game, but she likes to get the ball and tease Model Dog into a mouth-to-mouth tug of war to get it back. 

Na-na, na-na-naa! I've got your ba-all!

You can try and get it, if you want! Go on, - try!

I'm not letting go

I'll bite your leg off if you don't give it back!!

Eeek - quick - run away!

If TeenQueen does get it for any length of time, she bites chunks out of it.
She really has no idea at all.
What she likes best, is sitting on the sidelines waiting until the Model has got up enough speed to be worth chasing, then she charges after her and chases her round and round the orchard, growling ferociously all the time.
Honesty compels me to add that Model Dog adores this game as well.

I let them play this for a while, but eventually I went off to gather up my tools and some spring bulbs and of course they followed along behind. Dogs never like to be left.

I've been longing to get back out into the garden since my tulip-planting session last Saturday, but it was not to be.
The In-Charge has been in Venice all week  at the Biennale (no, no, I'm not even slightly jealous), and I thought I'd spend a consoling few days catching up with my garden, putting it to bed and cuddling it up under a liberal layer of the delicious compost we collected from the Council place in Ballysadare last weekend.

Instead, I've spent great wodges of every day firmly attached to my computer, fighting with my inability to grasp the technical niceties of PayPal v Facebook, and website construction.
Never mind. All in a good cause (which I will tell you about tomorrow), and swearing loud and long at the screen probably does wonders for clearing the sinuses.

This afternoon, after I'd finished gardening, and the dogs had finished their bones, we all went and stood around in the hens' field for awhile, while I watched my new babies to see how they're settling in.
They are so tiny, I have felt a bit anxious about them this week. The littlest one is only the size of a collared dove. I even left the cats inside while I went to town the other day, just in case. I usually lock them out while I'm gone away, but I thought that, deprived of their cosy kitchen beds, boredom might take them to the hens' paddock and revenge might do the rest...

They are so dainty and very sweet, the two littlies. And very clever. I think they are the first hens I've ever had who went into the henhouse on their own on their very first night, and not just into the nesting boxes, which some hens do for weeks, but up onto the perches with the big hens. All without me having to put them there. All except one, that is. If I'd needed any proof at all that Napoleon was their grandfather, I had it on that first evening.

I went out as the light was starting to fade, just in case I had to spend time looking for them. Once I'd got over my astonishment that two of them were where they ought to be, dismay took over as I discovered that No.3 was nowhere to be found. I did the rounds of every possible place in the paddock twice with no joy. I got a torch as dusk had turned into twilight (or is it the other way round?) and searched again. Then, remembering Napoleon and the quirky (but terrifyingly risky) places he sometimes chose to bed down in, I thought I'd better widen the field before it got totally dark.

Shades of Napoleon

Eventually I found her, more by chance than anything else, perched on something in the turf shed where the cats sleep at night. I wouldn't like to guess whether or not she'd still have been there in the morning. Hobbes is partial to doves and pigeons, when he can stir his lazy stumps, and all birds look grey in the dark - don't they?

Rapiers at dawn

Tonight, when I went back out to shut them up for the night, they weren't sitting on the end of a perch, side by side as they have been. One of them was almost completely hidden from sight, tucked under Wellington's capacious wing. I've no romantic illusions about my huge black cockerel though, as he's rather tetchy these days. He was fast asleep and probably oblivious.

Soon I must decide on suitable names for them. They are granddaughters of an Emperor, after all.
Any suggestions?

Of Birthdays, Tulips, Princesses and Cats

Today - tonight - would have been Top Dog and Under Dog's fourteenth birthday.
I can still hardly bear to think of them, even though it's almost a year since they died.
I have spent most of the year, I find, expecting Top Dog to suddenly appear, especially when I've been away. Driving home from the airport, I have to remind myself that he won't come running out to greet me.
I am sure everyone feels the same, about anyone they have loved and lost.
It's a tough one to get used to.

Top Dog and Under Dog sleeping the sleep of the just. As they do now.

I came across their collars the other day, folded together in a drawer, their mother's collar with them.
I could have wept.
The resonance of them still fills the quiet corners of this place.

But it has not been a mournful day. Far from it - despite the lowering sky and steely edge to the breeze.
I have been out in the yard potting up tulip bulbs, the ever-faithful Model Dog at my side.
The TeenQueen doesn't really like such pointless activities, especially if there are no bones involved, so after a while she opted to keep Model's bed warm in the cosy kitchen.

Potting tulips is such an obvious thing to do, but somehow it has largely eluded me until now.
Of course, they look wonderful in vast drifts as well, but, lovely as it is, I'd need a tad more space, and maybe a handful of full-time gardeners to achieve something like this.

