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.
I don't think I posted in April last year how I spent a little while exploring (what I call) Barnsley Mews, a small housing estate addition built by the Housing Commission in (I assume) the late 70s or early 80s. It is unusual for Victorian housing commission housing in that it is terrace-styled, clustered together, in a large open space. I took a few photos but it was only a cursory look around, interesting for the way the car parking was set up and the way the housing sites had been carved into the hillside. I would have spent a lot more time on it if I'd known the whole area was going to be demolished, which it was only a few months ago. Quite a surprise. I hope the cats got out OK. I gather a large social-mixed housing estate is coming in its place, no sign of that yet. And the last picture is Millie, leaving Barnsley Mews and heading for the creek - she always liked to dabble in the water on the other side of the bridge.
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.)
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.
Friday, October 08, 2010
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.
Our noble and gentle* beagle Millie died yesterday aged 11 and a 1/2. She had an inoperable liver tumour, was finding it difficult to breathe and was unwilling to eat. Until this struck - a week or so ago - she was enjoying a charmed and happy life. We will miss her very much.
Millie has not been well, and in fact spent a couple of days under observation at the Broadmeadows vets this week, she probably has a bile duct blockage and this has sent her liver into overdrive yet curiously also underperformance, as I understand it. She hasn't eaten much the last week and a bit and has lost a lot of weight. She doesn't seem to be in pain or feeling ill seemingly though she is quite sooky. We took the plunge the other day and decided to arrange for delivery of another beagle, to be known as Barry (after our heroes Obama, Jones, Humphries and McKenzie). This is not because we expect Millie to die next week, she has a few good years left in her, but we consider she will be a good stabilising influence on a young dog, as she has been on Charlie.
No big deal, she's been limping a bit. No big cause, either, that the vet could find. She wasn't pleased to be on the table though. Anyway she got some anti-inflammatories and she'll go back if there's any more trouble. On her own, as far as I'm concerned.
The only odd thing was the vet - who had never met Millie before and who was a handsome young man in his mid-twenties - immediately said 'hasn't she got lovely big floppy ears!' I thought the first thing they did at vet school was kick the sook out of you with hob nail boots.
Some films are plain old bad. I couldn’t understand where Blessed was coming from but once again I felt myself being in the silly position, as a middle class person living in a putatively working class area, being patronised by middle class people who think they’re portraying some kind of working class life (or perhaps former working class people who think what working class people did and said 20 years ago when they last checked in can still stand because they're angry, right). It bugged me significantly that Miranda Otto’s character was supposedly living in Westmeadows in a house that looks like nothing I had ever seen in Westmeadows (or Broadmeadows for that matter, but Westmeadows is comparatively bourgie and perhaps someone should have checked that) and that it is implied that her daughter’s friend after escaping from a police car outside this Westmeadows house then runs home to West Footscray. I am not sure but I am guessing that’s about 15 km (no, I checked on google map and it's a bit over 18). Miranda Otto’s character is a gambling tart who – a la the mum in Mallboy who gets together wiv her mates and sharpie dances to Suzi Quatro of an evening – dances to The Angels by herself, classic Alberts period natcherly. I found the Frances O’Connor character the worst but I also found the guff about the character played by Debra Lee Furness (a fine, fine actor) wanting her partner/husband William McGuinness to ‘touch me, you never touch me’ somewhat blah particularly when contrasted with FO’C’s son telling her two of her boyfriends had sex with her preteen daughter thus: ‘they touched her mum you let her touch them’. Ugh. All this prattish coyness. As for the young gay man who was the brother of Miranda Otto’s daughter’s best friend, the less said the better. We watched this film along with two others. They were Surrogates, with Bruce Willis and get this Radha Mitchell (everything comes back to Love and Other Catastrophes doesn’t it, really) and the other film was… a teenage school comedy called Just Peck. Why these? I was trying to get a kind of well-rounded selection of the quality with the crapity. Unfortunately they all ended up being fairly crapity, with Blessed the biggest waste cuz it had the best people in it and the best writers and best director. Surrogates had a lot of potential, and just didn’t make it on any level really with a few little exceptions such as the clever way the robots looked just a little fake but only just a very little. It’s about a time about 12 years into the future I think when almost anyone who can does their daily life through a robot which they control while lying in a dark room