Score one to the north.

Hard to believe that this is a view of Salford, with Trafford Park in the background. The water in the foreground is the former dock which is now the starting point of the Great Salford Swim and the cluster of shiny new buildings is Media City, controversial northern home of a large chunk of the BBC from this summer onwards. Just out of the picture to the left are the Lowry Centre and the Imperial War Museum, both impressive and popular public buildings. The whole area's a reet big chunk of in-your-face blaggadacio. Thirty years ago all you had in this area was decay and dirty water, with the then notorious Ordsall estate across the road. 


Thirty years ago was when I fetched up in Manchester, a refugee from a stalled business enterprise in the North East, looking for a fresh start. On a wet day in August I arrived with a Geordie mate and it didn't look promising. I remember my first impression was of wet, dirty redbrick buildings and chimneys and concrete and sprawl. There was no clear focal point, unlike Newcastle perched on its hill above the river. In Manchester at that time you had to thrash your way through the urban undergrowth to find the many treasures that lay beneath. Actually a few weeks ago I was taking a visitor from California to Piccadilly Station along the Mancunian Way and, as he was looking out of the car window at the hotch-potch of architecture which has grown like a culture on a petri dish from the first germination of the industrial revolution, he said 'God, this place is ugly. What do you see in it?' I felt a surge of pride and, while I can't remember exactly what my reply was, it wasn't too far away from this quote from Luke Bainbridge in The Observer today


'This is the home of the industrial revolution and the city that split the atom, the birthplace of the computer and the Guardian, the suffragette movement, the free trade movement, the co-operative movement, the anti-corn law league, vegetarianism, the nation's first free library, the world's first intercity railway and the engine room of rock'n'roll that has produced the country's best bands of the past 30 years, from Joy Division to Take That. This is not only where Morrissey met Marr, Jack met Vera and Bobby met George and Denis. It's where Engels met Marx and Rolls met Royce. I could go on… and on.'

And the best thing about it is that it feels like a big village. On my first night in Manchester I slept on the floor in a basement flat in Palatine Road and went out to a new club called The Hacienda. 

Unlike nightclubs in the North East there was no dress code, the atmosphere was easygoing and when a couple of lads started dancing on the tables in the downstairs bar the doormen came and asked them to get down. The vibe was friendly, and after all these years I still occasionally bump into people from that first night. I come across surprising connections to other people that I've met over the years, whether through work, or our children's schools or activities, or chance meetings on the street. Because of the BBC's move northwards there's been a lot of London-Manchester comparison going on recently. I love London, but it's vast. Compared to it Manchester is intimate, accessible and friendly. After thirty years I've realised that it's my home. It's familiar and surprising all at the same time, and there's still new stuff to discover. A few weeks ago we went to Jodrell Bank for the first time. It is amazing, Manchester reaching out to the universe...

Jeremy Clarkson and a few others may not get it, may not be prepared to look beyond lazy northern stereotyping. Tough. It really is their loss.  Here's to the next thirty years.

Stella Street meets Coronation Street (1)

I was inspired to write this when I was in Morrisons in Chorlton a few weeks ago. There was a guy with his kids by the dairy section. He looked vaguely familiar. Had I played football against him? Was he a former colleague or (more likely, given my age) a former pupil? I definitely recognised him but just couldn't place him. Then I realised I was having a Mancunian Stella Street moment. This usually involves encountering a 'celebrity' going about their normal daily business, and Chorlton's Morrisons, which used to be Safeway, and which has always been the supermarket from hell, is a better than average place to spot them.

On this occasion it was this guy

2nd from right, bass player with Elbow. Other encounters over the years have included

Beverley Callard, her from Corrie and 2 pints of lager...,

Ian Brown, Stone Roses and a bit of a Mancy monkey,

Mike Pickering, M People, moving on up to the fruit and veg (sorry),

Ainsley Harriot, the only one I've ever seen being mobbed. It was quite disturbing, watching him being outed as the bloke off the telly by autograph hunting grannies while other shoppers just stopped and stared at him with a kind of malevolent curiosity (Morrisons in Chorlton is like that),

Finally, the most bizarre. Mick Hucknall, no 1 in the charts at the time, just beginning to ride his 80's megastardom wave, in the checkout queue with a tall stunning and bored looking blonde woman. He was obviously still getting used to the whole pop star thing, because he was holding a newly purchased set of Ikea bathroom scales and enthusiastically banging on about what a great shop it was. I wonder what number she was on the list of thousands of women that he's recently owned up to sleeping with 'back in the day', and whether he wooed them all with some form of retail related foreplay.

