It was October 25th, 2013. Exactly a year since the day that they had moved in to their Merlin home. Yet in some very strange way if felt neither as long as a full year nor as short.
Molly and Philip were sitting on the decked verandah looking out over the acres of grass. A group of five dogs were cavorting and chasing around in what looked like for them a dog heaven.
He came back to his strange thought of it not feeling like a year; in either direction. The beauty of their land, the joy the dogs experienced every time they ran freely about the place was beyond measure. All their neighbours, without exception, were people that he and Molly liked. More than that, they were also helpful and sharing persons. Rationally, he admitted, this was probably a key aspect of country folk right across the United States of America. But it didn’t diminish what it felt like. Plus his Englishness was welcomed and enjoyed and that created an additional layer of acceptance. Thus in those ways it felt that they had been here for much longer than twelve short months.
On the other hand, his difficulty at learning names and faces of people, even neighbours; his struggle to still find his way to certain stores and shops in Grants Pass had a feel as though they had only just moved in; had been here much less than a full year. That slowness in learning his way about the area worried him at times. It was disquieting and more than once he turned inwards and quietly worried that dementia was stealing up on him as it had for his elder sister, Diana, who had died of it earlier in 2013.
More generally, two dogs had died of old age over the past months so they were down to a total of nine. Those nine were divided into groups of five and four.
The group of five were Pharaoh, Sweeny, Dhalia, Hazel and Cleo. Cleo was the younger German Shepherd that they had purchased as a companion to Pharaoh, who had passed ten-years-old last June. This group was affectionately called the bedroom group because they slept overnight in the main bedroom with Molly and Philip. The other four dogs were Lilly, Ruby, Casey and Paloma. Known as the kitchen group because they lived in the large kitchen and dining area. It worked very well. All nine dogs found their home property endlessly interesting simply because each day there were so many new smells for them to follow.
There was another aspect of their year here that figured very strongly in Philip’s mind. That was the tension between anger and peace, his anger and his peace, and the role of dogs in his life.
He had observed strongly how the level of disquiet, to put it mildly, in the minds of everyday folk all around them was increasing. A throw-away comment in front of a store check-out woman about how we were living in interesting times would trigger a facial expression, a shrug of the shoulders that spoke volumes. Often added to by a comment from the next person in line. Many other tiny windows into how so many people were feeling uncomfortable about the world we were all now living in.
He fully expected to see growing levels of social anger and unrest over the next few years. He could feel the force of anger playing with his mind.
What was it that Jonathan used to speak about? Yes, the difference between power and force. How force could never produce lasting change. Yet how power came from within and could change mountains, metaphorically speaking. Or, as Jonathan pointed out, literally in the case of the power of water and sand.
Philip knew that to bury his face into the furry warmth of a dog’s coat, to wrap his arms around one of their animals and feel the dog relax in to that hug, offered him something priceless. It offered the lesson, time and time again, that anger is only cured from within. That the power of that dog’s unconditional love for him effortlessly took him within himself and bathed him in love, peace and contentment.
One evening during early September, Dhalia did not return to the house after the usual after-supper dog run. He said to Molly that he would go out and look for her. He walked down to the forest just by the creek and stood calling out her name. As the sun set behind the tall peaks and the darkness drew in around him, he started imagining what it would be like to leave their property and plunge into the deep forest searching for one of their dogs that had become lost. He shivered with the thought of how fragile was the boundary between being secure at home and being utterly lost in a vast wilderness.
Thank goodness, he wasn’t put to the test because at that moment the sound of little paws heralded Dhalia’s return. She came immediately to his side, her tail wagging with such furious affection, as it so often did. Philip kneeled down and hugged her. Dhalia lowered her head and pushed herself under his left arm. Tears flowed from his eyes revealing his joy and love that this precious dog was not lost or harmed.
When he and Dhalia had returned to the house, he couldn’t shake off that image of being out alone in the forest. To the extent that the same evening, quite untypically, after their meal he had excused himself to Molly and sat down and written a short story on the theme.
Sitting there with Molly on the verandah more than a month later he reflected that what he could remember of those words was a little hazy. He rose from the chair to go and find where he had put the completed story. He found it almost immediately and came back out to the verandah.
“What’s that you’ve got there?” Molly asked.
“It’s that story I wrote of being lost out in the forest; you know the one I wrote back in early September.”
“Oh yes, I loved that story. Do read it to me again.”
He took out his reading glasses, looked down and started reading.
——
“Molly, where’s Dhalia?”
“I don’t know. She was here moments ago.”
“Molly, You take the other dogs back to the car and I’ll go and scout around for her. Oh, and you better put Pharaoh on the leash otherwise you know he’ll follow me.”
“Philip, don’t worry. Dhalia’s always chasing scents; bet she beats us back to the car. Especially as it’s going to be dark soon.”
Nonetheless, Philip started back down the dusty, dirt road, the last rays of the sun pink on the high, forested cliffs about them. This high rocky, forest plateau, in an area known as the Siskiyou Forest, not those many miles from their home in Southern Oregon. It made perfect dog-walking country and rarely did they miss a week-end afternoon out here. However, this particular Saturday afternoon, for reasons Philip was unclear, they had left home much later than usual.
There was no sign of Dhalia ahead on this remote forest road so he struck off left, hoping that she was somewhere up amongst the higher trees and the boulders. Soon he reached the first crest; panting hard. Behind him, across the breath-taking landscape, the setting sun had dipped beneath faraway mountain ridges; a magnificent sight. Suddenly, in the midst of that brief pause, him admiring the perfect evening, a sound echoed around the cliffs. The sound of a dog barking. He bet his life on that being Dhalia. Just as quickly the barking stopped.
The barking started up again, barking that suggested Dhalia was hunting a creature. The sound came from an area of boulders way up above the pine trees on the other side of the small valley ahead of him. Perhaps, Dhalia had trapped herself. More likely, he reflected, swept up in the evening scents of the wilderness, Dhalia had temporarily reverted back to the wild, hunting dog she had been all those years ago. That feral Mexican street dog who in 2005 had tentatively turned away from scavenging in a pile of rubbish in a dirty Mexican town and shyly approached Molly. Molly had named her Dhalia.
He set off down through the dense forest to what he thought was the valley floor. Some thirty minutes later, thirty minutes of hard climbing, had him reach those high boulders.
Philip whistled, then called “Dhalia! Dhalia! Come, there’s a good girl.” Thank God for such a sweet, obedient dog. He anticipated the sound of dog feet scampering through rough undergrowth. But no sound came.
He listened; no sounds, no more barking. Now where had she gone? Perhaps past these boulders down in the next steep ravine beyond him, the one even more densely forested with pine trees. With daylight practically gone he needed to find Dhalia, and find her very soon.
He plunged down the slope, through tree branches that whipped across his face, then fell heavily as his foot found empty space instead of the expected firm ground. Philip cursed, picked himself up and paused. That fall had a message for him: the madness of continuing this search in the near dark. The terrain made very rough going even in good daylight. At night, the boulders and plunging ravines would guarantee a busted body, at best! Plus, he ruefully admitted, he didn’t have a clue as to where he now was, let alone finding his way back to the road where he had left Molly.
The unavoidable truth smacked him full in the face. He would be spending this night alone in the high, open forest. It had one hell of a very scary dimension.
He forced himself not to dwell on just how scary it all felt. He needed to stay busy, find some way of keeping warm; last night at home it had dropped to within a few degrees of freezing. Philip looked around, seeing a possible solution. He broke a small branch off a nearby fir tree and made a crude brush with which he swept up the fallen pine needles he saw everywhere about him. Soon he had a stack sufficient to cover him, or so he hoped. Thank goodness that when he and Molly had decided to give the five dogs this late afternoon walk, he had put on jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, a pullover thrown over his shoulders. It didn’t make Dhalia’s antics any less frustrating but he probably wasn’t going to freeze to death!
The air temperature sank as if connected with the last rays of the sun. Philip’s confidence sank at the same rate as the temperature.
He lay down, shuffled about, swept the pine needles across his body, tried to find a position that carried some illusion of comfort. No matter the position, he couldn’t silence his mind. Couldn’t silence the screaming in his head, his deep, primeval fear of this dark forest about him, his imagination already running away with visions of hostile night creatures, large and small, watching him, smelling him, biding their time. Perhaps he might sleep for a short while?
A moment later the absurdity of that last thought hit him. Caused him to utter aloud, “You stupid sod. There’s no way you’re going to sleep through this!” His words echoed off unseen cliffs in the darkness reinforcing his sense of isolation.
He was very frightened. Why? Where in his psyche did that come from? He had spent many nights alone at sea without a problem, a thousand miles from shore. Then, of course, he knew his location, always had a radio link to the outside world. But being lost in this dark, lonely forest touched something very deep in him. Suddenly, he started shivering.