relaxing. So, it’s a kind of virtual reality in reverse. The stupid bit is that this whole thing goes pear shaped when someone – whoever, who cares, not I – finds a way to kill the users of these ‘surrogates’ by blasting the surrogate with a kind of ray gun that fries their minds somehow. The premise of the whole film is of course ridiculous, but this threat is also ridiculous. Although ridiculous I do feel that almost anything else done with the premise could have resulted in something a little superior. There are little resistance states within the cities (I think this film is set in Boston) where luddites refuse to use surrogates, for whatever reason. We get a tiny sense of these people’s lives and they play catch, and farm the streets or whatever – groovy, that's the limit of this director's conception of an alternative lifestyle. They are led by a big black man called The Prophet. Bruce Willis is a middle aged white man called… can’t remember. Radha Mitchell is only ever seen as a surrogate, controlled firstly by the woman she’s supposed to be controlled by, and then by others. Dragorama. Well, I asked for it. Just Peck has one very important saving grace, which is that while it is about a boy (13 or something?) with strong feelings for a girl about 16 or thereabouts, it doesn’t descend into anything grossout particularly, beyond the suggestion that he has diorrhea, for some unexplained reason, on the first day of high school. Thinking about it I do get the sense there was perhaps some editing after the fact (you know, love to see the director’s cut) because for instance there’s the diorrhea scene which luckily goes nowhere and there’s a scene where Peck first meets the girl, whose name I forget and his friend suggests that as payment for her giving him a ride in her mini moke, he (Peck) will show her his enormous penis. He says he will do this and then it’s the next scene and presumably he did not do it, because this was not something actually she would have wanted him to do (it’s not that kind of film, whatever kind of film it is) but he’s getting a ride in the mini moke and there’s nothing more said about the schlong viewing. I didn’t want the film to go in that direction so it’s cool, it was just either lazy scripting or weird editing. The Peck character was well played and some of the adults were good too. Marcia Cross did what she always does now, a prim anal bitch.
The next night two films were borrowed for pleasure. One was The Hangover. Why? Because we had borrowed a burnt version of this film and felt terribly guilty and just had to rent it and get the filmmakers and investors legitimate recompense. No, actually the burnt version stuck half way through so I felt left in limbo just not knowing. Heather Graham seems to put her hand up for every kooky bit part; does she have kids or something and just wants to do a few days’ work here or there? There were some faintly funny lines in the film but the character of Leslie Chow basically spoils the whole kaboodle with a Chinese gangster-esque figure combining magically every Chinese stereotype in one. Which still seems like a stereotype. Yeah, I could live without that film. And then Charlie and Boots.
Charlie and Boots. All the way through, I had the weirdest déjà vu feeling about this film, that it was like a travelogue from the 1960s, with some 21st century True Emotions plastered inappropriately on top. In fact, the script really could have been an old travelogue, except there was a little-son-dead storyline which wouldn’t have fitted the 1960s (Surrogates has a little-son-dead storyline too, fyi). Otherwise everything from the dramatically utterly awkward first ten minutes which has Charlie and his son Boots on the road from Warrnambool to Cape York instantly to the unhumorous interactions with weird locals along the way is just like a 50 minute short produced by the Queensland Tourism Council in 1974 only less amusing particularly as Paul Hogan looks kind of scary with hair like Bruce Willis’ surrogate in Surrogates, but a face a bit like an old, old man. Just a bit. Why Anne Phelan thinks he’s hot and he doesn’t think she’s hot (this is in the film, not real life) is beyond me. There is a bit of awkward stuff about a 16 year old country singer who for no reason that makes sense because the country music festival isn’t on, hitches a ride to Tamworth and then sings a song somewhere in Tamworth and that’s it. And she was going with a boyfriend who she ditches because ‘he wanted me to do things I didn’t want to do’. At least it wasn’t ‘they touched her, mum, you let them touch her’ or for that matter, ‘touch me you never touch me any more’. The scene where the men destroy the boyfriend’s vehicle is the funniest scene in the film.
So films are no good these days, when it comes down to it. Today I went for a long walk with Millie and Charlie between Strathmore and home, probably about 6 km with all the twists and turns. Millie got in the water at Gowanbrae and couldn’t get out, though I showed her a way. I listened to a bunch of podcasts – In Our Time (on Queen Boudica, aka Bodicea, did you know she possibly didn’t even exist!?), Movie Show and This American Life about stories from the recession. All recommended. Charlie was chased by a greyhound so she took it out on the next dog who came along, which was the size of a big rat. And we saw some really fat tadpoles.
It was a warm day.
