002 Rio

"Rio"

In the inbetween time we got a dog. His name is Rio, he Romanian and even has his own passport. He is not everything we hoped for but we try our best to help him get over his own fight or flight issues. He is a rescue dog who saw maybe too much in his first 4 months of life before the long trip to Scotland. We know for example that one of his siblings escaped from his cage and his life was ended too shortly as a result by way of bigger more dangerous dogs. We will never know what he saw or heard but the effects are obvious. He is now over a year old but still not bonding with us. When we are out and come home he is a typical energetic licky pup bouncing our height- almost. By contrast at night he can be an unpredictable monster who attacks at will. Maybe something to do with the dark. Maybe a memory of screams in the night. We will never know. In day time he is better but he can out of the blue just turn when his space is invaded or he has magpied something he should not have.

Why go abroad for a dog? It turned out to be our only option at the time. We tried the Dog's Trust and various other shelters but if it was not the lack of a garden it was the age of the children that got in our way. My wife was determined. When she turned 50 she used the money she got to buy the pup she wanted. Its still early days. The dream of going for long walks with the dogs or even the kids taking him out have unfortunately not come to fruition. He is aggressively scared and strong with it making walks anything but a joy. But he is young and some people I have met have told me he may yet improve. There is still time.

000 365

" 365 "

Its been a long time since I have posted and a lot has happen in between. Mainly not great which I suppose is my reason for blogging again. I had planned to start at the beginning of the year but things happened to prevent that. Then there was covid and lockdown which had me annoyed that I had not documented the run up to that. Finally my laptop gave up and the urge to finger type posts was not there.

Anyway I have my appetite back and now want to try a bit of an experiment. What I want to do is post for a year using only my phone. That won't be easy and to be honest any time I have tried something similar in the past I have given up in the first month or two. Here goes.. 

Dog Walk

 

The dog is the reason I have been out every day during lockdown as he needs walked. In fact it's one of only two reasons I go out at all nowadays. It's not entirely his fault but as good as it is to have that necessity to go out it is also more restrictive than when I used to venture out alone. He is basically a doggy agoraphobic. He is petrified of most things that stop him in his tracks, have him pulling to get back home or have him frothing at the mouth barking aggressively. Fight or flight or freeze. Ironic. So these walks now are now a battle to see who will chicken out first. For me it's distance from home. For him the aggression is towards other dogs, animals, people, cyclists and anything noisy like motor bikes, bin lorries and the like. The freezing I can relate to as it comes when he does not want to go any further and is not going to be pushed there against his will. The flight is s strange one. It seems to be reflective surfaces like bus shelters, office windows, glass doors and that sort of thing.

His reluctance has made my already receding world all the smaller. Its got me thinking that aside from the many small dog walks per day I might start going on one alone per day to start pushing my boundaries again. It took a long time previously to get to a point where I felt virtually free of agoraphobia and could walk anywhere that was physically possible. It took a short time to fall from the summit down to the foot. Its going to take a long time to get back there again with a lot of difficult times along the way. That journey I must do alone and I do plan to start doing that soon.

Tor!

 

As much as I love my Kindle and the benefits that it brings I do love now and again to pick up a book. This is only my second book in the past few years. The last was a forgettable work of fiction based on Bible John lent to me by my father in law. He enjoyed it but it wasn't for me. Still like 99% of books I start I pushed myself through to the end. This book is more up my street. It was a book I have been meaning to buy for years without getting around to doing it. Knowing this my brother mailed me a copy when he was getting books for himself from an online charity store. Just as well as the dog has taken a few bites out of it. I used to pride myself in keeping all my books pristine growing up but gave up when they got borrowed and wrecked by various people. Luckily this one is hardback or the dog may have left little for me to mentally digest.

There is no doubt E-readers have their benefits. Storage is a major thing. I have a loft full of books that were, as I said, in pristine condition but if I could ever get through the junk in the cupboard to get up there I will likely find they are water damaged now. Much better to have them all stored away easily accessible. But still you can't get the smell of an old book shop when you shop online. When listening to music I do at times miss hearing the sound when the stylus hits the vinyl. Nostalgia can be found in many forms. I'm feeling nostalgic at the moment. Its an opportunity to take a break from everything that runs on electricity and sit with a book and a cuppa and relax.

