Nails

It's 1980-something and I'm ensconced in the therapist's chair in Weesp, NL. The voice drones on in the background. Her accent is irritating me because I asked her to speak English as I ‘hear’ that better without having to concentrate… but I forgot I’d then have to contend with the Dutch accent, silly of me. 

‘Just listen to my voice, concentrate on only my voice…’ only I’m hearing ‘Joost leesten to mai voois, coancentrate oan oanly mai voois…’ so that’s all I can concentrate on, the accent.

It was a complete bust. The whole ‘get hypnotised to stop that bad habit’ gig (nail-biting in my case - I'd heard it worked for smokers) really was a complete disaster and I never did go back. I don’t think I even drifted off at all. No, I know I didn’t, but I sort of pretended I did, which is stupid really. I was embarrassed to tell her, after sitting there with one hand sort of hanging in midair the whole time (‘…coancentrate oan yoh hend…’) and figured she’d tell me I was too ‘under’, so didn’t want the argument. There was the whole ‘you will think you are awake but you won’t be’ argument to it all and I really didn’t want the confrontation. Wimp or what?

I’ve tried all sorts to curb the nail-biting and general finger-gnawing throughout my whole lilfe. I know how ridiculous it is that I still do it and do manage the odd interval when my hands are presentable, but stopping entirely doesn’t seem to be on the cards. The nasty stuff on your fingers, the varnishing the nails, paying loads for manicures, the plain 'stop fecking your fingers up!'... the lot. The hypnotising episode was years and years ago and not to be repeated. The best I’ve done over the years was using falsies. They do look fabulous, for the short duration. I find, though, they tend to actually ruin what nails you have, so while a great temporary fix, rather defeating the purpose.

With the wedding coming up I’ve set myself a goal. Nice nails… my own nails… in time for the wedding. Coupled with the diet to fit into the already bought outfit, I have given myself quite the task, I know. I figure though, if I can make this happen, I’ll be the bee's knees around here. There’s probably a long list of irritants that P him off with a capital P but the ugly nails can set him off on the best of days. I get it! I don’t disagree! 

I have been working on the too many paracetamols (going brilliantly, have to say), I’m doing the tricks to stop the coughing (who knew there were tricks!) and I’m honestly trying to lose the weight - swimming, exercising, dieting as such… shurrup… but working at it - so all (ALL) I really need now is the nails shit sorted.

This wedding better happen this year!! Two years of Coronavirus snookered the plans twice already (hence the outfit already chosen) so this has to be third time lucky. The planning, the hoping, the subsequent cancellations - it has been really rotten! Not even so bad for me personally, in the grand scheme of things, but bad enough.

It’s going to be fab this year though and we’re all going to look fandabidosy. Kilts are involved, flights and accommodation all booked... the anticipation, extended as it has been, is killing! As MotB I will be properly representative of my ilk, with nice nails, hopefully my own for once in my life. There will be photographic evidence.

Watch this space.

Coltbridge

This is all true… or maybe not entirely correctly remembered, but mostly described as it happened. I mean, it's not one of my stories.

Before we married, me at eighteen, him just turned twenty, we found ourselves a place to call home in a ridiculously tiny flat in Coltbridge, Edinburgh. Down and around a corner, in a sort of mews, I’m not sure if it was Place, or Terrace or Avenue, but whichever. A cabinet maker had his business right next to our stair door. I may or may not have taken the place at all if I’d understood that a cabinet maker made coffins. Well, who knew?

Ours was ground floor, with the bedroom window looking into the mews and the living room window looking onto a little patch of green at the back, below the bridge crossing a shallow stretch of the Water of Leith only yards away at the bottom of the garden. Our only access was through the window, but I planted crocus and daffodil bulbs in the grass, hoping to cheer the place up in the spring.

I wrote elsewhere of how our cats used this window for easy access but it was J’s access I’m speaking of here. I also mentioned how ridiculously small the place was? I’m not exaggerating, but we loved it. The tiny kitchen was basically just a gas cooker with a sink next to it, and bunker opposite, with cupboards below. Room to turn around between the two, with the cat bowls on the floor. The living room was perhaps three by four metres if that. We did have a bathroom, with a bath I might add, crammed next to the loo and a sink overhanging the bath. The bed, which came with the place, along with the wardrobe, wasn’t that big but the door hit it when you entered. The wardrobe door didn’t fully open either as it hit the bed on the other side. You could just squeeze past the window at the bottom of the bed. Seriously, the space was cramped. But still, it was our place.

