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It was London, 1965; I was 17, in love for the first time, and passionate about, oh, all sorts of things. Dylan released this wonder of an album:
I heard this song and I experienced what I can only describe as a seismic shift of the soul. The boyfriend and I played it over and over. Nothing was ever quite the same again.
Seventy eh? Who'da thought it? Just hope you're dancing somewhere beneath the diamond sky today, Bob. We're still following you . . .
I had the post already written in my head; a post about a small dog who has made me rethink all sorts of things . . . and then in that funny old way that so often happens in life, something cropped up.
The something that cropped up also involved dogs and a pair of clueless neighbours, who are out of the house for between 10 and 12 hours each day and who shouldn't have one dog, let alone two, one of which is an eight-week-old puppy. This morning, the neighbours' house was flooded, with the dogs inside. Another neighbour and I mounted a rescue mission and, as I write this (and nine hours after the rescue), the puppy and her older companion are still curled up by the Aga, waiting for their owners to roll up - because said owners didn't regard what happened as an emergency.
The puppy has to be isolated from my dogs (as in my own and guest dogs) as it has not completed its cycle of vaccinations. Meanwhile, the older dog, who is normally quiet and gentle, has become very protective towards the puppy and is ready to have a stand-up fight with any other dogs who come near her or the pup.
Ay de mi, as Nancy Mitford might have remarked in similar circumstances, although it's hard to imagine Nancy finding herself in a situation quite like this.
In the meantime, my dogs needed their afternoon walk so I left the rescued duo in the kitchen and with the run of the garden, and met a client - and now friend - with her dog. We stomped along the riverbank, had a bit of a rant and then managed to laugh, just a bit, which acted as a kind of balm, as only laughter can.
And it is her dog, a little shih tzu (let us, for the purposes of this blog, call her Little Miss P) whom I originally intended should be subject of this post because she has stolen my heart rather. She recently spent a fortnight with me while her owners were on holiday - a last-minute booking when her regular carer was taken ill. The one thing I didn't expect to do was to fall in love with a tiny dog, let alone a brachycephalic dog. To be honest, and I know they have their fans, dogs with this type of face, Pekingese, for example, never really did it for me (ditto brachycephalic cats). When it comes to canine appearances, I've always gone for large breeds, with fine heads; as a child, my first dog was a German shepherd and in adult life it has been (rescue) Labradors all the way, with only one slight deviation in the form of the late Rough Diamond, whose adventures were chronicled here over the years. And even he was a Labrador-collie cross.
But Little Miss P was an absolute honey; she was bold and brave and tried her very best to out-run the collie and lurcher guests who came and went during her stay. She even stood her ground with a rather fierce-looking German shepherd who was in full owner-defence mode when we met them while walking one day. She just sat down right in front of him, raised her eyes and let out as loud a bark as she could. He looked a bit nonplussed.
Come the evening, walked and fed and in full snooze mode, she like nothing better than to curl up on a lap . . .
And little by little, I fell in love with her and thought that perhaps - at some vague point in the future - when I am a very old woman and not quite up to Labrador handling, a shih tzu (but with a puppy cut, please - just like Little Miss P, no long trailing locks) might be the ideal canine companion.
Here are some of the Little Miss P's holiday snaps:
See what I mean? My daughter - a Labrador woman to the very core - couldn't quite believe her ears when I told her that I was just a tad smitten with a shih tzu. I had the distinct sense that she thought her mother was rapidly losing the plot or, more specifically, the canine plot.
I have not, of course, mentioned this to the Edinburgh Boy; I would not wish to hurt his feelings. He's a sensitive soul and, for the foreseeable future, my heart firmly belongs to him and to his own elderly lady companion, Christmas Holly, who is still with us and still doing remarkably well (which I attribute to the mighty healing power of pilchards).
But still . . .
You never know who you're going to bump into on the way to pick up the Sunday papers. It was moving day for some of the locals:
Not that anyone minds. This is sheep and cattle country and a round-up enables Mid-Devon's answer to Gil Favor and Rowdy Yates to show off a bit.
Then it was a quick dash to Tiverton Pannier Market for the town's very first Food Festival, organised by market regulars, Deli Shack. The emphasis was on local producers, most of whom came from within a few miles of Tiverton. An honourable exception was made for Taylors, artisan bakers of Bruton, across the border in Somerset.
Who can resist a display like this?
Or this?
Equally irrestible is Vulscombe - one of the finest goat cheeses you could wish to taste and produced not far from here. Post-breast cancer, dairy products are more or less off-menu for me but I do, very occasionally, tuck into some Vulscombe. I cannot recommend this cheese too highly and the good news is that you can order online from Deli Shack and other suppliers, several of whom - like this one - carry the story of how Graham and Jo Townsend, Vulscombe's creators, arrived in Devon almost 30 years ago and set about building their original herd and developing their superb cheeses.
