Making our own entertainment

Last night as I got on my bus, after going to my Irish class, and having discussed with a colleague some of the finer points of the language question over a patriotic pint on the eve of the Feast of St Patrick, I found to my pleasure a discarded copy of The Irish Times.

Have you ever tried to piece together a discarded copy of The Irish Times in the elbow-stifling confines of a Dublin Bus seat, with the glow of patriotism fizzing in your veins? Well it's hard, particularly in these days of the various "metro-seized" excrescences that pollute our daily lives, phenomena that have had a degenerating effect on the wrists of an entire generation of Irish newspaper-folders. The staples in the tabloid Irish Independent represent the infantilising effect of the modern world on a once-proud race.

Such thoughts served to steel me against the reluctance of the unruly newspaper as it dodged my grasp, defied my authority and wrestled to assert the power of chaos over civilisation. To begin with it seemed a simple task, a matter of finding the front page and folding it back from the inside to the outside. The wily rag would not be beaten so easily, however. For not only were the individual sections all over the place, they were folded in upon each other and assembled with such a disgusting disrespect for the moral and physical order of the world that they seemed the device of some diabolical agent of Chaos.

I was not put off. I am devoted to the principles of Apollo and messiness of any kind sets my heart to revolt. I improvised a cunning taxonomical method whereby I classified the contents of the newspaper not according to each segments general "feel" but by observing the order of the numerals printed on the top of each page. This effacement of personal taste in submission to a larger guiding principle is the very cornerstone of my artistic philosophy.

I managed then to arrange the business section and the cleverly inverted sports page, the pages dealing with World News, letters and Opinion and Analysis, Home News, Arts, Features and television. Some pages slipped to the floor and had to be retrieved; one had to be held in my mouth as I wrestled the broad pages into submission. More than once the whole thing fell apart and I will admit that more than once I was tempted to give in. Fellow passengers on the 44 bus may this morning count themselves privileged to have witnessed my struggle, physical and spiritual, with the renegade newspaper. It was a test of determination, dexterity and sheer guts to rope, wrestle and beat the paper bare of all its creases. By the time I applied an authoritative hand to smooth the broadsheet against the back of the bus seat, I was already in Dundrum and a little out of breath.

I sat, settled, and perused the dealings of the world, and my labours were rewarded because there was an article about a (sort-of) new play by celebrated English poet and dramatist William Shakespeare and an interesting thing about the current diplomatic crisis between the US and Israel.

Anyway, the point is - is this the way my dog thinks about the frenzied attacks he makes on the little corduroy coat which was a present from one of his admirers? If so he lives a very fulfilling life.

A Bone of Contention

Last night I found myself waiting up until nearly two while my dog was out having fun. He might as well have been guzzling vodka from a bottle concealed in the toilets of a teenage disco. I sat watching my grown-up television programme while he was off doing something in the garden. Occasionally I went out and called his name weakly, but all I could hear in the freezing dark was the dog running away from me, hiding from the majesty of my authority and snorfling away as he nibbled on a bone. I couldn't chase him in the dark and he absolutely refused to come when called, so I waited up muttering comforting words to myself until he decided to come in, at around what-kind-of-time-do-you-call-this.

Since the staking of a new fence in the back garden it has been a pleasure to let Freddie have the run of the garden. I believe it is good for his intellectual and moral development to conduct private research into the various smells to be found in the garden, the chewability of various sticks, etc, but he discovered a breach in security yesterday so I was concerned to keep an eye on him.

He was out there for nearly two hours, between Vincent Browne and the end of Mad Men, and no amount of cajoling would induce him to chew whatever he was chewing in the sociable warmth of the family hearth. I understand that a dog needs his private bone time, but it puzzled me that he should be quite so determined to remain outside.

Then I remembered that the bone he was working on - a very large bone for such a small dog, what looks like the swivelling ball of a cow's hip, shiny and perfectly round and covered with delicious gristle - was in the most literal sense possible, a bone of contention between us. I got it for him several weeks ago to reward his stout courage while getting his stitches out, and for a while it seemed that bone might have had him beaten. He had difficulty getting a purchase on the slick sphere of bone with his small jaws, and it seemed too heavy for him to carry comfortably. Frankly I was a little disappointed in the animal, that he should have let himself be bested by a bone, but I didn't think much of it when the thing seemed to disappear from the house, like an unused exercise machine.

Anyway, this was the same bone that turned up again last night and I was reminded that it had been the centre of an ugly scene between us. Some time in January I removed Freddie from the leather sofa in the kitchen, and I instructed him to take the bone with him (I'm not going to get into the appropriateness of otherwise of not wanting the leather sofa polluted by bits of bone right now). This was the first and only time that the dog growled at me in a non-playful way, the growl of a dog being separated from his bone. It has been argued that I should have let him be, but the principles of law and order in this house demanded that I smack him very sharply on the nose and throw him violently into a small dark room. (The fact that I collapsed in remorse and begged forgiveness as I released him a few minutes later does not detract from the forceful and decisive manner with which I responded to this threat to the social order.)

I don't know what to think about all this. Why did the bone resurface after so long? Could Freddie's refusal to work on his project indoors be related to the painful memory of our first fight? It's confusing. In any case I now have to find and act on this security breach, but I am glad that a) there was something on television while I kept my vigil and b) that the dog has finally shown himself the master of the recreant bone. Still it gives me a little pang of loss to think that I can never fully enter into the private thoughts of my poor old pup, although of course that is as it should be.

Domestication of the dog

I have just turned in the work that I was doing, so it's time to start paying attention to my poor old dog again.

When I first got Freddie, a friend was telling me about his determination to find a wife. He's a man in his early thirties and I suppose he considers it about time that he established a house and did his bit for the family line or something. Anyway, he accused me of in some way neglecting my duty to society by giving up on women in favour of this pup of mine. While it is flattering to think that what the country really needs in these difficult times is more of my genetic material in it, my immediate response was to scoff at my friend's rebuke, but maybe he had a point.

For a start, apart from various misguided mortgages and things, my domestic arrangement with my dog is the single biggest and longest-term commitment I have ever made. All going well, little Fred will live for another fifteen years or so and in the meantime I am responsible for him every day of his life. That's longer than a lot of marriages. Also, since I live alone, the dog is the thing I come home to. Walking him is the single constant in my daily routine, holidays if I have them have to be planned around him. We spend a lot of time together. We are in a sort of honeymoon period, granted, but we seem to have found a natural working rhythm to our days.

So does this mean I am married to my dog? I don't think so, but it is amazing how much sustenance the animal gives me and maybe it's not total nonsense to suggest that since I have a seemingly limitless supply of affection and hassle at home, I am less motivated to go out and wive. (And can we please, just for the moment, for once, leave the subject of sex out of this? Can we agree on that? Thank you.)

Hmm, reading back over that I do sound like some kind of cynical misogynist, which I hope I am not, but perhaps it does suggest a different model for my domestic arrangement. Rather than a marriage maybe what we have going on here is one of those old-fashioned households where two old bachelors sit and smoke pipes in the nineteenth century. Certainly Freddie is a confirmed bachelor, as in confirmed surgically.

The other way of looking at my relationship with this dog is as some kind of child-parent thing (this is the view propounded by a married friend, as yet with no kids). I can see the justness of the comparison, but I don't think it accords either of us much credit. Besides, the little savage would chew the nipples off me.