rabbit rabbit

 

mid to late jan 2011

25 Jan 2011: I am trying to start the habit of blogging into the future. If I keep this up I will NEVER REALLY DIE, at least not in blogworld, except of course my blog posts into the future will eventually run out and then I WILL REALLY DIE. I wonder what blogger actually 'is' and whether it will outlive me.

I am in the final throes (I hope) of finishing my short book currently known as The Bogan Delusion. I am at the point where I am 4/5 finished but feeling a crisis of confidence, now being so immersed in what I have to say that I feel like it's not worth saying and uncertain whether I believe it or not. I am at the point where I have railed against class hatred, but then go on to talk about why I have every reason to feel class hatred if anyone does. I'm glad I wrote that down, it now seems a lot more easy to deal with.

I am also over where I would expect to be word count wise at this point in the book, so I can start pruning and culling a bit, which is a relief and a pleasure. This morning I have taken Barry and Charlie out, put some washing on the line, put some clothes away, thrown some mouldy things out that were in the fridge, and fussed around on the internet putting up pictures of Barry etc - time wasting.

I wonder what it will be like in 10 years' time and whether every second conversation will be about Facebook. Annabel last week said she was fed up with facebook and it was a great relief to not have it in her life and I thought about this for a couple of days and then emailed her saying however much you hate/blame the messenger you are cut out of people's lives if you don't get involved in things like that. Hopefully in 10 years we won't be talking about it constantly however.

lorraine crescent ten years ago: 'A familiar tramp' (16 April 2005)

Went for a walk down by the wetlands/creek just before it got dark. Which it now is. Millie and Charlie were as usual incredibly excited. Charlie has been known many times before to bark uncontrollably at people she meets particularly if they have dogs. The barking still goes on but these days I think I notice a little restraint and something approaching a willingness to one day retire from this activity. Last time she and Millie met someone (not with a dog; some young guy who I couldn’t really see because he was in silhouette on the other side of the hill, not really even shouting distance if I’d wanted to shout) they were very gracious and pleased to see him, for no reason as I’m sure they didn’t know him. That was the first time I’ve known Charlie to meet someone happily. Well this evening she met two women with a spaniely-type dog; the women seemed to enjoy her barking but the spaniel ignored her totally. Then shortly after a woman with an Alsatian who wasn’t pleased. I am not sure how displeased the woman was (she had a prominent set of headphones on so she wasn’t really there) but the dog was against the whole scenario. Naturally Charlie went back for second barks and thirds. Oddly enough, after those events, which occurred just as we reached the ring road, the furthest point of the round-the-wetland walk, we didn’t see any other pedestrian or dog on the bike track side, which is usually far more crowded.

Down at that ring road end, however, I did see two herons. One was grey and small, another white and quite big, it looked too stylised and fragile to actually belong to nature. They were close together (though surely not friends or related?!) where the creek runs over rocks before it goes under the concrete bridge. Later, I saw another white bird in the middle of the wetlands area either with fantastically long skinny legs or sitting precariously in a tiny clump of reeds.

Young teens were doing footy training down at the oval. It is nearly time for Neighbours. Then an evening of marking papers and cleaning.

heathcote

Spending the day at Graham and Tanya’s property at Heathcote. The weather by and large very pleasant. Barry had never spent a day away from his home before and was initially freaked out, though now struts around like this is how it’s always been (and for all he knows this is how it’ll always be, though little does he know we’re going back in a few hours): the whole thing has been a petit vacance for Mia, who works too hard.

The biggest moment of the day was probably catching three flies on three separate occasions in a drinking glass (now washed) and letting them free in the garden. They help to break down kangaroo shit on the property and thus solve global warming, you see. Also reading Early Melbourne Architecture 1840-1888, a nice little vol. Second edition from 1963. Sad book. So many of the buildings recently demolished in 63, now probably only 1/10 of them still standing.

Playing a lot of Bix Beiderbecke albums and similar. There was a label in the 70s called Joker which seemed to specialize in reissuing old jazzy recordings of a period long before. Fun.

