When Bella and I have done all we feel we need to for the day, we have our dinner. Often pasta pesto for me, or jacket potatoes with tuna and salad. I know that carbs are making me fat, even the brown ones, but they’re cheap, and filling, and tasty. And I’m poor, and hungry from all the walking and writing, and love comfort food the most.
More sardines for Bella, and the tuna water from the tin. I’ve learned while housesitting that it’s like crack for cats and dogs alike. I don’t usually drink when alone, but I might have a glass of white or rosé at this house during and after dinner, as it’s not just from a ‘local’ vineyard. The domaine is at the edge of this very village, and their rows of vines form one border of my garden. I take the glass over and toast the parents of its contents sometimes. But I might have a different tipple in autumn.
Then Bella and I go on a second walk. A shorter one, this time, perhaps an hour or a bit more. Sometimes left from the top of the drive, down then up a steep dip and round the village of Souel. (The name always makes me think of Simple Minds’ Love Song). But I have to put Bella on a lead at times for that walk as she’s too goofy to be really road safe, and there’s a matted little village terrier that likes to shout at her.
So more often it’s up the sloping road to the right – or through the orchard-meadow – to the vineyards flowing over that side of the ridge. And there might be a stop back to the orchard-meadow for treats on the return home.
In the first sit in Souel, April to July, there are cherries, yes, and apples, grapes, sunflowers, and wildflowers. Then later there are acorns, quinces, and ‘helicopters’. This isn’t the day there’s a rich crop of bicycles and actual helicopters: the day the Tour de France passed quite nearby. I shouldn’t have taken Bella with me to see it, it was still too hot. Poor girl was panting when we got home and took a wee nap.
Someone wrote on Twitter the other day: “It’s very unfair that skipping isn’t socially acceptable as a way to get about. It’s fun, it feels economical in movement & you can go really fucking fast”. I would add, it releases dopamine and gives you an effervescent feeling of lightness, youthfulness, and joy. Let’s make skipping great again.
If we head out on the road in the evening, I skip for a bit, as no one’s watching. Okay, the Cantaloupes catch me at it one time, as they’re out arm-in-arm for their own evening promenade. But it’s easy not to care, there. Their laughter is affectionate. And Bella loves it – she starts skipping and leaping too, a big grin on her sweet face.
We play hide-and-seek among the vine rows, and sometimes Bella takes off after a scent. This isn’t the evening that an owl drops a stripped rabbit carcass right in front of us and I have to scramble to keep her from it. She’s getting tired now, though, and will let me know when she’s ready to head home. I thought so many thoughts on those walks, which I mostly don’t remember now. The AuDHD brain rarely shuts up. But sometimes the warm, heavy magic of dusk will hush it to a murmur.
It’s nearly dark when we get home, but we’ll stay outside for a bit to admire the marvellous moon and sniff the crepuscular wafts from the flowers. Bella truffles about in a flower bed for wild strawberries, which she adores. This isn’t the strange day that multiple birds lie dead among the bushes below the windows, apparently all having flown into them. Nor is it that terrible night Bella comes to me with blood dripping from her chops, and I realise she’s slowly chewing a still-living hedgehog.
No, not this night. On this night we sit together quietly gazing at the tartan sky. At the end of a perfect day. I had no idea, at the time, just how perfect. I don’t feel the breath of the coming storm, or smell the torrential rain carried on it.
Bella was gone by the following spring, gone on ahead of me, along with both of my parents, a number of friends, many family members of friends. Too many people to think of in one raw, unthinkable thought. But until it’s my time to follow them along a sun-dappled oak path into a morning mist, I’ll hold this perfect day in my mind like a baby hare gently rescued from a dog’s mouth, and keep it safe in its warm burrow.
So poignant.
I imagine the special bond created with Bella means she too in a dreaming state remembers those perfect days too and cuddles up with you at night whilst you’re in another reverie. What a day!