mud larking

when woody went off on his new adventure, I stopped walking, I’d been walking dogs for 22 years, everyday and whilst I welcomed the break, I was also utterly bereft, the dogs had often been my anchor point and salvation, and at times it was tiresome to have to walk them twice a day in rain or shine but they were true companions, all of them and Woody, being the last remaining member of my little family was incredibly hard to let go, walking without him seemed so utterly awful, I just couldn’t do it….it felt so totally weird walking without a dog. It felt futile, pointless and very upsetting, so I didn’t do it

I had already decided in Italy that I was going to take the rest of the year off, after all the Rick death stuff and renovations and adoption of Woody, I felt I needed a break from it all (in fact when I think about it, I hadn’t really had a holiday for over 12 years. I know that some people think when you move abroad you’re permanently on holiday and that’s as maybe if you haven’t got a house to build, but up until 2017 we had been building non-stop for years and then what with the fire and everything, life hadn’t exactly been a bowl of cherries), so, with the sudden passing of my mum and having to come back to the UK, I needed to do something else, limited by COVID I decided to bite the bullet and walk, I bought a coat and some boots and found an old map

I set myself little targets and then big ones until eventually I’d walked quite a lot of the Essex coastline

there’s something about this landscape that’s very alluring and compelling, it’s raw and ancient, it’s wild and rough, it’s quiet and often very still and then at times it’s noisy and very busy

walking these lands has helped me come to terms with all of my losses last year, it’s been less about scavenging in the mud and more about dropping something off, I have mumbled, shouted, laughed, cried and sung my way around, i’ve stopped to talk to anyone that will listen (such a novelty to be able to speak English), I’ve had conversations with birds, I’ve had conversations with bits of dead birds, and of course conversations with dead people, I’ve asked questions and asked for forgiveness, I’ve stomped and plodded, I’ve marched and I’ve slipped, I’ve sat and just been

some of my walks were walks that I’d been on with Rick and our dogs, so there was something very familiar about them and sometimes they were quite upsetting but then I moved into new territory and things began to shift. When I finally made it out to St Peters Chapel, my destination, I touched the walls of the chapel, said goodbye, turned round and left, I think I’d reached my destination before I’d got there, I’d got what I needed on the way round

Mourning is always complicated it’s not a straight forward process, we get hurled about in a tumble drier of regret, remorse, good memories, bad memories, memories that come back, other memories hiding, like a faded photograph that have lost their edges, you can vaguely recall things but it’s somehow stuck in time, irretrievable….all of this swirls around, at times there are moments of peace, when the machine stops and then everything starts again, going round and round, one way then the other, thoughts falling on top of each other, everything getting tangled up, shrunk and ruined and murky

there are moments in the peace when things drop into place, realisations, understandings, none of which are possible during someone’s life, it seems that only after someone you deeply cared about has passed away, in between the tears and the confusion, this is when those moments occur and that is the shitty thing about death. I would have liked to have the clarity I have now about my husband and my mother, because I could right some wrongs and just let all the other stuff go, I just wish, like hindsight that we could have those understandings when those people are still alive…….it’s almost like their last gift to us, the parting of them allows us to understand something that is bigger than us, something that is stifled by us, something that we humans do not seem to have got the hang of at all

somewhere between the glistening endless mud and the huge open skies, out there with the ancient winkle and oyster beds

in amongst the shipwrecks and lost souls, tucked away for all eternity, washing in and out with every tide, backwards and forwards in a never ending cycle of life and death, lies my grief

one lost, two gained

two amazing things have happened since Rick’s death

One is Peach

And the other is Dave

Peach was a very old friend of Rick’s, not always in his life, but he was at the end, they talked about bikes

Dave is a very old friend of mine, having spent some of our youth together, he was also very close to Rick, they worked together when Rick and I first met, they canoed a lot together

When Rick died they both made contact with me

They have both done something that you could only wish for, they have both stepped up to the plate, they have done what any self respecting man would do, they’ve pulled out all the stops to help me sort myself out in the most practical of ways

Peach supported me on-line through the building of the garden, always there to support me and advise me and encourage me forwards. He gave me a huge amount of his skilled time whilst I was in the UK to sort out my rental recently, he completely re-decorated the house, inside and out

arriving every morning with a huge hug, telling me stories, making me laugh and leaving with a huge hug at night. He will be a friend for life

Dave converted a van and left the UK after lock-down to come and dog sit whilst I went back to the UK

I hadn’t seen or spoken to Dave for nearly 20 years and from the moment he arrived, it was as if we’d only seen each other yesterday, we have both had a very difficult few years with little to laugh about, Dave has made me laugh so much I have nearly wet myself several times and that is what it is all about……….being with someone that can lift your spirits so high that you forget everything shitty and nearly wetting yourself with laughter is the ultimate goal in my opinion……

Dave’s other goal in coming to Italy other than cheering me up, was to get me ready for winter

he rebuilt my hearth and we got the wood burner in

He chopped all my firewood

the only safety boots available were Rick’s old motocross boots, Dave had to wear his slippers inside the boots to make them fit!!!

