by Kate Spicer
Anabel jumps in. ‘Most of the problems in the world can be traced back to only ever presenting two sides to an argument. I took the boys to the public galleries at the Commons quite often when they were young. A decent level of debate is so important to our society but I feel it is undervalued more and more.’
Will, Steve and I are milling, dumbly absorbing their eloquence.
Feeling a bit odd? Best to drink, I find. I set about opening my wine with a corkscrew, a little too quickly than is polite. I have clocked the other bottles lined up, supermarket premium range, best of the corner shop, nothing interesting.
Get in and pour yourself the biggest glass of your own good stuff. The supermarket best will do for later when I’ve taken the edge off.
‘Shall I open a bottle,’ I say, already an inch deep into the cork.
‘There’s one open already, Kate,’ Steve says as I pull up the waiter’s friend. Pop!
‘Oh, I didn’t see that,’ I say, lying. ‘Would you like some?’ I pour myself a large glass and take that first nourishing sip.
We sit down to eat at a marble table. The dog is well-behaved, although I have taken it on trust he will be when in fact he could quite easily have come in and immediately eaten Steve’s precious pedigree cat. I didn’t consider that before. I hear him drinking water noisily. Munchies must make a dog thirsty, I think. Oh that tickles me and I chuckle inside. This is one of the delights of owning a dog, the amusing sketches they present to you, hour after hour. I never knew the sound of a dog eating stolen cat food could be so precious.
He comes stalking out into the room where we’re eating and does his noisy collapsing thing of folding up his gangly limbs until he hits the floor in a heap. He sleeps there for a while, then gets up and comes and sits on my lap at the table. Three foot long with awkward sticky legs, bony bum and all.
‘Is that normal?’ says Steph, surprised.
‘I don’t think so,’ I say, equally surprised as I wrap him in my arms and fight the urge to lay my head on his shoulder, close my eyes and kiss his fur. His presence is the most delightful drug.
At the end of the evening I drive home, I do not consider a detour to Tim’s, I do not feel short-changed or bored by life. I crave nothing. I am satisfied.
The muddle of stuff in Wolfy’s Office was about creating a hiding hole of good smells and safety. His office was permanent, always there, like the sofa. It was not to be confused with the concept of the Woof Bed, which was a blanket term to denote any temporary bed. A Woof Bed was anything you could put on the floor to encourage the dog to settle and sleep in one spot while visiting or out and about. It was not limited to actual beds; I used my second-hand coyote-fur gilet turned lining down, the Burberry mac I nicked out of the bin when Charlie threw it away. I used an old sarong; occasionally, when desperate, a napkin would suffice. I could put down anything soft on the ground, clap and say in an exclaiming voice, while pointing, ‘It’s a Woof Bed!’ and Wolfy would dutifully come and lie in it – or partially on it, in the case of a napkin.
We needed this temporary bed concept because as the dog and I rolled to an increasingly wide range of places around town together, he would always know that this was his place. Otherwise he’d get onto anything remotely sofa-like – restaurant banquettes, velvet chaises longues, other people’s sofas, or, as at Anabel’s dinner party, my lap.
Not long after Wolfy arrived, the singing started. I’d do a full circuit of the Scrubs repeatedly going over the first verse of ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’. I developed a repertoire of West End musical numbers and purposefully bad raps that were intended purely for Charlie’s entertainment, which I’d sing in the dark February mornings when turning out of bed to walk Wolfy.
‘My name is Wolfy/and I’m here to say/it’s time to head to the park today/I’ll do some sniffs/I’ll have a poo/and when I’m done/I’ma have a big snooze/Yeah.’ Waggling jazz hands down the lethal-to-dogs stairs, I’d shout down to Charlie performing his usual vigorous dawn regimen, ‘Can you hear me, can you see me?’
‘Fox, that’s embarrassing, stop it. Have you made the bed yet?’
‘I’m looking for a record deal. I’m giving up journalism. I’m stopping it now so I can really concentrate on my singing career. I think you should resign because once the deal is signed we’re going to be incredibly busy.’
