Puppy love and Paranoia

There’s nothing like a litter of puppies to make you fall in love. Their tiny faces once their eyes have opened - too cute! Now that ours are three weeks old we’re into weaning and toilet training them; a messy affair, but I’m in love with them all the same.

What is it about puppies, kittens and other fluffy youngsters that make our hearts melt and photo-fuel our social media trains? If you’re a regular viewer of Spring/Summer/Autumn and Winterwatch, you will be familiar with Chris Packham’s disparagement of ‘cuteness’. It’s a bit of a presenters’ joke, but whatever - cuteness gets me every time. 

We’ve been surprised at how quickly these pups have responded to us even though they are still so dependant on their mother. Their puppy love of snuggling into our arms and tugging at our slippers is going to make it SO hard to let them go, as go they must. In spite of advice not to name them as it makes it harder to detach when the time comes, we have inevitably done so. First of all the children thought up names for them (we’ve been keeping them involved with video) and I suppose naming couldn’t be avoided once we’d been told what one would be called by his owner-to-be. They now have kennel club names too, so their pet names have followed suit - Rosie, Dotty, Teddy and Reggie (he’s the one already spoken for).

Sigh. 

When the day comes to let them go, I know I will shed tears. While giving the house a thorough cleaning and airing I will be sharing the heartache with our poor Pwdin who will have lost her little brood. I’m already wondering how she will react. Will she miss them like I miss my own brood? Will she wake at night wondering how they are faring? Will she spend her days wondering whether they still remember and love her? Will she have any paranoid thoughts about whether she was a good-enough mother? We assume that, unlike us humans, other animals detach from their young easily and ‘happily’ resume their existence without them. But do they? How can we know? Apparently ducks don’t notice the loss of any of their brood until they’re down to just one. Their numerical skills are limited to knowing the difference between one and more-than-one; so I’ve been led to believe. But it would seem to suggest that of course they notice. It’s whether they suffer a sense of loss, like we humans do, is my question. Maybe other animals are just better at stoicism. Who knows?

There’s nothing like being locked down to fuel paranoia, I guess. It doesn’t matter how many jigsaws or sour doughs one achieves, there’s still the knowledge that a world ‘out there’ is functioning and doing so without you. Ok, it’s just me; I am retired, after all, and apparently, by being older, more threatened by the virus. It’s a bit different for the younger generation, of course, struggling with trying to keep things going. But that’s how I feel - cut off, and I guarantee that there are many more, feeling the same way. 

What was it Shakespeare said (or was it Plato) about a ‘shadow show’? Gareth and I are nice and cosy in our little house (it’s a novelty to live in one after three years) but we see the world through screens now - phones, laptops, TV - shadows of the ‘real’ world. And when we do get outside....Well! As one of us has to be with the pups at all times, we go out separately. Whenever Gareth gets back from his walk or bike ride he will download all of his angst and ire about the foolishness and lack of consideration displayed by others ‘out there’ taking air and, as he sees it, filling it with virus. There’s nothing like an invisible virus that we’re told by the shadows on our walls to be deadly and highly contagious to make us paranoid about being anywhere near other people. Unless you are one who feels invincible, of course, or someone who prefers to believe that it’s fake news. 

It always takes a close encounter with the truth before taking any story seriously.

Ok, so a new day dawns. What shall I do today (apart from rearing puppies, that is)? So far the outside is looking pretty dreary, but light is coming through the curtains earlier each day and through the gloom of yesterday’s walk I heard a robin singing his Springtime song. Through the remains of a snow sprinkle, crocus and daffodil shoots were showing through. Primroses, tucked under the frosted fallen leaves in a nearby woodland are preparing for a blooming display as the days lengthen and the sun tows along the Spring. Maybe, sometime this year, 2021, we will all emerge from our caves into a more hopeful season; one with the virus safely contained (eradicated even) and one in which the only shadows are our own, as we walk companionably in the sunshine.

                                             — - - - - - - — — ——— -

In spite of my stated hope above, I can’t finish without making a point about vaccination. Vaccines have saved us from deadly illnesses; one of humanity’s greatest medical achievements, and I have enormous admiration for the world’s scientists who have worked tirelessly to find one for this present curse. But, there are people who are nervous and even sceptical about receiving them. I confess to being somewhat wary myself. What worries me more, I have to say, is the idea being mooted that there should be some sort of vaccination ‘passport’. I’ve heard it suggested by one travel operator that without such a passport transport will be refused on the basis that other travellers would be vulnerable. I don’t get the logic. Surely it’s the unvaccinated that are vulnerable and it may be their choice to be so. In any case, we are being told that social distancing, mask wearing and hand washing must continue, even after vaccination, so where’s the issue, unless it’s to do with the travel operators’ question of liability. What on earth is this Brave New World we are entering?

Within these walls

 So 2020 rolled off over the horizon leaving a nasty smell. 2021 has a familiar odour, arriving as it did in the midst of another lockdown. News of a more infectious variant of the virus put a big dampener on everyone’s Christmas plans and while it wasn’t exactly cancelled, for many it may as well have been. Here in Wales we were allowed Christmas Day with one other household and immediately after we went into full lockdown. 

