Woody’s big adventure

Those of you that know me, know that I always took my dog responsibilities very seriously, often too seriously, particularly at the end of my dog Blossom’s life, everything was put on hold, partly because the vet refused to put her down, I might add, it took me a year to convince him that she was not well, but at the ripe old age of 16, she’d had a good innings and it was a natural process of her life to then depart

Woody, however has posed some very very difficult questions for me, he is half way through his life, he’s already had a very blessed and amazing life

when I came back to Italy, Woody was a bit of a mess to be honest, Rick had spoilt him rotten which had in turn, sent him a bit crazy, he was anxious all the time, chewing his bed and himself, not to mention the incredibly strong prey drive that was a natural part of Woody’s personality but had also been a bit too encouraged by Rick

Walking Woody here in Italy had become a twice daily terrifying ordeal for me, constantly chasing anything and everything that dared move, getting him just from the house to the truck was a major event, god forbid if there were any cats around, not to mention the badgers at night…..I was in constant of fear of him being shot by hunters, resorting to making him a ridiculous hi-vis vest

my nerves were at the end of their tether most of the time, as things got sorted with Rick, I calmed down, Woody calmed down, we developed a good routine, he had his boundaries back, he got castrated, he calmed down a bit more

I felt terrible about the life he had, it was never our intention to just live in a village house, it was just going to be a stop gap, but as you know things didn’t work that way, so Woody and I got on with our little life, two walks a day and the rest of the time he was stuck in the house, whilst he seemed content enough, I didn’t

I thought long and hard about my decision to have Woody adopted, but didn’t want him adopted in Italy

I found a charity that re-homes Woody’s breed in the UK, they mostly rescue stray and abandoned dogs from around Europe, Woody’s case was different, he had a history, he’d had a loving home, I eventually plucked up the courage to make contact and lo and behold, a lot quicker than I expected, Woody was wanted back in the UK…..

So today, we all got up at 3am and drove to Potenza (the other side of the country), Woody is now on his way to a new home, a home where he will be loved and cared for, given all the space he needs and can live out the next bit of his life in relative safety

It’s been excruciating for me on so many levels, it’s possibly the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make, but I know it’s the right thing to do, for him and for me

it is the end of my whole life with Rick, Woody was the last part, I don’t know what is next, all I know is that there must be a reason for this, it’s just not clear what it is yet

Go forth my dear sweet, loyal friend and bless your little dog heart

a proper english farewell

I took Rick back to his mum via Ryanair, who, despite my sheer panic at taking the ashes out of the country he loved, taking him on a plane (which he hated) and worrying that they would be confiscated, were amazing, once on the plane, I sat patiently with my mask on, with Rick on the floor, when the stewardess asked for a volunteer to sit in the emergency exit, I jumped at the chance to get away from everyone and said, “yes, I’ll come, with my husband” she looked at the empty seat next to me and asked where my husband was “in my bag” I said, they couldn’t have been nicer and let me have him next to me for the whole journey (apart from take-off and landing)

whilst in the UK we had fish and chips on the first table he ever made

I took him to the first house he built

I took him to my friends garden

and put him in a tree

I said some nice things

“Something that saddened me the most about his death, wasn’t just that he died alone with his dog but that he never really knew how much he was loved and admired, the love that he has received in his passing has been overwhelming not just a great support to me but also a testament to how he had touched everyone’s lives, everybody that he ever encountered

He was a brilliant man, with a brilliant mind, I’ve never met anyone as bright as him and it was a great honour to not just have shared 24 years with him but to have achieved some great things and been a part of that, we made a great team but we also made a terrible team

The thing about brilliance is that whilst it is an incredible thing to experience it is also a difficult thing to live with for the brilliant person and the people around them. There is a limit to how brightly you can shine and rick had reached his limit

Things don’t always make sense and we can’t always know what the bigger picture is, despite not believing in god I do have faith of another kind and I know that he is not just at peace he was called away to be brilliant elsewhere”

His friends came and said farewell, Daniela sang and we ate cakes, we drank tea, we talked and reminisced and laughed alot and talked some more and ate some more cake

he would have loved it

attachments

As the enormity of what’s happened starts to sink in, I’ve realised that I have less stuff now than when I left home at 17, the only difference is that I have a husband and two dogs, oh and some vehicles

Last year my best friend, a friend I had had for 34 years suddenly stopped communicating with me, whilst there may have been a myriad of reasons, it was hard to not take it personally, the grief and anger I had, overwhelmed me at times and ate away at me, the realisation that I would never have such a friendship again, it was 34 years worth of friendship, marriages, births, deaths, breakdowns and of course laughter, joy and all the other stuff of life…….

