Sunday 30 July 2023

Sunday 30 July 2023 - The Holiday

 



Well. Rory Gamin de Pycombe and I have just returned from our first Dartmoor holiday.  I am not sure that there are words adequate to describe the events of our first trip together.  Rory cannot be relied on for accuracy (as you may guess from what follows), so it falls to me to sum it up as best I can for posterity...



We set off in the New Blue Corsa on Saturday 15 July.  I had prepared well in advance (or so I thought), armed with a waist-harness with secure pack for safe tethering of an exuberant and strong young dog to ones self, a newly-purchased second hand GPS device and a new waterproof jacket in a rolled-up pack.  More on those items later.  I had even procured a new personal letterboxing stamp, based on my previous ones:


Sweet Gisele-Stephanie never had a letterboxing stamp (I was mostly too poor or too unwell to letterbox more than a couple of times with her, sadly), though she is immortalised standing at the central Southern Dartmoor's Ducks Pool letterbox on my work Teams background...


...)

To set the scene - it was the first holiday that I’ve had properly by myself since @2016. And the first time back to Dartmoor under my own steam for many, MANY years. So, this week away was much anticipated and dearly looked-forward-to.  And my first ever holiday and letterboxing trip with Rory Gamin de Pycombe.  

Exciting!  How could anything go wrong…?

I should have known that it was cursed from the outset. The very first day, in fact.

Before leaving for Dartmoor, I knew I’d need a new waterproof coat - so off I went to Mountain Warehouse on my way back from a work meeting.  Being currently a larger lady, the choice is somewhat limited… I spotted some macs rolled up in individual packs and one in a large size – “brilliant” I thought, I’ll have that.  I was in a bit of a rush as it was after a lengthy work meeting and I was on my way home, so I grabbed it, bought it - I didn’t unwrap it but just put it in my rucksack.  The very first day out we went off onto the Moor and we were a good hour into our walk, when it started pouring down with rain. “No problem” I thought, and I put the rucksack down, got the new packed jacket out; unpacked it - it was a pair of f***ing trousers.

I taught the dog a few new words that day.

So that was day one.

Day two we began by going into Plymouth to procure a new waterproof jacket in a vast Go Outdoors store on a godforsaken industrial estate. It was grim just getting there and back, unhelped by having to negotiate the same hellish roundabout on which Jasper had once memorably silently vomited all over the gearstick whilst we were stopped at traffic lights...  New jacket purchased (after having tried it on instore – you can’t be too careful…) we headed to the very North part of Dartmoor, really remote – right out on the military ring road from Okehampton. A traffic accident near Tavistock and subsequent diversion meant that the journey to our intended destination, which would have taken @ 50 minutes from our hotel, took some 5 hours to complete.  I had a GPS device which I’d bought second-hand from eBay (my original trusty one having died a death some years back) but it looked and seemed alright when I was programming it the night before.

Out we got onto the moor in the direction of our first waypoint and the GPS display suddenly started spinning round and round and then just died, never to resurrect. So we had to abandon the walk - we just couldn’t do it without the GPS device – and return to the hotel.  I found and ordered a brand-new GPS unit from Amazon (£216) that they could deliver the next day and ascertained that the hotel reception were happy to accept delivery for me. However, they needed a one-time password (OTP) for the delivery driver and, although the hotel was lovely, and the staff particularly were really REALLY lovely - their first language was not English. I had to explain the delivery and the concept of a one time password and phone that in to them from the moor when it arrived, but that was alright; all went well and I received the device as planned.

Rory professed himself “unimpressed” with Dartmoor thus far. I can’t say I blamed him.  I wasn’t too impressed myself.


Unfortunately, the new GPS initially proved a baffling challenge – the units were in American measurements and it gave our exact location as somewhere in central New York city… but I managed to work it out and reset it (I had my laptop for online guidance, though the internet connection was weak and very rarely working) to UK data and GB mapping. With a sense of high triumph, I programmed it for our planned walk on the North moor, the co-ordinates all tallied as per our plan and map, and all was set fair and fine for the following day.

Still feeling highly pleased with myself, off we went back out to the North moor on the Wednesday for our third attempt at the planned walk, with new waterproof jacket, new functioning and fully-programmed GPS… and here is where the fates conspired against me in the cruellest of ways.

I had bought a special belt thing to clip Rory to, knowing him to be a strong, fit lad, so I thought I was being canny by both holding him on the lead and ensuring that he was clipped to me to prevent sudden escape.  Off we went, out to our first waypoint which we found with the new GPS with very little trouble (thinking “ah-ha! this was money well-spent”).  On leaving that waypoint, Rory jumped down from a low rocky shelf and, at the exact same time, saw a sheep in very close proximity. He leapt and lunged at the same time and the thing around my waist snapped and he was instantly gone.  He almost flew after the fleeing sheep, I saw him again briefly once and then no more. 

