(This post follows on from Prologue.)
A photograph of a tricolour Border Collie on Gumtree, this was the first time I’d ever used that platform. The ad read he needed a home through no fault of his own.
“Through no fault of your own” I said, peering into the screen, falling in love. I dialled the number and, later that day, asked my brother-in-law if he’d visit.
That evening, Anthony called. “He’s really friendly. But he stinks. Oof.”
The next morning, in the hours before M and I set off, I’d a mind’s eye map of the place, an hour on Google, Wikipedia, this and that app. Dead End Farm was on an island, surrounded by river. In Rivers Arise1, circa 1628, Milton wrote this river as being like an “earth-born Giant” spreading “His thirty Armes along the indented Meads.” As we neared our destination, I could well imagine swollen banks and flooded meadows.
We turned off the carriageway, drove over a narrow high-sided bridge. I pointed to a tall, brick building on our right, wondered it hadn’t toppled into the river, and pictured a circus procession. Spotted horses, mules, clowns and acrobats. I pushed away thoughts of Bengal tigers, polar bears, elephants. Whips.
“They made showmen’s wagons there. And wagons for travelling menagerie. 1900 or thereabouts.2”
Our eyes locked before I’d got out of the car. Alfie trotted over, accompanied by a short-haired, barrel-shaped bitch with a lopsided sneer. They vied for attention and, as if Alfie knew this was his opportunity alone, saw her off. He turned to me and smiled, we said hello.
Do you spend your nights swaddled in a rotting carcass?
I roll in stuff, he replied.
Alfie lived in the stable where he was born, had never set foot inside a house, was unfamiliar with stairs. He’d a congenital heart defect and a grade six heart murmur. His left ear was bald: localised demodectic mange. I ran my hands over his spine, could feel the individual bones of his vertebrae. Alfie was chipped, but he’d never worn a collar, never been immunised. We didn’t know any of this before we met at Dead End Farm. Most of it, I’d learn from the veterinary in the days that followed.
Dead End Farm had last seen industry as a forge. The blacksmith was, I’d learn, retired, and down on his luck. He looked like a character from a western film: tall, weathered, wearing a cheap black suit.
“I’ve been to a funeral,” he said, as the dust eddied around his shoes.
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Renascence Editions. An Online Repository of Works Printed in English Between the Years 1477 and 1799. Milton: Shorter poems in English. At <https://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/lycidas.htm>; accessed Wednesday 31 October 2018
“George Orton, a wheelwright and coach builder by trade, was born in 1843 at Measham, Leicestershire. Charles Spooner, a wood carver, was born in Burton-on-Trent in 1871.” At <https://www.fairground-heritage.org.uk/learning/orton-spooner/> accessed: Thursday 25 October 2018.
Excellent ❤️
Brilliant. X