* 5 Aug 2021 update: this post is constantly getting views eleven years later for a reason I can't deduce. I assume some spies are using it as a cipher in coded messages i.e. 'same blog post, capiche ? Today it's line 5, word 8,' etc. Anyway since so many people want to read it, I thought I'd put the movie poster for Blessed at the top, and give everyone a good time. LOL (as no-one said in 2010 I imagine (? can't remember) and as people really only say ironically in 2021 but there's a whole loliverse in there somewhere).
I am notoriously oversensitive to all criticism real or implied, so I have to report that, a few months ago when I came across a casual comment somewhere on the internet that my blog was full of me bleating about a lost kitten, I stewed over it for quite some time, and indeed, continue to stew. It has been a long time since I lost a kitten, certainly long before I started this blogging enterprise, but I suppose the person who accused me of promulgating such content was alluding to the furkids element herein. I guess I have to wear that.*
This afternoon Millie and Charlie and I went for a walk around our lake. I have discussed this kind of thing before and I suppose there isn’t too much new to add. There was no spectacular birdlife (we did upset some plovers when we first got to the water, don’t know what their problem was) and in fact no people in particular either, which was more unusual. It occurred to me for the first time ever that the landform at the edge of the creek was undoubtedly man-made, perhaps dating back in some regard to early settlement (this area was first farmed in the mid-19th century) but probably more likely to the major works undertaken in the early 1970s, when a few small tributary watercourses were put underground and so on. It’s funny how when you live in the city you don’t develop the ability to read the landscape at all really, you just take it as it comes (or I do, anyway).
We found evidence of some kind of car theft or damage, a taillight I think, though there was nothing but this (Charlie found it interesting).
It is strange to think that 6 months ago it looked like Millie was going to have to retire – in fact, it looked that way even before she had that horrible accident in April – but now she seems to have a new lease of life, even if she now really does look old. Nevertheless, she maintains her irritating habit of falling behind in the walk and, basically, asking to be called.
When we got to the isthmus between the creek and the lake, Charlie did an odd and rather quaint thing of sniffing all the yellow flowers on either side of the path. (This picture is not intended to show that exact act.) She seemed to get lost a bit in each one. I was reminded of something I hadn’t thought of for years and years. When my sister Nicola was about three, she and our father and I were doing something at their house (I can’t remember what we were doing) which involved going in and out of their shed on a few occasions. Each time she passed through the doorway, Nicola would make a little fist (the only kind she could make at that age) around a nail which was in the doorframe sticking out quite far but half way out pointing down at a right angle. After she did this a few times my father asked her what she was doing. ‘I’m getting a drink’, she said. Well, far be it for me to anthropomorphise Charlie any more than I already do – i.e. totally – I suppose she wasn’t playing with the flowers at all, more likely they had brushed on an animal/ some animals which she had to check up on. Anyway, it was kind of sweet, if you like Charlie, which I suppose it’s time to admit I do.
Other news. There is a good new café locally here in the Pearcedale Precinct (I don’t know what the café is called or what the people who run it are called or nothing). It is cheap and cheerful and they are threatening to name my breakfast from this morning after me (I asked for mushrooms and spinach on a muffin). The coffee is excellent and they get the papers in and this morning we were treated to a radio station that was constantly saying ‘we’re playing two hours of Australian jazz’, which was exactly what I wanted to hear at that moment (those words and the music they heralded). So now there are two great cafes in this general proximity – that one, unnamed, and Silver Sage. You should come and visit.
Tonight I am babysitting April. I saw her and Nicole yesterday in one of those grouse April vignettes thus: I was driving up Lorraine Crescent and came across an unusual impasse a little like a sacred cow reputedly can cause in India, wherein a man had been backing his car out of the drive and he somehow came to appreciate that a white cat was sitting in the road absolutely unconcerned about a vehicle coming backwards towards it. So I had to stop, he was in the road shooing the cat away though the cat had absolutely no interest in moving, and April and Nicole were on the pathway watching. April looked like this scene was one of the highlights of her short life which, though it has been a short life, is hard to believe. But it’s the thought that counts.
This morning in Niddrie Salvos I bought a light beige Pierre Cardin suit.
Currently listening to: Hoodoo Gurus, Denim Owl, Red House Painters, Wa Wa Nee
* I am also of the opinion that if you ‘put yourself out there’, i.e. make public pronouncements, on whatever minor level, you shouldn’t complain about what people say about you or how they typify you. At the same time, of course, it does come as a bit of a jolt.