I was screaming and screaming for him and in utter dread, because he was chasing sheep and I so desperately did not want to be that person; that thoughtless irresponsible dog owner who allows their pet to terrorise and maim and kill livestock.  At work and elsewhere, I have seen the misery, lasting harm and despair that this causes; it is an utter, many-levelled nightmare, often made worse by the callous and ignorant stupidity of the dog owner. I was sickeningly certain that Rory was going to kill or maim something, and it could end with the farmer – rightly - shooting him (or him being reported to the Police and having to be put down when caught).  After having initially seen him chasing some sheep and then, a short while after, not Rory himself but the sheep clearly running fast away from a pursuing dog (obviously him), very soon after that I saw the same group of sheep just huddled together in a little area beneath where I was standing, calm, clearly unharmed and no longer being pursued.  I could see no other livestock running anywhere in the vicinity, and no trace of a wounded or killed animal.  In fact, no sign of any animals anywhere, apart from the now peaceful and huddled group of sheep, so I knew Rory was just well and truly gone.

It was then that I noticed that he’d taken the waist-strap along with him in his flight (when it snapped, it must have become caught up with his lead as he fled - to which was clipped a pack containing my MOBILE PHONE AND MY CAR KEY.

Oh yes. I was in the middle of north Dartmoor, miles from anywhere, and the dog had gone with my car key and my phone and as the further horror of this dawned on me I felt utterly sick. It was it was awful.  I called and called for Rory - I yelled for at least an hour in increasing desperation – but there was no sign of him or the discarded waist-pack.

Eventually I realised that I’d got to get myself back to the car, as soon as possible - because if I get back to the isolated spot where people park their cars and there’s no other cars there where I could try and summon help, I’m seriously screwed.  I prayed that, at the very least, there might be someone there I could ask for help.  I made my way back there, which took nearly another hour, and I saw three people who looked like they had just come back from a walk. By this point I was almost in hysterics, certainly very distressed, and I said “I am so sorry, but can you please help me?  I’ve lost my dog. He’s gone and he’s taken my phone and car key with him.”  They just laughed at me.  They laughed.  Which is not characteristic of people on the moor – generally the people you meet are friendly and happy to say hello.  Most especially in such a remote place as this, a place where you have to make a real effort to be.  Amid their laughter, they pointed out a nearby vehicle and said “You want those lads; best ask them.”  And as I walked to this vehicle, they laughed at me all the more.

Not far from the access point to the North moor lies the UK military’s Okehampton Battle Camp.  In fact, the route that all cars use to access the more remote parts of the North moor is the old military ring road, kept in a state of semi-repair.

I had noticed before that there was a big military exercise taking place on the moor, with soldiers in camouflage crawling all over the place with blank weapons, firing and shouting at each other in full battle-training.  It turned out that they were training Ukrainians for the ongoing war and four of the UK officers were in a vehicle where the cars were parked, observing proceedings.  I went up to the officers and said “I’m so sorry, please could I ask for your help,”, explaining the situation and begging their assistance. They were wonderful.

The officers immediately said “Don’t worry - we’ve got officers all over the moor. We’ve got guys on the other side of the hill here; they’re all over the place and we will help you.”  (Karma also came a-calling for the initial trio who had laughed at me.  They were parked on the military ring-road, where they shouldn’t have been. One of the officers asked if they were with me and when I said no, he and a colleague marched off to administer them an A-grade bollocking. Ha ha.)

Before I could even finish expressing my heartfelt thanks, some of the officers immediately started - and it was like a REAL military operation; I was mortified - going over the moor in a sweeping motion, whilst summoning their colleagues in other locations to do the same.  I could see at least eight of them on my side of the hill and knew that others elsewhere were similarly mobilised.  It was surreal - like something that you might see on television - those police searches where they are combing an area for a missing person or evidence – looking everywhere quickly and meticulously for any sign or Rory or the missing pack.  They moved so fast and so thoroughly, covering the distance it had taken me an hour to traverse in what seemed like minutes. I was so thankful to them.

The officer in charge, as soon as I had explained my predicament, had got straight onto his walkie-talkie radio to communicate with his colleagues. Now that I am on the other end of this sorry episode, and knowing that it had a better outcome than at the time seemed likely, I can see the tacit, or inadvertent humour in the situation (certainly not at the time though).  The officer’s radio dialogue with his unseen colleagues elsewhere on the moor went as follows:

Officer: “I’m sorry chaps, real world situation here. We’ve got a civilian who’s just approached us; she’s lost her dog…”

Radio:    schkkllkk… Real world situation. Lost dog. Description. Over. schkkllkk …”

Officer:   “Staffie cross French bulldog. Gunmetal grey. Wearing red harness with black straps, trailing black lead. Over.”

Radio:    schkkllkk …[repeated description]. Over. schkkllkk…

Officer:   “Additionally, the dog was attached to pack. Was green with black straps…”

Radio:    schkkllkk… green with black straps pack. Over. schkkllkk …”

Officer:   “No, wait, there’s more.  Inside the pack were the civilian’s mobile phone and car key. Over.”

Radio: “schkkllkk … … … schkkllkk****ing h*llschkkllkk …”

 

He wasn’t wrong.

We waited by the vehicle for quite a while, as officers swept the moor.  All the while sat by my car, which I could not get into.  It was almost as if it was sitting there mocking me.