Other things not Heathcote related, which need to be recorded:

1. Two days ago my niece Florence spoke to me for the first time. This was achieved by her not knowing who was on the phone. She said, ‘I’m having a babychino’.
2. The Mia Schoen Group’s EP is about to come out. If you want one let me know.
3. People who run conferences badly are the scourge of the Earth. You probably thought it was dictators or malaria but no, it’s people who run conferences badly.
4. The new Panel of Judges album is sensational.
5. If anyone tells you I have written another book, do not believe it. I have contributed three chapters to a new book and that’s all. They were written off the top of my head OK.

hare smell

Charlie smells a hare that had recently passed by. Barry gets swept up in the mania. Music by the Enclosures from forthcoming EP

trois flaneurs

Kenzie is staying at the moment. Charlie pissed on his head while he was sniffing a bush. I think he liked it. He then pissed on her front paws. She didn't seem to notice. Barry is happy to have Kenzie around as he is the best double-faceted friend: he is older and wiser than Barry but Barry is about twice his size now.

dog walks

I can't stand people generally, but I'm still uncertain which of the following types I can't stand more: people who educate their children to be scared of dogs, or people who have never told their children not to run up to dogs and thrust themselves at them. Both are awful. That said, both our dogs have been stunningly good the last couple of days with all the people (tykes included) they have briefly 'met'.Today and yesterday, I have taken them on quite extensive walks. Yesterday we went through Hadfield (12 km round trip) with stops at the West St shops and the Silver Sage at Glenroy where as we were leaving Charlie got away from me and ran into the kitchen. Today we went to Strathmore in a train-walk situation, where we walked the equivalent of almost one way to Strathmore (7 km). On the way back Charlie drank deeply from a puddle.
Then she threw up and then drank a whole lot more from the same source.

broccoli

Mia tells me that broccoli in summer needs a hundred toxic chemicals to make it grow and you eat those when you eat it. i was just reminded of this when I had to take some old yellow broccoli up to the compost bin. The dogs always follow me when I go up there, because most of the time, there's something in it for them. In this case there was. It was a biscuit each. Charlie got the heart and Barry got the bone. It is rare for either of them to get a full bone-shaped biscuit because these ones are easily snapped in two, unlike the heart ones, which crumble. I can see Barry right now, up the hill, sniffing around. He has a vivid if solitary private life.

three terrors

Charlie, Barry and Kenzie at Altona dog beach today



We went to Altona Ice but it was closed!!! Till Tuesday, bastards.

barnsley II

I found a few more Barnsley Mews photos (see two posts down for the first batch). This was early (around March) 2009, and there had recently been floods - as you can see from the crapola on the bridge! I don't mean Charlie.

stock

We only went to Perth for 36 hours but for some reason our various vegetables in the fridge let themselves go as a consequence and we came back to slimy asparagus and yellow broccoli. So I am making stock with the addition of potatoes with the shoots cut off and some of that massively expensive garlic. When I put it in the pot I thought, god, I might just as easily go out and spoon crap out of the compost bin, but in fact it has been cooking gaily away for an hour or so now and it smells excellent.

Yesterday was overheated but today is a nice cool (if still a bit muggy) day and I think it will be OK. As the dogs are outside I am the focus of attention by cats. Asha is sitting to my right looking perturbedly at Bela who is approaching me from the left. Bela is like a dinosaur, huge and impractical, and when he sits on the floor it's like a small 4WD has been left there. Asha is a trifle overweight due to the fact that she sleeps almost the entire day well into the night, usually in the bed like some kind of hypochondriac duchess, but her nervousness has stopped her from descending entirely into obesity. Asha sees herself as part of a pack of three: Mia, me and Bela. Anyone else is an enemy. Bela has no time for her at all, though they will sometimes sniff each other's faces, but it is as likely to end in him cuffing her with his claws as anything else. She also doesn't really trust her humans either, and considers anything they do to be potentially life-threatening and vicious, so she is always running away, and in that really irritating way of getting underfoot while doing it.

I am going to take Charlie and Barry on a walk to Glenroy, to take a swag of books back to the library there. That will be my main activity of the day I feel.

barry and charlie the soap opera

Charlie bit Barry's ear this morning and it was, in Mia's words, 'pissing out blood', so we had to take him to the emergency vet at Essendon Airport. He will need anaesthetic and a couple of stitches, estimated cost $500- $650.

When we got back from the vet's Charlie, who had been banished of course to the backyard, forced her way into the house and ran around panting, she also checked the shed and the back of the backyard.

It's my fault. I keep ascribing logical behaviour to her ('jealousy', 'regret'). I am sure she would tell this story quite differently.

(Later: all is serene, though the wound looks nasty but well-stitched. The problem is of course really that Barry gets all the attention and Charlie isn't as cute as she used to be. It'll be OK in the long run I'm sure).

lust for power

Charlie watching Barry and Kenzie playfight from the cheap seats last weekend.