Our first New Year's Eve as a married couple, we had the gang over. At some point, after sufficient lubrication, the slapping game erupted. This is where the men are shirtless and they take turns at slapping each other across the chest and back and arms. The point being to see who can land a proper handprint on the other, hence the bare chests. There is no winner, only a whole lot of laughter. Hysteria ensued, not least from one of the other girls who was upset to see her man so… manhandled. It was really hysterically funny, both the yells from the boys as her blubbing. It was just fun! Insane fun, but still. There’d be one flexing his fingers, ready for revenge for the slap he was clearly portraying across his back, and the other now cringing, waiting on it. Even if you hadn’t landed a good one, you were obliged to take the revenge slap. Eventually, it did all calm down, much more alcohol was consumed, to numb the pains perhaps… and J and a couple of the others took a shower to cool off their burning skin.

It was the wee sma oors by now and things were winding down so everyone was getting their coat (wriggling past to even put them on - wee place and all!) and they all headed out the door. J was still, miraculously, wrapped in a towel at his waist as we sat at the window, waving to them as they crossed the bridge, heading into town and home. I should perhaps have been more alert, but it was after all the end of a long and heady night. It was cold at the open window, it was Hogmanay after all, and I did warn him to be careful as he swung his legs over the sill…

…to jump down into the grass, leaving the towel in my hand. He was now dancing a merry jig over the grass to hoots of laughter from both me and every one of our pals on the bridge overhead. Naked as the day he was born. I knew there was no stopping him so could only laugh as he pranced towards the edge of the water. ‘No.. don’t!! It’s freezing!’ but there was no stopping the bold boy as he skipped merrily into the water. We were all ending ourselves as he splashed around, suddenly to realise just how cold it was. He darted past me with the towel in my hand on the grass and threw himself in the window, narrowly escaping serious damage to his bits which had sensibly retreated into hiding. He was yowling with laughter though and as I myself climbed in behind him, the crew waved and left… I could hear them still laughing until they were well out of sight.

I don’t remember how it all went after the window was closed. I honestly have no memory of how I got him to bed, or if perhaps he just lay on the floor until returning to his senses next day? Anything is possible. It had been a wild night, I’m sure I threw myself into bed right away, but honestly, don’t really remember.

I’ve always wished one of us had had a camera that night. For the slapping, the crying and for them all standing on the bridge, laughing fit to burst, and for the ghostly white figure of a drunken man dipping himself in the Water of Leith on New Year’s morning of 1974. I have the images burned into my brain though, they’ll do.

We didn’t stay there for very long. Six months I think we managed? It was way too expensive for us really, despite the size of the place. We were gone before the spring so I never did see if my bulbs came up… with luck they carpet the place, almost fifty years later, although someone will have dug the place over since, probably.

J’s reputation as a go-go dancer followed him for many years, and he has 'obliged' at odd intervals, although kept his kecks on, mostly, thank goodness. There is film, somewhere, to be released one of these days, perhaps for money. Alcohol was always involved, of course, so probably won’t happen again any time soon because those kind of events are pretty few and far between at our age, but never say never. He’s never been shy, so alcohol actually needn’t be a requisite, to be fair. I sometimes think that he and Billy Connolly are related, because BC is always getting his kit off for a prance in the snow or around Stone Henge or something. Oh, just remembered one J did in Spain… haha, but that’s another story.

Feelings

I asked friends to send me ‘first lines’ to write a story around. I got quite a few, that project is ongoing. Then I asked for a ‘subject’ as some of the first lines are hard! The only one there that came in was from C… ‘Feelings’. I think I can work with that, but not for a story. So I’m writing this blog on it.

We all have them of course, excepting the psychopaths among us. We all have to contend with them at times! (Hah, we have to contend with psychos too!) Sometimes, perhaps mostly, it’s nice. Contentment is a nice one. Joy and Happiness, of course. Relief is good. It’s when the negative ones impact on our lives that we notice them most, of course. Contentment, happiness… those are easy and practically unnoticeable when you are contented and/or happy. It’s when you lose them, only to have them replaced by sadness, misery, worry, grief… when they take over, well then we notice them all too much. When you’re elated, or just quietly happy, you don’t really think about if it will ever end. When the bad feelings arrive, you’re sure they never will end. Funny that.