Thank heavens I didn't have to plant these

Over the years I have planted I don't know how many tulips in the flower beds, and for one season they rise, stately and beautiful, but generally they don't put in many subsequent appearances. Our climate is too damp, or perhaps the slugs and snails eat them, or mice, or people steal the bulbs from under my nose - who can say? But last spring, on Gardener's World, Carol Klein said she always planted tulips in pots,  and at last I woke up to the blindingly obvious.

Pink tulips with a touch of orange - amongst my favourites

The massed effect, without disembowelling the flower bed, trashing bulbs already planted in the one spot you choose to excavate, and driving yourself into Bedlam.
I can't wait for them to bloom
Meanwhile I'll make do with fabulous paintings to brighten my days.
This one cheers me up no end.

Judith I Bridgland's wonderful painting of Tulips and Cherry Blossom

And these tulips, by another Scottish artist, Fiona Sturrock, never fail to cheer me up.
Her next exhibition runs from November 15-17 at Edinburgh Art Fair at the Corn Exchange. I wish I could go and see it.

Tulips and Lemon by Fiona Sturrock

Tulips by Fiona Sturrock

Tulips in Antique Jug by Fiona Sturrock

Beautiful, all of them.
Oh, how I wish I could paint.

The tulips weren't the only bright note to my day.
At lunchtime our friend Colin dropped by, as promised, to deliver a special present.
Three of Napoleon's grand-daughters.

You may remember Napoleon. I will never forget him, and like my lovely dogs, I miss him regularly.
He had so much character, and, despite his small stature (we can say that out loud, now that he's gone), he dominated the hen's paddock.

The Emperor Napoleon with his Little Empress

He caused me untold anxieties -as on the day when he was not to be found - anywhere - and, by dint of climbing a ladder to look over our high walls, I espied him in the wild churchyard behind our garden. I had to walk round, pick him up and carry him home through the street.
There are other, far more terrifying incidents that come to mind - one involving a dozen bullocks - but that is by-the-by. He was a dear creature and I loved him. I don't know if he loved me, but he was devoted to his wives, Josephine, then the Little Empress and finally Mrs Smith (aka the Golden Princess or Dolly).

I am thrilled to bits to have three of his grand-daughters. Although they came from his third marriage, they bear no resemblance to Mrs Smith, but look like Napoleon dressed in the Little Empress's attire.
They all have rather dinky little hats - somewhat more feminine than the Emperor's tricorne - and the larger of the three certainly has her grandfather's bearing..
I shall look forward to seeing how they grow up.

Napoleon's grand-daughter - she has his air

Is that a smaller version of a tricorne I see?

Tonight they are tucked into the spare pen I built for the Escapees. They are a little uncertain of their new home, and have spent the afternoon being stared at through the mesh by all and sundry. At dusk, I found them sitting on their roof in the rain, rather than cuddling inside. I put them into their shelter, and hope that by now, they are all fast asleep. Tomorrow they might feel up to staring back.

And last but by no means least, I have received queries as to why the cats never appear.
It's not because I have done away with them, nor have they left home via the churchyard.
It's just that I don't see much of them. Now that autumn is turning into winter, they have become lazier than ever. After their breakfast they retire to bed and don't get up again until supper time. And after supper they retire to bed... you're getting the idea.

Pushy has been performing quality control on the new pole warmer.

Pushy warming the pole warmer

And Hobbes is gearing up for a leading role in 'Red Sails in the Sunset'

Barley sugar ears

As for little Pixie - as she is very nearly blind, she can't see how lovely she looks on this Peruvian throw, but luckily, we can.

Pretty little Pixie in pink

Food, Glorious Food

A typical sight in France

At a very cosy supper party last night, a friend was telling me that she had just come back from France, and went on to comment on how thin everyone is over there - especially the women.
Didn't I say the very same thing just a few months ago! 

There is nothing thin about me - well, apart from my bank balance that is - but nothing personally thin about me. And nor is there ever likely to be - I have just come in from a damp morning's work in the garden, utterly ravenous, and devoured I don't know how many rice cakes and cheese, closely followed by a large slice of the delicious chocolate cake that my friend Clare kindly sent yesterday.

Much to the In-Charge's disgust, I am very fond of rice cakes - especially with cheese. He often says: 'I don't know why you buy those, I've loads of that stuff in the workshop.' (He is, of course, referring to polystyrene insulation board.) My friend DodoWoman jokes of low-fat yoghurt: 'The more you eat, the thinner you get', and I guess rice cakes fall into the same category.
Although the trials on that one aren't too promising so far, despite forming the basis of my lunch, I haven't noticed any thin-ity creeping in.


