Several years ago – far more than it actually feels, to be honest – I had a dog, and like all good dog-owners I would walk him twice-daily on a nearby park. Although a relatively modest green space compared to some of the more expansive oases the bigger cities can boast, fellow dog-walkers were nevertheless in abundance; long-lasting friendships were formed with some, whilst others only existed as genial acquaintances within the context of that small albeit largely friendly community. One of these was a blind girl who I routinely used to encounter on there as she strolled around the circuit with her guide dog. Initially, as with many confronted by a sightless person when not necessarily accustomed to them, I tended to be very conscious of her condition and tried not to put my foot in it. Of course, the more one attempts to do so, the more the likelihood of ‘mentioning the War’. I can remember walking round with her on one early occasion and the subject of a TV show came up; I aired my opinion of it and she said she hadn’t seen it yet. I then thought, ‘Shit – obviously, you haven’t seen it; you’re blind’. As my stupid head was trying to work out how someone deprived of vision ‘watches’ a television programme, my mouth did its best to change the subject.
A little later on, when I’d changed my address, I discovered the same girl was now a neighbour of mine and we’d often bump into each other – not literally, I must stress – when venturing outdoors. By this time, the fact she was blind had lost its ‘novelty value’ (for want of a better description) and it wasn’t an awkward obstacle to being at ease in her company anymore. I got used to announcing myself whenever our paths crossed and then we’d simply converse. So used had I become to seeing her with her guide dog, the first time I saw her on her own without her canine companion, I naturally inquired where the dog was; she informed me he’d been retired. This was something I’d never even considered. Yes, it may appear to be obvious that a guide dog can’t retain its sharpness as it ages and will eventually have to call it a day for fear that its diminishing ability to do its job may pose a danger to its owner, for whom it acts as surrogate eyes. But it’s one of those factors that distinguish working dogs from mere pets that ordinary pet-owners tend not to think about; most of us have our dogs until they pass away, and that kind of parting is hard enough; we don’t even think about guide dogs that retire and leave their owners whilst still in the land of the living.
During its golden age, ‘Blue Peter’ would regularly provide an introduction to the world of the guide dog by following the progress of a chosen puppy that – in time-honoured tradition – viewers were invited to name. Said pup would be shown receiving training from one of the programme’s presenters (usually Peter Purves) and the climax of this ongoing narrative spread over several months would be the eventual placing of the dog with someone in need of its acquired skills. I guess unless we have a friend or a family member who happens to be sightless, most of us only ever come across guide dogs on streets or in supermarkets and rarely take time out to ponder on what a invaluable lifeline they are to their human companions – and how their working status means the years doing the job is something they can’t simply forget when they’re too old to keep doing it; retirement is thrust upon them and there has to be a parting of the ways within the partnership that must be upsetting for both.
I was reminded of this when hearing a story of the blind BBC correspondent Sean Dilley, who appeared on the ‘Today’ programme describing his feelings about his 10-year-old guide dog Sammy, whose dreaded day of retirement after eight years’ sterling service had arrived. Dilley invited a film crew to record the pair’s last working walk together in order to illustrate the hard reality of having to say goodbye to his most vital companion. Dilley described a farewell unique to guide dog-owners and spoke from the heart. ‘We (the blind) lose our dogs twice,’ he said. ‘We lose them when they hang up the harness and we lose them when they pass on. And we know that’s the reality, and so when we sign up to train with our dogs we know that one day, this day is coming.’ Sean Dilley was born with congenital blindness and the poor partial sight he had was gone by the time he reached the age of 14; what he describes as his ‘guide dog journey’ began when he was 16. Sammy had predecessors, though emotional bonds have deep roots after eight years, and Dilley clearly felt the pain of this latest parting as acutely as he no doubt felt about the others. ‘The last walk anybody does with their guide dog is poignant,’ he said, ‘and a thousand emotions of sadness really go through your mind. Like the rest of us, a dog has a working life and they would come to a point where they slow down…I don’t think the words actually exist to express the gratitude I have for Sammy and my mobility…when Sammy leaves me it will leave a huge hole in my heart.’
However, like hundreds of other guide dog-owners having to retire their dogs in the UK, Sean Dilley now faces up to two years of getting by without a replacement. Thanks to Covid, guide dog partnerships have dropped from 5,000 to 4,000, leaving those in need of the service somewhat in the lurch. As with so many necessities for so many people during a period when all resources were diverted into tackling the coronavirus (or were diverted into the pockets of the despicable opportunists who profited from the pandemic), puppy breeding of future guide dogs was placed on ice in 2020 and ’21 as a means of ensuring ‘volunteer and staff safety’. Sean Dilley is currently receiving training in becoming more adept at walking about with just a cane as a guide. ‘A dog is not for everybody,’ he said, ‘but for me it means I can live the life I want to live and have the independence I need to have. I trust Sammy with my life and he trusts his with mine, and what we have is a partnership beyond any words that exist.’
