I thought I was getting good at dealing with this whole 'global pandemic for nearly a year also my dog died' thing, but January is always a bit of a sucker-punch mood wise, and lol-sob, this year is no exception.
I'd like to say I started the year gently, and I guess I did, though perhaps a Samaritans Shift from 2am – 6am was never going to be the easiest launch into 2021, especially given that shift mostly consisted of my most harrowing call to date. Luckily I'm made of (depressingly?) stern stuff when it comes to my work with Samaritans, so it was absolutely fine and I'm glad I could be there for the person concerned. Came home, slept, wore comfy trousers and had a burger. That bit was nice. Hi 2021.
At the start of the month we were still accompanied by our small soft chaos friend Max, the dachshund from Borrow My Doggy, who we were dog-sitting for three weeks over Christmas/New Year, as part of my ongoing 'I CANNOT COPE WITHOUT A DOG' post-Charlie processing. It was strange to have a new buddy so soon after Charlie and I spent a lot of time being sad that he wasn't Charlie, but also a lot of time enjoying his unparalleled ability to immediately fall asleep on any human surface for maximum soft-cuddle-warmth (something which Charlie, despite being the all time best boy, was a bit too twitchy for.) If there was anything I needed it was dog cuddles, and I'm glad Max was able to provide these, even if it did mean also having to deal with his several annoying habits, including chasing children on scooters, attempting to eat every random object he could find on the pavement and barking maniacally whenever he wanted attention (which was often)
The Spy Who Loved Me features one of my favourite villain's lairs of all time, but perhaps little else of note. Still we persist with our Sunday-night Bond marathon (there are a lot of them)
Ugggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Boris is back, and hey guess what, letting everyone (who chose to) see their families over Christmas was a terrible idea and now we all have to stay in our houses for another couple of months to try and stop thousands more people dying! Well fuck
Well Boris I'd love to oblige, but my small canine charge has decided he needs to prolifically vomit ELEVEN TIMES over the course of a couple of hours this evening, so (with massive thanks to housemate Tabitha for the ride), a trip to the emergency late night vets at great expense (his owner's tho, phew) it is.
Dachshunds are born scavengers, and more than likely he had eaten something random which gave him an acute tummy bug, but having LITERALLY LAST MONTH HAD MY DOG DIE OF POISONING (I mean come the fuck on, Max), which manifested with very similar symptoms, I wasn't taking any chances. (Why did I take chances with Charlie? Why did I think HE would be okay?! Fuck, it's still so easy to cry).
Anyway, the kind vet was able to confirm that Max was definitely NOT dying, just a bit of an idiot, an anti-emetic was administered, and he got to go home and sleep in the bed with us, which was [arched paws and evil cackle] all he'd wanted the whole time. Obviously I got no sleep whatsoever and lay awake staring at him and thinking about how Charlie died alone and how unbearable it is to think about, still, and how there's no avoiding the thought spiral once it starts.
Anyway, Max's owner got back the next day and I found myself quite pleased to hand him back over, thankyouverymuch.
I mean I guess maybe you'd think that whole experience would put me off the stress of dog stewardship, buuuuut...
This is Chase. And this is the ad which we saw, in Late December.
All the big shelters are overwhelmed by demand right now, and having been rejected by a Romanian shelter for not having a garden, I was basically despairing at the chances of me being able to welcome a new friend any time soon. The suddeness of Charlie's absence left me absolutely emotionally bereft, and I genuinely couldn't imagine any kind of contented existance with that void in my heart and home unfilled. So I turned to uh, slightly more nefarious dog-obtaining means... I wrote a bit last month about my Pets4Homes browsing strategy here, and though I wrote to a few people, only one person wrote back — Tracy, owner of Chase, the nearly-ten-year-old lurcher.
We agreed to go and meet Chase (this was pre full lockdown), and we fell in love with her at first sight, with some minor notes of caution. She seemed like a contented, well behaved girl, with a springiness of step surprising for her near decade of existence. The also seemed a bit smelly and slightly unkempt. The middle-aged couple who were selling her had known her for her whole life — she was intially raised as a working ferreting dog by them, and then had two litters of puppies while she was still quite young. Not long after her puppies, the couple's (early twenties, I assume) son wanted a pet, and they felt she would be a good house dog, so her took her on, and she lived with him, his wife, and their three young children in a house from then on. However, their son's marriage broke down, he couldn't take her with him to his new accommodation, and his now-ex-wife struggled to give Chase all the attention and care she needed (albeit not that much!) while looking after three young children in lockdown. The couple who met me had decided that, for her own good, they'd take her back, however they already have 5 (!) dogs of their own, working and pets, and don't really have the capacity for another, so they were looking for a new home for her — the price reflects the fact that she's old and they genuinely weren't in it for the money, and they sold her in this way because a) they couldn't bear the thought of her having to live in a shelter for a while, and b) they wanted to see who she'd be ending up with.