I see potential for a new tv show combining elements of anthropomorphised documentary (Meerkat Manor etc) and sitcom (I'm thinking particularly of The Office). Because when I see how Charlie has changed with the arrival of Barry, it strikes me (again) that hierarchies are everything in dog world. Charlie as Millie's underling was a challenging, edgy and sometimes reckless personality. Now, with Barry taking that role, Charlie is some kind of elder statesperson, leading a life of routine and quiet duty. She has become a kind of public servant. I am reminded of an insane diatribe I once had delivered to me (though not about me) by a fellow Australia Post worker in about 1987, about those amongst us who went up in the chain and became bosses, betraying us in the process. You used to be cool Charlie.

(No, you still are. It's different though. It's Martin Scorcese cool, not John Safran cool.)

monsters

Barry is already matching Kenzie in size and aggression. Charlie: 'I really need a drink'

barry update

Barry is of course a great addition to the family and while no-one can replace Millie he takes human-dog relationships round here to a new paradigm. Even Charlie is kind of into him now I think, in a sort of Charliesque way (she growls at him 4 or 5 times a day in quite a sinister, ugly way but since she could quite easily snap his head off with her jaws and hasn't, you assume she's taken on a pedagogical role more than anything). He bites a lot but that's OK, as long as he grows out of it, which Mia keeps saying he will.

charlie barry madness

Well Barry is proving to be an enormous success, not very surprising really. He has clearly read the guide on how to behave like a puppy and win hearts everywhere. He didn't read the chapter on how to get Charlie onside unfortunately and she is not entirely convinced. That said, they definitely played yesterday (the way she and Millie used to: asserting oneself with decisive front-paw emphasis, and the hand on the back) but she also has been known to get him in a corner and upset him. Still, they sleep together (not just like in this picture: they sleep in the same bed at night, not up close and personal but they do cohabit, and Charlie appreciates the company I'm sure).

Charlie today

"stop anthropomorphising me idiot"

Charlie is a complex individual with certain requirements, and at the moment she is quite needy, which is unusual for her. For the last week she has basically had run of the house and last night was a particularly bad night for her I think. I ended up having to sleep on the couch to keep her company (I know this sounds pathetic, but it was pragmatic apart from anything else: I needed her to go to sleep and not mope from room to room/ outside over and over). It's a comfortable couch, it is from the cosy and urbane 1950s. She doesn't quite realise it but she is about to be exposed to Cyclone Barry. That will change her life. Also, Kenzie is coming again on Thursday. Wot larks!

charlie in the grass today at south morang

Thank you to everyone who has commiserated, mostly off-blog. Millie was a big part of my life and I can remember hundreds of time when she was around, partipating or otherwise. I hate the end of this era. I don't believe in puppy heaven either.

Millie's deafness in her last year meant she looked to Charlie for cues on when to eat her dinner (they were both very good dogs, uncommon in beagles, when it came to getting the nod to eat). What I didn't realise until today was that Charlie looked to Millie for cues too. I often threw a bit of dry food up the back of the garden when I fed them, and Millie was always utterly attentive to where that went and would race off with Charlie. Today I discovered that Charlie was completely looking to Millie for cues on that. She had no idea what I was doing.

I realise it might be a good time now to train Charlie to do things (we were a bit lazy about this as Millie was so obedient and Charlie was being led, but also, it was very hard to train Charlie with Millie distracting her). Considering Charlie is a bit of a barrel, it's strange to note that she is not particularly food oriented, and probably wouldn't do much for food.

It took me a long time to get over the death of Silver in 2005, in the sense of no longer feeling a pang when I think about her. We had Silver for the last half of her life, and she was a stupendous and personable dog too. Millie we had since she was a puppy, so I knew her at all phases.
I realise now that she was winding down quite a bit in the last 12 months and perhaps particularly since her car accident. That said I know well that she could easily have died then (+ we might never have known what happened) and so I have to be glad that didn't happen and she had another 18 months.
I think others had a better sense of her oldness than I did. For instance last week when I was taking her to the vet I ran into John and Jill next door who seemed unconvinced by my positivity about her general good health. She was losing weight rapidly.
I am not going to go on being philosophical or at least not out loud as I have more things to think about on this topic. Well, of course, I am still missing Millie very much and this has been a terrible week. It has been a bad year for death altogether, 2010, so I hope to get to the end of it at least without another major one that impacts immediately on my day-to-day life.

Charlie is coping but confused. Kenzie is keeping her company currently.
As mentioned last week we had already decided on another dog. Barry is coming to us next week. Here is a picture of him with his mother and brother. He is the small one.