Interestingly, this sad story isn’t the first time the non-working life of Sean Dilley has ended up as a news item. Sammy the dependable dog had been alongside the BBC correspondent when his body-cam captured the moment just six months ago when the pair of them strolled into two London Tesco stores and were informed dogs were not allowed in the shop. At the time Dilley commented, ‘For somebody to say that I cannot come into a shop, or that I have to leave because of a guide dog in 2022, it just feels the north side of unacceptable to me.’ Tesco swiftly issued a grovelling apology when their ignorance of the law was publicised, though research by the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association revealed 75% of guide dog-owners have endured a similar experience, with 20% of these coming in supermarkets. Those of us for whom guide dogs have always been a familiar sight in shops – indeed for many years it has been a perceived privilege unique to them – will be surprised at these findings as well as the fact there is no specific law in the UK that prevents dogs, working or otherwise, from entering shops. However, guide dogs are exempt from rules by businesses banning dogs, something one would imagine Mr Tesco would’ve informed his staff about.
A friend of mine who happens to be the sole survivor of those twice-daily visits to the aforementioned park that I’m still in touch with had a dog of her own at the time; this dog was gifted with remarkable road sense and was generally an exemplary model of good behaviour. The one curious exception was the dog’s dislike of guide dogs, which she would always bark at. We used to joke that the dog imagined working breeds were somehow letting the side down by being so bloody perfect and setting an example that the humble canine pets could never compete with – like a dog’s equivalent of the character criticised and envied in The Undertones’ ‘My Perfect Cousin’. Whether or not that was the case, it’s undeniable that the service guide dogs provide is indeed a special one and one that it’s so easy to take for granted by those with the gift of sight.
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‘Oh, I’m looking after my girlfriend’s dog again while she’s at work’; ‘I think that cat lives next-door and it keeps coming in every time I leave the backdoor open’ – just two of the excuses I routinely used when I had both a canine and feline companion when living in rented accommodation and the owner of the property turned up unannounced. Keeping quiet about one’s benefits was one thing – ‘No DHSS’ was something landlords were allowed to state in the same way they’d once infamously stated ‘No Irish, no dogs, no blacks’ – but pets were the ultimate no-no. That said, I lived in three different premises with my cat and dog and wasn’t officially entitled to have either of them whilst living there. Some landlords were more tolerant than others. A landlady I had over 20 years ago insisted on collecting the rent in person and would call every Thursday evening at the same time; but she didn’t just take the money at the door; she’d come in, sit down and natter. Throughout this weekly endurance test I’d have to make sure the cat was out and I’d ask a friend to sit in the kitchen with the dog, bribing him with treats to prevent him from barking.
When the wide eyes of a nine-year-old perused the pages of ‘2000 AD’ in 1977, one strip set in the far-flung future of 23 years hence seemed less feasible to me than anything involving robots, ray-guns or spaceships. In it, I recall an irate father was poised to deliver a smack to his misbehaving child when the mother interjected by reminding her husband, ‘We don’t chastise children in the 21st century’. This required more stretching of the imagination than the rest of the stories in the comic put together; I clearly remember thinking how such a scenario was never going to happen in my lifetime. I mean, routine smacks, slaps, clouts and belts from grownups was part and parcel of my childhood experience, and had been part and parcel of all the childhood experiences there’d ever been before mine. That was one of the perks of being over-18 – you could physically put an unruly child in its place, just like parents and teachers did on a daily basis to those of us who were kids back then. The idea that this would one day cease as a legitimate punishment and would indeed be frowned upon, even legislated against, was pure pie-in-the-sky. Judge Dredd didn’t seem remotely fantastical next to that.
The actor David Niven once explained how he was able to turn his talents to the written word by finding a secluded spot in his garden that would shield him from distractions; more dedicated scribes like Dickens and Dahl famously had glorified sheds erected in their gardens to guarantee privacy whilst Virginia Woolf emphasised the need for ‘a room of one’s own’. A conducive environment for jotting down one’s thoughts certainly helps the process of jotting them down, and speaking personally I can’t really complain in that the desk upon which I write faces a large, spacious window that gives me considerably more natural light when working than the gloomy ground-floor flat I used to know as home, one with a grim, grey wall to look at when opening the curtains on a morning. The wide windowsill that divides desk from window at one time served as a convenient platform for my late lamented cat to requisition as a handy sunbathing spot in the summer, but still cried out for a permanent purpose. I eventually made use of the windowsill space by mentioning to a friend with horticultural leanings that I’d quite like to acquire a couple of rubber plants.