Needless to say, it was at the chocolate cake stage that the extreme 'lightness of being' maintained by so many French women returned to my mind.
How is it possible to be thin in France (or anywhere else for that matter)?
Do the French not have eyes? Don't their mouths water? Do their tummies not rumble?
Are they boulangerie-d out, or are they just made of sterner stuff?

How can one resist?

I suppose, on reflection, I don't dive into a cake shop every time I go into my local town, but then (please forgive me, Irish cake shops) - there really is no comparison. NO comparison.

A pâtisserie in Paris

We sat at the high bar-style table in this very shop in Paris and had a quick bite one day. The In-Charge, as is his wont, chose some savoury item, and I ummed and aahhed and aahhed and ummed. The thing is, I tend to choose old favourites over and over again, instead of branching out and trying something new, and I was about to go for a tarte au citron when I surprised myself and - shunning strawberry, almond and chocolate confections - opted for the tarte à l'orange instead.

One mouthful convinced me that I had, in fact, died and gone to heaven. It was 'Tivine' as #1 Son used to say when he was tiny. Totally Tivine. I'd thought it might prove to be slightly artificial in flavour, or too sweet, or too something, but no, it was melting, smooth, tangy perfection. And had that particular pâtisserie been on our daily route, I would have found an excuse to go in every morning.

If I lived in Paris, I would get fatter and fatter no doubt learn to control myself. I would certainly have to plan my routes quite carefully in order to avoid such places of temptation. But that's just the problem - they are around every corner. Even the least promising of of streets will throw a chocolatier or boulangerie at you out of the blue.

Patrick Roger's wondrous chocolates

Innocently walking round the corner from Saint-Michel towards Odéon, we stumbled upon Patrick Roger, chocolatier extraordinaire, and stood staring, spellbound through the window. Or at least, I did. How could chocolates possibly be so beautiful? How could you bring yourself to eat them? I would just want to collect them - a different one each week, to keep in a gorgeous glass jar on the dresser.
I did - and do - wonder what they taste like. They look like splendiferous king-of-the-castle gobstoppers. Either that or Murano glass marbles. Alas, we didn't go in, so I shall never know.

Not everyone would find such things a temptation, I know.
My friends Sarah and DodoWoman don't have sweet teeth. But they are just as easily waylaid by other delights. They would, no doubt, have found their feet automatically turning left outside our apartment door every day, to visit the huitre-stall just a few feet round the corner. If there were just huitre-stalls everywhere, I would be mince, très mince indeed.

And I know for a fact that when Sarah or DodoWoman are in Paris, Italy, New York or even St George's Market in Belfast, just the sight of all this glory is enough to cartwheel both their brains and tastebuds through a kaleidoscope of cookery books, and they can't wait to rush home with newly-bought treasures and start cooking.

Glorious tomatoes

Every vegetable under the sun

More huitres - and allied fishy things

Charcuterie

For me, the orgasmic delight isn't in the thought of mouth-watering dishes to come, as it is for them. It's in the colour-fest here and now. I can't get enough of looking, and could happily walk around all day, just absorbing the complete palette such an array provides, the light, the shadows, the shapes, the contrasts. The food itself could be flowers, or yarn, or bolts of material - if the rainbow colour effect was there, I'd be perfectly happy. Take these, for example. They fulfil all my colour-desires, but arouse no hunger whatsoever, so I'm obviously not past redemption.

Meringues as only the French could make them

I suppose part of it is that, much as I like eating, I don't particularly enjoy cooking. Perhaps the deciding factor on whether I see food as actual feast or visual feast is when it's already done for you - no cooking required. And while I have lots of sweet teeth, I have a good few savoury ones as well. These, lovely as they are to behold, I - like Sarah and DodoWoman, would also stop and buy.

A rhapsody of olives

 Instant food.

And these.
In fact, I might linger in the vicinity of this stall until I'd finished eating my purchase, so that I could get some more. They are my absolute favourites.

 And these I would buy because they combine both kinds of feasting in one fell swoop.

But then it's back to the boulangerie stuff. More instant food?

I don't know what it is about bread. Perhaps it has something to do with being one of life's staples, but it's hard to walk past a shop full of fresh bread without diving in, even if you don't need any. It's about more than need, it's about comfort and stability and well being, about sharing with friends and family, about hospitality and food on the table. And of course 'bread' is a generic concept, embracing all other food.

And once you're inside the baker's shop, well there you are, back at square one.

I'm afraid thin isn't going to happen any time soon.
How do these French women do it?

(I suppose I could try burning my passport. It would be a start.)

À la Recherche du Temps Perdu

I sat down two days ago to sort out a bag of paperwork that has been sitting, minding its own business for six months. I have to confess that we are neither very tidy nor very organised about lots of things, paperwork being top of the list. Or bottom of the list, depending on which way you look at it.
I was only driven to do something about it now because I want my bag back.