The slightest movement he made caused the needles to slip from him and the cold night air began to penetrate his body. He tried not to think about how cold it might get and, by extension, thanked his lucky stars that the night was early September not, say, mid-December. So far, not too cold. But it wasn’t long before the fear rather than the temperature started to devour him. What stupid fool said, ‘Nothing to fear but fear itself!’ His plan to sleep under the pine needles, fear or no fear, had failed; he couldn’t get warm. He had to move.
He looked around and vaguely saw a boulder a few yards away, like some giant, black shadow. No details, just this huge outline etched against the night. He carefully raised himself, felt the remaining needles fall away, and gingerly shuffled across to the dark rock. He half-expected something to bite his extended hand as he explored the surface, ran his hand down towards the unseen ground. Miracle of miracles, the granite gently emitted the warmth absorbed from the day’s sun. He slowly settled himself to the ground, eased his back against the rock-face and pulled his knees up to his chest. He felt so much less vulnerable than he had laying on the forest floor. He let out a long sigh, then burst into tears, huge heart-rending sobs coming from somewhere very far within him.
Gradually the tears washed away his fear, restored a calmer part of his brain. That calmer brain brought the realisation that he hadn’t considered, well not up until now, what Molly must be going through. At least he knew he was alive. Molly, not knowing, would be in despair. He bet she would remember that time when out walking in the Dells down in Arizona they had lost little Poppy, an adorable 10 lb poodle mix, never to be found again despite ages spent combing the area, calling out her name. A year later and Molly still said from time to time, “I so miss Poppy!” First Poppy and now him! No question, he had to get through this in one piece, mentally as much as physically.
Presumably, Molly would have called 911 and been connected to the local search and rescue unit. Would they search for him in the dark? He thought it unlikely.
Thinking about her further eased his state of mind and his shivering stopped. Thank goodness for that! Philip fought to retain this new perspective. He would make it through, even treasure this night under the sky, this wonderful, awesome, night sky. Even the many crowns of the tall trees that soared way up above him couldn’t mask a sky that just glittered with starlight.
It was that heavenly clock that resided in the night sky and tonight offered a magical example of the immensity and grandeur of the universe.
Often during his life the night skies had spoken to him, presented a reminder of the continuum of the universe. On this night, however, he felt more humbled by the hundred, million stars surrounding him than ever before.
Time slipped by, him being unable to read his watch in the darkness. However, above his head there was that vast stellar clock. He scanned the heavens, seeking out familiar pinpoints of light, companions over so much of his lifetime. Ah, there! The Big Dipper, Ursa Major, and, yes, there the North Pole star, Polaris. Great! Now the rotation of the planet became his watch, The Big Dipper sliding around Polaris, fifteen degrees for each hour.
What a situation he had got himself into. As with other challenging times in his life, lost in the Australian bush, at sea hunkering down through a severe storm, never a choice other than to work it out. He felt a gush of emotion from the release this changed perspective gave him.
Far away, a group of coyotes started up a howl. What a timeless sound. How long had coyotes been on the planet? He sank into those inner places of his mind noting how the intense darkness raised correspondingly deep thoughts. What if this night heralded the end of his life, the last few hours of the life of Philip Stevens? What parting message would he give to those that he loved?
Molly would know beyond any doubt how much he had adored her, how her love had created an emotional paradise for him beyond measure. But his son and daughter, dear William and Elizabeth? Oh, the complexities he had created in their lives by leaving their mother so many years ago. He knew that they still harboured raw edges, and quite reasonably so. He still possessed raw edges from his father’s death, way back in 1956. That sudden death, five days before Christmas, so soon after he had turned twelve, that had fed a life-long feeling of emotional rejection. That feeling that lasted for fifty-one years until, coincidentally, also just a few days before Christmas, he had met Molly in 2007.
His thoughts returned to William and Elizabeth. Did they know, without a scintilla of doubt, that he loved them? Maybe his thoughts would find them. Romantic nonsense? Who knows? Dogs had the ability to read the minds of humans, often from far out of visual range. He knew Pharaoh, his devoted German Shepherd, skilfully read his mind.
Philip struggled to remember that saying from James Thurber. What was it now? Something about men striving to understand themselves before they die. Would that be his parting message for William and Elizabeth? Blast, he wished he could remember stuff more clearly these days and let go of worrying about the quote. Perhaps his subconscious might carry the memory back to him.
He looked back up into the heavens. The Big Dipper indicated at least an hour had slipped by. Gracious, what a sky in which to lose one’s mind. Lost in that great cathedral of stars. Then, as if through some stirring of consciousness, that Thurber saying did come back to him: All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.
He reflected on those who, incarcerated in solitary confinement, had their minds play many tricks, especially when it came to gauging time. What a bizarre oddment of information; where had that come from? Possibly because he hadn’t a clue about his present time. It felt later than 11pm and earlier than 4am, but any closer guess seemed impossible. Nevertheless, from out of the terrible, heart-wrenching hours of being alone he had found calm, had found something within him. He slept.
Suddenly, he was slammed fully awake. Something out there in the dark had made a sound. Something that caused his whole body to become totally alert, every nerve straining to recognise what it might be. It sounded like animal feet moving through the autumn fall of dead leaves. He prayed that it wasn’t a mountain lion. Surely, such a wild cat preparing to attack him would be silent. Now the unknown creature had definitely paused, no sound, just Philip knowing that somewhere out there, something was watching him, waiting. Now what! The creature was making a sniffing sound. He hoped it was not a puma. Pumas could make trouble; they had no qualms at attacking a decent-sized dog.
Poised to run, he considered rising but chose to stay still. Very quietly and gently he moved his fingers around the ground near to him on either side. A few moments later he closed his right-hand around a small rock. The sniffing stopped. Nothing now, save the sound of his rapidly beating heart. He sensed, sensed strongly, the creature looking at him. It seemed very close, ten or twenty feet away. The adrenalin hammered through his veins.
He tried to focus on the spot where he sensed the animal was waiting; waiting for what? He pushed that idea out of his head. His ears then picked up a weird, bizarre sound. Surely not! Had he lost his senses? It sounded like a dog wagging its tail; flap, flap, flapping against a tree-trunk.
A dog? If a dog, it had to be Dhalia!
Then came that small, shy bark! A bark he knew so well. It was Dhalia. He softly called her, “Come here girl, there’s a good girl.”
With a quick rustle of feet Dhalia leapt upon him, tail wagging furiously, her head quickly burrowing into his body warmth. He hugged her and, once more, the tears ran down his face. Despite the darkness, he could see her perfectly in his mind. Her tight, short-haired coat of light-brown hair, her aquiline face, her bright inquisitive eyes and those wonderful head-dominating ears. Lovely large ears that seemed to listen to the world. A shy, loving dog when Molly had rescued her in 2005 and all these years later still a shy, loving dog.
Dhalia raised her head towards his face and licked his tears, her gentle tongue soft and sweet on his skin. He shuffled more on to his back and that allowed her to curl up on his chest, still enveloped by his arms. His mind drifted off to an era a long time ago, back to an earlier ancient man, likewise arms wrapped around his dog under a dome of stars. This bond between man and dog. So different to each other yet so closely bonded. Bonded in a thousand mysterious ways.
The morning sun arrived as imperceptibly as an angel’s sigh. Dhalia sensed the dawn before Philip, brought him out of his dreams by the slight gentle stirring of her warm body.
Yes, there it came, the end of this night. The sun galloping towards them across ancient lands, another beat of the planet’s heart. Dhalia slid off his chest, stretched herself from nose to tail, yawned and looked at him, as much to say time to go home! He could just make out the face of his watch: 5.55am. He, too, raised himself, slapped his arms around his body to get some circulation going. The cold air stung his face, yet it couldn’t even scratch the inner warmth of his body, the glow from the bond between him and Dhalia.
They set off. As they crested the first ridge there ahead, about a mile away, was a forest road busy with arriving search and rescue trucks. Philip could just see Molly’s white Dodge parked ahead of the trucks and he instinctively knew that she and Pharaoh had already disappeared into the forest, knew Pharaoh was leading her to them.
They set off down the slope, Dhalia’s tail wagging with unbounded excitement, Philip ready to start shouting for attention from the next ridge. They were about to wade through a small stream when Pharaoh raced out of the trees from the other side. He tore through the water, barking at the top of his voice in clear dog speak, ‘I’ve found them, they’re here, they’re safe’. Philip crouched down to receive his second huge face lick in less than six hours.
Later, when safely home, something struck him. When earlier they had set off to find their way back, not long after sunrise, Dhalia had stayed pinned to him. That was so unusual for her not to run off. Let’s face it, that’s what got them into the mess in the first place. Dhalia had stayed with him as if she had known that during that long, dark night, it had been he who had been the lost soul.
Thus came the message from that night, a message as clear as the rays of this new day’s sun, the message to pass to all those he loved. We can only find ourselves from the places where we are lost.
——
Philip put down the story. There were tears to his eyes. Molly had just blown her nose with a paper tissue so he guessed he wasn’t the only one with wet eyes.
She looked at him.