We got along, Chase seemed to like us well enough, so we agreed that as soon as Max was gone, we'd go and get her. In the event, my hero Dad went to get her in his car and bought her to us, as due to lockdown we couldn't really go on the train again to fetch her (She was just over an hour outside London). She was handed over as contactlessly as possible at both ends, and suddenly we had a large, confused (but very waggy) lurcher in our living room.
More on her later, obviously...
In the meantime, I got my partner the great cookbook 'Vegan Japaneasy' for Christmas, because of their love of Japanese food and recent decision to go vegan. As I should have expected from them by now, they took the gift VERY seriously and immediately proceeded to make a large quantity of various Japanese stocks and sauces, which made our fridge situation rather challenging, but was also very exciting to behold.
With new lockdown, it was confirmed that all of our university sessions will be online only until at least Easter (previously we were going in one morning a week, and had some days where we could access workshops). We've been doing online shops for a while which means with the exception of dog walks and mini-top-up grocery runs, the only reason I leave the house is for my Samaritans shifts in Oxford circus.
I covered a different shift to my usual ones — the 6.30 – 9am shift. The tube on the way in at around 6 was quite busy, full of people obviously on their way to work.
However, perhaps unsurprisingly, the tube home at just after 9 was absolutely deserted. As I walked along a completely silent Oxford Circus platform waiting for my train, my ears were slowly filled with the dead, flat drone of ventilation fans, and as I turned to look round the corner into one of the connecting tunnels, I was confronted by a woman, entirely draped in many many layers of fabrics, her face completely covered, standing next to the giant vents, warming herself.
The fabric covering her head was a striking blue pattern, and something about the eerie silence of the platform coupled with suddenly seeing this tired, cold, homeless woman, alone, unaware, desperately trying to stay warm, against the dull drone of the dusty black vents.
I don't know. It's hard to draw. It's hard to see.
Moonraker is one of the dumbest Bond movies and maybe [whisper it] my favourite?!
For the first few days Chase was with us, she stubbornly (though politely) refused to eat, subsisting only on a couple of slowly chewed denta-sticks and a reluctantly consumed can of cheap dog food. I got the fear — is she actually really ill?! Did her old owners con me into taking a sick dog at death's door (yet she's so perky and sweet otherwise?!)
I tried her with 5 different kibbles (because I would really much rather she ate kibble as it's much more practical and better for her than wet food), but the only one she'd even consider was a small sample pack of incredibly expensive loch-salmon kibble that I'd once got with an order of Charlie's old food and never got round to giving him.
Even that was only eaten grudgingly and in small quantities, but I texted her old owners who confirmed that she was indeed a fussy eater, and they'd been sweetening the deal with fresh mince atop her regular kibble.
Well I'm sorry Chase, that absolutely ain't happening in this house. The luxury goob days are over.
Once she'd had a vet checkup to confirm there was nothing medically wrong with her (apart from an unrelated little touch of stiffness in her back which may be the beginnings of arthritis, but fine, she IS 10), we just persisted with the fancy salmon goobles, and one can a day of meaty chunks.
I am pleased to report that she is now happily consuming these things to her own, slightly obtuse daily routine, which is extremely alien to me post Charlie, who would eat anything and everything, immediately, whenever and wherever it was presented to him.
Chase on the other hand, prefers to skip breakfast, eventually considering a couple of mouthfuls of kibble around mid morning. Finally at lunchtime she gives us a couple of gentle nudges, at which point we give her a tin of canned food, which she eats approximately 3/4 of (but only if it is served to her in small increments, if we put it all out at once, it is refused). The remaining 1/4 is offered again around our dinner time, which she finally deigns to eat, possibly accompanied by a couple more mouthfuls of kibble. Then eventually, after her brief outing for night-wee at around 11 at night, she will finally gleefully consume an entire bowl of kibble, but only if I sit and watch her. Oh, and she will only eat if she is served in the living room.
Well FINE. (We really like her, so this is okay)
A cute collage because I had A GOOD DAY AT UNI (woah what) — we began a short (3 week) project led by guest lecturers, and I opted for a workshop run by Common Knowledge on (loosely) design for activism and thinking about design practice in the context of communities. This was much closer to my areas of experience, and I realised with some small pride that after an entire career feeling guilty that I don't do enough design for activism, I've actually done a big old pile of design for activism over the years, and continue to do so. Not to get complacent or anything, but it actually motivated me to realise that this is something I DO have some experience of in a more meaningful way than I had originally realised, and I really enjoyed learning about it in a slightly more thinky way that actually felt USEFUL and PRACTICAL and TANGIBLE (not just about trying to read/write the most pretentious word-soup possible as much of this course has done so far, which increasingly makes me think I'm not cut out for MA level study and was deluding myself to believe I could be in the first place but HEY OH WELL HERE WE ALL ARE)
It rains a lot less in London than it did in Yorkshire but it still rains, and I for one, hate it (though with every day that passes I am happier with the big stupid unflattering duvet coat I bought back at the start of winter)
I haven't done a Samaritans shift since this day. It was feeling bad either way. To not go in is to leave desperate callers waiting on the line longer, but to keep doing it felt ever more perilous given the rate in London is over 1 in 30, and with my housemate Tabitha now working on the frontline with COVID patients in her role as an NHS researcher, I felt increasingly like *I* could end up being a risk factor if I caught it from her and unknowingly took it into the centre. So I'm taking a leave of absence for a month or two, until the transmission rate in London is a bit more under control.