Remember. Morrisons in Chorlton. It's a rubbish place to shop, but if you've got an i-spy book of celebrity types, it's the place to be.

A cut above

The first time we visited our oldest daughter in London she took us to a place that she had visited with her friend, Rachel(advocate of the no. 42 bus route). I don't know how Rachel discovered it but her knowledge of offbeat tourist London puts her up there with Tom at tired of London, tired of Life in my opinion. The place is the Hunterian museum at the Royal College of Surgeons.

It is macabre and inspiring, graphically showing and telling the story of the growth of the science and craft of surgery. There is something respectful and moving about the way the exhibits are  beautifully displayed, despite some of the more grisly and dubious tales that accompany them. I was especially moved by a video presentation of an operation on a brain tumour. Given that 42 years ago my dad's tumour was seen as 'inoperable' I saw hope in the advances made, a way that his illness and death fitted into the development of the life-enhancing skills of surgeons.

And the museum is located in the Royal College of Surgeons, stressing its place as a record of work in progress. On the day we were there some kind of oral exams or interviews were taking place and seeing the hopeful candidates making their way gave a vitality to the place that I wouldn't normally associate with a museum. Go, and be inspired.

More of more of the same

With reference to my post of two weeks ago ('More of the same'), I know I said that the owners systematically dismantle the team by selling the best players, and that humiliation was never far away for Newcastle fans. It gives me no pleasure to be right again. Andy Carroll in a Newcastle shirt just looked so right. He was local, a product of the club, an exciting and edgy presence and now, like Paul Gascoigne, our last prodigy, he's gone. The club have taken the money, they've got nothing to replace him with, and he's a young man out in the world with a huge price tag and massive expectations on his shoulders.

Let's hope that's where the similarity ends.

The big issue

This is Dash when we first met him a week ago. He'd been left in a house for 3 months, with no exercise and little attention apart from regular feeding. As a result he is more than a few pounds over his fighting weight.

This is an approximated pictorial representation of me, post-Christmas, having made the most of not going out. Like Dash I've got work to do in order to get back to my optimum streamlined profile, so we've decided to start a Rocky style fitness programme. My goal is the Manchester 10k Great Run on May 15th. I'm 55 on the 14th May and I'd like to run the race in 55 mins or less. I ran it for the first time last year and did it in 64 mins even though most of my preparation and half the race was affected by a calf muscle injury.

Dash is a terrific training companion, despite the full set of spare tyres that he's carrying. We ran together for the first time yesterday, on a beautiful sunny and frosty morning. I ran 2 miles and by the end my chest and throat were burning and my legs were turning to jelly. The good news was that my calf muscles held up, and I had broken through the inertia barrier and exercised seriously for the first time since the clocks went back. Dash probably covered about 6 miles, given that he would charge ahead and then come back to check up on me and then charge off again and so on. We even stopped halfway through for a bit of tennis ball chasing (I ran on the spot). I creaked my way through the rest of the day, exhausted but satisfied. Dash went out for 2 more long walks and seemed a little bit tired by the evening.

He's going to look pretty damned good in a month or so. As for me, if I'm half a stone lighter by May I'll be happy.

And now the very latest news - our 16 year old son has decided to run the 10k with me, so I've got even more incentive to shape up. 

I'll keep you posted.

New dog, new tricks

We started looking seriously for a new dog at the end of November. Benji was such an important presence. It took a while to adjust to him not being around, to grieve for him, and then to come to terms with our desire for a new pack member. I ran hot and cold. Some days I was yearning for a dog to walk with, to share space with. Then there were other days when I relished the lack of complication and responsibility and the resulting freedom to be spontaneous. Deep down I knew what I really wanted, which is why I had a dogsblog tab permanently open on  my browser. 

A week ago I was on a train back from London when my wife sent me a text. She'd spotted this beautiful boy, Dash, and had phoned the RSPCA and arranged for us to meet him. We met him Saturday, brought him home Thursday and the photograph above was taken on our first walk on the meadows.