Cautious caveats are a MSM prerequisite when reporting the passing of a pre-Woke pop cultural icon today. The BBC News website was naturally required to pay tribute to Sean Connery, whose death at the age of 90 (yes, hard to believe, I know) has been announced; but it also had to stick to the post-MeToo BBC ‘toxic masculinity’ agenda. Therefore, the site’s ‘tribute’ included such Bond era disclaimers as ‘The action scenes are still thrilling; but the sex bordered on the non-consensual’ and ‘Thankfully it’s been a while since 007 slapped a woman on the backside and forced a kiss’. Yes, we’re sad he’s snuffed it, even though he was a horribly misogynistic symbol of the patriarchy as viewed through the stony-faced prism of the century without irony. Personally, I found Connery’s Caribbean tax-exile cheerleading for the SNP far more offensive (not to say hypocritical) than his portrayal of a cartoonish character created before the male of the species was emasculated by the feminisation of the arts, but maybe that’s just me.
A year ago this week, I smoked my last cigarette; a recent clean of the spines displayed on my bookshelf reminded me how my world used to be coated in a stinky and sickly golden smudge that unknowingly proved to be as great a social deterrent as BO. But it’s only when you sometimes come across evidence of how something used to be that you belatedly realise how much it has changed. Example: A couple of years back, I purchased an archive copy each of the Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph; both were printed in 1977. Twenty-odd years of colour newspapers utilising digital technology had served to erase the aesthetic memory of how Fleet Street produce once looked, felt and smelt. The bright clean reproduction of images we’ve become accustomed to (if we still bother with a physical edition, of course) when stood next to the murky monochrome equivalent from forty years ago reveals the latter as having a closer resemblance to a poor photocopy.
Seven is a highly potent number. It concluded the head-count for both dwarves and Samurai; it provided us with the seas, the deadly sins, the colours of the rainbow, the wonders of the ancient world and the ages of man. It gave us the right quota of brides for the right quota of brothers, the amount of years for a marital itch, the veils needed for Salome’s erotic dance routine, the title of a disturbing 90s horror movie, Enid Blyton’s secret alternative to her famous quintet, the necessary inches for the classic pop single, the correct collection of rogues for an intergalactic outlaw called Blake, and – of course – the assembled days of the week. It seems to have followed me around. I was born in a year ending in seven, lived at a No.7 for the best part of two decades, and my current home is a residence whose separate flat and house numbers add up to…you guessed it. And now I have seven months on the clock to measure my faltering progress through the brave new world I was dumped in as 2017 drew to a grim full stop.
It’s an old question – ‘What would you take with you if your home was on fire and you had to make a dash for it?’ For years, my answer to the question was the same: my cat and my memory stick. I sadly no longer have my cat, so it’s just the memory stick now. Touching wood, I’ll never be faced with that dilemma; but it’s not just fire that can provoke a swift and sudden flight. Hurricane Irma’s trail of death and destruction across the Caribbean and the southern coastal States of the US has forced people into giving their own answers to a similar question. Unfortunately – and, to me, inexplicably – many of them didn’t regard their pets as being top of the list; some didn’t even put their pets on the list at all. For such a God-fearing country as America, it’s amazing how many Americans failed to take a leaf out of Noah’s book.
It’s reassuring to know some things never change; they’re part of the fabric of the nation, upholding Great British traditions and hopefully continuing to do so in perpetuity. The shipping forecast, the Proms, the football results on a Saturday teatime, strawberries & cream, leather-on-willow, the proud ineptitude of the Metropolitan Police Force. When it comes to the latter, what a relief it is that this one particular Great British tradition is determined not to blot its impressive copybook of cock-ups and sheer stupidity.
Safe in the assumption you’ve probably digested your breakfast by now, I shall proceed. Dog-mess, the most polite term I can come up with, has always been a fixture of pavements as far back as I can remember. It was certainly a key element of the urban landscape in the 1970s, though there seemed to be a greater variance of shades then – white being the chic alternative to industry standard brown at the time. It shared sidewalk space with routine rubbish – empty crisp packets, smashed bottles, closing-time sick, discarded pages from ‘Playbirds’ et al – though the pavements then still didn’t seem quite as depressing-looking as today; the aesthetic carbuncle of the wheelie-bin line-up competes with the nose-to-tail parked car parade in a competition to decide which has rendered our streets the uglier.
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