“You know, that story about Dhalia reminds me of the way that Lilly stayed with Ben.”
“Sorry sweetheart, remind me of that again.”
“When Ben was dying, Lilly stayed by his side on the bed every minute of every hour except for a dash outside for a pee from time to time, and to eat her meals. I knew that Ben had died even before going into his bedroom because Lilly had come out from the room and was resting besides me. Lilly knew that I needed her now more than Ben did.”
There is so much for people to learn from dogs. So many of the ways that dogs behave that show us of what is so desperately missing from these times; from these so-called modern, twenty-first-century times. A time when many believe that our way-of-life is as good as broken. Broken by the levels of greed, by the lies and abuses of those wielding power and control, riven by the deep inequalities between those with comfortable, material lives and those who struggle to live more than one cruel day at a time.
Dogs live so beautifully in the present. They make the best of each moment uncluttered by the complex fears and feelings that we humans so often chose to have about us. They don’t judge, they simply take the world around them at face value. Yet they have been part of man’s world for an unimaginable length of time. Man’s longest animal companion, by far!
There is no archeological evidence of dogs being part of man’s life earlier than thirty-thousand years ago. However, there is serious consideration by scientists that the grey wolf, from which the dog evolved, was in some way connected to Neanderthal man. That the earliest dogs became man’s companion, protector and helper and that the relationship between dog and man was critically important in man achieving success as a hunter-gatherer. Allowing our species to evolve to farming the land and, thence, the long journey to present times.
However at some point in the last, say one to two-hundred years, that farming and husbandry spirit became corrupted by selfishness and greed to the point where the planet’s plant, energy and mineral resources were, and still are, seen as an infinitely deep pot. That corruption producing a blindness to the most important truth in all our lives. That Planet Earth is man’s only source of life. Unless and until we return to living in balance and harmony with our planet then we are close to the edge of extinction. Both a literal and spiritual extinction.
Dogs know better, so much better! Time again for man to learn from dogs!
Philip drove himself, as quietly as he could manage it, back up to Lisa and Don’s house. It was a little after 4am. The night air was cold and as he slipped into his bed the inside of the bodega felt just as cold as outside. The hours of love-making with Molly had been a new experience for him. Of extraordinarily different dimensions from any previous experience. Like every other aspect of their relationship, because now it was most definitely a relationship, the ways that he and Molly were relating to each other, how each was getting to know the other, was a new journey for him. As with all new journeys in life, both the real, external ones and the inner, subjective ones, new journeys came with new experiences, new vistas and new horizons every step of the way.
As he slept on that next morning, Lisa had telephoned Molly and had asked her what the hell was going on. She seemed very upset in a way that Molly couldn’t fully understand. After Lisa had calmed down a little, Molly told her that she and Philip were now lovers.
Five days later, 2007 bid farewell forever and in came the New Year of 2008. Philip and Molly endeavoured to be together as much as possible for his remaining ten days. He was now effectively living at her house. In those ten days any lingering cautions in their minds about either of them being hurt just vaporised. For the very simple, yet gigantic, reason that he wanted to be with her and she with him. There was no doubt whatsoever that he would leave Devon and come to San Carlos with Pharaoh just as soon as it could be arranged. In the interim, Molly would come to Devon in the Spring to meet his family and friends. Then the plan was that in the early Autumn, he and Pharaoh would make the one-way trip to Mexico, routing via California.
Thus it came to pass that early one morning in September, Philip arrived at London Airport with two suitcases and one beloved dog: Pharaoh. They were flying one-way with British Airways, London to Los Angeles. He had been informed that Pharaoh would need to be checked-in at the World Cargo centre. Philip parked outside said cargo centre and walked Pharaoh on his leash to the animal check-in desk. Fifteen minutes later, with his face staring out at Philip through the grill of his travel cage, Pharaoh disappeared from sight without even a bark; without even a whimper. It was as if he sensed the new life that was ahead of him. Philip had asked as to where in the aircraft’s hold Pharaoh’s cage would be situated and had reserved a cabin seat more or less above that spot. He was of no doubt that Pharaoh would know that he was sitting as close to him as possible.
As is the way of long international, non-stop flights, it was over in some sort of time-warped way, before he could really grasp it.
Molly had driven up from San Carlos to meet him and Pharaoh when they flew in to Los Angeles. First she welcomed Philip with the world’s sweetest and dearest hug then they repositioned to another part of the terminal building to await Pharaoh’s arrival. In what seemed like no time at all they were all heading out from the airport complex, Pharaoh sitting on his haunches on the rear seat of Molly’s car unable to take his eyes off the strange world outside yet at the same time eagerly eating a bowl of dog biscuits being held under his chin by Philip.
So, it’s time for this story to take a pause. Well, maybe not a pause, more a drawing back from the intricacy and detail of the previous pages. For in so many ways the story has now been told.
Philip and Molly’s lives together were all, and more, of what they could have ever imagined.
He had been living in Mexico with Molly for about eighteen months when they were clear that they wanted to marry and find a new home in America. Because Molly had US citizenship through her marriage to Ben, it seemed sensible for Philip to apply for a US Fiancée Visa. So it was decided that they would find a home in Arizona and sell the beach-side house in San Carlos. They quickly found a comfortable home in Payson, a city of fifteen-thousand persons located at five-thousand feet, eighty miles North-East of Phoenix, Arizona. The subsequent move from Mexico to Payson went off remarkably well. Especially if one reflects that the move included fourteen dogs, seven cats and all their belongings. Their latest dog being a beautiful, black, half-Rottweiler female dog that was dumped in the street just outside the house barely ten days before they departed Mexico. She was still in milk, frantically tearing back and forth along the dusty street, presumably looking for her puppies, crying out the pain of her loss. Molly enticed her into the house, gave her water, for she was very thirsty, and within minutes the dog was showing her love and gratitude to Molly. They named her Hazel.
Then it was time for Philip to apply for that fiancée visa. There was no delaying that because his entrance to the USA, when they moved up from San Carlos, was on the basis of a ninety-day tourist visa.
Applying for that fiancée visa could only be done at the US Embassy back in his home country; England. In the end, it involved several trips back to the UK and strange, interminable processes convincing the US Embassy in London that he was a fit and proper person to be admitted as a resident to the United States of America.
Nevertheless, on November 4th, 2010, he boarded Virgin Atlantic’s flight VS007 from London Heathrow to Phoenix, the possessor of a United States visa permitting him to marry a US Citizen; in this case a very special one. Sixteen days later, on Saturday, November 20th, he and Molly were married.
This is where the story should have ended. Molly and Philip and their animals living very happily in a comfortable home in Payson, Arizona. But the story has a twist.
It had been a night in the middle of June in 2012; the night of the 20th June as he recalled. There was nothing about the previous day that could have had any bearing on his mind, as in any trigger for the dream, not that, as dreams go, it was a dream of any meaning; well not outwardly. He dreamt he had gone to the bathroom in the middle of the night and turned on the cold-water tap and found no water flowing from it. That was the dream; no more or no less. Bizarre!
Yet when he awoke in the morning, the dream was vividly present in his mind. He said to Molly that he had had the most strangest of dreams and recounted the experience. As it happened, they had a neighbour call by later that morning and the conversation lead Philip to mention his dream. To which the neighbour had simply remarked that if he was worried about water then they should go to Oregon.
While their property was sufficiently far out from Payson to require their own well and, as wells go, it was a deep one of nearly three-hundred feet, the water level had stayed pretty constant around sixty-feet down. On the other hand, this part of Arizona had been receiving below-average rains for the last twenty years.
Then, almost as though it had been pre-ordained, a short while thereafter Molly met a woman who said that she would be delighted to house sit and look after all the pets if Molly and Philip ever wanted to go on a vacation. Molly had mentioned that they were thinking of visiting Oregon. All of which came together and saw Molly and Philip setting off on July 11th on the start of a three-day, twelve-hundred mile drive to Southern Oregon.
On their arrival in Grants Pass, Oregon, yet another set of coincidences found them being introduced to an independent real-estate agent, Donna. Donna said she was happy to show them some properties for sale in this part of Southern Oregon. The second property that Donna showed them was a few miles North of the small community of Merlin, itself some nine miles North-West of Grants Pass.
Donna stopped at the entrance to the driveway, turned round and looked back at them.
“I have to be honest and tell you that I know very little about this property. There are not even listing particulars. It was for sale a few years back, rumours had it at well over a million dollars; possibly even million and a third. Then it was lost to the bank and, for whatever reason, nobody has gone for it. It’s been empty for at least two years.”
Donna drove in. The driveway was surrounded either side by tall forest trees; oaks, pines and firs. It initially sloped down from the roadway and then went across a bridge over a sparkling creek of crystal-clear water flowing from right-to-left. Donna paused the car as Philip asked a question.
“Any details about the creek, Donna?”
“It’s called Bummer Creek and it flows all-year. Not sure, will need to check on it, but I thought I had heard there were formal water extraction rights for the owners of the property.”