Another officer telephoned the RAC.  They were useless – they first denied all knowledge of me (I’ve been a paid-up member since 1998) or my vehicle.  Then, once they’d identified me, could not help beyond saying that they’d texted a link to my phone and “all” I needed to do was to follow the link and help would be on its way.  They were utterly unable to cope with the concept of not having access to a mobile phone.  When the officer testily explained to them (again) that the phone was gone and unavailable he was met with incomprehension and silence.

The insurance company (Direct Line; I’m not afraid to name them) were no bloody good either. They were unable to suggest anything that might help in the moment, beyond “isn’t there anyone local who might be able to help you out?” and “we can email you something but if you put in a claim, your premiums will go up…” Yes. Thanks for that.

All the while I was feeling sicker and sicker.  Wondering how the hell I was going to get out of this – and how I was going to have to go home without Rory, never knowing what had happened to him and what harm and havoc he had caused.  I dreaded having to ring my mum and tell her that he was gone.

The military officers were so kind and reassuring.  They had not found Rory or the pack but, equally, they had not found any injured or killed livestock, so that was some small reassurance.  They stressed that, sadly they regularly saw such things on the moor; they knew the signs generally present and the all-too-obvious sad evidence, but in this case there was absolutely nothing.  No blood, carnage or mangled remains, and they assured me that, had anything of that nature happened, they would certainly have seen indications of it.  This brought a small measure of relief. 

They then needed to get back to their base.  They did ask of their superiors, but understandably I was not allowed to go to wait within the battle camp for any further developments - but they did say that I could sit in the guard room, so they took me down there by vehicle (that was heart-wrenching; being driven down, away from my stricken car and from where I had last seen Rory). Once there, they phoned the hotel and said “We’ve got your guest here, can you arrange a taxi for her from the Okehampton military camp?”  The hotel staff said that they would sort that out, so there I sat for ages, still trying to summon help from the RAC or Direct Line without success.

One of the officers had said that, generally, dogs lost in the area eventually made their own way to the military camp. It was the only thing around for miles, and when lost dogs became hungry and tired, they could smell food and signs of human habitation and arrived at the guard house of their own volition.  Although this was reassuring to hear, my hopes weren’t high.  I really believed that I would never see Rory again.

After at least another hour (possibly more) had passed, the phone in the guard room rang. It was a member of the public who said they’d found a dog - miles away on the other side of the hill – loose and running about.  The officer said “Oh! We think we’ve got the owner here, bring him on down.” It was clear from the lady’s description that it was the fugitive Rory, unharmed and without any evidence of having killed/injured anything.  She drove down in a gold-coloured Volvo - with Rory sitting on her lap in the driver’s seat with his head poking out of the window.  Thank all goodness. I thought I’d never see him again. I was so grateful; the lady was glad to have been the means of reuniting us and said that it was her firm believe that he had not been involved in the harassment of livestock.  The officers concurred.  Had he caused harm, the physical evidence on him, on his harness and in his mouth would have been clear for all to see.  I was doubly thankful for that.

So Rory was back - but he was no longer attached to the waist-pack.  I mean, I knew from the outset that it was gone. There was that faint glimmer of hope that it MIGHT still have been entangled in his lead – but in my heart I knew that it was long gone.

The one officer in particular who had been helping me (he was very lovely in lots of ways; I only found out his first name – Luke) he let me use his phone as much as I needed to.  He also took Rory and I back up onto the moor to see if we would locate the pack one last time – he tried to access a “Find my Phone” tracker (but could only find one that he’d have to pay for and I refused to let him do that), then he tried ringing my phone, it rang all right, but we couldn’t hear it.  He jogged all the way to the top of the tor and back around, while Rory and I struggled around the lower slopes.

One of the early and repeated questions from the military officers was “do you know roughly/can you point out roughly the area where you were when you lost the dog?” Not without a cruel sense of irony was I able to say “I can tell you exactly where I was - down to the last inch practically.” Because it was bloody Waypoint One on my GPS device, on which I had just spent a fortune and was using for the very first time.  I had been clutching it in my hand throughout the whole ordeal.  So I knew exactly where to guide them – as well as the route we’d taken to get there, including diversions, the length of time it had taken to get there AND how high above sea-level it was…  But it didn’t help. Rory had been gone for hours; he could have gone anywhere between there and Princetown so goodness knows where he and the waist-pack had finally parted ways.  Luke and I searched the areas around waypoints one and two but of the pack there was no sign.  My hopes were not high though. The area was rocky, boggy in places, with gorse and heather and the bracken was above waist-height in parts.  You could have been just a foot away from the pack and walk right past it.

Luke was kind and offered as much calm sense as he could in the situation, telling me that the dog was back unharmed, everything else could be replaced, it would all be alright.  Of course, he was right. Everything else COULD be replaced, and Rory was safely back and clearly innocent of wildlife or livestock destruction (I wonder what he DID do all that time?  Probably found himself a shady nook and had a jolly good kip, the lazy git).  In the beginning of the crisis, as I was trying to keep myself rational and calm on the way back to the car, I was telling myself “this day will end. This day will be over, and it will be alright.” Although I couldn’t see how.  Bad days DO end, and better ones come after them.  That was what I kept telling myself as the horrors were unfolding in my mind.