This feels like the right decision but it also means my world has got even smaller — I know for many people it's been like this for a long time already, but I cannot overstate how much I valued my roughly weekly train ride into central London. But so it goes. Fuck the Tories, man.
I did a drawing just like this of Charlie not long after we got him (see it here, on the 11th) It became one of my favourite drawings I'd ever done of him, and really shaped the way I came to draw him subsequently (as you can see from the other drawings in that month, I hadn't really got to grips with how to depict him yet). I found myself wrestling with similar with Chase, I haven't quite managed to capture her shape, texture or expression in any of my drawings so far, and she's very different in every way from Charlie, (and dogs are hard in general for me). So I made this little Chase summary based on everything we know about her so far. I like it.
For Your Eyes Only is a perfectly acceptable middle of the road Roger-Moore era Bond movie. One of its highlights is the use of the EXTREMELY HIGH TECH 'Identigraph'
Probably could and should have done something better than this to mark the occasion, but let's face it, it's all a little tainted at the moment given that I nearly got made redundant a couple of months ago and now only work there one day a week, but... 10 YEARS IN MY JOB! Which presumably either shows intense dedication or an intense lack of ambition. Or maybe both 🙃 Here's to the next 10! (I'm kind of not even joking, continuing to work there 1 – 2 days a week is a nice thing that I genuinely still enjoy for as long as they'll have me)
Nonetheless, took advantage of the university's careers advice sessions to ponder on what the other side of the MA might look like, which amounted to having a woman who was probably 5 years younger than me asking whether I have a website, and do I keep my linkedin up to date? 😑
Though the workshop was fun, me and my team (ugh, teamwork, amirite guys? Though to be fair to them, I quite like my team buddies) totally misinterpreted what was required of us the first time round. In the words of one of the tutors [slightly apologetically] 'It's an MA, it's meant to be hard?'
My partner made tempura and it was great but I ate way too much and felt bad for nearly 2 days, lolsob
Octopussy is BAD and makes absolutely no sense.
One thing we're finding quite disconcerting is that Chase basically sleeps for about 20 hours a day. And it's... fine?! A combination of her age and her breed (sighthounds like greyhounds and lurchers and whippets tend to sleep a lot) means that this is just how she likes to chill, and unlike Charlie, who could go from fast asleep to I AM HERE AND I NEED TO KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING in approximately 0.1 seconds, she just... DGAF. It's kind of refreshing and kind of hilarious how much persuasion it takes her to just do basic stuff like COME FOR A WEE and EAT YOUR DINNER — I mean why would you when you could just lie on the sofa and sleep, right? Big mood Chase. I envy her tbh.
(Though it's also worth noting that you don't get a dog called 'Chase' without having some sense of what that might mean in the context of cats and squirrels and other greyhounds)
I cannot overstate how much I would like to literally just lop my breasts right off if I could afford to.
She's really beautiful and I can't wait for a time when you can all meet her.
Stubbed my toe SPECTACULARLY badly to the point where I was genuinely convinced for about a day that I'd broken it, but I think it probably was just a sprain after all. Ughhhhh BODIES.
An ongoing series I call 'here's my art' (got my first term assessment results back and IT WAS FINE, including the phrase "Essay is very good and promising, showing evident abilities to think critically"
!!!!
(Though it did also say "Parts of your writing are too descriptive." Well I'm sorry but WELCOME TO THE EMMA CLUB) (Yes yes fine)
Back to that old low mood thing. But it's not like I've known before, and there's obvious reasons for that. I know that deep deep down inside me there's a solid core of 'I'm okay', which I've been lucky to not yet have shaken, even at the very worst of times. But I do feel like there are parts of me that are slowly being chipped away, and I wonder whether they will ever come back? I worked very hard for a number of years on being brave. On saying yes to every opportunity. On being spontaneous. On travelling... Even though my deepest insticts were those of fear, and caution, and anxiety, and a need for stability and constancy. This year has made my world so much smaller and I can feel that those parts of myself I worked so hard on developing are fading away with every week I spend hiding. Will I ever get them back? The thought of getting on a 12 hour plan feels nightmarish and unimaginable. Even a short day trip down to the seaside feels anxiety fraught and stressful to imagine. Maybe this is the bit of my life where some people settle down and have children, except fuck having children, I'm just going to have a dog and stay home every night playing computer games. But it all happened much too suddenly to feel natural, to feel like a choice.
Or maybe this is just the pessimism of [checks] 320 days of this, and I'll come out the other side mentally unscathed. But will any of us? Really?
Well, let's press on and find out, eh.