Headaches have been plaguing me this week. Usually on the left hand side. On Tuesday it was particularly bad, and this morning it is not great either. Last night we went to the launch of Vagabond Holes, the book of reminiscences/ skerricks/ discussion/ etc about David McComb, and Beautiful Waste, a collected poetry tome. D McC has now been dead a decade, and he is obviously still sorely missed by many. I contributed a piece to VH which seems now to me to be a little outside the spirit of the rest of the book but whatever – that was the editor’s decision to make, not mine, and they must have been happy with it. There is a lot of interesting shorter memoir stuff in there which I enjoyed reading. I guess there is an elephant in the room when it comes to D McC (the drug stuff) which no-one is addressing in print. If it’s irrelevant, then perhaps we at least need to have the discussion about why. I don’t think it’s tasteless to bring it up. But in any case what really stands out for me in VH and what I find really interesting is his absolute dedication to his craft, and his concerted reworking of ideas and writings throughout. Last night we had Judith Lucy and Robert McComb reading a couple of poems each; Graham Lee and Robert McComb performing a couple of songs; the Black Eyed Susans performing about five songs.
Speaking of poorly functioning heads, Millie’s eye is back with us, what it is of course is not her eye but what a buildup of pus is doing to her eye, by distorting her cheek. It gives the right side of her face a sleek look – a bit deco – which in itself is not entirely gross but it doesn’t measure up well against the left. She is back on the antibiotics.
A co-worker said to me this afternoon, ‘are you sick or just tired?’
She's zany, irascible and at it again, causing vet bills to be issued wherever she goes. Millie had an abscess on her tooth and it made her face (part of it) swell up for some days. It didn't seem to bother her but she looked alien. Anyway, the vet had to drain her head of pus. She is still Millie though, except Millie used to look nice.
Well Charlie woke me up completely rearranging the living room (ripping up a cardboard box as it transpired). I put her outside and she ran amok out there for a while (2.30 am). Then barked to be allowed back in. This woke Millie up who has decided she has some serious fidgetty shit to accomplish. Now Charlie is asleep again and Millie is going. It's only me that's awake. I am dreaming I am blogging, which is almost embarrassing.
I checked sitemeter again, always a relevation. Recent success stories here have been the stuff on Knockout from a few months back alongside the old hits of 'what relation is your cousin's child to you' and '1001 songs you must hear before you die'. I actually wrote some entries for the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, eg the entries on Godd's A Wizard, a True Star; ZZ Top's Tres Hombres; and the Bee Gees' Trafalgar. It took a real sublimation of the instincts to work for that book (though the editor was great to work with, a pro, and there were no lies told) because of course everyone has their favourite 1001 albums - why stop at 1001 - and I was railing all the way against non-inclusion of so many things I thought were so much better than so many other things, but luckily it wasn't my call. I would have produced a book without Sgt Pepper (that would have been in the book 1001 cultural artifacts you must avoid until you die, along with 2 1/2 Men, Macleod's Daughters, Star Wars, The Joshua Tree and London). I did feel privileged to write on Pere Ubu's Dub Housing which is in my opinion one of the top ten best albums ever made. There was nowhere near enough Australian stuff in there of course, probably Back in Friggin' Black and that's about it. Back in Black is such a chronically awful record - look, I know - its broad appeal, like that of internet porn, makes me despair for almost anyone.
I went to the doctor's tonight because I was worried I might have swine flu. Headaches, cough, fever. He said if I had had it, which I might have, it was mild and it has more or less passed. When I say I was worried, I was only worried I might be a carrier and/or that it was the beginning of something huge and horrid. So I felt fine. The headaches are the only really bothersome bit and can be managed. I did have to watch 2 1/2 Men in the waiting room. The upside of today aka yesterday: a student sent me an email saying of a course I taught this semester: 'Everything was fantastic. By far my favourite subject so far in my tertiary education' - god that's nice to hear! - and the redoubtable Clarkey, a woman much on my mind lately as I have been tramping the wilds of her former planet, Templestowe the last couple of weeks, texted me to say she was at a service station in Joondalup and saw someone wearing those silly converse I drew, and fell into a converse-ation with him, and he told her he loves them and so does everyone else he's ever met. OK, I'm being flippant. But I now know of 4 satisfied owners out of 4. So since the dogs are now asleep and power snoring, I am going back to bed. Night.