Animals have feelings too. Of course, they do. Some manifestly more than others, sure. Nobody hears the screams of the daddy-longlegs you pull the legs off! Yet, anyone who sees a dog in the shelter (for instance) and denies it’s pain or sorrow or fear, or doesn’t believe that cow is scared going down the ramp in the slaughterhouse - I’d say they’re high on the psycho spectrum. Humans don’t have a monopoly on pain although we are usually better at showing it when it is not immediately obvious. If you have (had) a dog, you’ll have learned to see the signs that are not always evident. They handle things differently is all.

Me, I call my pain threshold uber-low! Gimme the drugs! I have never seen the point in being stoic. I’ll yell it out with the best of them if the dentist is hurting me. I’m not about to make his day good when he’s ruining mine! There are different circumstances and different levels of hurt, but I truly believe keeping it internal when it is too much *for you*… psychological hurt too… is detrimental to health. I don’t go crying all over the place when I can keep it in. I mean, I wouldn’t frighten the kids, lying about, languishing in bed with a damp cloth on my forehead at the least twinge, but if you stamp on my foot, accidentally or not, I’m not going to be polite about it.

Some feelings overwhelm the most stoic though. Of course. Grief is the pits. Grief has various ways of manifesting and it can hit you right away or it can simmer on a low peep and suddenly grab you by the throat when you least expect it. I’m not a follower of the ‘7 stages’ theory. Not if I’m honest. I don’t think things like that can be proscribed, so don’t see the point in classifying it. In retrospect, the categories sound legitimate, credible, sure. It’s just, if I was grieving right now, really grieving, I’d be annoyed too (a useful feeling!), wondering which stage people thought I was in. Of course, no one is saying things go chronologically, or that you have to feel this way *today*, it’s just the whole pigeon-holing I don’t like.

Grief is a very personal thing. It’s comparable to what makes you laugh, in a way. You often cannot explain why a particular thing is funny when the person next to you sees nothing funny in it. Grief can cripple the one, yet leave the other sad while not unduly bothered. There are levels. My grief for a pet, my grief for a friend, a family member… they could all be equally horrendous and sincere yet totally different from someone else, ‘equally’ affected. Different each time too. The time for the grief to kick in, the length of time it lasts, the intensity… it can all vary, every time.

Gratitude… is that a feeling? Yeah eh? I’m sure it helps to ‘quantify’ grief somewhat. Gratitude for the time you had with the one you’ve lost. Gratitude to those around who are helping you, knowing the depth of your grief. Gratitude that you had affairs in order that will take the load off, when things settle. That kind of thing. Solitude though, that feeling of being alone, that’s a biggy. That one must be hard to control for a long time if, say you lose a life partner. Guilt… that’s always a hard feeling to cope with in whatever circumstance. Even when it is entirely unjustified that you should feel at all guilty.

Hatred, anger, disbelief, abandonment… they’re all negatives that are surely difficult to shake off. I think, I do believe, that people are fundamentally meant to be happy. It’s our default setting. All the negatives put everything out of kilter and can make us ill, and yet they are so obstinate and enduring. It’s not that I believe in denying them! Not at all. Negatives can be useful at times, I’m sure. We need to feel a measure of pain to know that something is not right. It’s the all-consuming, suffocating negatives that even when battered with your strongest painkillers of whatever ilk… they still tend to prevail. Those are the ones everyone needs help with, with Patience, Love, Understanding, Friendship, Time… all of that. Hmm, Time, I don’t think falls under ‘feelings’… but you get my drift.

I’m a sucker for sad films, sad stories… anything to have a wee greet at really. Yet if I was actually grieving I know I wouldn’t want to see any of it. I know none of it would compare and I would be annoyed at the audacity of people pretending, acting out, how it is to be… well, me. I have grieved, I know. I know how it totally sucks that everyone else’s lives just go on like yours isn’t at its lowest right now.  I remember thinking ‘how dare they!’ Don’t they know how I hurt? I remember how every single thing on the telly was impossible to watch because it indirectly or perhaps even directly, referred to my situation. Somehow. At one point, I remember having just lost my dad, Dave Allan's sketch about a coffin rolling down a hill... hysterical in other circumstances... seared my eyeballs at the time. World affairs did not matter. A nuclear explosion could happen a mile off and I *could not* have noticed nor cared less. Of course, that’s an exaggeration, but it’s to illustrate how isolated, how totally muffled, insensate, grief and all its associate feelings can make you feel.