The driveway then made a gently climb along the right-hand edge of a large, multi-acre, grass paddock. In what must have been nearly a quarter-of-a-mile later, they drove up to a large, wooden-clad, single-story home surrounded by more wonderful tall pines and firs. It was stupendous. A four-bedroomed property in thirteen acres of fenced land with stables, a garage and other outbuildings, and what did turn out to be water extraction rights from Bummer Creek.
It took Molly and Philip less than an hour to make up their minds that at the right price this could be their home of a lifetime for them and all their animals.
Donna came up to them as they stood outside the front of the property.
“What do you think, guys?”
Philip answered, “It’s an incredible property and I don’t doubt that at some point it would have been an expensive property to purchase. Do you know the asking price?’
Donna answered, “I’ve just been calling to find out more details. The bank that originally foreclosed on the property then sold it a while back to a company called Gorilla Capital. Gorilla are just trying to flip the place for cash but, as with the bank, have had trouble finding a buyer. The company have told me they are looking for three-hundred-and-eighty-thousand dollars. I have to say that’s quite a low price for all that’s here even in these depressed times. My guess is that many people would find it a bit too much to take on in terms of the acres. Otherwise, I can’t see why it hasn’t sold a long time ago. Especially for the money being asked.”
Philip and Molly took another walk around the house. They ended up standing together on the wooden deck overlooking some eight or nine acres of grassland, dense forest sweeping up the flanks of the slopes in the near distance, and the mighty Mount Sexton visible four or five miles off to the North-East.
“What do you think, Molly?” he asked, putting his arm around her waist.
“It’s gorgeous, I just can’t believe what an incredible home it is. How about you? What do you think, sweetheart?”
His reply was unequivocal. “I think we should put in a silly offer.”
“Such as?” Molly wondered aloud.
“Come with me.”
He took her hand and lead her around to the front of the house, to where Donna was waiting.
“Donna, we want to make an offer. Tell Gorilla that we can’t go anywhere near their asking price just now. But if they want a deal today, we will offer two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars. Cash on the nail as we say in my old country.”
Donna walked away to be out of earshot and rang Gorilla. She was back in a couple of minutes.
“They say that’s too low. Say there really looking for something a bit higher.”
Fifteen minutes later, Gorilla and Philip and Molly had settled on the figure of two-hundred-and-seventy-one-thousand dollars.
As they walked towards Donna’s car she said to them, “You do know, don’t you, that even in today’s depressed housing market, that’s one hell of a deal.”
So it came to pass that on the following day, Sunday, 15th July, over at Donna’s office, Philip and Molly signed the purchase contract.
They left to return to Payson the following day.
Upon their return to Payson, without exception, all the people they shared their news with were astounded at what they had purchased for such a modest sum of money. Now came the challenge of getting their Payson house ready for sale, packing up their things and transporting what was by now eleven dogs and five cats, the twelve-hundred miles to Oregon.
Nevertheless, as is the way of things, piece by piece, little by little, it all came together resulting in the day of the ‘big move’ arriving: Tuesday, October 23rd to be exact. Philip’s Jeep was towing a large covered U-Haul trailer and Molly was driving a U-Haul rental van towing another trailer carrying her Dodge van packed to the roof. They were off to Oregon.
Within less than forty-eight hours of arriving at their new home in Merlin, as Molly and Philip saw how the dogs reacted to their acres of land, the trees, the hollows and the borders, they knew that all of them, in the fullest sense of the phrase, had come home.
He was settling very quickly into the local scene. It was a strange mix of Americans and Mexicans. Then within the Mexican population there appeared to be as least two groupings, or categories. Those Mexicans that, in one form or another, had lives or businesses that revolved around the many Americans living there and then another group of Mexicans who were much less visible. Undoubtedly, this latter group were poorer, many living in an area of San Carlos known as the Ranchitas. An area that he didn’t expect to be shown but had been mentioned by both Lisa and Molly. It slightly reminded him of those early days in Spain when English tourists started travelling there, before the whole packaged holiday thing exploded. He could remember his father and mother taking the family for a vacation in Spain. Pretty sure that was back in 1953 because he recalled the streets of London being prepared for the Queen’s Coronation as they drove through London early in the morning on their way to the Channel car ferry. Distant and faint memories of the place where they were staying in Spain being dusty, hot and very uncommercial yet gearing themselves up to sell as many services as they could to these new British tourists. So, so long ago. Philip didn’t have a clue as to where they had stayed in Spain, just that at some deep level in his memory that place in Spain seemed to resonate some fifty-three years later with this place in Mexico.
Lisa and Molly arranged that all of them would go on Friday to a local dinner and dance establishment in San Carlos called Banana’s. Apparently, every Friday there was a Mexican Mariachi band that played lively music plus the menu offered a number of good local Mexican dishes.
He didn’t have a clue as to what to wear but not having brought an enormous range of clothes he settled on a loose-fitting, short-sleeved cotton shirt over a pair of cream slacks.
It was a perfect end to his first full week, and he had no doubt whatsoever that Lisa’s invitation to come here for Christmas had been a godsend. No better underlined than by the fact that yesterday had been the 20th of December and it was only this morning, the 21st, as he was showering and wondering what the date was, that he realised that the anniversary of the bombshell in his life a year ago had remained out of his consciousness. Maggie had been erased.
Rather than go directly to Banana’s, Don drove first over to Molly’s house and waited while she closed her front door and jumped into her own car. He caught a glimpse of what she was wearing; noticing how her low-cut blouse, a silk scarf across her shoulders, a pair of skin-tight long, pale-blue trousers signalled that this was a lady who was going to enjoy her Friday evening out with them all.
The atmosphere at Banana’s was electric for reasons that he couldn’t put his finger on. Not that it mattered what the reasons were, what did matter was that there was almost a festival mood all around them.
Molly was obviously a very competent Spanish speaker and ordered the meals and drinks for all in the Mexican waiter’s native tongue. Philip had rapidly come to the view that Molly was well-known in the town. Hardly surprising when one reflected on how many years she had been living here, as well as being a fluent Spanish speaker. They were chatting about the number of Americans living in San Carlos and Don explained how he and Lisa, as with so many of the other Americans, went North back up to the States during the Summer as it became so very hot here in San Carlos. Molly said that for her this was her one and only home plus that she couldn’t, and wouldn’t want to, leave her dogs.
Their meal came to an end. Molly was clearly itching to be dancing. Philip, never a great dancer at the best of times, was fearful of even being able to put one foot in front of another, let alone offer an attractive woman a worthy experience on the dance-floor.
The Mariachi group started another tune. Molly said, “It’s a tango, come on, let’s give it a try.”
He started to protest that he didn’t know how to dance the tango but, nonetheless, was rising from his seat.
She grabbed his hand and led him on to a smallish dance-floor saying just to follow her. The wooden circular dance-floor, perhaps thirty-five feet in diameter, had a dozen or so other couples getting into the swing of the music.
He put his right arm around Molly’s slim waist, grasped her outstretched hand with his other hand, and gave in to the rhythm. Molly danced in such a natural way that within a few bars of the music his feet had got the idea, and his head had embraced the beat of the music. He very quickly got lost in the whole sensation, not even the smallest part of his mind puzzled on how it was that he could walk on to a Mexican dance-floor with a woman with whom he had never danced, a band playing a rhythm that he would have been certain he couldn’t dance to, and feel as though he and Molly had done this their entire lives.
It was not unnoticed by others. As the music came to a close, Philip and Molly were aware, and rather embarrassed, to observe that other couples on the dance-floor had stopped their dancing and moved to the edge of the floor to give them more space for their gyrations. Molly put her arm through his as they made their way back to the table and said that was perfect; that she loved fun things and hadn’t had such fun for a long time.
Lisa looked up at them as they came to the table and remarked in Philip’s direction that for someone who claimed not to be able to dance the tango, he and Molly had put on quite a show.
Molly had her hand on Philip’s forearm as she declared to Lisa that this man was quite a dancer. Philip was at a complete loss to make sense of anything. It was almost as though the Philip of a year ago had died and been reborn Philip Mk. II.
After a pause of ten minutes or so, Molly was up for another dance and grabbed his arm. It was a slower dance and he had not one moment’s hesitation to be on the dance-floor with her.
Again, he became connected totally to her through the music, unaware of anything else going on in the room. All that he was experiencing in his heart was that being with Molly was unlike being with any other woman in his life. All he knew was that in a previous life having such close contact with a gorgeous, single woman would be triggering desires to have his wicked way with her. No, forget triggering desires, he would be scheming how to get her knickers off before the night was out!
But with Molly it was different. Yes, of course, she had a lovely figure and as they danced close to each other he could feel her beautiful breasts pressing through her silk blouse against his chest. No, the difference was that he had no ambitions, no sense of what was coming next; whether that next was in an hour’s time or in a life time. He had heard frequently about living in the present; assumed what it was at an intellectual level. However, what he was experiencing now was nothing less than being fully alive in this present moment. It felt like perfection of being.
