one on a grown-up’s grave positioned near the great wrought-iron gates at the entrance and which I copied into my diary.
Remember well as you go by,
As you are now, so once was I. As I am now so shall you be. Prepare yourself to follow me.
I never failed to read it as we passed the grave and never failed to be absolutely terrified by it. We would run home to the warmth and safety of my mother’s kitchen and her wasted words of advice.
‘Of course you’re not going to die. They didn’t have such good doctors in those days. And if it upsets you so much, don’t go there.’ But for most of our walks I was irresistibly drawn to what Dad always tried to make me laugh by calling ‘the dead centre of Barnsley’. Not funny. Not funny at all.
An alternative route was the lane opposite my grandmother’s house which led to a bridge over the railway line and then the river. We would pause on the bridge and wait for a train to pass, the steam puffing up and over us. I loved it and the promise of bigger and better places it offered. Taffy hated it and would cower at my feet until the roaring noise was well past. But he loved the river. He swam and rolled around in the muddy banks whilst I paddled in the shallow water, dipping a fishing net in among the weeds and bringing out tiddlers and sticklebacks.
I had a jam jar with string tied around the neck for ease of carrying and at the end of the afternoon we’d carry our prize home to my mother’s ‘Don’t bring that smelly jar in here, and keep that dog outside – he’s filthy.’ We both had to hover around by the back door, whatever the weather, until she found time to turn on the hosepipe and give him a shivering wash down. He leapt at the warm, dry towel I proffered – old and tattered and kept for the job – and revelled in a good rub down.
I learned a lot from Taffy. As I grew older and struggled with the inevitable anxieties and tensions of the teenage years, he became my confidant when I realised that secrets told to a dumb animal were much less likely to be passed on than if they were told to someone you’d thought you could trust as a friend.
I discovered that kindness, low-voiced firmness and bribery tend to achieve far more than shouting, screaming or smacking. He would do anything he was asked as long as there was a treat clutched in my hand. He taught me that having a sense of humour was the best way of dealing with any sadness or worry. A dog has an uncanny ability of turning a lonely moment into one where there’s a companion who never takes life too seriously for too long. Taffy had the trick, as Butch does now. A head cocked to the side, ears erect, eyes full of love and mischief – one could even say a cheeky grin. You can’t stay miserable when faced with such innocent enthusiasm.
Taffy even managed to make me laugh during one of the greatest moments of shame and humiliation in a now rather long lifetime. I must have been 10 or 11 and, even though by now he was at least five years old, he hadn’t grown out of his puppy habit of gobbling up anything he found on the floor, no matter how seemingly unappetising. We’d just left the house and were walking along the pavement on our way for a tour around the cemetery with Mum (I’d persuaded her it was an interesting place to visit) when he desperately needed the toilet.
The mystery of what had happened to the stocking my mother had said was missing from under her bed was revealed. The only way we managed to get the whole thing out was for me to step on it as it emerged and my mother to walk him away from me. Passers by looked on in open-mouthed astonishment as my mother and I giggled, red-faced, and tried to explain we were not indulging in a perverse form of doggy torture. Taffy looked round at me with a look of grateful and slightly shameful thanks. I was helpless with laughter.
I also found that even the most devoted and faithful companion needs a life of his own. It was probably genetic, given his father was something of a tramp, as, I suppose, was his mother, but there were times when he would nip out into the ‘dogproof ’ garden and simply disappear. He’d be gone for several nights on the tiles, much to my dismay, but would always return ragged and exhausted, no doubt leaving many other little ginger mongrels dotted around the town.
I was in my second year at university when I came home for Christmas to be greeted as usual by his cheery, wagging welcome. Throughout our lives together he had always seemed to know when I was due and had never been absent from his place by the door where he waited for me. When I came home from school he was there, following me as I dropped my satchel in the hall, ran upstairs to change and took him for his walk. After a trip out in the evening, he appeared to hear me get off the bus a five-minute walk away and would leave his place by the fire to be ready for the opening door, and now, even though I spent long weeks away, he still seemed to anticipate my arrival.
On this occasion – I was 20, he was nearing 16 – he sat on my lap watching television all evening and nipped into the garden for his late night wee before bed. I didn’t worry too much when he didn’t come in. I guessed he’d gone off to a party somewhere and would soon be back. I never saw him again. He hadn’t been too well and my father reckoned he was the kind of independent spirit who would have wanted to go off and die alone. I was inconsolable and vowed never to fall in love with a dog for a second time.
His death was the first bereavement I’d ever had to face and his sudden absence, so final, seemed unbearable. We had grown up together and shared so many adventures and so much quiet, cuddly pleasure. I couldn’t imagine it would ever be possible to fill the gap he left, and to do so, despite advice from all around that the best way to deal with the death of a pet was to get another one, it felt that to try and replace him would be a betrayal of all the devotion he’d given.
For ten whole years I remained faithful to his memory. I finished university and managed to wheedle my way into the career I longed for. It was not easy in the early 1970s for a young woman to get herself on to the broadcasting ladder at the BBC. They turned me down once after a disastrous interview when my mugged-up knowledge of the technical side of the business far outshone my familiarity with the current events of the day. Lesson learned: never go to an interview without having devoured every available newspaper that morning. I eventually managed to persuade the manager at BBC Radio Bristol that I had potential and started at the very bottom of the ladder as a copy-taker in the newsroom.
Much as I loved radio, he persuaded me that survival in such a volatile industry meant having a wide range of journalistic skills – he taught me how to do radio, encouraged me to write and then packed me off to television in Southampton, which is why I found myself working as a reporter and presenter on the regional news programme, South Today. I’d met a dashing young naval officer, David Forgham, bought my own house on the edge of the New Forest and he was in the process of moving in (he’s still here thirty years on) when the news editor announced he needed someone to cover the New Forest agricultural show. I drew the short straw. A dull day of watching farmers parade their prize cattle around the ring and plump little girls whipping their Thelwell ponies over the jumps.
I was perched on a shooting stick, bored and waiting for the cameraman to finish filming the ‘idyllic’ country scene. He was brilliant but laboriously slow so we called him, partly out of impatience and partly admiration, ‘Every Frame’s a Rembrandt’. I spotted a large, untidy woman, hair falling out of her carelessly pinned French pleat, striding purposefully across the field, heading for the dog show. Trotting elegantly by her side was the cutest thing I’d ever seen on four legs. It was small, grey, square-nosed, with floppy ears that flapped up and down as it ran and a short, docked tail that wagged incessantly. It bore a strong resemblance to the Tramp from Lady and the Tramp and I was intrigued. It was a breed I’d never seen before.
I chased after the woman and caught her, breathless, just before she got to the show ring. She explained that it was a miniature Schnauzer. She was in a hurry. She was due to show right now. Yes, she had a litter of pups. She lived in a caravan in a field in the lee of Salisbury Cathedral. I’d be welcome to go and have a look.
