Posts Tagged ‘Capone’
Walking The Dog 3
Walking The Dog 3
The fields have been ploughed and scattered this week. My memory tells me that the ploughing should take place in the depths of winter so that the frosts can break up the great clumps of soil but that’s not the way it’s done in Emsworth.
Instead the local farmer brings in contractors who arrive in huge leviathan beasts, each worth a brace of Aston Martins, that devour the stubble fields and transform them into finely graded seedbed.
Think of the effort of lifting one spade of compacted soil. The plough carves down three spades deep and four spades wide with each of six blades. The earth surrenders to its mighty force and is exposed rich red and raw. Then a massive grader, its huge weight hauled at speed across the fields smashes the soil into powder. Only then does the farmer drive out his John Deere, looking puny by comparison and sets it to seeding and raking. In the space of three or four days the work is completed.
The new scenery brings out a burst of fresh exuberance from Capone. He gallops across the fields, his energy enough to lift any mood. His sheer joy at being perfectly expresses the purpose of a dog. He and the intimate experience of a walk with my best friend is the most powerful of therapies requiring no theory or structure, just the doing of it. Perhaps more like a meditation or prayer.
With age the individual senses diminish in power but I find that there is a greater discernment between them. I hear birdsong now like I never used to. The pleasure of the birds, the sea, the sky, the light and the breeze is all so much more intense and the unreserved, joyous companionship of my dog makes it all the more so.
The most extraordinary things happen every day to those of us that indulge in this most universal hobby of walking the dog. Last week, and I kid you not, from behind an isolated cottage, flew a second world war US fighter plane at no more than 200 feet. Breaking every civil aviation rule in the book, it sent Capone and me diving for the nearest slit trench convinced that we were its target.
Regularly the Chinooks fly over Chichester harbour, their massive thumping beat pulverising the air. If you happen to be wading through a large area of eight foot tall bullrushes it is so easy to imagine the rattle of M16s and the threat of napalm descending from above.
But the real dangers that lurk here are of a more rural nature. The most marmalade orange, malevolent cat saunters along the church wall, a half dead rat clamped in its teeth. The nasty fat corgi, its belly dragging on the ground and while Capone ambles by it leaps up and bites him on the back of the neck!
Spring is accelerating towards summer now. The grasses and nettles in the hedgerows are lush. The trees are turning a deeper green and filling out their magnificent silhouettes but the earliest crop in Emsworth is the forest of masts that’s sprouting everywhere you look.
Peter Reynolds 14-05-08
Walking The Dog 2
Walking The Dog 2
Apart from herons and wealthy, attractive, single women (which seem to be virtually extinct), the main focus of our daily rambles is sticks.
Of course, sticks come in all shapes and sizes but Capone prefers something, shall we say, robust. I suppose the ideal is about four feet long and perhaps three inches thick but the crucial factor in stick style is the way it is carried. It must be held at one end, not in the middle. I think Capone believes this is more flamboyant in the same way the way that a quiff or fringe sweeps back or a fighter pilot’s scarf flies to one side. Of course, even the most perfectly fashioned stick is merely debris on the ground until I have thrown it. Then it becomes the most exciting, the most important thing in life and if it is thrown into the sea he would swim until he sank before giving up the chase.
At the weekend we tackled Thorney Island, all the way around – an eight mile walk in a force eight gale. Out along a one mile dyke, straight as an arrow, then pass through the MOD security gate keeping to the public footpath beyond. The oystercatchers are still here on Thorney although in much smaller numbers but another mile or so on and we put up a roe deer. In the open, not as you usually see them in woods. It ran and Capone ran too but made my heart burst with pride when he responded immediately to the signal, dropped and looked back at me. We watched it run two, three hundred yards inland and continued on our way.
As you approach the most southerly point on Thorney you see to your right the end of Hayling Island and to your left, East Head at the tip of West Wittering. Between is open ocean and a direct line to the Falklands. A couple of months ago when we first made this journey, I spotted an Army Land Rover ahead and we found two men laying the foundations for a bench in memory of a “fallen comrade”. Now, the bench is there. It’s not the usual railway sleeper design. It’s much more elegant and the inscription reads “In memory of Steve Jones, 264 (SAS) Signals Squadron & the crew of ‘Hilton 22’”.
These were our boys, shot down just north of Baghdad three years ago. If I had a son who died a hero in the service of his country, I could think of no more poignant and intense place to remember him amidst the wind, the sea, the sky and the solitude.
Capone and I duly honoured their memory and sat for a cigarette, he accorded the privilege of sitting beside me on the bench for such a special occasion. We remembered them, lachrymose old Welshman that I am.
Thorney turns much warmer and gentler as you move to the east side away from the wind. Nearly seventy years ago, other young heroes took off from here during the Battle of Britain. Now the RAF sailing club provides the local excitement and past Thornham marina and Emsworth harbour back to the mainland.
A pint of beer never tastes better than when you deserve it. So with aching legs and an exhausted dog we made a brief stop at the Bluebell Inn before home for sustenance and sleep.
In the back garden lies a pile of sticks, proudly retrieved, collected and preserved. Out there in the wind and the rain a pile of sticks fashioned into a bench remembers much more than another walk with the dog.
Peter Reynolds 02-04-08
Peter Reynolds 