They returned to the table to find that Don had left. Lisa explained that he was tired, that he wasn’t much of a partying man and had gone on home, with the expectation that Molly would run Lisa and Philip back to the house at the end of the evening. It didn’t seem to phase Lisa; quite the opposite. Because she said, with an eager and excited tone to her voice, that they should spend the rest of Friday evening at Froggie’s Bar. Apparently, Don had settled the bill here at Banana’s on the way out.
The evening continued at Froggie’s as it had started at Banana’s. Lots of silliness between the three of them to the extent that their peals of laughter, especially from Lisa and Molly, caused more than one head to turn in their direction. He couldn’t believe, even as he was experiencing these days in San Carlos, just how wonderful it was making him feel.
Thus it was some twenty minutes later, with Lisa enjoying a dance with one of the many Americans having a Friday night out, when he glanced at Molly and spoke with a slightly raised voice to counter the sound of the music, “I just can’t tell you what a difference coming to San Carlos has made for me.”
Molly, sitting next to him at the table, gave him what he thought was a most puzzling look. He was trying to read that look, a look that seemed part dreamy, part embarrassed, and part very private, when she lent her head close to his right ear, hand on top of his hand, and murmured to him, “Do you know I would love to be kissed by you.”
He swung his legs around to the right so that he was sitting opposite her, placed his right arm around her warm, slender waist and softly, so very softly, met her lips and kissed her. The moist tip of her tongue explored his tongue in what was the most sensuous kiss he could remember in a lifetime.
It had him turned totally upside down. As with their second dance at Banana’s he was feeling a wave of emotion unfamiliar with anything from his past life.
Lisa returned to the table and after another twenty minutes or so, it was agreed by all that it was time to call it a night. Lisa, in particular, didn’t want her return to be too late knowing that Don would be asleep in bed.
Philip suggested that as Molly and Lisa had clearly had quite a lot to drink, certainly much more than he had, then why not let him drive Molly’s car, drop Molly off at home and bring her car back first thing in the morning.
It was a little before nine in the morning when Philip drew up outside Molly’s house, turned off the ignition and opened the door in the front wall that enclosed a small yard space in front of the house. He was heard by the dogs well before he reached up for the iron door knocker on the main front door and shortly thereafter he heard Molly’s shout to come on in.
“How’s your head?” he asked her.
“Oh, fine. Thank goodness I rarely suffer from hangovers. Don’t know why because I’m happy to have a few drinks when the mood is right. Can I get you a coffee? Or would you like a tea? I managed to buy some tea-bags yesterday. Lipton’s tea, can you believe that.”
He opted for the tea and stood looking out across the bay. He heard the sound of water heating up in a pot followed moments later by Molly calling out to him.
“Philip, I’m so sorry about last night for being a fool. I got a little carried away in asking you for that kiss. Please excuse me.”
He wasn’t sure how to reply and sat on his thoughts, so to speak, as the sound of boiling water being poured into two mugs heralded the arrival of the tea.
“Milk but no sugar,” she called out.
“Yes, that’s correct. Well done on remembering.”
They both sat down on the verandah.
“Did you hear me saying how sorry I was to be such a fool?”
“Yes, I heard you.”
There was a silence between them of a couple of minutes or so, before she spoke up.
“I don’t know what to make of your lack of any reaction to what I just said.”
“Molly, it’s like this. Your kiss was beautiful for me and I thought you felt the same way. So when you just said sorry for being a fool, it’s left me confused. I don’t know how to match what I felt as we kissed with the idea that it may have just been a bit of a flirtation on your part coming out of a fun evening.”
Molly said nothing. She just put her mug down on the glass-topped table in front of her, stood up and came around to be behind Philip as he sat on his chair.
She wrapped both arms around his neck and shoulders and across his chest and lent her head down besides his, kissed his left cheek and breathed the words, “Thank you”.
As she stood upwards, he got out of his chair, turned and grasped his arms around her and kissed her full on her lips. This time there was a hunger in him and he felt stirrings through his body that were both sexually exciting and emotionally confusing. For he was starting to realise that Molly was something more to him, even if he was unable to define what that more was. Yet, at in the same thought, he knew that in just over two week’s time he would be leaving Mexico and travelling back to England. That he knew that he was emotionally unprepared for the separation from this woman that was starting to be so attractive to him.
“Sorry, Molly, now my turn to apologise. I was clearly getting a little carried away.”
Her face was written all over with the same emotional confusion as he had just felt within him.
“Molly, both you are and I mustn’t inadvertently hurt each other. I sense we are both yearning for love and compassion but …”
He couldn’t find the words to finish his sentence.
“I understand, Philip, I really do. You’re right,” Molly paused. “But I damn well wish you weren’t.” There was a twinkle in her eye.
“Come on, I’ll run you back to Lisa’s place.”
Philip was aware from previous times that Americans didn’t make as much of Christmas as Europeans do, and especially as the Brits do. However, Molly, in true British style, decided to put on a Christmas dinner for all four of them. He wondered what to give Molly for a Christmas gift. Luckily came up with the brain-wave of buying some blank recordable CDs and making up some music CDs. He had brought his laptop with him from England and there were several hundred music tracks to choose from. It was only after a long evening’s recording that he realised that the majority of the tracks he had selected had romantic music. Something was pulling his emotional strings!
Later, after his bed-side lamp had been turned off and he was settling down under his covers, he found himself thinking very deeply about Molly. If only she was living in Britain. If only …. He pulled himself up sharply. If only what Philip? Was he thinking that Molly is someone that he would like to have a full relationship with? But only if it was convenient? The voice in his head was very good at asking the questions but not so good at delivering the answers.
Christmas Day was a good day and Molly adored the music CDs. She had worked so hard to decorate her house yet Philip dare not admit that the warmth and the sun and the scintillating views out across the waters of the bay didn’t make it really feel like an English version of Christmas Day. Even the huge Christmas lunch couldn’t offset his feeling of displacement. It was small beer in the scheme of things.
The 26th, the day after Christmas, was a Wednesday. Two American friends of Molly, Don and Pam, invited Philip and Molly for dinner at Banana’s. They, too, had a second home in San Carlos. Molly came over to Lisa’s house to pick him up in her car
He immediately took to Don and Pam as they sat and enjoyed a pre-dinner drink. Don was asking him a little about his background when he noticed Pam say something to Molly in private that made her blush and snigger a little.
He paused in his conversation with Don and caught Molly’s eyes.
“Philip, Pam was just saying that the general view around the place is that we are an item.”
Don laughed and said how it only confirmed all that he had heard about British single men and their carrying-ons when on holiday.
“Come on Don,” Philip teased him back. “That’s single British men in the twenties screwing around, literally, on the beaches of the Costa Brava in Spain; the result of bottom-dollar cheap packaged holidays. I’m an ancient fella in contrast, I mean the wrong side of sixty-three and all that. Practically forgotten how to screw if you’ll forgive the expression. Last time I performed that way London was being lit by gas lamps.”
Pam threw back her head and roared with laughter. Molly poked a finger in his upper arm and commented that she hadn’t realised that he was that old.
It was another lovely evening. He couldn’t help noticing how he was being accepted by all those that clearly knew Molly well and it made him feel very good within.
After the meal, both Don and Pam and Philip and Molly enjoyed a number of dances.
He and Molly had returned to their table as Don and Pam remained for the next dance.
She took his hand and looked him in the eyes. “You know, I was thinking about what you said earlier.”
“What was that I was saying?”
“About how you have practically forgotten how to make love. Can’t use that other word.”
There was the briefest of pauses before she continued, the softest of loving tones in her voice, “Do you want to make love to me tonight?”
I came at today’s post from a number of directions.
A few days ago I was catching up with a good friend back in the UK, Peter M. We hadn’t spoken in a couple of months. One of the items from my end was mentioning that I had converted to a vegetarian diet, verging on trying to be a vegan. Jeannie has been a vegetarian for almost her entire life. Having made the change to a vegetarian diet, to my surprise I had gained 12 lbs (5.4 kgs) in the last month. Peter then mentioned that he, too, had put on 8 kgs before deciding to try and cut back. Peter and I are of the same age and motivated to stay as fit and healthy as we can. Anyway, Peter’s route for losing some weight was to commit to the fasting arrangement promoted and recommended by Dr. Michael Mosley – more of this later.
The conversation also reminded me of an essay by George Monbiot back at the end of November: Wrong About Being Wrong. Mr. Monbiot wrote of his mind changes about being vegetarian. With his permission, here is that essay.
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Wrong About Being Wrong
November 27, 2013
The argument seems, once more, decisively to favour veganism.
By George Monbiot, published on the Guardian’s website 27th November 2013
He did it quietly, and the decision is the better for that: Al Gore, according to reports in the US press, has gone vegan.