I'm not a superstitious person but I find something appealing about the idea of good omens, so it was fantastic on that first walk when I spotted a kingfisher on the brook. We see it occasionally and it always feels special, a real privilege, to see that flash of colour. Vivid, iridescent, electric, in flight it is one of the most beautiful and uplifting things I've ever witnessed and I never tire of seeing it.

Dash is a classic Border Collie. He runs and runs, loves chasing and retrieving balls and has a lovely nature. Our pack feels restored and revitalised. Benji is still in my thoughts and I find myself wondering how the two of them would have got on as I watch Dash dozing. He's just looked up as if to ask what I'm writing, and it feels so good to have him here. 

Them and us

Don't you just want to give them a slap? I know I do, and having watched Andrew Neil's documentary  this evening I think I have some justification. I realise I'm a grammar school boy from a working class home and that I can wear chips on my shoulders as stylishly as this shower show off their new romantic/Flashman fancy dress. I am also prepared to accept the possibility that if we actually did have a meritocracy some of them might still make it to the top on ability and aptitude, but the point is we'll never know. Their privilege, their money, their friends have guaranteed them their place at the top table. Let's start the campaign now for the UK's first comprehensive school educated Prime Minister. Can you imagine what an exceptional individual s/he will have to be to wrest power from these smug b'stards.

Then again, maybe politics is the haven for the greedy, the self-serving, the morally bankrupt. In which case these are clearly the (white)men for the job. I'm not a cynic, and I've worked with some incredibly gifted and resourceful young people over the years who, if they were given a fraction of the resources that this lot have had, could achieve so much. They have a wisdom and insight born of experiences that these guys could never really understand, and this country needs people in power who represent us all.

When I was younger politics always seemed more interesting when Dennis Skinner spoke up, and I really can't see anybody like him coming through now, and that's a crying shame. Maybe the student demos of the last few months could be the start of a more representative political class. I live in hope.    

The no. 42 bus

 I stayed with my daughter and her housemates in Camberwell last night. I had to get to Liverpool Street Station for an early train this morning and asked them the best route. With the bus passenger's equivalent of the knowledge, I was reliably informed by my daughter's friend Rachel that the 42 from Camberwell Green was my best option, and that it was a favourite of hers.

I can see why. At 10 past 7 on a cold crisp morning I was going across Tower Bridge in the dark, with a spectacular view of the city lights, and a full moon above the river to the West. It was magical.

No matter how mundane my reason for being there, I always feel like a tourist in London, and there was something thrilling about seeing the place at that time, being part of the small band of travellers on their way to work, bringing the city to life. At that time there's a sense of purpose, and also a kind of intimacy, as if we were the crew preparing a stage or a film set for an epic crowd set piece.

I was early for my train so I got a coffee and some breakfast and watched the drama of the morning rush hour at Liverpool Street unfold, happy to have played my part in setting the scene.

Thanks, Rachel.

A many splendored thing

These are the Simonside Hills near Rothbury. The distinctive stepped ridge is visible from all over south and mid - Northumberland. I used to look for it as I travelled on the coast road from Newcastle to Whitley Bay. It marks the beginning of the wilder northern part of the county, the Cheviot Hills running up to the Scottish Border. I reckon I was 8 or 9 when we got our first car and this was a regular weekend day out for us. We'd scramble all over the hills, racing each other to the top, and then taking in the view back to the coast and the chimneys of Blyth Power Station a good 20 - 30 miles south.

They felt like they were our hills. There was a Northumberland National Park Visitors' area and car park with forest and nature trails but we rarely went there. We would park at the side of the road and strike out through the heather on the most direct route to the top. I associate it with my dad and our dog, Moss. After dad died I don't remember going there as much.

This is a poster for a romantic weepy film that was a favourite of my mam's, starring her no. 1 heartthrob William Holden. I guess you're wondering why this connects to a small hilly ridge in Northumberland. I was on a train this morning, and looking at the hills in the distance sparked a memory. In the film William Holden plays a war correspondent covering the Korean War (I think) and Jennifer Jones is the woman he falls in love with in Hong Kong. Their love is conquering all (I can't remember the particular obstacles - maybe something to do with her being Eurasian and society's disapproval) when he goes back to the war and is killed - bummer. I watched it a few times on Sunday afternoons when I was a kid, and the scene that always got to me was at the end. The couple have a favourite hill where they meet

and when she hears that he has died that's where she goes. Then she sees him walking down the hill towards her, and he waves, and it's confusing and great and then in one of those manipulative heart-wrenching tricks of cinema he fades away and she's left, bereft.

