Paws for thought…

CHRIS BENNETT is in dog mode again.

RECENTLY I experienced another of those serendipitous moments that add sparkle to our lives. It was all to do with the search for my new dog. Or perhaps I should say my new dog’s search for me.

I seem to have been reading TIME magazine since birth, (my birth, not that of the magazine in about 1924) and each week I have always looked forward to it popping up in the letterbox. It is the only publication I do not read online.

The cover of the issue of August 16 this year depicted Bibi, a puggish dog with a whimsical expression of resignation and undying patience. Her balloon says, “Way to go, Einstein”, a comment obviously aimed at her owner. It is perhaps the most delightful cover I have ever seen on the magazine.

Not only was I seriously looking for a dog (f), not any dog but the dog, my sensitivities to Bibi’s delightful face were magnified by a recent visit to the Lower South Coast SPCA, my second in a few months.

I was lucky enough to meet Alistair Sinclair, the man who is top dog at the SPCA. Alistair is a devoted and passionate dog man who has many theories, born of a lifetime of trying to understand the mind of the dog.

My late canine friend, Maisie Wiggins, who died of old age in June last year, was a constant source of amusement, amazement and puzzlement to me.

If she did not approve of what I was doing, or about to do, a suitable reaction was adopted. A bath would bring on a balefully reproachful look, followed by her disappearance under some impossibly low piece of furniture, from which vantage she would growl, utterly unconvincingly.

She knew there was to be a walk on the beach before I. There would be a tail wagging frenzy and something approaching cartwheels on the bed. You should understand that she did not sleep in my bed; I slept in her bed. But then I would.

In order to build some sort of plan for retirement I have usually tried to buy a house when my work moved me around the country, as it periodically did. I have always bought a house suitable for Maisie Wiggins or her predecessors, whose names, believer you me, you don’t want to know. In other words I have always lived in a kennel.

Bibi is on the August 16 cover of the illustrious magazine because the lead article that week was about What Animals Think by Jeffrey Kluger. He tells us that new science has revealed that they are smarter than we realized.

Alistair Sinclair and I, I suspect, have known this for a long time.

My visit to the SPCA near the highway in Uvongo, was memorable. Alistair showed me all the kennels, the boarders, the strays, the puppies and the dogs people just did not want any more.

I should tell you the experience was a little more than somewhat harrowing.

This beautifully maintained and run facility (I hate the word, but can’t think of another) is to go on show this Saturday, August 28.

The Open Fun Day will be at the SPCA from 9.30am to 1.30pm, and should be a delight for all the family, especially the youngsters.

The organisation receives no help from the government, thankfully, and it is our SPCA and we should be more than happy to support it ourselves. A dog’s love is completely unconditional; a concept alien to about 99 percent of humanity.

We owe the good people who work, largely volunteers, for the Lower South Coast SPCA a great debt of gratitude.

Millicent was not there, by the way.

Booking your future…

CHRIS BENNETT has been reading about reading, again.

FOR a few years now there has been quietly raging, behind the scenes almost, a battle between paper, the mundane substance we make from trees or rags, and the innovations of modern technology.

I refer, of course, to the electronic reader, the acceptance and popularity of which has been growing rapidly, especially this year; although much more slowly than the cellphone when it was introduced less than two decades ago.

The latest devices for reading are the redesigned Kindle, made by the American book giant, Amazon.com, and the iPad made by Apple.

The iPad may cost more, but then it is also a computer and can be used to surf the net and do much more.

I am ambivalent about these two formats for reading; one thing I am not ambivalent about is reading. Few people read enough, largely I suspect because of some lurking fears that they might discover things they would rather not know about, like themselves, for instance. As some benighted soul said to me recently, “Reading is for school and kids”. Ja, well, no, fine.

I believe anything that encourages people, especially young people to read must be a good thing, and electronic reading is something that I have adapted to easily in the almost-two years I have been reading on the screen of an iPhone. Amazon has recently released a free app, Kindle for the iPhone, and the first book I bought was Elizabeth David’s French Country Cooking. I would like to see other favourite authors of mine, particular those that I re-read year in and year out (ED is one), available, which they will doubtless be.

Amazon last week announced that it has sold more ebooks than hardbacks. Well hardbacks are not cheap, but there will always be people who like to feel the paper (I am one) and who like to keep the book if they have the space, an increasing problem these days.

Another thing about ebooks is that they are not very comfortable for sharing. For young readers this would be a big drawback; in fact it would be a big drawback for most readers, given that handing over your Kindle or iPad for a while is not the warmest of sensations.

I have also made use of Apple’s own iBooks, in the app called iBookstore. It is not, to my mind, as comfortable as Kindle, but it has some neat tricks. Most systems use bookmarks which are a great help: the book you are reading will open where you left off.

My guess is that there will always be a demand for books printed on paper, but I rather imagine that the quality of binding and the paper itself may improve, as the cost of making books becomes higher and higher, and book readers become, essentially, a niche market.

It is early days yet; but what I think will be the winner will be the agility of people’s minds, an agility the scientist tell us will last into old age if exercised by reading.

It is interesting to note that Charles Darwin, in his introduction to The Descent of Man (1871), wrote, “… in the first edition of the Origin of Species I distinctly stated that great weight must be attributed to the inherited effects of use and disuse, with respect both to the body and mind.”