I realised that I would never have a friendship like that again, I don’t have enough time in front of me to formulate it….well I may have but I doubt very much that I will…….I learnt valuable lessons about myself and how much I had invested in something that could so easily be thrown or taken away…it was a hard lesson to learn

I can’t compare the loss of that friendship with the loss of a house, but the feelings are the same…..and I’m guessing the lessons are the same too……the attachments I had to my things, the things that I had collected from all over the world

the fabrics that I had dragged across Central and North America, literally on my back, overland, the amazing tin collection that had taken me since I was 17 to amass, mostly priceless and very rare…none of it I can or will ever have again, I can’t possibly conceive of starting it all again, so I won’t…it’s only stuff, it didn’t really matter, the attachment I had to it was probably unhealthy and to be honest I hardly ever looked at the tin collection, it never came out of it’s boxes and the fabrics I was too sentimental about to ever cut up of turn into something else…all a bit like a museum of my life….very Miss Haversham…..a bit depressing in a way

I think, on some level we would all like to be able to let go of something, but whilst that “something” is still in front of us or in existence, we can practice it and some may even achieve it, some pay a fortune for it, spending years meditating or living some kind of monastic life but do we ever really “let go”. It takes a certain kind of honesty to admit that a) you may have an attachment and then b) to admit that you haven’t really let go. This event has given me the opportunity to grow and understand in a way that obviously no-one would want, but it has happened and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, accepting it and learning from it, asking better questions and doing things differently is all that is required

so, here we go again

ourlifehandmade part two, stay tuned

bye bye baby

some of you may remember a rather sentimental post about my car : https://ourlifehandmade.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/my-lovely-valentine/

well, despite my best efforts to keep her, I am having to let her go. It’s not good for an old car to sit in storage forever, unless all you want to do is look at it occasionally, we need the money and I’ve had to make the very hard decision to let her go to a new home. I have had the best 2cv mechanic in the world and when he asked if I would sell her to his son, it just felt like the right thing to do. I’m trying not to be too depressed about the whole thing, we can now get some much needed building supplies and whilst it breaks my heart and I weirdly feel disloyal I know that her departure is making space for something new to come in I hope it will be another quirky car or maybe one of these????

but given our current financial status, it’s more likely to be something like one of these

bye bye Valentine

food of love

marriage is a difficult thing, some would say it’s the most difficult thing you will ever do, whether you are officially married or not, it takes work, compromise, patience, discipline and a lot of love.

I live with a man who loves his food, he loves different foods from me and generally that’s ok it work’s,  it take’s a lot of discipline on my part to not eat everything he eats and it takes some compromise on his part to eat the things I want to eat.

One thing is certain, I have learnt, that the way to my husband’s heart is through his stomach or less his stomach but more his desires for things to put in his stomach. When we met each other I had never made a cake in my life, having not come from a home of baking or even puddings for that matter, his childhood was very different, they always had puddings and at least one cake a week……..

For the first few years he didn’t ask me for anything special in the kitchen, I was commuting to London everyday and rarely had time to think straight let alone bake a cake but since we moved to Portugal and I have more free time, I’m able to indulge him and I love it, it makes him so happy and that in turn makes me happy, call me old fashioned, I don’t care, but that is (for me anyway) all that matters, it works, it’s the easiest thing, it doesn’t take a lot, just the desire, the desire to do whatever it takes to make someone happy without sacrificing very much at all.

So when he asks for bounty bars and he’s worked his heart out all week, that’s what I do, take the morning off and indulge him

Happy eating