This scene had an impact on me long before I'd really experienced loss. My dad died when I was 13, and when I was 14 I started going out with a girl at school. We were together, on and off, for the next 6 years. When I was 15 her family bought a holiday caravan on a site in Rothbury, a mile or so from Simonside, and we'd go there for walks. Her family tended to follow the trails, and one day I had a yearning for the old days so I went off-road and headed in a straight line for the top. As I did I thought of Love is a Many Splendored Thing and I couldn't shake off the idea that when I got to the top he'd be there, even if only for a few seconds before fading out of view.

I walked all over that summit, choking on huge sobs. There was nothing. No sign, no sensation, no presence to bring him back to me even for a moment. Love is a many splendored thing, which makes losing somebody you love all the harder to understand and accept.

Funny what you see when you look out of a train window.

More of the same

I don't know when this picture was taken, but it clearly shows that Sunderland-Newcastle derbies go back a long way. I was working while the match was on yesterday, teaching on a psychotherapy training course, and catching updates on my phone between pieces of supervision. Despite the late, lucky equaliser from the Mackems I was happy with the result. It suited my current ambivalence about my club. Actually, that phrase 'my club' is the problem. It's not mine. It doesn't belong to the fifty odd thousand who turn up at St James Park every home game either. It wouldn't be there without us all, and we'd be lost on a Saturday afternoon without it. And it belongs to Mike Ashley, the latest in a long line of exploitative owners who apparently have no love or understanding of the game, who openly despise the fans and who will systematically dismantle the team by selling the best players rather than build on success.

The received wisdom is that a few wins is all that it takes to erase history and bad memories from the fans' minds. We've done all right since Alan Pardew took over, and we seem to be playing decent football. We've even revived a long-standing tradition of getting humiliated by a smaller club in the 3rd round of the FA Cup. I just can't get excited about it at the moment. The sacking of Chris Hughton was dishonourable, a way of letting us all know whose club it really is, whose club it was always been. The butchers, the bakers, the candlestick makers - all those shopkeepers who fancy bigging themselves up by having a stake in the local club - the lawyers and bankers who turn it into their plaything. The owners. They've always been there, especially at Newcastle, and sometimes I wonder whether it's worth caring and getting worked up about.

Mind you, Andy Carroll might be back from injury in a couple of weeks, and I really can't fault the team.
Supporting Newcastle is a thought - provoking pursuit, never straightforward, and humiliation never feels far away.

Adrift

This picture is a still from the Powell and Pressburger film 'I Know Where I'm Going'. I don't, and a whirlpool seemed a good image for my thinking process at the moment. To my loyal readers, all 5 of you, I apologise. I've been living up to my pseudonym and spending a lot of time with my thoughts, going nowhere.

I've been thinking about, and as the year goes on I will write about

• Learning Front Crawl

• Looking up to my son

• The joys of living in Chorlton cum Hardy

• How to be middle-aged

• and the rest...

I love the word melancholy. It has a musical cadence, and a complexity to the way that it looks and sounds that fits with its meaning. It's a kinder word than depression, a mood rather than a condition, and it comforts me when I use it as a label for the way that I have been. I've had a recent brush with Bell's Palsy, now almost cleared up, and our daughters have both gone back to their other homes after being home with us over Christmas, and I feel lucky and lost all at the same time. A bit like seeing a beautiful evening sky...

Loss

Two days after the Great Salford Swim Benji died. His tumor had been growing, and he was struggling with walking, but we then had an added complication in that he stopped eating. We had arranged to take him to the vet for a check-up, but as he was clearly deteriorating we asked her to come to us. We then had to make the agonising decision to have him put to sleep. The tumour had spread, his liver was swollen, he was clearly struggling and yet it was still so difficult, to have to choose to end his life. We've none of us recovered yet. He was with us for six years and he became part of the fabric of our family life. Everywhere I look in the house there are memories and associations. I'd love to say that I could feel his presence, that I had a sense of him watching over us, but dead is dead and our time together is over.

