Dear Hearts

I took Jim for a walk in the park this afternoon and as we turned to come home he started to whine, then scream, and then whine some more and pull on the lead and pull and pull.

When we got to the house he ran up the stairs and there was Jess on the mat in front of the fire.  She had just come back from the vet.

I don’t think we understand Jim at all.  He is loving and clever, but bossy, often miserable, often a trial, and does not always seem to like Jess.  When she came he hated her.

Jim went up to Jess and began to lick her ears, then he licked her muzzle, then her paws.  He took his time.  I don’t remember him doing this before with such care.

It was as if he knew that twenty minutes ago the vet had told us that there was no chance of saving Jess’s leg and in the morning it would be amputated.

Jim knew – try and tell me he didn’t.  They know, they know.

Poor, poor Jess.  But with seven eyes and eleven legs between us the crew of the Phyllis May is still operational.  Jess will adapt as they do and the months of pain and frustration will fade.

Sorry to report bad news at a happy time. 

Have a Xmas full of cheer and a Happy New Year

Love from us all   See you in the Spring.

Tits Magee (to whom fear is a stranger) Gulfstream Rose, Jim and poor little Jess.  XXXXXX

Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier, like the other Narrow Dog books, sometimes calls up dark stories from history.  I thought a sombre extract would be right this time. 

STRANGE IMAGES OF DEATH

Pembroke Dock was the most important Coastal Command base in Britain.  The Sunderland flying boats, the ones that looked like white double-decker buses, would draw a line of chalk in the Haven half a mile long before heaving themselves into the air.  Turning to swans, they banked west, off to hunt U-boats in the Western Approaches and over the Atlantic until their tanks were empty and their crews exhausted.

On the hills above Pembroke dock was a brood of great circular oil tanks like gasometers.  These stored power to send our merchant ships and their destroyers to America for food and supplies. 

Hitler did not think Pembroke Dock was a good idea at all, and when he had captured the French airfields he reckoned he could reach out and do something about it.

Monday August 19th 1940 – three o’clock on a quiet sunny afternoon.  I was playing in the road when a line of thunder rolled down Milford Haven towards the other end of Pennar Gut.  As I was pulled into the doorway of number nine there was cracking and huffing and blasting from the oil tanks and then it was quiet for a moment and then people started getting themselves together and pushing me back into number four.

Within minutes the smoke was a thousand feet in the air and bursting and the fire roared inside the smoke and you could see it pump and reach and spill and rivers of flame were running down the hills and into the sea and the sirens had started and we were looking at the biggest fire in the UK since the Fire of London.  You could see the smoke from Somerset.

Not a shot had been fired in defence.

Soon there rained a ghastly dew.  The washing was black on the lines, the sheep were black in the fields, the earth was black, the air was black. 

Over the next three weeks the great tanks burst one by one until eleven of the seventeen were destroyed – thirty-eight million gallons of oil.

Near the site the heat was terrible. The six hundred and fifty firemen received a thousand injuries.  In the town the women would bathe their eyes.  A tank exploded and swept five firemen into the flames. 

Vernon Scott of the Western Telegraph interviewed Mrs Addie John for his book Inferno 1940.

I saw a fireman, covered in oil from head to foot, coming up from the the beach.  He was swaying all over the road like a drunken man.  I offered him a cup of tea and with great difficulty he pulled off his boots and removed his oilskins.  I gave him rags and paraffin to clean up the worst and then, on the doorstep, he washed himself with warm water and soap.  I gave him his tea but he broke down and wept.  I told him he could rest and gave him an old trousers and jacket.  He slept on my bed and when I woke him later he told me he came from Tenby.  He never did mention his name.

The Luftwaffe returned to drop more bombs around the target and machine-gun the firemen. 

For three weeks the battle of good against evil wore on.  A fireman interviewed by Vernon Scott –

We saw a mouse crawl out over the top of the moat.  It was coated with oil and seemed to be blind.  But we thought Good luck to you you little blighter, you’ve survived so far, and we took it to some grass and left it there

The night of 12th May 1941.  What pervert puts a whistle in bombs?  What asshole adjusts the carburettors of bombers so they roar in and out?  Isn’t it enough to kill people – do they have to feel terror too? 

We were under the stairs.  My mother held me close.  My grandfather was there in his striped shirt and braces.  I can still smell the gas from the meter.

Uncle Clifford tumbling down from his bedroom, crowding in, his shirt tails flapping.  Go back – put some trousers on, said my mother – have you no decency?

That night thirty-two people were killed and two thousand houses damaged.  The military installations were untouched.

The next raid was the Fire Blitz – thousands of incendiary bombs.  As the town burned we were lying in the fields and on the beaches.  Four were killed that night.  We had a dud incendiary through the roof next door – chubby little chap with fins.

Uncle Clifford firing his home guard rifle from the doorstep did not bring the bombers down.  Even little Cocky Roblin could not scare the hell-birds away.  Cocky was the air raid warden who patrolled the blackout.  He made my mother laugh so much – Oh, Mrs Darlington, Mrs Darlington, I’m shaking like a leaf! 

Cattle machine-gunned in the fields.  Houses taken out like teeth. Jigsaws in the rubble

Strange images of death.