Buns and I were discussing religion.
He is an escaped cradle Roman Catholic. I have all sorts of deeply held ideas and a passionate belief that “when you look at the best mankind is doing, you can’t help but hope there is something better.” God. Probably closer to the Great Spirit of the Native Americans than anything else. “And “ I said “if I waver, I have only to think of the wonders of nature – with or without explanation – to be reaffirmed. The face of heaven.”
I was invited to lunch by a woman I have met once, it was raining dank drizzle and I got lost. No sense of direction till the feet know the way (see the idea of “the body remembers.”) Coming back from the wrong way I saw a man with his hood up and the most beautiful Doberman I have ever seen. Not hyperbole. Enormous, tall, cropped ears, young, shining with intelligence and that strange quality which is beyond being beautiful, when it is known and accepted as part of the bearer’s responsibility.
I stopped. I do not approach without permission. This is not Disney.
The owner signalled a query. I pointed to the dog. He turned and spoke to the dog. I saw the balloon above the dog’s head which read an incredulous “You want me to what ?” The man repeated himself and the dog sat down in the rain. The man beckoned to me.
I went forward, hands outstretched to be sniffed, which he did. I said “Oh, you’re beautiful.” And he gambolled. He stood up and kicked his wonderfully proportioned body in all sorts of directions, leapt and ran in a little circle before coming to me. The man said warningly “No..” I said “Why ?” He said “He’ll get mud on your coat ..” I said as the dog closed on me “I could care less. He’s the most beautiful thing” and the dog was tall enough to put his paws on my shoulders and his head forward, to lick my cheek. I hugged him and said again “Oh you beauty !” And then he sat. Can a Doberman beam ?
I am smiling
And I looked at the face of the young man, smiling at me as I smiled at him. I said “How can I ever thank you ? You made my day” and he said “Us too.” And we parted in the rain.
Howletts is a Georgian house in its own grounds in which the legendary right wing gambler John Aspinall oversaw a zoo park for endangered species. And there in one of the generous enclosures (better few and right than many and mean) Nick and I saw a clouded leopard
whose eyes were such pale green, they shaded into violet. Neither of us spoke. The animal was there a minute or two and then gone. Nick said “Look down”. On his shoe, paused safe for a moment because we were still, was a harvest mouse, with his long tail.
And still we stayed till he left.
Among 723 channels offering brainrot, there are three wildlife programmes and sometimes my day is made by a cloud of deer drifting towards the waterhole. I saw a man who had induced a certain ant to carry more sugar water to his orchards and thus the animals and the trees flourished. The film of the labour was fascinating and I am bad at bugs.
I think of the strange implacable beauty of my mother’s face the night my father died, when she said “I have so much grief inside me, I feel I must give birth it.” And she began to rock in mourning, a behaviour I had only read about and never seen.
V arrived yesterday, after a gap of it doesn’t matter how many years, a friend of my son’s who always loved me, lost touch, got in touch and came to see me – no cumbersome explanations about “I should have…” or “Why didn’t you .. “ – bearing a home made loaf and raisin buns, the mushrooms I had asked her to pick up if she had time, strawberries (“every girl deserves strawberries in the winter !”) and yellow roses, the face of heaven.
Annalog 