Dave taught me how to use tools properly, we made an apple crate kitchen

Dave stayed longer than anticipated because he wanted to see Woody off and hold my hand as he went

Dave left this morning having made new friends here in Italy, he had a great time, I learnt a lot about many things and have had my spirits restored

I now have two brilliant men in my life, if Rick’s death has an upside, this is it……..

summer

not that i want to wish my life away, but it looks like summer is nearly over……thank god……

looking back over my photos, i don’t seem to have done very much, other than a very stressful trip back to the UK and then 2 weeks recovering not a lot has happened…but here’s a little snippet

dis boot and das boot

It feels like an age has passed and I haven’t written a  thing, not even thought about writing a thing. Sometimes it’s like that, we wait for inspiration, we forget that we are waiting, we get on with our lives. There is a huge amount of nothingness here in the mountains, well some would call it nothingness, there’s plenty, if you know where to look, we have to take our inspiration from tiny things, from the inane, from the “doing-ness” of our lives.

November has had a lot of ups and downs, we’ve had the most bizarre weather

and not enough rain and then loads all at once. It’s been too hot, then really cold. We had no olives and what we did have ended up on the floor after gusty winds.

I’ve made some splendid cakes

and cookies

I’ve sown some stuff

Meanwhile,  in the garden

things are slowing down, I’m still harvesting parsnips, carrots and Kale, herbs and flowers. The dahlias have been dug up and put to bed, the citrus have been covered again. the asparagus has been cut down.

A few years ago, I let some garlic go to seed
aside from the fact that they look beautiful, I wanted to collect the seed and grow my own garlic.

It can take years for the garlic to be a useable size and you just keep harvesting and keeping for next years seed, until it is big enough, which seems like a faff (it is) but possibly worth it in the end (or not)

When I’m super stressed (which is most of the time, it seems), I count, I count everything, how many steps I’m walking, how many things I am picking, how many times I have turned the spade over etc. etc.

Last week I planted 457 cloves of garlic………I dressed the soil with ash from the bread oven and some blood, fish and bone, raked it all in and am keeping fingers crossed that that will be enough to get them going…….

 and just to round off, a little light-heartedness about boots…..
Rick’s boots, have been the source of much entertainment over the last 6 years, mostly in the sort of laughing one does when one is a little bit desperate and trying to see the funny side of things when actually they couldn’t be sadder………I’ve lost count of how many pairs of boots he’s been through on this build, aside from how much money they cost, it’s the logistics of buying them that cause the most amount of angst because he is too big for Portugal (clothes wise)……they have to come from the other world….the world were men have feet that are bigger than women’s feet!!!

which brings me to the end of this entry and little ditty about dogs, life, the universe and everything……

Woody caught a boot,

a lonesome, soleless, cowboy boot…….god knows where it came from, how old it is or who it belonged to, given that there are not many cowboys around these parts (although I did see one recently in the agri store, sporting a fantastic moustache and wearing spurs….), it’s been up and down the road several times, being picked up daily by one of the dogs…..

the dogs and how they are, are a constant reminder that often the very thing that you want/need the most is often right under your nose, if only you could just stop for a moment and use your senses to find it or see it……….

the princess and the pee

No it’s not a typo and it’s not really a post about fairy tales either, more puppy dogs tails…….

we have a bed wetter and a chewer which has meant that not only does dog bedding have to be washed regularly but also mended and often just thrown away. Blossom has always had spayed bitch incontinence, it’s been a manageable problem until recently, age and illness has meant that her issues have got worse……

Woody is a serial chewer

thankfully it’s been mostly things that don’t really matter, like pine cones, stones any old bit of wood but mostly his favourite chew toy is his bedding………

So, I got given two old duvets, which I cut in half, giving me 4 dog beds, i then salvaged some old fabric from the dump and an old duvet cover, sewed everything on to everything a million times and viola, i now have lots of dog beds that can go in the wash and dry really quickly above the fire or in the sun……..

hopefully the woodster will stop chewing as soon as his last canine has finished growing (it’s been a slow one) and well the bed wetting is what it is……

spring has sprung…..

…..and then it sort of went away again. It did peak a bit early with temperatures in the mid twenties, which is a bit odd given that it was only February and it went from 6 to 26 in less than two days. Needless to say I was quite ready for it, as it seems to do this every year and the last thing I want to be doing in the garden is panic digging!!! aside from the fact that panic digging is no good for your body, I prefer to give the soil a chance to warm up and digging can help it do this, so by the time the temperatures rose I was ready to sow, which i did, I put in rows and rows of parsnips and carrots

turnips, kale and peas various other bits and pieces. All of which have germinated now (thanks to the heat).

I generally fleece all these first sowings

as this aides their germination and then they are also protected from any foul weather we may have. I have known it to hail in May here, so the fleece stays on until then and gets raised up with hoops made from willow.

I will continue to sow for a few more weeks and then that’s it for sowing direct.

The blossoms and wild flowers are peaking,the display this year is spectacular, especially the plum blossom

so hopefully this will mean we will have a bumper crop if, of course the frosts don’t come and ruin everything.