Outside there is very little change but enough to feel some slight optimism. It hasn't affected me bu at the weekend my wife took the kids up North for the day to see her dad for the first time since the outbreak started. Still socially distanced and still too soon to stay overnight so she had to do the 120 mile round trip in a day. Also of great excitement to the kids was their first McDonalds in a very long time- first take away actually. This is a bit like how it should be. Not the virus of course but this appreciation of things that we used to take for granted. I have said numerous times that the kids get take aways too often to the point they don't enjoy it as much nor appreciate it. Growing up my friends and I had to get a bus into Edinburgh to get a McDonalds. We never saw a KFC or Burger King. Growing up in a new town we had a Chinese take away, an Indian takeaway and a few chip shops. None were delivery so we had to pick up on the few occassions we got one. And because of that we really appreciated them, not like now. And the other thing about it was we got whatever my parents were choosing. With the kids I have seen my wife go to two different take aways to stop arguements. Yet that does all seem so long ago. I just wonder how long it will be before that is commonplace again.

One last thing, a small thing. When my panic hit hard for the first time and I was basically housebound for the begining it made me reflect on a lot of things. It made me think about the way I had (mis)treated people, my attitude, regrets, things I missed, my well being and so much more. In a strange way it possibly made me a better person even if I was not in a position to show that. And I wonder if this break in play for the world will make many others do the same while sitting indoors stuck unable to do the things they once could do. I hope so. 

Summer's day

 

Some things change, some things remain. The anxieties of lockdown have been an experience some could not have imagined but pretty much normal for me. And cold, rainy and windy afternoons I'm July are not new unfortunately. A typical Scottish summer. It is not lost on most either that this was the week schools would have finished for summer. After a warm week last week when they would normally have been in class it's a dismal affair thereafter with days lately painted in greys. Not that we have anywhere to go.

We had no holidays planned this year. For one we cannot afford it and additionally if we could then I now can't go any way. I do feel though for all those people who work all year looking forward to that 2 weeks or however long under the sun by a pool relaxing. Everywhere you look there is mental anguish of some sort. And without those planes to take them away the are left here windswept, cold and miserable. It is a real shame.

It's a couple of factors added to the existing ones which have created a sort of communal angst. This pent up frustration was threatening to spill over over the first few months of lockdown and then finally it did. All it took was a perceived green light when the sun came out. People went a bit mental. They were drinking far too much and in that cocktail or sun and sand with a twist of blowing off steam they started brawling and being generally annoying. There have been some poor sights to see in my own street and no doubt across the land. I cannot help thinking if the heat wave had continued we could have seen even uglier more prolonged scenes resulting in many public disturbances sadly. So maybe the rain and cold is not so bad at this time. Maybe it is needed even to let the dust settle and hopefully when the sun returns people will be a bit wiser having gotten their ire out of their system. We'll see.

Fox in the box

It would be very easy and maybe even unavoidable to talk about COVID every week because it is 90%+ of most people's day in some form. As such I think most are doing everything they can not to dwell on it so I'll try not to if I can. I will just say that as an agoraphobic who has spent most of the past decade stuck indoors this period is not affecting my mental health as much as it is affecting others. I would imagine a lot of people are going to have a lot of difficulties when they come out the other side whether that be from after effects of COVID or purely their mental well being. Aside from that there are also all those unfortunate souls who have lost someone or multiple someones. 

A different subject then today. I don't know if this is a product of lockdown but it has certainly coincided with it. Every night for the past week or so two foxes come to sit below our window looking to be fed. They return because my wife does just that. Is that right or wrong? I don't know to be honest. Vermin or not its hard to ignore any animal looking for food. I say there are two but only one comes out into the open and the other stays hidden mostly in the shadows. We know they are here by the noise of the gulls who take turn dive bombing them. Quite the racket in the still of night.

Not a great quality photo as I am reduced to taking photos with my phone- or mobile device which probably serves as a more accurate description nowadays. I still have 2 perfectly working cameras but no longer a laptop with an SD card reader to transfer photos. Its a long story for another day as to what I am using now which is far from ideal but I am thankful to have something. Basically though my laptop fell to pieces physically at the start of lockdown. Its extremely frustrating as all the individual bits work but I cannot piece them together because of a very poor design by Lenovo- never again. The worst possible time for it to happen but there are bigger problems out there as we all can concur.

If nothing else the foxes provide a much needed distraction in this otherwise mundane period. That along with some thunder and lightening shows have been the main attractions. Slowly the world turns again and slower still we call get back to what we once called normality. That is something I can certainly relate to. Its predicted and its desired but there are still many doubts as to whether things really will ever be the same again. Again I can relate.