Once back in the guard room, Luke brought me a cup of water, and another cup for Rory. We were both very grateful.  He also brought me a Snickers bar, god bless him, to cheer me up. Unfortunately, I’m allergic to nuts so I had to say thank you very much and hide it in my pack when he wasn’t looking. I managed to achieve that without anyone noticing. 

After quite some more time had passed, another officer eventually they phoned the hotel again to say “Look, it’s been a while now - what’s the ETA on this taxi for your guest?” Unhappily, the hotel chaps (again the lovely young men, but for whom English is their second language) replied that they “weren’t able to get any taxi firm to accept the job. We’ve been trying to ring Miss P----- to let her know, but we haven’t been able to get a reply.”  Arrrgh!

How is it possible to exist these days without a phone?!

I was exhausted after at least four hours of this, heaped upon the initial distress.  Fortunately, Luke continued to let me have free use of his phone. We looked up all the local taxi firms and I tried each one.  None of them answered – until the sixth one, Acorn Taxis. After hearing about my situation, she said she could be with me in half an hour and would take me all the way to my hotel near Plymouth for £55.  I was profusely thanking her until I heard “oh, wait, hang on. Did you say you had a dog with you? I’m not sure I – “

I almost broke down. To be so near help and then to hear that it might be denied was nearly more than I could bear. I began “oh, no, PLEASE, no-“ but then the lady asked me to describe Rory and after the first few sentences she said that it would be fine.  It turned out that a very large, hairy and slobbery dog had once unexpectedly accompanied a booked ride and all but destroyed her car interior; she was fond of Staffies and French Bulldogs and as long as he was seated on a towel, Rory was welcome.  I couldn’t have been more thankful.

It turned out that the taxi lady was an angel in more ways than one.  After I had left the guard house expressing my deepest gratitude to Luke and his wonderful colleagues, and was explaining the full history of the afternoon whilst towels for Rory were laid on the back seat of the taxi, she said that her husband worked on a vehicle recovery truck and had a mate who did emergency car key replacement.  She offered to telephone her husband and get the number for me.  The key man, James (from keytomycar.co.uk, god bless them) was out on another job at the time, but she kindly left a message for him to call me at the hotel, or via her if we were still en route.  We formulated a plan that she would get me and Rory back to our hotel that evening, hopefully key man could make a replacement key, which he would deliver to taxi lady. Once done, Rory and I would get ourselves to Okehampton (ideally the train station), where taxi lady would meet us and hand over the key and then take us up onto the moor where the car would be waiting.

So, I had renewed and thankful hope.  I had resigned myself to the fact that the phone and keys would not be recovered.  I was having minor palpitations about all the work contacts and data stored on my phone but, most especially, all the photographs.  Holidays, memories, almost all of the offline photographs I had of Gisele-Stephanie were stored on that phone – the thought of losing those was a real sadness. At least Rory was safe.

Back at the hotel, the staff (Sunil and Jetain) were very pleased to see me looking unharmed, but sorry for what had happened, and then I think the full horror of the situation actually dawned on them and they were mortified at their unwitting part in it, not having realised that the phone had gone, along with the dog and car key, and the implications of their not having been able to summon a taxi and not letting the army officers know but leaving a voicemail on my vanished phone and innocently believing that they’d done enough.  They could not have been kinder.  It really wasn’t their fault.  They let me use the hotel phone as much as I needed.  I was able to let my mum know what had happened, but that Rory was safe and unharmed.  And finally, after a number of attempts, I was able to speak to key man.

Key man was aware of the situation by the time I got through to him, having spoken to taxi lady.  He was kind and didn’t laugh at my misfortune at all.  He was calm, matter-of-fact and reassuring.  Despite the fact that he lived fairly locally to the North of the moor, he didn’t know where the car was located – it really was that remote - but fortunately his father-in-law was staying with him and his father-in-law knew where it was.  So they went out together that night and successfully made the new key.  He rang me back at the hotel once it was done to reassure me (so that I could at least get some sleep that night) and I promised to call him back first thing in the morning to pay him.

I then began to plan how I was going to get myself to Okehampton the following morning.  Taxis from the hotel were known to be hard to come by(!) but I thought I might at least be able to get one to Plymouth station and thence get the train to Okehampton.  Alas, there’s no such thing as a direct train these days - I would have had to get a train from Plymouth to Exeter and then Exeter to Okehampton – with Rory in tow. But then I wondered how - even if I get to Okehampton - how am I going to ring the taxi lady? Because there are no payphones anywhere anymore.  That quandary was rendered irrelevant in any case – because the bloody trains were on strike the next day. Joy was just being heaped upon joys.

I decided I would phone taxi lady in the morning and see if I could appeal to her to taxi the key all the way to us in the hotel and then return with us to the car.  The hotel staff were anxious to be sure that I would have a taxi in the morning, and so wanted to book one for me there and then in advance, but we agreed to wait until the morning and after I had spoken to both key man and taxi lady again.