We had a nasty experience with our giant puppy Woody, despite our best efforts at keeping him safe from the processionary caterpillars he went and stuck his entire face in a nest and had an anaphylactic reaction, passing out half way down the farm, leaving me to try and carry him back up to the truck covered in poo and weighing 33 kilos, luckily a friend passed by and helped me finish the job. Woody is OK but we are having to walk him away from the pines, which is not easy being as we live in a pine forest, he goes on the schist trail every morning and the afternoons we go to the local national park

needless to say he has rather alot of energy and our nights are not quiet or sleep filled…….

I’m secretly hoping that the foul weather will continue as it will kill off the last of the caterpillars and then life can go back to normal and Woody can gallumph around on the farm again……

bless you dear cat

sadly a few weeks ago, I had to have my darling Lulu put down, she’d been off and on poorly for a while,  living outside had not agreed with her (long story) but she was nearly 16 and I’d say thats pretty good going, she’d used up all her lives with various accidents and poisonings, not to mention being mauled (practically to death) by 4 puppies

what a fantastic cat

Blossom and Lulu on the schist trail

 Stanley and lulu, the best of friends

Fred and Lulu chilling on the stairs

 and just when she thought life would be a bit quieter in her very old age, along came Woody

Fredwood

sometimes things happen and you can’t fathom out why? often, on an intellectual level, you can understand the cause and effect, or the sequence of events that led to the thing occurring. but, when its something that matters to you emotionally, sometimes then, despite all your best efforts to make sense of it, especially at the time it occurs, it fails to make any sense what-so-ever, and leaves you in a void of emptiness, and loss, sometimes even a loss of faith.

this is the situation we found ourselves in. earlier this year when we lost our dog fred. he died of kidney failure as a result of Leischmania, a viral infection carried by a sand fly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leischmania). when we arrived here, a few years ago we first heard of the disease, but at that point only a strain of it that affected the skin and eyes of dogs, which if left untreated resulted in death. subsequently we have found there are other strains of the disease that affect dogs, and also humans. 

none of it made any sense. i can’t begin to explain the sense of trauma and loss we felt at the time. for 2 weeks we ferried fred back and forth to the vets, in the vain hope that he might pull thru. we thought he deserved every chance. he was an incredibly fit dog, who never showed any fear or pain or suffering, possibly to his detriment, as he only showed symptoms of the disease right before he passed away from it.

a week before, he was leaping up sheer rock faces fox hunting, that’s the kind of dog he was. we never imagined he would go like that, what seemed more likely, was that he would be gored by the wild boar he was always hunting and chasing. 

if i had felt my bond strong with stanley, my first dog, who died of the kind of complications that set in in old age, only shortly after we got here, then it was hard to describe the bond i shared with fred. it was stronger, he was so very much my dog. he was the dog i dreamed of,  almost like i had dreamed him into existence, or that he and i had dreamed our relationship into being. we were devoted to each other.

he was so very alive. i have never seen another dog like him. i guess we knew he wouldn’t live long, nothing that shines that brightly can. he filled our lives in a way that nothing else did, and the subsequent vacuum his departure caused was nothing other than immense. like being stranded in deep space, unable to breathe, drfting. it has taken me since june to come to terms with it enough that i can bring myself to write something.

not that it was in any way like falling off a bicycle, but the desire to get another dog was very strong. it felt, at the time, like the only way, the only thing to do, that might in some way bring some resolution to our pain. some might say that’s a funny reason to get a dog, but it was only perhaps the motivating reason. we had been talking about it, as we always do about other dogs.

there were some criteria for another dog, we wanted another hunt point retrieve dog, one that might afford us the opportunity of working with him. and thats how we found woody. in spain, in a little village not far from the astonishing castle of penafiel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penafiel_Castle), and the wine caverns of aranda de duero (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aranda_de_Duero)

woody is a deutsch drahthaar  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch_Drahthaar) and he’s very funny. he is also very (or wery) wuffly. 

i guess the point i’m trying to make is, you can’t have everything, everything has its time, and sometimes just to astonish you, something amazing can show up just when you really need it to.

let sleeping dogs lie

too hot to stand up and eat our lunch, we’d prefer to just sit down or lie down to eat it!!!!

Fleasn’all

We are kindly looking after a friends dog for three months,

5 weeks in and we’ve had a flea infestation. We have spent almost three days washing everything in the house, spraying furniture, floors, washing endless dog bedding, backwards and forwards to the chemist for hideous products, several phone calls to the chemist, some tears and some laughter, finally last night we had a full nights sleep without being bitten….however, I noticed as I have been inspecting all our creatures that the fleas had still not left Bullseye. I have taken very drastic measures, the first day I cut most of his hair off, badly, with some dog grooming scissors,

when I noticed the fleas again today, I went back to town and managed to buy a dog grooming kit in one of the many Chinese shops we have here. I have now groomed him properly. Well sort of, he didn’t like it so I had to ply him with constant treats and lots of encouragement, I’ve left him a pompom tail and some furry boots and his head. Sorry Keeley