PS (I'm not writing this, I'm dreaming I'm writing it) actually a book called 1001 Cultural Artifacts You Must Avoid Until You Die would be a fantastic idea - the new Stuff White People Like I reckon - everyone would get enjoyably up in arms about the stuff that was dissed in there because they'd all know it - classic. If you decide to run with this idea, cut me some royalties please OK? OK.
Millie is occasionally putting weight on her bad foot and though the pad is still not 100% she is clearly almost completely fine. There is a scarline on her foot which I suppose will be pretty much there forever (contrasting with her tumor-removal scar on the other leg very complimentarily) and she refuses to stop chewing and licking the foot, which means she'll probably have the buster collar on for at least another few days. However, the whole thing turned out grouse. I had to take Charlie to the vet yesterday for an injection. What a wuss! They couldn't hear her heartbeat, she was panting so loudly. She is slightly overweight but she has incredibly good teeth for a 5 1/2 year old. So now you know.
...over Millie's recovery at the vet's. Today they were so pleased with how she's healing they wouldn't even take money for a check-up and a 7 1/2 hour stay, on the basis that they love having her there. At present she is temporarily enjoying the thrill of not having a bucket (aka 'buster collar') on her head, as it means she can lick her front legs and bite her arse. I have to keep an eye on her because I know she's seconds and centimetres away from having a go at her damage. What she hopes to achieve I do not know. Presumably Mother Nature has an approach there. (seconds later) She went there, so the bucket went back on. Meanwhile what about me, it isn't fair. By mid-day I felt very ill, on the way home I believed I could smell vomit, though there was none (otherwise) apparent.
Alright, so I was skiting about being a homeowner before, and that probably is unforgivable, even though my point really was not that I was lucky enough to be able to buy a home, which in any case was only made possible by the generosity of parents and a thirty-year loan of money which, if it plays out in full, will mean paying back that sum about twenty times over, but that I have often grinned and borne jokes about our area and that it has come good as an investment nonetheless – nothing more than that. If I’d been defending Jacana ardently just as a pastime with no vested interest for the last five years, I’d have wanted to make the same point. In fact (as I think I have mentioned here before, or at least by implication) until I first came to Jacana and looked at houses here in 2004, I was actually under the impression that Jacana was the east side of Jacana railway station, when in fact, it’s the west and not even west of the station, kind of north-west. You have to admit the fact that neither the Jacana station nor Jacana Street, which is near it, are in Jacana is a little misleading.
I mean I wouldn’t say we have suffered a lot of gags at the expense of Jacana and who really cares anyway but you probably know what I mean. There is a bit of – er – not schadenfreude but the other thing.
However speaking of schadenfreude Clement Freud died the week before my birthday and I never got to say anything about him bloggingly because Millie had her accident and I didn’t want to think about death. Well, I was very saddened by the death of Clement Freud, whose work I had enjoyed for decades. When I was a child I had a book by him, actually two short novels in one (but still a book), Grimble and Grimble at Christmas. I enjoyed those. And he was of course the last of the originals on Just a Minute (except for Nicholas Parsons). Up to the end he was extremely amusing, whether he was terribly quick witted (I like to think he was) or relied a little on schtick in his last days is neither here nor there. He also had a marvellous timbre to his voice. The Just a Minutes they repeat on the ABC on Monday mornings are very Clement Freud. I suspect they are from the year after Kenneth Williams’ death, I think they were trying to replace him with Wendy Richard (who of course also recently died) and who keeps complaining when CF does his lists, ''e's listin' again'. I suppose they are all jamming with Jimi Hendrix in heaven now. If Jimi Hendrix has any other reason to wish he hadn’t died it is surely that everyone who gets to heaven gets to jam with him. Clement Freud had a good innings and for some reason, mysteriously (see the link to the JAM blog at right) he said Nicholas Parsons wasn’t allowed to come to his funeral, but he did anyway because Freud's widow thought Parsons had suffered enough.
I just read Stephen Cummings’ book. Stephen probably has written a book’s worth of commentary on this very blog and in fact at least once he tried out a chapter here I think but I have to say, the book is very very good and I enjoyed it greatly, laughing in some places – I would like to say crying in others but I didn’t. But put it this way, I read about four chapters last night which was all I could do because I had work deadlines but this evening, with the pressure off a little, I read the whole rest of it in one sitting. Chronologically it is all over the place (I mean, it doesn’t claim to be chronological; the achronologicality of it is actually a plus) and the sexy bits feel weird but generally speaking – and as much as I liked Don Walker’s very veiled and bleak Shots – it is probably the best memoir by a musician I have read, and I’m counting Dylan’s glib one and even Mick Fleetwood’s, which had long been my favourite. Certainly it is a lot better than Mark E Smith’s Renegade, which I finished reading recently and was frankly quite disappointed by. Well it’s not a competition, as I am always saying, only because I know full well it really is one.
