Snippets

So, a whippet won Best in Show at Crufts. Hmmm, need I say more? Best of dogs, most beautiful, most gentle and loving, most adorable. Most sleepy. Well, nobody is perfect, though a dog who likes to snooze a lot is a distinct advantage for an owner with a busy life. My little boy, scarred in various places from unprovoked attacks and misadventures running off after hares, will never win a beauty prize, though he'd surely walk off with any other gong going - nicest nature, most fair and even spreader of love, quickest to succumb to a stroking hand. Last week he weathered several storms, not knowing if he was coming or going, or at least if I was. This weekend he was rewarded with a visit from two of his very favourite people, and had more treats in a couple of days than he normally gets in a month. His wet food has also been changed from an evil-looking sausage of some brawn-like substance that was recommended by the rehoming people and for which I regularly braved Tesco to buy, to a delicacy called Cressida's Kitchen or something equally posh, tasty morsels hand-made by eunuchs in a Bavarian castle. He likes it very much. Thanks visitors. I notice it costs more too.

I'm reading four books currently. That's what happens when rest has been ordered and is being dutifully followed. Firstly, and most entertainingly, is a biography of Molly Keane by her daughter Sally. Molly's works provided the rich background to my PhD thesis. It was an exploration of the subjugation of a nation by its colonisers, brutally for the first few hundred years and then more benignly and subtly, patronising and infantalising instead. Her books, set in the Anglo-Irish "big houses", showed how the violence of the past turned inwards from matriarchs towards children, spinster aunts and governesses, their hapless victims, while the weak men lived their useless lives. My theories fascinated me and I was passionate about them. But eventually I ran out of steam, working largely in a vacuum as PhD students do. I ended up loving all of Molly's books, and Sally's biography is of special interest to me. I'm even quoted in it and acknowledged at the end, but alas she's got my name wrong, Denise Long instead of Laing. My small claim to fame, thwarted. Two of the other books are set in Rawanda after the war and Ethiopia respectively, women struggling to survive in a violent patriarchial world. I didn't choose them, but I can see a pattern here. Both offer fascinating insights into an unknown world. One starts off by saying that her sister has three children by the aid worker who forced her into marriage. Some things don't change then.

My kitchen floor is still desperately in need of a wash. I half did it the other week but ran out of energy. I try not to look too closely. I'm particularly anxious that Hugo might be affronted by it, but he assures me not. To prove his point he'll even walk around the tiles nearest the doormat with muddy feet to show how chilled he is about it. See what I mean about whippets? Lovely people.