But cruel circumstance had not finished with me quite yet. Rory had been safely installed in the hotel room with his (ill-deserved) supper, and I went to return the hotel phone to reception.  There was another guest in the hotel who had overheard my relation of the day’s events and my phone calls with key man while he was in the hotel bar.  He very kindly put details of my lost pack and its precious contents on the local Facebook pages (the wonderful taxi lady also put it on the Okehampton Facebook page for me, bless her). He also let me use his phone to put it on some other Dartmoor pages that I frequent and I also notified the National Park Authority in case a ranger came across it (the Police didn’t want to know).  Whilst doing this, the lovely hotel chaps had been closing up the kitchen for the night.  Bless them both, they then brought me a bowl of chicken curry that they had made themselves (proper, authentic chicken curry with everything including all the bits and bobs and bones of the chicken).  As with the Snickers bar from Luke earlier, the gods of gastronomy were laughing at me once again.  I’m a vegetarian.

These dear young men gave me the lovely curry that they’d made, after I’d had such a horrendous time (and with no food).  It was so very, very kind of them.  I couldn’t bear to turn it away or seem rude.  What could I do?

I pretended to eat it. That’s what I did.  I put it all in my mouth and chewed, professing delight at every lovely mouthful.  And, to be fair, it was absolutely delicious. I swallowed the tasty veg and mushrooms and the outstanding home-made sauce.  But as soon as I was unobserved or a back was turned, I took out the bits of unswallowed chicken and carefully concealed them about my person, unobserved. 

I was somewhat limited as to places of concealment, as you may imagine.  So each piece of chicken was quietly transferred from my mouth to my hand and from thence to the only hiding place available: my pants.

I take no pride in the fact that I did this for the entirety of the meal undetected, in the presence of the other guest in the bar (a more grateful and infinitely more honest recipient of some curry) and my kind, generous and thoughtful friends from the hotel.  I felt unbearably guilty the whole time.

Wracked full of guilt, and my pants full of curried chicken, I then had to walk past everyone, all of whom were cheerfully bidding me goodnight, expressing again their sorry for the day’s misfortunes, trying to get across the lobby and up the stairs without chicken-leakage or betraying the lumpen shapes about my lower regions which would announce my heinous, traitorous, disrespectful secretions.

Once I was safely back in the room, putting the chicken pieces of shame into Rory’s gratefully-receptive maw, I believed that I had never felt quite so wretched in my life.

So that was that day.

The following morning, at breakfast (with extra scrambled egg, mushroom and a little hash brown on my plate, guilt, guilt guilt) I phoned key man and paid him the £390 for the emergency replacement (computer-reprogrammed) key.  Very happily for me, angel taxi lady kindly said she will come all the way down to the hotel with the key, collect me and Rory, and drive us back out to the moor where the car was and all for another £55, which I felt was more than reasonable. 

I cannot thank my helpers highly enough. I can tell you that it was a sweet, sweet sound when got out of the taxi, pressed the key button and the car went “peep peep” and opened. Utter relief.

Before she left, taxi lady asked if I was going to stay up in the location and look for the waist pack.  I seriously thought about it – but on just looking at the hillside I knew it would do me no good.  I decided that I was not going to torment myself by even trying to look for the pack.

At the hotel receptionists’ suggestion that morning I had tried ringing the phone from the hotel, so that I could leave a voicemail message, in case someone was able to find and unlock it. It was still ringing but had not gone to voicemail – and I suspected that the battery would soon run down as the phone also served as my alarm clock and would, by now, have been going off without me there to silence it.

I felt that the sheep had probably got it by now - they are probably ringing Domino’s as we speak – “Meeh -eeh-eeeh… can I have extra pepperoni on mine, please… meeh-eeeeh…. Garlic bread… meeh-eeeh-eeehhh….”

Another walker preparing himself for his day on the moor overheard the conversation and asked me about it once the taxi lady had left.  He expressed sincere sympathy and offered to help to look for the pack.  I was very grateful, but I knew that we could look for days and never find it – if the army and all their combined efforts yesterday could not locate it, the chances of us finding it were extremely remote.

Blessing again the assistance of taxi lady and key man, I started the car and drove back down to the military camp guard house, just to say thank you again to the soldiers for their help. I was so grateful to them, more than I could ever express.  Luke sadly was not there, and the officer on guard duty did not know who he was (I think they address each other chiefly by surnames, and I didn’t know Luke’s).  I did leave a written note of thanks, along with my details for the lost property in case anyone handed in the pack.  The civilian guard on duty remembered us from the previous day and said that he would keep an eye on the various Facebook pages.

And, with that, I was all set to head off elsewhere.   But then I thought to myself “No! I’m bloody well going to do this walk.  It’s cost me an absolute fortune to get everything out here in terms of new keys, GPS and taxi fares. I have just spent another £55 just to get back here, so I am bloody well going to do it.”  I hate to be defeated by anything and I was determined that this was not going to get the better of me.  I was going to stick two fingers up to the events of yesterday and not let it have the satisfaction of defeating me.  I was going to show fate what I thought of it by succeeding in doing the whole walk that I had planned and set out to do, and claw back a little bit of victory for myself from the whole sorry episode.