Then when that was finished I watched Pure Shit, which came out on DVD on the weekend and which is everything I had hoped. The one thing I never realised – why not? – is that it’s in colour! The descriptions of this film, which I have wanted to see for so long but never been able to, don’t do it justice, and are also in many other ways deceptive. For instance, I never realised Helen Garner’s involvement was just one scene; but it really is very funny and indeed believable. I will write about this film properly sometime when I’ve absorbed it completely. The package of the DVD is incredibly good – three discs and an explanatory booklet in a fold-out sleeve which is immaculately and lovingly designed – you have to see it to believe it, it’s perfect in every way – one disc is the film (plus commentaries which I haven’t got to yet) another is extras of interviews and a third is the soundtrack music, an audio CD. I am a monster Bert Deling fan, and would love to see Dalmas given the same treatment. Another thing I didn’t realise about Pure Shit was that it was shot by Tom Cowan, whose The Office Picnic is one of my favourite films ever. Oddly, both Pure Shit and the Office Picnic have one feature in common – there is a point at which the action turns to something else happening on a screen, in the firstnamed it is a chat show featuring a drug dependency doctor (played by a goggle-eyed and brilliant as always Max Gillies, god he looks like Murray from Flight of the Conchords here) and in the second it is, if memory serves, a kind of training film.
Funny to get the Stephen Cummings book (which is called Will it be funny tomorrow, Billy?) and Pure Shit on the same day as the book talks about Helen Garner, Martin Armiger of course (who did the PS soundtrack) and in fact even briefly mentions PS itself. Zeitgeist with a 35 year time delay.
You probably read this far hoping for a Millie update. Well, she’s still not walking on the foot, but it’s obviously getting better, at least, it’s looking better every day. She still has to wear the bucket on her head as she will chew it (the foot, not the head or the bucket) assiduously if she gets a chance. But I have every expectation that, when she visits Darren the vet today, he will say it’s still looking very good, etc etc. And I think on balance it is. I wish I could take her for a walk though as I think she is going a bit stir crazy.
Charlie is still bonkers about the whole thing and acting like a freak. A couple of days ago I invited her out for a walk just the two of us, which as you have seen previously she enjoys, yet she steadfastly refused to come to me; she slunk off instead with her tail between her legs as if she was in terrible trouble. It was really quite funny, mainly because at no other time would she give a loose root if she was in trouble or not. Except the time when I’m actually trying to get her to do something she’d really enjoy.
People ask me if Millie’s learnt her lesson. This question reminds me of when we had Millie and Silver, mother and daughter, together. People would say, ‘do you think they know?’ which is actually an interesting question, in one sense, but in another, it’s kind of like, even if they know, why would they care? But in truth, Silver did take a very domineering position over Millie and would occasionally make her toe the line. As far as whether Millie has learnt her lesson – I feel fairly confident in saying she is unlikely to link whatever happened on Johnson Street (we still don’t really know) with her escape from the grim bounds of the backyard where she has everything but the freedom to roam under car wheels and bust her foot. As non-sensible as beagles generally are, Millie has usually been fairly sensible when it comes to cars (whereas Charlie, who has little experience of them, is shit-scared of them). Oh anyway I guess when it comes down to it, no I doubt she’s learnt her lesson. She’d so much do anything for food that she’d even randomly roam around putting herself in mortal danger on the offchance that she might find some accidental food somewhere.
It is interesting, in an unsurprising way, how much I appreciate her more now she’s had a new lease of life. Of course, I have long been a pathetic, lame-arse sook about these dogs and I don’t deny it, but what can I say? To me she is an unusual and important character with all kinds of quirks and depths, and we have a good time together a lot of the time.
Good news. Millie is now bandage-free. (Bad news: it looks gross). Fingers crossed she won't need them anymore and she will be fine; the vet said today he expected complete recovery. All agree (all in the profession I mean) she is an extremely lucky dog, inasmuch as she was unlucky to be hit by the car in the first place, but she was lucky thereafter. She sends you her love and has another message: 'please come round and take this stupid plastic thing off my head so I can bite my foot to bits'.