So there you have it. Run and Read.

Tree fellas…

CHRIS BENNETT was lost in admiration as a dead milkwood of huge proportions was removed from in front of his home.

IN the village in which I live, surrounded by the most noble and glorious milkwood trees, which daily remind me of the first time I heard the actor Richard Burton reading the prologue to Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood*, winter means the already laborious task of keeping the village clean of woodland (and human) detritis is an even greater task. And it is well done.

One of the most dangerous of these tasks is the felling of the dead milkwoods.

It was engrossing to watch from the elevated view of my terrace, and look down on the workers and their foreman as the skilfully used ladders and ropes, thick as a man’s wrist, to secure and delicately counterbalance, like the counterpoint in a Bach fugue, the distribution of the weight of the sawn branches.

First the finer and smaller branches are cut off by a worker using a machete. This is relatively quick; then starts the more serious business. Someone has perilously to sit on a major branch while chopping it off. The trick, it seems, is to sit on the trunk side of the cut, otherwise…

It is now that the geometric ballet of the ropes comes into play, giving the whole operation the air of a spectacular trapeze display in a circus: as the branch, probably weighing as much as two or three men, falls from the tree it is immediately suspended by the ropes, seemingly weightless. Finally it is lowered safely to the ground, under the watchful, nervous, narrowed eyes of the workers. There is a lot of relieved tension.

Then there is the demolition of the colossal trunk to be dealt with. This involves a chain saw, whose screaming bite gnaws the affrighted air. The brave soul wielding this appalling machine needs nerves of steel, the eye of a hawk and, preferably a third arm. Another leg might be useful too, as he straddles the saddle like-forks of the now limbless trunk.

I imagine that a similar undertaking in the last century would be a cause for great celebration. A few of us managed to secure stumps big enough to grow peaty plants in and soften the all too evident concrete around our cottages.

All this cleansing and maintenance of the village is a pleasant reminder of how conscious of our surroundings we have become. Of course there is nothing new in this. Here’s a quote from Plato (428 BC to 348 BC): “…don’t put too many people in one place, don’t impose more on the physical environment than it can bear, make the maximum use of resources like water and replant trees if you cut them down.”

The other milkwood I mentioned, Under Milk Wood, was a play written for radio (of course some prat made a movie of it) written in 1954 by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. It was written for his friend, the outstanding actor of his day, Richard Burton, whose meliflous, slightly gravelly voice, swaying gently on occasion into a Welsh lilt, was the perfect medium for this near-perfect poetry.

I’ll leave you with the opening sentence, spoken by the narrator, Burton:

To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack*, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.

* The sloe berry, the flavouring of gin, is coal black.

* Dylan Thomas, 'Under Milk Wood', The Definitive Edition (Dent: 1995.)

Booking your future…

CHRIS BENNETT has been reading about reading, again.

FOR a few years now there has been quietly raging, behind the scenes almost, a battle between paper, the mundane substance we make from trees or rags, and the innovations of modern technology.

I refer, of course, to the electronic reader, the acceptance and popularity of which has been growing rapidly, especially this year; although much more slowly than the cellphone when it was introduced less than two decades ago.

The latest devices for reading are the redesigned Kindle, made by the American book giant, Amazon.com, and the iPad made by Apple.

The iPad may cost more, but then it is also a computer and can be used to surf the net and do much more.

I am ambivalent about these two formats for reading; one thing I am not ambivalent about is reading. Few people read enough, largely I suspect because of some lurking fears that they might discover things they would rather not know about, like themselves, for instance. As some benighted soul said to me recently, “Reading is for school and kids”. Ja, well, no, fine.

I believe anything that encourages people, especially young people to read must be a good thing, and electronic reading is something that I have adapted to easily in the almost-two years I have been reading on the screen of an iPhone. Amazon has recently released a free app, Kindle for the iPhone, and the first book I bought was Elizabeth David’s French Country Cooking. I would like to see other favourite authors of mine, particular those that I re-read year in and year out (ED is one), available, which they will doubtless be.

Amazon last week announced that it has sold more ebooks than hardbacks. Well hardbacks are not cheap, but there will always be people who like to feel the paper (I am one) and who like to keep the book if they have the space, an increasing problem these days.

Another thing about ebooks is that they are not very comfortable for sharing. For young readers this would be a big drawback; in fact it would be a big drawback for most readers, given that handing over your Kindle or iPad for a while is not the warmest of sensations.

I have also made use of Apple’s own iBooks, in the app called iBookstore. It is not, to my mind, as comfortable as Kindle, but it has some neat tricks. Most systems use bookmarks which are a great help: the book you are reading will open where you left off.

My guess is that there will always be a demand for books printed on paper, but I rather imagine that the quality of binding and the paper itself may improve, as the cost of making books becomes higher and higher, and book readers become, essentially, a niche market.

It is early days yet; but what I think will be the winner will be the agility of people’s minds, an agility the scientist tell us will last into old age if exercised by reading.

It is interesting to note that Charles Darwin, in his introduction to The Descent of Man (1871), wrote, “… in the first edition of the Origin of Species I distinctly stated that great weight must be attributed to the inherited effects of use and disuse, with respect both to the body and mind.”

So there you have it. Run and Read.