Certain things could be said about other aspects of his lifestyle: his enormous houses and occasional use of private jets, for example. While we can’t demand that everyone who espouses green causes should live like a Jain monk, I think we can ask that they don’t live like Al Gore. He’s a brilliant campaigner, but I find the disjunction between the restraint he advocates and the size of his ecological footprint disorienting.
So saying, if he is managing to sustain his vegan diet, in this respect he puts most of us to shame. I tried it for 18 months and almost faded away. I lost two stone, went as white as a washbasin and could scarcely concentrate. I think I managed the diet badly; some people appear to thrive on it. Once, after I had been unnecessarily rude about vegans and their state of health (prompted no doubt by my own failure), I was invited to test my views in an unconventional debate with a vegan cage fighter. It was a kind invitation, but unfortunately I had a subsequent engagement.
In 2010, after reading a fascinating book by Simon Fairlie, a fair part of which was devoted to attacking my views, I wrote a column in which I maintained that I’d been wrong to claim that veganism is the only ethical response to what is arguably the world’s most urgent social justice issue. Diverting grain that could have fed human beings to livestock, I’d argued, is grotesque when 800 million go hungry.
Fairlie does not dispute this, and provides many examples of the madness of the current livestock production system. But he points out that plenty of meat can be produced from feed which humans cannot eat, by sustaining pigs on waste and grazing cattle and sheep where crops can’t grow. I was swayed by his argument. But now I find myself becoming unswayed. In the spirit of unceasing self-flagellation I think I might have been wrong about being wrong.
Part of the problem is that while livestock could be fed on waste and rangelands, ever less of the meat we eat in the rich nations is produced this way. Over the past week, a row has erupted between chefs and pig farmers over the issue of swill. The chefs point out – as Simon Fairlie does – that it is ridiculous to feed pigs on soya grown at vast environmental cost in the Amazon instead of allowing them to dispose of our mountain of waste food. Feeding pigs on swill has been forbidden since the foot and mouth outbreak of 2001.
The farmers respond that the risks of spreading disease are too great and that pigs fed on waste grow more slowly than pigs fed on soya. I side with the chefs: I believe that a society capable of identifying the Higgs boson should be able to sterilise waste food. But I suspect that they’re not going to win: the industry and its regulators are firmly against them.
I should have seen it coming, but I watched in horror as the meat industry used my article to justify the consumption of all meat, however it was produced, rather than just the meat raised on food that humans can’t eat. A potential for good is used to justify harm.
While researching my book Feral, I also came to see extensive livestock rearing as a lot less benign than I – or Simon Fairlie – had assumed. The damage done to biodiversity, to water catchments and carbon stores by sheep and cattle grazing in places unsuitable for arable farming (which means, by and large, the hills) is out of all proportion to the amount of meat produced. Wasteful and destructive as feeding grain to livestock is, ranching appears to be even worse.
The belief that there is no conflict between this farming and arable production also seems to be unfounded: by preventing the growth of trees and other deep vegetation in the hills and by compacting the soil, grazing animals cause a cycle of flash floods and drought, sporadically drowning good land downstream and reducing the supply of irrigation water.
So can I follow Al Gore, and do it better than I did before? Well I intend at least to keep cutting my consumption of animal products, and to see how far I can go. It’s not easy, especially for a person as greedy and impetuous as I am, but there has to be a way.
Back to the conversation with Peter M. about fasting. He spoke enthusiastically about Dr. Mosley who one quickly discovers,
Dr. Michael Mosley.
Michael J. Mosley (born 22 March 1957) is a British journalist, medical doctor, producer and TV presenter. He is probably best known as a television presenter of programmes on biology and medicine, particularly his series on the workings of the human body, Inside the Human Body and his regular appearances as the friendly medic on The One Show.
He was interviewed by Steve Wright of BBC Radio 2 back in January, 2012 and that interview is on YouTube:
That BBC Horizon programme is no longer available to watch but a 4-minute extract may be seen here:
Inevitably, Dr. Mosley has a website Fast Diet that is packed full of valuable information.
So just as soon as we have the water back to the house and I can have a long, hot shower I intend to adopt the 5:2 diet.
Tried hard to avoid a grim reality post, but failed!
As last week, I thought that wall-to-wall book chapters were a bit much and that Wednesdays should be a break. Ideally, a light-hearted break. But failed! Sorry!
For a long time, I have followed George Monbiot’s writings. Like a number of other correspondents that come to mind, Mr. Monbiot writes with a clarity and intellect that takes some beating. Rather tentatively I wrote to him asking if I might republish some of his essays, including those that are published in the UK newspaper, The Guardian. To my great pleasure, George replied that so long as his essays did not appear in print then permission was given.
Before going on, it may do no harm to remind me and so many millions of others, of the opening preamble of the US Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Whatever the country, the concept of ‘by the people, of the people, for the people’ takes one hell of a lot of beating.
So to the essay. I was struck by a recent essay from George Monbiot that seemed to touch on something that more and more ordinary folk sense; that many so-called democratic political systems are not functioning in the interests of the people. Thus with no further ado, here it is.
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Why Politics Fails
November 11, 2013 Nothing will change until we confront the real sources of power.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 12th November 2013
It’s the reason for the collapse of democratic choice. It’s the source of our growing disillusionment with politics. It’s the great unmentionable. Corporate power. The media will scarcely whisper its name. It is howlingly absent from parliamentary debates. Until we name it and confront it, politics is a waste of time.
The political role of corporations is generally interpreted as that of lobbyists, seeking to influence government policy. In reality they belong on the inside. They are part of the nexus of power that creates policy. They face no significant resistance, from either government or opposition, as their interests have now been woven into the fabric of all three main parties.
Most of the scandals that leave people in despair about politics arise from this source. On Monday, for example, the Guardian revealed that the government’s subsidy system for gas-burning power stations is being designed by an executive from the company ESB, who has been seconded into the energy department(1). What does ESB do? Oh, it builds gas-burning power stations.
On the same day we learnt that a government minister, Nick Boles, has privately assured the gambling company Ladbrokes that it needn’t worry about attempts by local authorities to stop the spread of betting shops(2). His new law will prevent councils from taking action.
Last week we discovered that G4S’s contract to run immigration removal centres will be expanded, even though all further business with the state was supposed to be frozen while allegations of fraud are investigated(3). Every week we learn that systemic failures on the part of government contractors are no barrier to obtaining further work, that the promise of efficiency, improvements and value for money delivered by outsourcing and privatisation have failed to materialise(4,5,6). The monitoring which was meant to keep these companies honest is haphazard(7), the penalties almost non-existent(8), the rewards stupendous, dizzying, corrupting(9,10). Yet none of this deters the government. Since 2008, the outsourcing of public services has doubled, to £20bn. It is due to rise to £100bn by 2015(11).
This policy becomes explicable only when you recognise where power really lies. The role of the self-hating state is to deliver itself to big business. In doing so it creates a tollbooth economy: a system of corporate turnpikes, operated by companies with effective monopolies.
It’s hardly surprising that the lobbying bill – now stalled by the Lords – offered almost no checks on the power of corporate lobbyists, while hogtying the charities who criticise them. But it’s not just that ministers are not discouraged from hobnobbing with corporate executives: they are now obliged to do so.
Thanks to an initiative by Lord Green, large companies have ministerial “buddies”, who have to meet them when the companies request it. There were 698 of these meetings during the first 18 months of the scheme, called by corporations these ministers are supposed be regulating(12). Lord Green, by the way, is currently a government trade minister. Before that he was chairman of HSBC, presiding over the bank while it laundered vast amounts of money stashed by Mexican drugs barons(13). Ministers, lobbyists – can you tell them apart?
That the words corporate power seldom feature in the corporate press is not altogether surprising. It’s more disturbing to see those parts of the media that are not owned by Rupert Murdoch or Lord Rothermere acting as if they are.
For example, for five days every week the BBC’s Today programme starts with a business report in which only insiders are interviewed. They are treated with a deference otherwise reserved for God on Thought for the Day. There’s even a slot called Friday Boss, in which the programme’s usual rules of engagement are set aside and its reporters grovel before the corporate idol. Imagine the outcry if Today had a segment called Friday Trade Unionist or Friday Corporate Critic.
This, in my view, is a much graver breach of BBC guidelines than giving unchallenged airtime to one political party but not others, as the bosses are the people who possess real power: those, in other words, whom the BBC has the greatest duty to accost. Research conducted by the Cardiff school of journalism shows that business representatives now receive 11% of airtime on the BBC’s 6 o’clock news (this has risen from 7% in 2007), while trade unionists receive 0.6% (which has fallen from 1.4%)(14). Balance? Impartiality? The BBC puts a match to its principles every day.
And where, beyond the Green Party, Plaid Cymru, a few ageing Labour backbenchers, is the political resistance? After the article I wrote last week, about the grave threat the transatlantic trade and investment partnership presents to parliamentary sovereignty and democratic choice(15), several correspondents asked me what response there has been from the Labour party. It’s easy to answer: nothing.