So we did it. The whole walk and every single letterbox (waypoint) (it was the “Animal Tors” charity letterbox walk in aid of Pancreatic Cancer UK; a lovely route and very nice stamps, as it turned out).  Rory was slightly hobbling his way around at times, but my sympathy for him was limited.  I felt that he was the architect of his own misery and you’re going to finish this walk and like it (he actually did enjoy himself in the end, though not the fact that he was now wearing two leads, one clipped to his harness and literally tied to me and the other being an old lead of Jasper’s that I clipped to his collar. I wasn’t going to be complacent again).

It was very satisfying to complete the walk, feeling that I had secured victory over defeat, and return to the car happy.

Less happily, though still thankful for a better outcome than had at first seemed likely – and VERY thankful that Rory and I were together again – for the rest of the holiday I had to restrict where we went, in case I got myself in a tricky situation because I now had no phone with which to summon help if I was in a predicament.  Plus the fact that the phone was also my Sat Nav (though I was still able to navigate using paper maps, never a wasted skill).

We were, however, still blessed with the new GPS device, and that promoted our enjoyment of several other walks in more easily-accessible and less troublesome areas.  We had some lovely times and walks in the days remaining to us.  Sadly I had no means of photographing them, but they are committed to memory now and that will have to do.  My conscience still pricked me about the unwitting litter I had left somewhere on the North moor, and I grieved for the loss of all those photographs of sweet Gisele.  But I was incredibly mindful of how very much worse the situation could have been, and thankful for the outcome I had received.

Rory Gamin de Pycome returned to my side unharmed and innocent of malevolent wrongdoing or carnage was a blessing for which I will always be thankful.   It does beg the question of what on earth he WAS doing all the time that he was gone.  I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m probably better-off not knowing.  He was gone for hours, with no trace of him or his doings; what was he up to?  Actually, I suspect that he found himself a nice secluded shady spot and had himself a good sleep for a few hours.  For a fit young dog in his prime, he can be really quite remarkably idle.

On our last day we went out on a lovely, gentle walk with beautiful letterbox stamps to find in the popular Pew Tor area, where there is generally a highly worthy local ice-cream van in the car park to reward ourselves on our return.  Our final walk duly and happily completed; we met some Australian tourists also enjoying the rich bounty on offer from Willy’s Ices on the Moor.  They stopped to admire Rory (everyone does; as with Jasper and Gisele.  They were adored wherever we went, as now is Rory.  I’m just incidental – Rory is Sooty and I am very much the Matthew Corbett of the piece.  But no matter – he deserves to be loved, I would much rather they looked at him than me).   I told them what Rory had done; they were laughing so much that one of them almost hurt himself.  They ended up taking photographs of the dog so that they could show their friends back in Australia - saying “this is what this dog did! Look at him!”  I got a small piece of quiet revenge; they told me that they had just come from touring Ireland and one of them had been kissing the Blarney Stone. I asked them if they knew that the locals went down and pee-ed on it at night.  But they laughed very heartily at that too.  In truth, they were lovely people, and it was nice to talk with them.  I was glad that our tales of mishap had made them laugh. It’s nice if we can make someone smile or make their day just that little bit better.

It was not exactly the uneventful and battery-recharging holiday that I had hoped for.  But it has at least been a tale (with a thankfully better-than-expected outcome) which can make people smile.  I have committed the whole thing to record here, in case I forget any of the finer details.  And also to remind me that, however, awful a day I might be having – this one was worse, and we came through it. It was OK in the end.

Of course, I had to listen to Sh*t FM in the car all the way home, as my carefully curated play-list of tracks was on my phone.  And we had to get back in time to go to the phone store to get a replacement.  They, also, were kind sympathetic and helpful.  And a most happy coda to the whole came when it transpired that all my phone data – including all the photographs of Gisele-Stephanie – had been backed up to the Cloud all the way up to the morning of the fateful incident and were easily restored to my new phone.  I’m still getting to grips with the new device and its many and varied settings, but I am so, so thankful for the backups.  I will never be tardy about employing them again.  Alas, the photos from the morning of “the incident” are non-recoverable (unless the old phone is located, but I doubt that will ever happen), but I’m not sure I really want those.  The last photo I took was of Rory at his first letterbox, gurning at the camera with the box in the background.  That was taken approximately 45 seconds before that day turned to merry hell and I am not sure I want a pictorial memento of that.

None of this has deterred us.  We have already booked our return to Dartmoor.  Although old Rory “Two Leads” Gamin de Pycombe will not be offered another opportunity for solo adventuring.  We keep smiling, and very thankfully and gratefully so.

I suppose I should offer the last word to Rory himself:

“Mamma refused to rub cream onto my sore and calloused paws. Unacceptable.”

Happy days!

Thursday 11 May 2023

Thursday 11 May 2023

This is Rory Gamin de Pyecombe, who came to live with me on 19 February.  He's helping to mend the broken hearts that sweet Gisele left behind her.