Was it such a mad idea? They’d made a musical about the bent businessmen at Enron, an opera about Jerry Springer, so why not a quirky West End smash. Wolfy! The Musical. It might even transfer to Broadway.
Charlie started joining in. Our mutual appetite for silliness was revived and turbocharged. The majority of our happy times together might have been geared around talking utter drivel and behaving like ten-year-olds, but you know what they say – the couple that can soft shoe shuffle together in their undercrackers at 6.30a.m., they stay together.
‘Why are you jogging backwards?’ people would ask and I’d smile at them and say, because I couldn’t tell the truth, ‘Oh, I’m just being a responsible dog owner and ensuring I don’t miss a poo.’
The truth is I took pleasure from just watching him, my saviour, my relationship’s saviour. It was so absorbing to catch him busy at his doggy doings, watching him sniff, potter and race his way round the urban green. It felt how I imagine religious conversion feels. ‘He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.’
I couldn’t stop looking at him. Owning a dog was awesome; literally actually awesome. My God. Or, more accurately, my Dog!
But it also freaked me out. My reasonable mind just couldn’t fathom it all. I’d spent the last thirty years of my life battling to get on, do OK at work, have fun, enjoy life, while juggling the usual mass of neuroses, and now all I wanted to do was bumble about with my Wolfy. The stuff that used to bother me didn’t any more. If I felt sad, I’d look at him lying somewhere, and say, ‘Hey you, whazzup,’ and he’d lazily thump his tail on the floor. It’s a real tonic, two lazy wags of a sleeping dog’s tail. And to think, I used to need drugs to feel joy.
In the mornings, on the streets near home, walking to Coffee Plant, I’d see a thick-muscled and kinda bad-looking man rolling towards Portobello Road in front of me with a petite black Staffie bitch quick-waddling by him. His grimace, the thick short neck combined with his dense physical heft, gave him a whiff of menace. He was the spit of the Incredible Hulk. His dog was always off the lead, and if she strayed too far from him he’d growl, ‘’Ere,’ or ‘Wait’ with a menace that made me wonder if he loved his dog like I did mine, or if he went home and kicked her and didn’t care that much.
I’d wonder, why was my brain exploding, my stomach roiling? Why, when I heard Wolfy make tiny lip-smacking sounds as he snuggled down for a sleep next to me on the sofa, did my heart start pulsing?
I needed to know this was normal.
Walking in the park, Wolfy would inevitably be drawn to the instructive aromas of other dogs’ rear ends. Standing waiting, we owners would stare at our phones or make small talk – smell talk – as long as it took for the nose-to-anus dog communication to end.
This interaction was sometimes no more than one of those millisecond smiles or a couple of amused raised eyebrows. More usually it was brief commentary, ‘Going in for a good butt sniff,’ ‘Speaking fluent sphincter there,’ ‘Sniffing his CV,’ or ‘Your dog obviously has a seriously delicious bum.’ Occasionally, if the owner was an moron, he or she would react by yanking the dog away going, ‘Don’t do that, it’s dirty.’
If the bum the dog was sniffing belonged to another lurcher, the areas for discussion multiplied.
If you own a lurcher you’ll already know that asking about the mix is an absolute must when chatting to or stopping another owner. What’s in there? Bedlington, whippet? He’s deerhound-greyhound mix, got bit of collie, the combinations are copious given the many mixes that can be in a lurcher – if there’s saluki in the mix it’s reliable that you’ll hear, ‘He’s a bugg
er for not coming back’. Salukis are Arab desert dogs that can go for a day across the dunes, stamina of a camel, speed of a racehorse, body of a supermodel. Thin. So thin. They look like combs draped in a bit of fur, with burlesque feathers for tails. Crazy-looking beasts. Magical. Bonkers. Fast.
When it came to discussing Wolfy’s mix I didn’t have a satisfying answer. In fact I would never give an answer at all. Dog owners become like VW Beetle drivers, very committed to their own brand. And I wasn’t a labradoodle person, I had a lurcher as far as I was concerned. In shame, I kept quiet about what Sara thought she knew about him. I definitely didn’t want to share that he possibly had labradoodle in him.