For Gareth and me it’s an extension of the torpor we’d ( I, anyway) got accustomed to at the caravan except we are now comfortably ensconced in our Legoland-type house. In November our tenant left in time for us to pack up at the caravan, get our stuff from storage and move in. 

As I write, it’s the early hours and I am on watch for the arrival of puppies as Gareth takes his turn for an an hour or two’s sleep. Knowing that we wouldn’t be travelling this winter we decided to let our Pwdin have a litter before she gets older. As a mother I am relating to her as her body prepares to bring new life into the world and Gareth is like an anxious father as he diligently checks her and studies whelping articles. We are equipped and prepared but at this moment, Pwdin seems a bit reluctant to produce. Our preoccupation with her is a welcome distraction from the fact of being separated from family and friends. We had a lovely reprieve by having Christmas Day at Owen and Jess’s; a sparkly day shining brightly in my memory like a star in what would otherwise be a gloomy winter. Contact with the rest of my brood is virtual and scarce.

In my last blog I admitted to my spectacular lack of achievement through the autumn. Apart from our period of home-making I can’t thrill you with any novel accomplishments. I have enjoyed the thinking time, however, with plenty of opportunity to ruminate on the meaning of life. I can’t offer you any stupendous revelations but I will share a couple of my thoughts (they aren’t necessarily my own thoughts, of course - I have been reading a bit).

For instance, back in the summer we picked up on a podcast that intrigued me into buying the book it was based on,  “Sitopia - how food can save the world”  by Carolyn Steel. The podcast was a vision of society, post-pandemic, that realised the significance and value of food after issues of supply and distribution (we’re now witnessing those issues as a result of Brexit, too, as it happens).  The book skilfully presents the idea of how we need to rethink our attitudes to food given the way our monetary economy has, after 5000 years, got us up a creek without a paddle. 

The book is giving me pause to think, as I often do, about the ‘olds’ that have passed on, so recently it feels; my parents, Gareth’s parents and two very dear aunts, my god-mothers.  I am glad that they didn’t suffer the same fate as so many of their generation in this pandemic, though they lived through WW2 and came through many a crisis, personal and societal. The book has caused me to think of how food featured in their lives and to what extent their lives were shaped by the foods available to them. Although I was too young to remember, I had my own ration book as a baby, food shortages still being a problem in the early fifties, but I do remember some of the tales my  parents told about what foods were available to them through the war, and how precious something like an orange was, or a piece of chocolate. My father’s recollections of fresh milk at the mid-Wales farm he was evacuated to, left him with a life-long love of a cool glass of milk. My mother, my sisters and I developed a finely tuned ear for when Dad had sneaked a swig from the fridge. Much to his bemusement we could even tell from his voice if he’d ‘been at the milk’. 

It may have been the lack of anything food-wise to get excited about in my mother’s youth that led to her being a less-than-adept cook. Like most housewives in the fifties (yes, it was a woman’s  job then) my mother fell in with the trend in convenience food and as children a large part of my sisters’ and my diet was tinned or dried and rehydrated. My father liked his meat very well done which is just as well because that’s the only way my mother could cook it - burnt.

Gareth’s parents both grew up in rural Gower, in the same corner of the peninsular, the war being a bit less apparent perhaps than it was to my Swansea town-dwelling parents. Gareth’s mother was from farming people and farm life, with its food-based economy and close community ties. It definitely shaped her to the effect of her being unable to adapt happily to the life-on-an-estate that marriage took her to. Raised on a hard-work ethic, in retirement she had to make work for herself, including for her retired teacher husband whose preference was for more cerebral things than manual labour. With no fields or flocks to attend to the only labour available to her was cleaning and cooking, with knitting for leisure. Food played a deeply important role in Val’s life, central to her need to nurture relationships and cement her place in the community. 

Many of us today are finding meal preparation a pleasant distraction from the sense of incarceration inflicted on us by this pandemic. With restaurants closed, home cooking is having a resurgence. My own cooking is definitely not Masterchef worthy, but I am enjoying the kitchen in our Lego house (Taylor Wimpey actually) having managed in our caravan kitchen or the motorhome for the past three years. It’s nice to have our stuff around us again too. Christmas surprises for us consisted of rediscovering things that have been packed away in storage since moving from Bay View. Rediscovering my cookery books has been fun. I’ve been able to whip up some of the old favourites with the book propped up in the kitchen instead of having to work my way through someone else’s blog on my iPad to follow an untried recipe. You’ll have to ask Gareth about the worth of my concoctions.

Post-script: I wrote the above just after the New Year came in, as we waited for Pwdin to deliver her babies. On January 5th she produced four pups; two males and two females. They are now one and a half weeks old and more than twice their birth weight. Pwdin has taken to motherhood beautifully and Bess is looking on carefully, looking forward (I assume) to being a playful aunty. Their eyes will start opening soon and once they start running around it’s going to be very busy here (that reminds me - I need to get a new mop and bucket). It will be fun, but tinged with the disappointment of not having the grandchildren around to see the process. Children are so detached from the natural world these days, compared with previous generations, and this pandemic is cutting them off from so many other things, now, too. 

Ok, 2021, do your worst, but get it over with so we can gather and hug again.