His literary skills are still in progress, but he looks forward to sharing his adventures, of which I am sure there will be many.



Keep smiling, always. x

Friday 9 September 2022

Friday 9 September 2022

 

I write this on 9 September 2022.  Last evening, 8th September 2022 at 18:30, it was announced that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second had died peacefully at Balmoral that afternoon.


It is the end of an era. But what an amazing era it was.  Following the September 11 2001 terrorist atrocities in the USA the Queen, in her message to Americans, said "Grief is the price we pay for love." (from the original quote by Colin Murray Parkes).  And we grieve now for a monarch and lady who was very much loved.

Thank you for your life of service and devotion.

The Queen is dead.  Long live the King.

#TheQueen, #RoyalFamily, #RIPQueenElizabeth

Monday 25 April 2022

Monday 25 April 2022

Sweet Gisele-Stephanie died today at 16:10. Emergency treatment brought scant respite and exploratory surgery this afternoon revealed a massive inoperable tumour on her pancreas. I took the utterly wretched decision not to wake her from the surgery and was able to hold her as she went. Utterly heartbroken. No more smiles left to keep. 

Sleep sound my Tiny Dancer.


Wednesday 26 January 2022

Wednesday 26 January 2022

Here I am, still in a world of Covid - but still wagging my tail though, despite it all.

To all this I can add - this is not the time to be wandering around with a shaved belly.

I have been very poorly in the hospital.  A liver infection.  Quite serious apparently, which it is a bit ironic for something with the word "live" in it.  So I had to have lots of injections and medicines and have my insides looked at on a screen, which is why they had to shave my little belly.  It is very cold indeed.


The scissors are for a big tapestry cushion that Mistress is making, a picture of some apples.  I keep trying to steal the wool for extra warmth, but she puts it where I can't reach it.

I can't complain. I have had a very happy year.  I went to see my cousin Doug for Christmas.  I celebrated the summer by very suddenly going deaf, which was very strange.  Mistress took me to the vets, but there is nothing wrong.  I don't mind too much - I can tell by my nose and my eyes what's going on and I still enjoy my life very much.  It's actually quite nice not to have the noise when I am trying to be asleep.

Especially because I get lots of extra meat with my tablets.  I have to take them until next week, but I will see if I can squeak some more meat every day for as long as I can.

I wasn't very happy with Mistress after I was allowed out of the vets.


That's my best "I hope you feel guilty" look.  I think it works quite well.

It's a big new vets building and hospital.  The old one where I (and Jasper and Tess) used to go has been knocked down (so I don't have to walk past it nearly every day, hurray!).  By a strange coincidence the new place is built on the site of the building where Mistress's parents worked for 40 years.  Mistress says it feels strange to go there now.  I says she ought to try sitting there in a cage, hooked up to a drip with a little shaved belly.  THAT feels strange.

On 11 January - so, 15 days ago - it was exactly ten years ago that Jasper died.  Mistress says it seems like yesterday and she can't believe it has been that long.  I can only remember meeting him once, when I was very little ("You still ARE very little" says Mistress.  Ha ha. I mean, when I was a puppy) and lived with someone else.  He was very nice to me.  I think, even though we still have a nice life together, Mistress still misses him sometimes.



He was a very fine dog.  If you look back at earlier posts on this blog you will find lots of lovely stories about him and his adventures, going all the way back to Sunday 13 August 2006 (It all started here).  I think it might even be one of the first ever dog blogs.  2006 is a long time ago in the world of the internet, I think.

I am very much hopeful that this year - 2022 - is going to be a very good one for me and for Mistress and that I will have lots of adventures to share here.  Mistress has not been able to drive a car since 2017, as she has been ill, but the doctor says she can now, hurray!  We are just waiting to get a new one and then there will be no stopping us from exploring wherever we can.

I can't wait to see what the year is going to bring us.



In the meantime, stay safe, be nice to each other, don't give up hope and keep smiling.

Lots of love from Gisèle x

Sunday 7 March 2021

Sunday 7 March 2021

Mistress has made a cake.  It has got chocolate on it so I am not allowed to have any.  As if that, and the pictures posted in recent entries were not debasement and humiliation enough for a sweet young thing such as I, she is now making me put the recipe on here so her friends can have it.  My way is clear.  I will have my revenge - but she won't find it until she next puts on her boots, hehe...

"Exhibit A"

If you must...

Coca-Cola Cake (by Nigella Lawson)

For the cake

200 g (7 oz) (1 3/4 cups) plain flour
250 g (1/2 lb) (1 1/4 cups) golden caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
125 ml (1/2 cup) buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
125 g (4 oz) (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
2 tablespoons cocoa powder (Mistress accidentally added a bit too much cocoa powder once and it was actually quite nice, so you could add a little bit more if you want to)
175 ml (3/4 cup) Coca-Cola (Mistress says to use proper Coca-Cola, not Diet or Sugar-Free as they won't taste right)

 (22-23 cm Springform, lined with foil to prevent the batter leaking, then greased)

For the icing

225 g (7 oz) ( 2 1/4 cups) icing sugar
2 tablespoons (30g) butter
3 tablespoons (45ml) Coca-Cola
1 tablespoon (15 ml) cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

 

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4/ 350 F and put in a baking sheet at the same time.