When a dog dies the loss is so immediate and intense. There are none of the bureaucratic and administrative diversions, death certificates, funerals to arrange etc. There's just an empty space.

It's taken me so long to publish this post. I couldn't bring myself to complete it, to let go and say that he's gone. I've read a lot of philosophy this year, and taken a lot of comfort in others' struggles to make sense of life, and death. I still don't know, and I've realised how much I value not knowing, if there's anything more than this, these few moments we spend living. Benji dying was an awful and inevitable experience, and yet it was worth going through for the 6 years that he chose to spend with us.

Swimming with shopping trollies

I did it! I completed the Great Salford Swim in 53 minutes 44 seconds, breast stroke all the way and pretty much the same time that I've been managing for a mile in the pool. It was an amazing experience. The water was 14 degrees, and it felt refreshingly, rather than numbingly, cold all the way round. What really struck me about it was how clear it was (a bit scary when you can see bike wheels and shopping trollies lying in the silt at the bottom) and how sweet it tasted when I got the inevitable splash in the face. Because the course followed the walls of 2 docks and the narrow canal connecting them our back-up team of family and friends who were spectating were able to keep pace with us and offer encouragement along the route. This meant a lot to me because by 1200 metres I knew I was going to get round, but I felt bored, restricted and contained by the course. I realise now that this was sabotage. I was getting closer to my goal and it was as if I wanted to stop myself from succeeding. I turned for the last stretch to the finish. I could see it in the distance. A voice in my head was saying 'Turn round and swim back, you don't want to finish' and I was beginning to slow up, when I heard my oldest daughter shouting 'Come on Dad!' I looked up and there she was, waving me along. It was just what I needed. I dug in and thought of the people who had inspired me to be there - my wife who, along with our middle daughter and our son had completed the Great North Swim last year and who, in the way she embraces new challenges, inspires and empowers the whole family - my dad, who showed such patience with my fear of water throughout my childhood years - and Pete Kendrew, the former olympic swimmer who looked after the pool at my teacher training college and the man who finally convinced me that I could float.

Since the swim I've lost my way. We've only swum a couple of times in pools, and our wetsuits are hanging like bats on the backs of doors around the house, scaring guests going to the bathroom at night. In writing this post I'm dipping my toe in the water, making a pledge to myself to get back in the swim, to learn front crawl and to prepare myself for the open water challenges to come.

Round the block

So here I am at the end of October and I haven't written anything for a month or so. I've started a few posts and then deleted them, unable to see them as having any worth. Writer's block is a pernicious condition, and today I'm writing my way through/past/around it. I'm determined to get to the end of this post and publish it. I've switched off (well, turned down a bit) my internal perfectionist editor and I'm writing. Why do I let it worry me so much? As I look now at the screen and see the words accumulating, the sentences unfolding, the piece taking shape, I begin to realise that I've been punishing and depriving myself. Writing is a way of reflecting on life, of celebrating and making sense of achievement and loss. In the last couple of months so much has happened and I'm going to post about it all in the next couple of days.

The blank page is here to be filled, not feared. Tally Ho!!

Summer Holiday

The first holiday that I went on was in 1970. It was just after my 14th birthday. We went to Pontin's  holiday camp on Jersey for a week. It was a profound, and emotional, experience. I'm not attempting irony or humour in saying that. My dad had died the previous summer and the only reason we were at last able to afford a holiday was the insurance payout. Thinking about it now, it wasn't the most salubrious set-up. The chalet was a room with 2 sets of bunk beds, and a small bathroom (I think there was a bathroom), and it had to contain my mam and 3 boys. At the time it seemed amazing. We flew there from Newcastle. It was the first time any of us had flown and I remember it as noisy, bouncy and exciting. The holiday camp was actually a pretty quiet place, located on a headland and surrounded by lovely small coves and beaches. In looking for pictures to accompany this post I've found out that it's now abandoned and derelict, and I found this aerial photo.

 It looks a bit grim in the picture, but the sun shone every day when we were there. We made friends with some kids from Essex and I fell in love with a girl called Wendy from Westcliff on Sea. That's probably a bit of an exaggeration, given that the high point of our relationship involved us sitting on the swings at dusk, holding hands and talking. I think it was probably the first time since my dad had died that I talked to somebody detached from that drama, somebody who didn't know the story and who was prepared to listen as I told it.