Blair and Brown purged the party of any residue of opposition to corporations and the people who run them. That’s what New Labour was all about. Now opposition MPs stare mutely as their powers are given away to a system of offshore arbitration panels run by corporate lawyers.
Since Blair’s pogroms, parliament operates much as Congress in the United States does: the lefthand glove puppet argues with the righthand glove puppet, but neither side will turn around to face the corporate capital that controls almost all our politics. This is why the assertion that parliamentary democracy has been reduced to a self-important farce has resonated so widely over the past fortnight.
So I don’t blame people for giving up on politics. I haven’t given up yet, but I find it ever harder to explain why. When a state-corporate nexus of power has bypassed democracy and made a mockery of the voting process, when an unreformed political funding system ensures that parties can be bought and sold, when politicians of the three main parties stand and watch as public services are divvied up by a grubby cabal of privateers, what is left of this system that inspires us to participate?
My sub-heading is further forward in time, as it were, than Chapter Four represents.
Because at the time of preparing this post for today. i.e. yesterday afternoon, while I am releasing Chapter Four to you very forgiving readers, in terms of my current position, I have just started Chapter Eight. So on the NaNoWriMo website, my word count is, or will be within the next hour, around the 16,500 mark, as opposed to the word count at the end of Chapter Four which was 10,100 words.
On one hand that feels like some achievement but the reality is that it is very close to where I have to be today, to achieve the 50,000 words by the end of November and, guess what, another 1,660 words has to be created tomorrow, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and ….. I’m sure you get the message.
Anyway, enough of this waffling, I have words to write! 😉
Here’s Chapter Four that continued from Chapter three here.
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Learning from Dogs.
Chapter Four
Upon his return to Harberton, Philip’s change of mood was unmistakable from that when he and Pharaoh had left the house a little over three hours ago. He opened the front door, allowing Pharaoh to push past him, as he always did, and stepped into the house.
Maggie was downstairs in their bedroom sorting through laundry. Philip, led by Pharaoh, went in to the room. He sat on the edge of the made-up bed.
“Guess what, Maggie!” he exclaimed. “We had the most amazing stroke of luck.”
“Come on,” Maggie replied, “Let’s go upstairs and I’ll make us some coffee and you can tell me all about it.”
As they sat drinking their coffees, Philip explaining the chance meeting with Angela and next Wednesday’s appointment, the grey cloud was breaking up and letting a fitful November’s Winter sun through the pair of full length windows that looked Southwards out over the tiny cul-de-sac where their house was situated. Maggie and Philip had lived here for some eight years, coming together to live here about a year after they had first met. Luckily, at that time Philip had been in rented accommodation in a farmhouse just a couple of miles away. So when Philip suggested that he and Maggie buy a house together, it was an uncomplicated move.
They had struck lucky in finding the property soon after this house had come on to the market. It was actually a converted stone cow-shed that had originally been built over two hundred years ago. The stone barn, to give it a more accurate description, was the typical Devon stone barn in that the cattle were accommodated, stable fashion, at ground level and the hay was stored on the level above. At that time, the barn would have been on the edge, and connected to, the open grassland to their West. But when the barn was taken out of agricultural use and sold, it had only a fraction of that pre-existing grassland attached.
The local guy who had done the conversion some twenty years ago had done it as an ‘upside-down’ house with the living rooms above the two bedrooms and family bathroom on the ground level. But despite it being a smallish house, it was full of character and Philip had been lucky to find out about it. In fact, from a casual remark over a pint of Devon ale in the Church House Inn, the local village pub. Philip had idly asked David, the publican, if he knew of any houses for sale in the village. David had put a hand up to halt Philip in mid-sentence and called across the bar, “Barry, someone wants to buy your barn!” And that had been that.
Before Philip knew it, Wednesday morning had arrived. Monday and Tuesday had been busy days for him. Since he had returned in 1993 from a few years living overseas, he had found himself being asked to provide mentoring support to a number of other entrepreneurs. Philip had been fortunate to start his own business back in 1978 after leaving IBM in the UK, and even more fortunate to have someone contact him in 1986 enquiring if Philip might be interested in selling out. Ever the salesman, Philip was delighted to close the deal and take a few years off bumming around the Mediterranean.
This part of South-West England had many who either wanted to start their own business or needed support in developing an already established operation. It wasn’t a great money-spinner for Philip but the connections and the variety of different businesses out there, plus so many fascinating entrepreneurs, made it very enjoyable. Plus he, himself, was constantly learning new ideas.
Of course, any reminiscences of the past had Philip lingering in the memories of those years from 1978 through to 1986, the years that he ran his own business. Way back to the early days of business computing. Back to a chance meeting with the sales manager of Commodore Computers UK at their Chiswick headquarters to the west of London. How he had become the sixth Commodore Computer dealer in the UK based in Colchester in early 1979 and been offered the opportunity of distributing a word-processing program for the Commodore ‘PET’. While he hadn’t a clue about computers, Philip had left IBM as an experienced word processing salesman. In a dramatic turn of fortune, Philip went from having trouble spelling the word computer to being able to offer the Commodore Computer with word-processing software for businesses for around a tenth of the cost of then ‘stand-alone’ word-processing machines. It really was a licence to print money.
He must have become lost in thought to the point where Pharaoh had to remind him with a nudge from a warm snout that they were going out and to, please, open that front door! A very excited Pharaoh bounced down the steps, he sensed something very different about this day.
Again, South Devon was offering typical November weather with low grey clouds and the promise of rain. Philip had Pharaoh’s regular leash plus he had grabbed the body harness that was such a gentle alternative to tugging on a dog’s collar.
As he drove across to Staverton to walk some of Pharaoh’s excitement away, before going on to Angela, his mind drifted back to those days of running his own business, reflecting on how quickly demand for his software had him setting up country distributors right across the world. In America, he had set up a distributor for the eastern part of the USA in Philadelphia in New Jersey, and in Southern California had likewise appointed a distributor, Danny Mitchell, for the western half of the US.
Dear old Danny Mitchell, what a character he had been. No, that’s wrong, it should be what a character he still is! Danny and Philip had formed a fantastic relationship that was still going strong today after more than twenty-four years.
It was a little after nine-thirty when he parked nose-in to James’ field gate. He let Pharaoh out of the car, locked the car doors and opened the gate to the upper field. Just for a change and just as much for the experiment, once the gate was closed behind them, he commanded Pharaoh to sit.
“Pharaoh, stay!” Philip quietly unclipped the leash. “Pharaoh heel!” Philip slapped his left thigh with his left hand, and set off down the grassy path. As he hoped, Pharaoh trotted beautifully to heel, even up to within a few yards of the edge of the woods.
“Pharaoh, sit!” Philip rubbed Pharaoh’s forehead, just where the blackness of his snout filtered into the black-brown hair across his wide, brown eyes. “There’s a good boy. Go on then, off you go.”
Pharaoh was away into the trees.
Philip found one of the stumps he used for such mornings, swept the back of his coat underneath his backside and sat down on the old oak stump.
The hour passed as gently as one could ever wish for and, as if on cue, Pharaoh trotted up to where Philip was still sitting just about when it was time to be off to Angela’s place.
Soon they were back in the car and Philip reversed out into the lane and repeated the car journey of just last Sunday. He couldn’t square the circle of the events since that Deborah Longland had marched them off, figuratively speaking, from her class just last Saturday afternoon. It seemed like a lifetime ago. That old chestnut came to mind; one of many that he was apt to use. The one about never underestimating the power of unintended consequences!
As they nosed again into Angela’s yard area, about ten minutes before eleven, she was there expecting them. This time the muddy overalls and red plastic boots had been cast aside for a pair of freshly laundered blue jeans, fitting snugly around her hips, over a pair of soft, walking shoes, topped with a cotton blue-and-white blouse showing from under a woollen pullover. Angela’s face declared more make-up than last Sunday.
“Morning Philip,” Angela called out in a bright and breezy manner as Philip closed his driver’s door behind him.
“Good morning to you, Angela. What’s the plan then?”
“It’s quite simple, Philip. Just walk him on his leash over towards that fenced off pasture, just where I’m pointing. Stop before reaching the gate when you are five or ten feet away.”
Philip opened the tail-gate quietly surprised that Pharaoh was in a very contented mood. Despite the lure of so many new sights and smells, Pharaoh sat on his haunches as Philip clipped on his leash.
“Down Pharaoh. Pharaoh sit. Pharaoh heel.” Bless him, Philip thought, he’s behaving immaculately.
As they came to a halt, Angela standing a little before the gate, Philip noticed that in the far left-hand corner of the pasture were two dogs. Philip was totally thrown by Angela’s next instruction.
“Philip, I’m going to open the gate a little and stand back. Just slip inside the field, let Pharaoh off his leash and then leave him to do just what he wants to do.”
“But Angela, I can’t guarantee that he won’t go across and be aggressive to those dogs over there.”
“Don’t worry, Philip. This is not as random and unplanned as you may think.”
Angela then unlatched the gate and opened it towards her by quite an amount. She then stood back.