2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, bicarb and salt. In a measuring jug, beat the egg, buttermilk and vanilla.

3. In a heavy-based saucepan, melt the butter, cocoa and Coca-Cola, heating it gently. Pour into the dry ingredients, stir well with a wooden spoon, and then add the liquid ingredients from the jug, beating until it is well blended.

4. Pour into the prepared tin and bake on the warm sheet for 40 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.

5. Leave to stand for 15 minutes in the tin before un-moulding. Then unclip, unwrap and turn out on a wire rack, making sure you’ve got a sheet of newspaper or something underneath the rack to catch any icing that drips through.

6. Sieve the icing sugar and set aside for the moment. In a heavy-based saucepan, combine the butter, Coca-Cola and cocoa and stir over a low heat until the butter has melted. Remove from the heat, add the vanilla, and spoon in the sieved icing sugar, beating as you do so, until you’ve got a good, spreadable, but still runny, icing.

7. Pour this icing over the cake, while the cake is still warm, spread gently and leave till cool before transferring to the plate on which you’re serving it.  Decorate it however you want - in the picture Mistress used white chocolate buttons with rainbow sprinkles. We wanted to use those jelly Coca-Cola bottle shaped sweets but the shop didn't have any.

8. Now grill 87 chops of various types for your loyal and long-suffering Parson Jack Russell and tell her she's a good and beautiful girl while she eats them. 

All hail.


Saturday 13 February 2021

Saturday 13 February 2021

Disrespectful laughter is not a sound that I like.

Don't mistake me, I do very much like to laugh.  I just don't like being laughed at very much.  My handsome predecessor, Jasper (who started this blog back in 2006) liked making people happy as much as he could and often performed particularly to gain laughter and general amusement.  Here he is, nobly sacrificing dignity for the sake of laughter, posing at Pixieland on Dartmoor in Devon:


No part of this picture was digitally edited or added-to.  
He wore this hat and sat on this toadstool for REAL. And was happy about it.
You can visit the scene of the crime here: Pixieland

Elsewhere on this blog you can spot him dressed as Sherwood Forest, some Watercress, Robin Hood and performing in character as 'Bullseye' in a production of Oliver! and these were by no means all his appearances.

I will admit that I have done a couple of shifts dressed as some watercress myself; you can find it here within the pages of this blog if you want to see that, I am not going to look it out and post it again.  My own ability with photography is not high - just a few days ago I sat on Mistress's 'phone and accidentally posted a rather ordinary (as if there could be such a thing) photo of myself dozing on a sofa to her "My Story" section of something called Facebook.  She only found out when she got notifications that people had seen it.

The general subject of this all came about back at our house earlier today.  Mistress was sorting through a box and found lots of dog photographs. Right back to her first dog Jaki, through the tragically short-lived Tess Tickle and our hero Jasper-Horatio up to my own sweet self, Mistress showed me lots of pictures and I enjoyed them very much.  We also found some pictures from six years ago.  They were less to my taste.

These pictures were taken on the day that Mistress came out of hospital after recovering from kidney failure.  She had brought some "souvenirs" from the nurses on her ward.  Because I was so happy to have Mistress home alive and well I reluctantly agreed to pose briefly with these items.  It was my belief that these pictures would never see the light of day.  Silly me.  I defy you, friend reader, to dare to laugh at them...




Yes, that's what I thought.  A shocking abuse of sanitary apparatus.

After coming back to GrannaPea's house later in the afternoon, I was given a big tasty chew to enjoy.  I decided to consume half and stash the remainder for another time.  I duly took the first opportunity of sneaking outside when the back door was open, to bury my bounty in a carefully concealed secret location.  I chose a specially-secluded site, prepared the ground, and placed the chew.  Some time later, GrannaPea had cause to put some stuff into her compost bin and, inexplicably, found my place of concealment!  The traitorous septuagenarian (big word for me, I know.  I looked it up on Mr. Googles) came back into the house laughing in a VERY disrespectful way and summoned Mistress.  She followed her mother back outside and both of them returned laughing heartily.  I got very cross.  The more cross I got, the more they laughed. Mistress called me "a total muppet" and said that my burying skills "were rubbish".  I think not.

After all, I chose my spot most carefully.  It was the site of where the old compost heap used to be (before the posh new compost bin arrived).  I didn't go there hardly at all last year because birds were nesting in the clematis and I had to be good and leave them alone.  They are gone now and the nest is empty.

Mistress has been using her new computer to play games (very unfair, it was only supposed to be for me to be writing this on). Some of them have been "hidden object" games, where you have to find particular things on a crowded screen.  So here is my very own hidden object game.  See if you can find (a) the nest (easy) and (b) my very carefully and professionally hidden chew (I bet you can't):


I don't know why they were laughing.


Stay safe, be nice to each other, don't give up hope and keep smiling.

Lots of love from Gisèle x