Making cheese of such consistently high quality is, inevitably, hard work, with long hours, seven days a week, and Graham is looking for an apprentice. Believe me, if I were 40 years younger, I'd be off like a shot. Seriously.
A good many friends were at the Food Festival too; so was half of Tiverton by the looks of things and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. We're all hoping that it could become an annual event and Tiverton could certainly do with this sort of boost. Its historic Pannier Market has been in existence for 700 years and we have some of the country's best food producers on the doorstep. A natural alliance, wouldn't you say?
Anyway, a huge thank you to the lovely people at Deli Shack for sponsoring the festival. There's a short video about Tiverton Pannier Market on Deli Shack's home page, which also features the equally delightful Mary from Landrake Farm, purveyor of finest vegetables to 60 going on 16. And we are very fussy about our vegetables . . .
PS Sorry that there are no meat photos but that would be just a step too far for a non-carnivore like me. But my meat-eating chums said that they were very impressed with what was on offer and came home with overflowing baskets.
I wrote this on May Day and intended to post it there and then. But somehow didn't . . .
I've had family guests staying so I gave them my bedroom, which is the largest in the house; meanwhile, I decamped to what we call the summer bedroom. I rather love it, despite the fact that it is the smallest bedroom and north facing; in summer it just about catches the farther reaches of the sunrise, to the east. To the north are hills and grazing sheep and the view is the best from the house.
And there are bookshelves. There are books in every room in the house (and on the stairs) but this room is one of only two that have their own proper, custom-made bookshelves. So I wake looking at books I have yet to read, books I have loved, and books I have almost but not quite forgotten.
This morning I picked up this
a limited edition, published in 1973, the year it was given to me and inscribed three years later, by the person who gave it to me, with the closing lines of the final poem in the collection known as The Passionate Pilgrim (Shakespeare et al).
On reflection, I could have gone down the maudlin route as I took this book off the shelf on May Day, remembering that poem is set in the month of May and that the person who had inscribed my book all those years ago died on a May Day just 10 years later. And I could, had I allowed myself to do so, have reflected that even things, people, events, love affairs, marriages that somehow go horribly wrong were once - or at least once seemed - wonderfully right. But I decided not to go there and I tried to look at this book, that had once symbolised so much, with fresh eyes and was astonished at what I discovered. I didn't quite fall out of bed but my jaw dropped, visibly.
The book is The Cry of a Gull, the journals kept by American writer, Alyse Gregory, between 1923 and 1948. It was published by Out of the Ark Press, or 'Out of the ARK PRESS' as it says on the cover. In 1973, the press was located in Brushford a small village just few miles from here and which I drive past at least once a week on my way to Dulverton. Somehow, I had missed this connection completely since I moved here in 1998.
There is another Ark Press, which was founded in 2009, but I can find no details of what ultimately happened to Out of the Ark Press. It was founded by Michael Adam, known also as Kim Taylor, a self-taught printer who had joined the University of Texas in 1960 as director of its Book Arts Center.
The journals chart the years of Gregory's life with the English writer, Llewelyn Powys, and after his death in 1939 until 1948. She had met Powys in New York, when she was managing editor of The Dial, then America's foremost literary journal. They married in 1924 and she remained with him for the rest of his life always devoted, immensely supportive of his work, and nursing him through bouts of tuberculosis, despite having to share his affections with his much younger mistress and muse, the poet, Gamel Woolsey. (So Wild a Thing, also published by Out of the Ark Press, is a collection of Powys's letters to Woolsey and leave the reader in no doubt as to the depth of his passion. Alyse must have been the most unusually tolerant of wives; she and her husband had met Gamel Woolsey in 1927. Alyse, allegedly, encouraged their affair and Powys's last letter to Gamel Woolsey was written just a few days before his death. Hard to imagine the marital and extra-marital tensions, not least because Woolsey's attachment to Powys continued after her marriage to historian, Gerald Brenan, who had once had an affair with Dora Carrington. . .)
But there was something else I had missed too: The Cry of a Gull includes an afterword by Michael Adam, a summary of Alyse's final years. And rereading this earlier today, my jaw dropped again, for these years were spent in Morebath, another village I know well, not least because, like Brushford it is just a few miles from here. I have friends who live there; I went to yoga classes there for years; all those visits and I never knew. It was just like the Rebecca West discovery. Adam records that' 'Apart from Alyse's friends living on at Morebath, nothing remains there to tell of her.'
That was almost 40 years ago; they are probably there no longer but I think the cottage still stands . . .
(If you know what happened to Out of the Ark Press, do tell.)