I do think grief, and all its inherent negatives, is essential too though. A ‘rite of passage’ perhaps. Not that you need to experience it if nothing particular happens in your life to cause it, but that when it does, you ‘should’ grieve. As it befits *you*. Nobody else, no prescribed stages to be followed, just how you feel. With all your feelings. Wallow in them even. Have a good soak in them. Take as long as you like. I’ve read of people saying ‘oh you must be over things now eh?’ and personally would be livid at such a (paraphrased) suggestion. That and ‘buck up’ or similar. I will decide, I think?!

So, feelings eh? Emotions. Empathy being high up on that list… normal people (and lots of animals) need them. We need to experience them. Even the negatives, even at their worst. We just need to know there is an end to the bad ones. And there is. Always. The worst will eventually be but memories. Nice memories will drown the bad ones, or at any rate, take the edge off. Grief too fades, the pain gets less, only to resurface on anniversaries, imagined or otherwise. Not because we have forgotten, but because we have learned to live with them. The good stuff becomes more prevalent and inevitably, life goes on. I'm in no way saying how anyone else should 'feel'. Just, say it, with feeling. Life does go on.

Sonny

I’ve possibly mentioned him before. Have I?

He was such a mad dog. Mad in a good way. Ostensibly my sister’s dog, she brought home this ridiculous beast, still a puppy, but big with it, and named Popeye because of the patch around his eye. Well, that wasn’t happening! So we named him Sonny, after Sonny Liston, if I remember correctly. He was at least part Boxer, so it fitted.

Sis left the country shortly after so we all took turns at taking him out from our top-floor tenement house. Not often enough though and probably not far enough. Sonny took it upon himself to run away at every opportunity because we were so lax in our duties, but he always came back. Until one day he didn’t. Days he was gone, and we were all inconsolable, until the knock at the door. A policeman carried him in and laid a very sorry, quite badly injured Sonny on his blanket. Dad must have asked about him at the police station or something? I don’t really know. He was by now dad’s dog of course, but we all loved him and I’m sure there were inquiries made at the Dog and Cat home, that kind of thing.

I don’t know what had happened to him and we’ll never know, but there was a huge wound on one back leg. It took ages to heal and might well have required stitching but who had money for vets in those days? Maybe they did take him to the vet? I don’t know. Suffice to say he was coddled and petted and spoon-fed for a couple of weeks. Carried downstairs for his business and carried back up until he was his old self again and back to eating like he’d never had a meal in his life, chasing his plate across the floor and wolfing it all. Every time!

While still young, he was badly mauled by a much bigger Boxer while I had him on the leash. He hated that dog forever and was totally cowed by him. Another giant black Labrador at the end of the street hated him and would take every chance at getting him, his owner holding desperately onto his leash and being pulled along. It wasn’t always fun to have poor Sonny out on the leash. It wasn’t that he was aggressive, just that other dogs hated him for some reason. So it seemed.

One early Christmas he found my presents before I was up and my baby-doll lost her hands and was left with punctured arms before I even saw her. Dolly sits on top of my cupboard yet, gloves hiding her damaged arms as a reminder of Sonny. Not sure they bother her. Dad tarted him up with a bow-tie at New Year and he seriously liked it, showing off to all first-footers. Although it might have been because they gave him treats.

He loved going on holiday and I have memories of running up the hills with him in Burntisland, Sonny way ahead. We walked the whole place together then, day after day. Along to Petticur Bay and back too. We were always out and about when over there. He’d go racing through the bracken on the hills and disappear for ten minutes, coming back with a stick far too big for comfort. He sent me flying, one day on the links. Right up in the air I was, landing with a thump on my tailbone. Pest was licking my face and still jumping around, not realising I was crying and in pain. He’d come firing into me from behind, just trying to catch me.

We were still not the best at walking him in town, but for a couple of years, he was my passport to getting out at 9pm when the news came on. J would be waiting downstairs for me as Sonny waggled downstairs as fast as he could, peeping all the while, to get out and lift a leg before he couldn’t keep it in any more.

There had been talk of getting shot of him. He hadn’t been the best behaved, having practically eaten two brand new mattresses, and witness, Dolly. He emptied the bin at regular intervals and you basically couldn’t leave him alone so, he got his own ‘room’. Forget getting rid! A box-room, storage with an old tea chest and blanket for him to lie with. It got so he liked going in it every night for bed and knew to remind us he was there of a morning. The door had deep scratches from his early days in there, but it was only locked when he would otherwise be alone. He honestly didn’t mind. We got him a cat, my cat, for the company and after a while, he didn’t really need to be in there at all, but it was his night-time spot. Until we moved out of town.

