FraserWords

What it always comes down to is good against bad, right against wrong.

Good: my eldest son, taking full advantage of the joys of the environment in which he’s been raised, is now of an age where he can depart for bike rides on his own of an evening. Where he goes, my collie dog follows. This evening, I met Jamie at the bottom of the hill, returning from the woods with a laughing collie – you can tell a laughing collie from the length of its lolling tongue – in attendance.

Only my son Jamie was concerned: ‘I met these awful people who told me I should have my horrible dog under control.’

These people, it transpires, were fellow owners of a neurotic collie, whose dog disappeared in panic last year when spooked by the same selfish farmer’s bird-scaring explosions that alarmed our own dog. I walked miles looking for their dog for them. This they have forgotten, preferring to take an aggressive attitude to a ten-year-old boy and a collie dog who has never ever attacked another dog, ever.

The village here is split between those good people who accept that my collie is mad, show it kindness and relax around it, and therefore enjoy walking with it: Chris, Carrie, Rosie, Brother and Mrs Fiddle. On the other side of the coin are previously two, now four, sour-faced joyless fucks who would intrude upon a boy’s joy in the world around him, as did the people today. The people who mistake a collie’s boisterousness for aggression. Idiots, in other words.

Well. Good: my son. Bad: people who would show aggression to a ten-year-old boy rather than a positive attitude. Come, friendly bombs….

Perhaps they’d call themselves dog-lovers. I don’t think so.

Last week, my poor father’s poor dachshund reached the end.

This Spring, Dad, at 87 and in poor health, could no longer look after his Freda, latest and last in a line of dachshunds stretching back 50 years – 50 years! – to my infancy. I do not like short, yappy toy dogs, but of course I took in Freda without a single split second’s hesitation.

This gallant little dog adapted from life on a pensioner’s sofa to life with a collie, two lively boys, a huge ginger cat, two horses and a chaotic home with barely a bat of her brave little eyelids. She fought for and won her space on my bed with the collie and the puss; she came for walks through the woods; she eyeballed the horses; every time I came home, I came home to the frantic scrabble of her paws on the floorboards as she rushed, tail wagging, to meet me.

So I came to love her. A dog-lover will do so, no matter what the drawbacks of the mutt in question.

When, last week, the vet discovered very terminal cancer, I cried hot tears of grief, and when, shoulder-shaking on my knees, I buried brave little Freda at the top of our field, with a view of the Lynher Valley she came to love to comfort her, I could not see or care to see for the muddied swabs of howled mourning across my face.

I could not turn upon a dog for a billion pounds. Nobody I love would do so. Those who would bully a dog or a boy are beneath contempt, the lowest of the low, the worst kind of cowards.

Talking of…

Talking of the worst kind of cowards, we come to the Labour MPs who abstained in the vote on the George Osborne bill to legalise child abuse: he wishes to punish children who, through no fault of their own, are born to families above two children. All but the 50 Labour MPs led by the splendid Jeremy Corbyn, lacked the moral backbone to oppose his cowardly bullying.

Shame on them. Shame on them. As I said weeks ago, what is the point of the Labour party now it no longer opposes injustice? Unless Corbyn wins the leadership, it will pass, deservedly, into history as a once great campaigner for social justice, now finding it impossible to find convictions, backbone or decency.

Talking of…

Once again, tonight, I was accused of shouting. It’s difficult. Accused of such by people so stupid they accept the tenets of the Daily Mail as fact, what can one do but shout? It comes down to good against bad, right against wrong: if you believe help should be refused children, you’re bad – no matter what your reason, no matter what the Daily Mail lies to you about benefit scroungers and greedy foreigners, denying an innocent child help is wrong. Somehow, it’s even worse when you come from a generation that harvested the fruits of social justice – university education, early retirement – but would deny those benefits to others. Thank the Coconut Eating Crab for the likes of dear Captain Kay and good Brother Fiddle, who retain a sense of what they gained and want it to be shared by the next generation. Right against wrong. Good against bad.