‘How old is he?’ is another question. If the answer is, ‘We aren’t sure’ then it’s a rescue dog, and you get to share your dog’s more or less tragic history. ‘We’re his third owners.’ ‘Ours was rescued from a pound in Romania.’ ‘Mine was fished out of a lake.’ ‘He’s got issues.’
Cue discussions about behaviour. How nervous the dog is, whether he comes back when you call him; and, if you’re talking sighthound stuff, there’s the big question – how’s his prey drive? When a fast dog spots a moving thing, you won’t be grabbing his collar for a while. Whoosh. Is that light speeding by or a sighthound after a cat? It’s hard to tell the difference.
Wolfy’s prey drive seems pretty feeble compared to Castor, who is a cat chasing maniac. The cats in the alley scratched Wolfy’s nose a few times and he doesn’t chase them anymore; squirrels only when he spots them; deer: always.
When people say to me that my dog is beautiful, I beam as if I had given birth to him myself.
Beauty without ego, love without conditions, regal without entitlement, packaged in fur and by my side. I’m not really a braggart or especially confident. If people pay me a compliment, I usually try to turn it into an insult. But when people told me my dog was beautiful I’d just say, ‘I know.’
Wolfy often zones in on the skinny bums of dogs his shape, and there are a lot of them. West London is stuffed with lurchers. I had no idea. There are loads.
It’s a grey Monday morning when we bump into Cecil up on the turf opposite the Hyde Park Barracks, home of the Household Cavalry on Kensington Gore. Wolfy spots a bum he’s sniffed before and trots over, tail in ecstatically friendly ‘windscreen wiper in a torrential downpour’ mode. One hundred young cavalrymen and perhaps the odd woman are out practising ceremonial drills. They’re wearing all the gear: scarlet tunics, champagne buckets on their head with plumes of horsehair spouting out the top; long swords bounce against strong thighs wrapped in tight white breeches and high black leather boots.
While Cecil and Wolfy have a lingering bum sniff beside us, his owner and I have our own lingering bum moment with the Life Guards trotting to and fro in front of us.
‘Might as well linger a while.’
‘Quite,’ she says. ‘Very Jilly Cooper.’
We talk a bit. Neither of us are really perving over the Cavalry’s buttocks. I ask her if she has kids.
‘Yes.’
‘I expect it’s because I don’t have kids myself to spunk it all on but God, I love my dog so much. I’m worried it’s a bit sad. Do you relate?’
‘Oh no, no, no, you aren’t sad. No!’ She throws her hands up to her face and turns to look at me. ‘I’m so relating to you mate. I am so in love with Cecil. I think I love him more than the children.’
‘No?’
‘Yes!’
‘No!’
‘I’m serious.’
I don’t quite believe her but the opening to the conversation is so welcome I don’t care, ‘I’m hopelessly in love with my dog. He makes me so unbelievably happy, and look at us. Here, and this …’ I wave an arm at the jangling tack and impeccable buttocks bouncing around before us accompanied by mounted trumpeters and drummers. ‘It’s a whole new world of dog. I’m sure I thought I was cool once.’
‘I used to take drugs with posh twats,’ she says.
‘I used to take drugs with them too, but if they weren’t available anyone’d do. But I’m a dog addict now.’
‘Yeah,’ she says, burrowing her fists deep into the pockets of her parka. ‘Me too.’
‘Tell me, have you ever looked at a wolf fleece and thought, That looks cool?’
‘No,’ she says. Despite this, Sasha is my first dog-walking friend.
I have others, all lurcher owners.
One Sunday afternoon Castor, Keith, Wolfy, Charlie and I are yomping round the Scrubs and bump into Anna with her Wally, a fluffy and bonkers lurcher of extremely indeterminate mix. We walk together and by the end, high on lurchers and life, we have decided to eke out the vibes and go for celebratory pints at The Cow. The times there are so good that we all go back to our tiny flat. Will and Steph drop in with the kids; my oldest nephew, Sam, has a toy for Wolfy, his furry godfather as we call him.
At one point I look up from my seat leaning against the radiator under the window. There we all are, all sat together, while the kids watch films on my laptop in the bedroom and the dogs are curled up asleep, one to a cushion, on the sofa. I laugh, take a picture and post it to Instagram.