Pharaoh looked at the open gate and the two dogs a good hundred yards from him in that corner of the field. Philip released the leash and stepped out. Pharaoh walked confidently in beyond the open gate and further on for about twenty-five yards. Pharaoh hesitated.
Then came the call from Angela that would be destined to be in Philip’s consciousness for the rest of his days.
“There’s nothing wrong with Pharaoh!”
Philip practically choked on getting his next words out. “Sorry? Not sure I heard you correctly? Did you say there’s nothing wrong? But don’t understand. How on earth can you tell so quickly when Pharaoh’s hardly even entered the field?”
“Philip, it’s very easy. Because my two dogs haven’t taken any notice of him. He’ll be fine. Let’s just lean on the fence and watch the three of them and I’ll explain what’s going on.”
Philip came up and lent his arms over the top horizontal rail of the fence, its height comfortably allowing the rail to run across his chest and under each armpit. Angela, being a little shorter than Philip, stood next to him with her hands on the rail.
“Those two dogs of mine in the field are Sam and Meda. They are both teaching dogs. Sam is a teaching dog, a male, that we would describe as a Nannie and Meda is a female teaching dog more closely described as a Mentor. Don’t worry just now, I’ll explain all later. Let’s just watch Pharaoh’s interaction with them for a while.”
Philip was silent, utterly overcome with emotion. He loved that dog of his so much and had been so worried these past few days that to have Angela’s endorsement of him in this manner was joy beyond joy.
He watched as Pharaoh came up to Angela’s two dogs, head slightly lowered, tail down, seemingly offering himself to Sam and Meda as a submissive youngster ready to learn.
Sam took no notice at all of Pharaoh as Meda partially encircled Pharaoh, sniffed his bum and then, miracle of miracles, softly touched wet nose to wet nose. Pharaoh noticeably perked up and as Sam came across to greet this new companion, Pharaoh’s tail gently wagged a return greeting. Sam then hung back as Meda appeared to take Pharaoh on a bit of tour around the field, sharing this smell and that smell.
“Do you know what, Philip,” Angela remarked, “I’m pretty sure that Pharaoh is another Mentor.”
She continued, “I can see no difference in their hierarchies. In other words Pharaoh is not dominating Meda, neither Meda dominating Pharaoh. I think you have a wonderful German Shepherd. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if I can’t use him teaching some of the poor dogs that come this way.”
Angela added, “Let’s call them in and I’ll make us a nice cup of tea and open your eyes to the magical world of dogs.”
With that Angela called out to her dogs and over they came, Pharaoh happily in tow. Philip was able to call him over to the car and Pharaoh jumped up just as happy as a dog could be.
Sam and Meda had parked themselves somewhere else and Angela pointed Philip towards a static caravan that seemed to be the customer’s lounge. Inside, there was a small gas burner and within minutes the kettle was singing out in the unique way that full kettles sound when they are warming up.
“Sit yourself down in the corner, Philip. Won’t be long. How do you take your tea? White with sugar, or …”
“Just white with no sugar, please Angela. Must say that I could murder a fresh cup of tea.”
“Tell you what, why don’t you go and bring Pharaoh to be with us in the caravan. This story about dogs could take a while!” Angela winked at him.
Moments later, Pharaoh was curled up contentedly on the opposite corner cushion. Shepherds, like most other breeds of dogs, but ten times more so, loved being in the company of humans chatting comfortably together.
Five minutes later, fingers around the warm, white china mug, steam rising from the freshly brewed tea, Philip was all ears to learn more about dogs in general and teaching dogs in particular.
Philip knew that he was on the verge of embracing dogs, in every single meaning of the word. It was a magical morning.
Up to 100,000 people died in drug-related violence in Mexico in the last 6 years. We might think this has nothing to do with us, but in fact we are all complicit, says Yale professor Rodrigo Canales in this unflinching talk that turns conventional wisdom about drug cartels on its head. The carnage is not about faceless, ignorant goons mindlessly killing each other but is rather the result of some seriously sophisticated brand management.
Rodrigo Canales wants to understand how individuals influence organizations or systems–even those as complex as the Mexican drug cartels.
My post last Monday, The lure of patterns, appears to have resonated far and wide. In the sense of many echoes reinforcing the perilous nature of our present times and the desperately uncertain decades ahead. Tomorrow I shall be writing specifically about those echoes.
Those echoes, as I chose to call them, were kicked off by a recent item on the blog Economic Populist. The item was called Maps of Economic Disaster and had some sickening information. Such as:
Today 15% of Americans live in poverty. Below is a county map showing the previous year’s poverty rate and we see once again the South has high concentrations.
People are living on the edge. People living in liquid asset poverty is a whopping 43.9%. This means 132.1 million people lack the savings to cover basic expenses for three months if they lose their job, have a medical emergency or some other sort of crisis. The below map** breaks down that percentage state by state. Pretty much half the country is living on the edge, paycheck to paycheck.
** I’ve not included that map but it may be seen here. However, I did want to republish the closing map.
Finally, the next map shows how income inequality has grown in United States over time. The gini index is a measure of income inequality, the higher then index gets, the worse income inequality is. If there is ever a map which shows the the destruction of the U.S. middle class, it is this one.
[N.B.The following map is an automated GIF so just left-click on it to see the sequence. That sequence is essentially a coloured graphical image of each year, from 1977 through to 2012. Don’t struggle with it. All you have to note are the changing colours. More colours towards the green end of the spectrum indicate a worsening gini index, i.e. a worsening measure of income inequality. ]
America is clearly in dire straights and the above maps it all out. Why then has this government, this Congress not put wages and jobs as jobs #1 is a good question. Why America hasn’t outright revolted, demanding this government do so is a better one.
oooo
George Monbiot.
Let me now turn to George Monbiot, a British writer known for his environmental and political activism. WikiPedia describes Mr. Monbiot, in part, as:
Here are some of the things I love: my family and friends, salt marshes, arguments, chalk streams, Russian literature, kayaking among dolphins, diversity of all kinds, rockpools, heritage apples, woods, fishing, swimming in the sea, gazpacho, ponds and ditches, growing vegetables, insects, pruning, forgotten corners, fossils, goldfinches, etymology, Bill Hicks, ruins, Shakespeare, landscape history, palaeoecology, Gavin and Stacey and Father Ted.
Here are some of the things I try to fight: undemocratic power, corruption, deception of the public, environmental destruction, injustice, inequality and the misallocation of resources, waste, denial, the libertarianism which grants freedom to the powerful at the expense of the powerless, undisclosed interests, complacency.
Here is what I fear: other people’s cowardice.
There was a recent essay concerning the UK’s energy strategy posted by George Monbiot published in the Guardian on the 22nd October. It is also on his website.
The essay opens, thus [my emphasis]:
Fiscal Meltdown
The government is betting the farm on a nuclear technology that might soon look as hip as the traction engine.
Seven years ago, I collected all the available cost estimates for nuclear power. The US Nuclear Energy Institute suggested a penny a kilowatt hour. The Royal Academy of Engineering confidently predicted 2.3p. The British government announced that in 2020 the price would be between 3 and 4p. The New Economics Foundation guessed that it could be anywhere between 3.4 and 8.3p. 8.3 pence was so far beyond what anyone else forecast that I treated it as scarcely credible. It falls a penny short of the price now agreed by the British government.
Mr. Monbiot’s essay concludes:
An estimate endorsed by the chief scientific adviser at the government’s energy department suggests that, if integral fast reactors were deployed, the UK’s stockpile of nuclear waste could be used to generate enough low-carbon energy to meet all UK demand for 500 years. These reactors would keep recycling the waste until hardly any remained: solving three huge problems – energy supply, nuclear waste and climate change – at once. Thorium reactors use an element that’s already extracted in large quantities as an unwanted by-product of other mining industries. They recycle their own waste, leaving almost nothing behind.
To build a plant at Hinkley Point which will still require uranium mining and still produce nuclear waste in 2063 is to commit to 20th-Century technologies through most of the 21st. In 2011 GE Hitachi offered to build a fast reactor to start generating electricity from waste plutonium and (unlike the Hinkley developers) to carry the cost if the project failed. I phoned the government on Monday morning to ask what happened to this proposal. I’m still waiting for an answer.
That global race the prime minister keeps talking about? He plainly intends to lose.
NB. I edited out the links to a comprehensive set of references to make the essay easier to read off the screen. But all the facts reported by Mr. Monbiot may be seen here.
oooo
Just two more or less random pieces of writing that have graced my ‘in-box’. Nothing scientific about my selection; just the sense that they are representative of the reams and reams of articles, essays and reports coming in on an almost daily basis from right across the world showing an ever-increasing credibility gap between the peoples of many nations and those who purport to serve those peoples in their respective Governments.
Frankly, I can’t even imagine how or when we will ‘transition’ out of this present period. But one thing I am sure about. This schism between us, the people, and those who govern us is unsustainable!
Learning from Dogs 