I have my bag back at last!

The trouble with us is that every now and again we can no longer cope with not being able to see the kitchen table. (Literally.) At this point lots of virtuous people would sit down and sort out the offending mass of mess. Sometimes I too am virtuous, but if there are too many other things going on, I sweep the whole lot into a tottering pile and shove it into the first box or bag that comes to hand.
Thus is was six months ago, and unfortunately, the first empty receptacle that came to hand was the lovely bag my mother gave me last Christmas.
Since then I have added to its contents, but not taken anything away.

I never know which side I like best

Happily - by chance rather than planning - the electricity has not been cut off, and neither have the bailiffs arrived at the door in the interim. There were bank statements, bills, receipts, newspaper cuttings, work stuff, notes to self, telephone messages and what-all else... but now, after my final stint with the bag this morning, I have reduced its contents to several piles: a large one of rubbish, one of filing (which - alas - could be the start of the next bagful, unless I actually file the wretched stuff), a small pile of 'in urgent need of attention' and a somewhat larger pile of 'on-going'. But, I have my bag back.
I also have a little heap of scraps which I discovered stuffed down amidst all the bills and receipts, which turned out to be the paraphernalia we brought back from Paris in June.

Oh joy! Needless to say, I spent more time going through that than I did the dreary bank statements.
It was the typical ephemera one brings back from holiday. At least, I presume 'one' does. We certainly always seem to have bags and pockets full of cafe receipts, gallery cards, museum tickets, maps and who knows what.

Jardin du Luxembourg

So much else has happened this summer that I haven't spent much time mentally revisiting our lovely trip to Paris, so it was very nice to sort through all the bits and bobs.

'A litre and a half of bottled water only costs 23c in Paris' I told the In-Charge, apropos of very little. A supermarket bill - which I probably didn't glance at at the time, now made riveting reading.
'Did we really spend  €14 on a cup of coffee and a glass of wine?' I asked in disbelief as I picked up the next slip of paper.
'I expect it was Les Deux Magots or that expensive cafe at St Michel,' he replied, and added sagely: 'It's a bit late to be worrying about that now.'
How true. And now that I recall, it was St Michel, and we'd dodged in out of bucketing rain at the time, and we really hadn't cared at all.

St Michel another day - watching the brilliant street performers

I found a list of incomprehensible notes scribbled on a scrap of card and puzzled over it for several minutes before remembering that we had, at long last, after I don't know how many previous visits to Paris, spent a happy afternoon exploring each and every one of the Passages - some in sad disrepair, others a total delight. If the notes I'd jotted down were even slightly decipherable, they'd be a useful guide next time round, but sadly even I can't get to the bottom of my own scrawl.

One of Paris's beautiful Passages

Probably the most famous of the Passages

And here's another - with colourful guerilla knitting decorating the entrance!

Another dog-end of paper revealed my approximation of the recipe that must have been used to concoct one of the most delicious tartes it was my pleasure to sample. So good was it, in fact, that we had to re-visit  Le Bistrot du Peintre several times to test it all over again. It never failed to hit the spot. I'd forgotten about it, but I must have an experimental session in the kitchen. (Current note to self: buy oranges, almonds and ingredients for sweet pastry deliciousness.)

Inside Le Bistrot du Peintre

And speaking of deliciousness, the next item to emerge was the business card of a chap we'd got chatting to in the Marché Bourse. He plied us with samples of his wares, and told us that although he got up before dawn every morning to cook, it was all worthwhile as he went to Boston several times a year to visit his sister. He was Lebanese, and his food was so delectable, we bought enough for supper that night and a picnic lunch in the Jardin du Luxembourg the next day. (And while we were talking to him, two girls came up and presented us with a shopping bag listing all the Paris street markets, their arrondissements and addresses. How cool is that!)


There was a receipt from the Kilo Shop - the wonderful emporium on St Germain where vintage clothes are sold by weight; train tickets from our trip to Monet's garden at Giverny; passes for the Musée d'Orsay (probably my favourite of all the Paris art museums) and a billet for the Sainte Chapelle - another favourite place of incomparable beauty.

Gingham shirts in the Kilo Shop

Inside the wonderful Musée d'Orsay

Some of the amazing, original floor tiles in the Sainte Chapelle

One of the windows of the Sainte Chapelle (taken, sadly, with my phone camera)

The Rose window - also, alas, taken with my phone camera

It didn't do much to reduce the pile of paperwork, but it was a very happy half hour remembering our holiday in Paris.

'There's an un-used Metro ticket here,' I said, picking up a little blue and orange-stamped Mobilis from some carnet we bought along the line.
'I suppose we'll have to go back then,' the In-Charge replied.
It can't happen too soon.

The famous bridge in Monet's garden at Giverny