This is it, this is success, posting pictures to Instagram taken at an impromptu and authentically happy event. I show it to everyone: ‘That’s a great picture.’ Yes! I mentally punch the air. I’m living the dream. I walk-run to the kitchen and crack open champagne. Woohoo, everyone yelps as I hand it round in our mismatched champagne glasses, flutes, coupes, the new ones I can’t remember the name of. I feel free and bohemian. If I wanted to attach a hashtag, it’d be #livingmybestlife. This is our first dog party.
I forget about the picture until the next day, taking a shambling hungover walk round the Scrubs. Wow, lots of likes, including one from the sainted lovely-legged influencer I met at Tim’s on the day I decided to get a dog. Chica. Followers now close to 60,000. Despite the fact I have only met her once she has left a kiss-strewn comment. ‘He’s adorbz darling. When do I meet him?’
My dog is making me popular on social media.
Pictures of the two of us together harvest way more likes than anything else, even ones with famous people. Not that I hang with a lot of famous people anyway but, truthfully, the dog is a good substitute for them.
I scroll through Chica’s feed. Poolside – location, Palm Springs, a close-up on the side of her perfect lithe body in a sheer mesh and Lycra swimsuit with all sorts of flesh-exposing cut-outs and panels; she has no flab. Here’s Chica again, on a step outside a white stucco townhouse in Notting Hill. She’s wearing teeny shorts and ankle boots: acting dead natural. She’s heading into a fashion show in Milan – so she’s getting show tickets now – wearing a rock star’s wife’s fashion label. Her social heat is rising. I note she has dumped handsome Libore and is dating a notorious playboy posho. One who won’t have terminated the activities seen round Tim’s coffee table. In fact, he is someone I met, once, at that coffee table from hell. A handsome toff. A naughty one. A rich one. A devil in bed.
Am I jealous?
Am I?
I absent-mindedly scuffle the thick fur under Wolfy’s throat as I think about this.
Am I?
Am I pining for a fabulous, decadent life?
I briefly remember the scruffled sheets, the cigarettes in bed, the indolence, the insolence, the frantic dash to the chemist after 72 hours, and the thrills, spills and loneliness inherent in a life that exciting.
Am I?
Nah.
It all looks like bloody hard work. ‘Come on, boy. Let’s go.’
It was not true that I was living some kind of quiet Christian life now, rising with the sun and living and singing among all God’s creatures like west London’s answer to Mary Poppins. It’s the dog lover’s life for me now. Praise be!
I still went out, sometimes even to what might be described as ‘star-studded’ and ‘glittering’ events. Everyone felt a bit of a spanner at these bashes. Especially the people who ha
d to actually pay for their tickets. Some time previously I had realised these parties often weren’t really parties; they were networking events, paid for by brands wanting to get close to the shiny people, and a chance for the shiny people to get their pictures taken.
There is one of these dos at the Victoria and Albert Museum and I’ve borrowed a Gareth Pugh dress that I can just about cram my body into. It is striped like a barber’s pole and has a train that pools at the rear. I set about the well-trodden routine of layering on the nocturnal armour. Performing the ritual glamazoning triggers an anticipatory thrill at what might happen and who knew where I could end up. This maquillage routine can cause a soaring, if transient, ego-driven vanity, a climactic moment of self-love without which it is moot whether I’ll ever get out the door.
A thick layer of dark, metallic oily shadow on my eyelids; my cheeks honed to a fantasy bone with highlighters and shade; concealer softening the perma-circles under my eyes. I dry my hair straight, then mess it up so it looks like I haven’t.
Now, shoes. Since Wolfy the flats have increased and the heels dwindled. I stand up to take a look in the wardrobe and find that the dog, so used to settling and sleeping on any piece of fabric I’ve laid on the floor, has curled up on the dress train, which is trailing over the back of the stool. He thinks it’s a Woof Bed. ‘Move! Wolfy!’
Fashion isn’t my natural turf, but I’ve hovered on its fringes for years because when you write for the style press and the lifestyle pages, at some point everything comes back to fashion. If how we dress is our armour, then fashion people could walk through a minefield unharmed.
