FraserWords

As the clock struck three, I whistled down the garden for the dog. Three o’clock means it’s time to collect the boys from school, and the dog always comes along for the ride.

As ever, she came trotting round the corner of the house to the garden gate, but less eagerly than usual: twitching in her mouth was a soon-to-be-late bunny rabbit.

Lovely. I hate this bit about living in the countryside and loving animals.

The dog stood looking at me, eyes moving from the bunny to me and back. The message was clear. “Dad, this small funny jumpy thing. Want eat it.”

But last week Belle was in season, and had been generally poorly. I had no wish for her to eat a rabbit and then sick it up in Management’s shoes or over Management’s furniture, as this would result in further disciplinary sanctions against the dog and, it goes without saying, me. Neither could I leave her unattended in the garden while I went to get the kids.  Neither did I want her eating a rabbit in the back of the car, getting blood and goo everywhere.

Now Max, my former collie, who smiles at me from his picture frame as I type, and who I miss every single day of my life, would actually place the rabbit in my hands if I asked him, and trot off at my heels. He once got something’s guts stuck as he was munching away, and sat there patiently as I pulled them up his gullet and out of his chops in the manner of a conjuror pulling a string of comedy sausages from a sleeve.

Belle, however, is as mad as Michael Gove, and there really is no telling what she will do next. Sometimes, unlike Gove, she is very, very good and sometimes, very much like Gove, her goggle-eyed lunacy takes the breath away.

“Look,” I addressed her, speaking frankly. “We’ve got to get the boys. Put your rabbit down.”

Now she understands “get the boys” as that means a car ride, which she loves; and she understands “down” as the command to hand over a ball. So she knew what I was on about. Nevertheless, she stood her ground, eyes flicking to me and back again to the bunny, due to be mourned by its fluffy family any minute now.

This was a further problem. If Belle handed over the rabbit, a mercy killing would be necessary and this is not something I relish. I looked about me for a blunt instrument, and rather wished I had George Osborne to hand. One of the few uses I can imagine for him is as a blunt instrument, to be used in clubbing a fluffy bunny to death. Mercifully.

Belle, fortunately, indicated her displeasure with a quick shake of her head, which had the unlooked-for consequence of ending the bunny’s misery, as far as I could tell.

“Come on, Belle, we’ve got to get the boys.”

To her great credit – this may be the best thing she has ever done – Belle carefully placed the dead rabbit in the shelter of a stone wall, stood and looked at it for a moment, nudged it with her nose, then turned, shoulders bowed and tail down, to trudge reluctantly at my heels to the car.

I thought that was really very remarkable loyalty for a mad collie dog, and so I handed over a reward of two gravy bones immediately. She looked at them. I could read her thoughts. “Gravy bones? Gravy bones? I put down lovely tasty funny jumpy fluffy thing still nice squishy warm and you give me fucking gravy bones?”

We collected the boys.

Usually, when we get home they let Belle out of the car and go running up the garden with her. Today, I explained, we had a corpse to dispose of first, because I remained consistent in my policy vis-à-vis ex-bunnies / hungry dogs / Management’s shoes.

The children, eager to examine the mortal remains of the bunny, accompanied me to the site of its sad demise. Of the rabbit there was no sign. No sign at all. But…. Straining our ears, we could hear a sort of crunching noise. Coming from under the camellia.

I remembered that while Belle and I negotiated at the rabbit’s deathbed, our cat, Captain Pusstasticus, formerly the Ginger Ninja, had been loitering up a nearby tree in a furtive manner, examining his claws and eyeing us speculatively.

The boys and I repaired to the camellia and parted its branches. From a scene reminiscent of Shaun of the Dead stared Captain Pusstasticus and the defunct bunny. The bunny’s expression was hard to read, as its head was no longer connected to its body. Captain Pusstasticus was somewhat easier to decipher. He was clearly saying “What? What?” The boys were clearer still. “Cool! Look, there’re its guts! Awesome!”

I felt we were not giving the former rabbit the respect it deserved and so, making another enemy, this time of the cat, I gave it an immediate, solemn burial by picking it up with a spade and flinging it over the hedge, where various bits of its remains festooned an unexpected holly tree, looking rather like the sort of bunting you might find in a remote village deep in the forests of America’s deep south.

I released Belle. She ran straight to the spot where she had carefully placed her bunny, ears pricked, tail wagging – and stopped. Stopped dead. She stared in disbelief. “Fluffy tasty jumpy thing here! Right here! Here! Now fluffy tasty jumpy thing not here! Bugger! Bugger!” She placed her nose to the ground and began running around in circles. “Want fluffy tasty jumpy thing, want it now! Mine! Want it!”

The boys went off to take a photo of rabbit innards in a holly tree. If you know us well, this may well be your 2013 Christmas card from them.

The dog spent the next two hours conducting an exhaustive paw-tip search of the garden and the field. I don’t think she will ever solve the mystery.

The cat slunk off, full of rabbit, for a sleep. On Management’s bed, it later transpired, resulting in the aforementioned disciplinary action against the guilty party, i.e. me, so I might as well have let the dog throw up the rabbit in her shoes anyway.

Cold cases

I have a couple of history cases on the go at the moment, revolving around a subject that fascinates me – memory and its meaning. One concerns the mystery that a soldier who died at Loos in 1915 seems to have no place of commemoration by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, neither grave nor name on a memorial to the missing. History has passed him by. Together those involved will restore him – but why? To what end?

I think history matters or I wouldn’t breathe it so, so I guess the answer must be that he was a man; he lived and died; it makes us better people to acknowledge him and his story.

Looking around for supporting evidence for this theory of memory, I offer you one of my favourite remarks about history, by GM Trevelyan in her seminal English Social History (1944):

“There is nothing that more divides civilized from semi-savage man than to be conscious of our forefathers as they really were, and bit by bit to reconstruct the mosaic of the long-forgotten past. To weigh the stars, or to make ships sail in the air or below the sea, is not a more astonishing and ennobling performance on the part of the human race in these latter days, than to know the course of events that had been long forgotten, and the true nature of men and women who were here before us.”

Basket cases

The damned woman haunts us still. The good Captain and I had just breathed out a sigh of relief in the wake of the departure of Margaret Thatcher from life and from the media. He, I and Sister Wizard Woman could at last plan our charabanc outing, to dance and, in the Sister’s case, to conclude a darker mission… but we turn on Radio 4 this morning and what’s the book of the week? Charles Moore’s biography of… Margaret Thatcher.

And finally… Brother Yardie’s good lady wife had to perform a mercy dash to the vets on Sunday morning with their daughters’ bunny rabbit, at a cost which came as a sobering shock even to somebody employed as our brother is (that means expensively). I thought it best not to repeat the above story.