My 9pm slots were history, but that’s another story. For Sonny, it was paradise. He was out in the country now. Who needed walked? Dad would just open the door and say ‘come back in half an hour you!’ and he’d take off. He became well known around there and he wasn’t so much a stray dog as a local dog. He became well known at dad’s local too, where he’d get a half pint in a bowl and a packet of crisps just for him. He came home with evidence of a fight often enough, but still knew where home was. I wasn’t there much but it was my bed he slept on when I was. Wasn’t allowed, but rules were for other dogs. He guarded me and a friend one time when we were out with him and approached by a creep. Threatening to set Sonny on anyone would keep the worst away for sure. Despite his silly black eye and the one brown patch on his white back, and his ridiculous wiggle to wag his roughly docked tail, this boxer/bull terrier cross was all muscle and loyal with it.

I made a proper birthday cake for J one day – a work of art, iced properly and all -  and he was coming out to our place for his tea. A rare occasion. I met him off the bus and when we got in, Sonny was on the table, demolishing the cake and looking more than pleased with himself. A whole cake! He did the same with Easter Eggs one year if I remember rightly. Just a few bits of cardboard and chocolate all over his face as evidence they’d ever been there. The dog was a hoover, a mincer, a grinder and a garbage disposal on legs, with teeth! He may or may not have had stomach problems with his penchant for eating stuff that really wasn’t good for him, but if it was more than gas, it never really transpired.

After I left home, and took my cat with me, it came about that a family with kids just down the street were enamoured of him because he just inveigled himself into their home. They knew he was ‘our’ dog and would bring him home to start with, but dad was sick and mum had her hands full. She knew it was nice for him to have kids around. He so loved kids. So, still our dog, he more or less lived with them. He didn’t seem to like going in to see dad, knowing he was sick, but would come and visit and hear dad give him a ‘ya bah!’ and leave again. He barely stayed in our house now.

The weekend dad died, Sonny was off on his holidays. A caravan with the other family. They later said he’d been pining and out of sorts all day and at one point had started howling. They hadn’t been able to console him so had had to bring him home. He’d known. How, we’ll never know, but he’d known his man was gone and he was upset. He came in, sniffed around, and promptly sat at the door to get out again. Never lived in ‘our’ house again and lived out his days with the family up the road.

I was about 25 when he died and he’d been around since I was about ten so when mum phoned to tell me, even though I hadn’t seen him in years, I was well cut up. I have very few pictures of him, but his image is branded on my retinas and I won’t forget him. Pest of a dog, he was the best. Always licking himself and making a horrible noise doing it, and grossing people out with wind at inappropriate times (when you were eating!) but he gave the best welcome home ever and never once growled at us or any other child.

It’s funny how we remember our pets. Sonny is still a huge marker on my early life at ‘home’ and I know other people have similar memories of growing up with a favourite. We had lots of pets throughout the years but he (and my cat, his companion) were my proper initiation into the world of animals. Rodents and birds don’t count as much. Horses didn’t either. Just Sonny.

We didn’t have a dog all the time our own kids were growing up, for various reasons, and it wasn’t until the girls left home that we took on a rescued dog which, again, changed our lives. For the better, for sure. It’s what they do. We should have had them when the girls were small. We had two more after her, all female, (sorry Sonny but you put me off boy dogs with the licking!) and they were a joy, an enrichment in our lives. No question. None now though, you are freer to travel when you want, without a pet… and man, they do die on you, which kills you.

So, Sonny. I’m sure he had no idea the kind of mark he made on us. On me anyway. Never properly trained, he preferred just to trail you behind him on his leash. His best trick was sit and give a paw, which, after all, ain’t much. He understood dad’s gibberish commands though, no doubt, and did listen when he spoke. The connection there was more than just ‘man and his dog’ – they did win a prize as ‘dog most like his owner’ once! – and we, all of us, were just extras in his whole theatre production. I like to think he had a good life with us, after his bad start, whatever it was that put him in the shelter to start with. Well, I know he did. He only moved on when there were none of us around to coddle him. He needed that coddling and just went and found it for himself. Like any smart dog would.

And he was smart. Not annoyingly smart that you could show him off, but street smart. The best of dogs. Our dog. Sonny.