I hated going home. Whitley Bay seemed drab and grim. Our house, still full of memories, felt claustrophobic. I'd seen the possibilities of a world outside our bubble of grief and then they'd gone. Nothing had changed. I was angry and depressed, and this was compounded by the phalanx of well-meaning adults who guarded my mam and who kept telling me how grateful I should be for having had such a wonderful, and expensive, experience. I realise now that it was life-changing. I didn't suddenly come to terms with the loss of my dad - that would take many more years - but I knew that I wanted to get out into the world, to escape the confines of my family and my home town.

I started this post because I wanted to tell you about the fantastic holiday we had this summer. Funny where your thoughts can take you.

September catch-up

Summer's on its way out, and boxes full of new English apples are appearing at Unicorn, our local Vegan supermarket. Somewhere in August I lost my blogging Mojo, and I've decided that the only way to get it back is to write, write, write my way through the blockage.

The last post I wrote was in the week leading up to the Great North Swim. I was ill, I hadn't been able to practise and as the day drew nearer I was resigning myself to deferring. I didn't feel well enough to drive up to the Lakes, let alone dive into one. Then, on the Thursday evening, a text arrived announcing that the swim had been cancelled due to unsafe levels of blue green algae. I was able to defer to next year, and as my health returned I have picked up my swimming, and I've decided to make use of the practice and preparation by signing up for the Great Salford Swim, taking place at Salford Quays next Sunday. I  was apprehensive about this. After all, a converted dock on the Manchester Ship Canal doesn't sound as appealing as a beautiful lake in Cumbria. Anyway, yesterday I went to a training session in the dock with my wife and we swam 800 metres in our wetsuits at 7.30 in the morning. It was amazing. I know now that I'm going to do it, and I'm going to enjoy it.

The canal in the picture forms part of the course, joining the two dock basins that we swim around. I was amazed at the quality of the water, and I soon overcame my fears about putting my head under. I was able to get my breast stroke rhythm going, which was something else I was anxious about, as I'd been told that breast stroke is difficult when wearing a wetsuit. 

My aim now is to see if I can complete the course within an hour. I usually do a mile in the pool in about 53 minutes, so here's hoping. Roll on next Sunday.

Where do we go from here...

..Is it down to the lake, I fear? Thank you Haircut 100. Next week, I'm taking part in the Great North Swim, and I'm worried. I watched last year as my wife, my son, my daughter and her boyfriend, all took part and made it look, if not easy, then definitely fun. I was inspired. I'm not the most confident swimmer and up to that point the most I'd managed in a pool was between 20 and 30 lengths, not even half a mile.

I didn't learn to swim until I was 19 years old, at teacher training college. I was training to be an English teacher. I had wanted to teach PE but I was turned down because I couldn't swim. I had actually begun swimming when I was 4. I went with my Dad every Saturday to the Northumberland Baths in Newcastle, and I'd just begun to doggy-paddle my way around the shallow end when, one Saturday, I walked in and saw some older boys pretending they were drowning, kicking around and splashing in the water. I'm told that at that point I stopped swimming and became terrified of getting out of my depth. I remember that I struggled with this fear  throughout my childhood. I kept going to the pool, and I convinced myself every week that I would be ok, and as soon as the water came up to the top of my chest, or if I lifted my feet off the bottom and tried to float, I would panic and fight to get out. When we had swimming lessons at school, I had a fight with a lad who jokingly tried to push me in at the deep end. When I finally learned to swim I think I felt relief rather than joy, and I still retain some of that fear and mistrust of water, so resolving to swim a mile in England's largest lake represents a real challenge for me.

A year ago I knew that I wanted to do the swim but I still didn't know if I could cope with the distance, or the depth. I started going swimming regularly with my wife at the Manchester Aquatics Centre. 3 times a week we'd get up at 6am and go down there before work. The depth in the pool is a uniform 2 metres for the lane swimming sessions, so I can't touch the bottom, and 50 metres looks a long way when I first get in, and at the start I felt scared and clumsy in the water. However, by Christmas I was swimming 20 lengths of the 50 metre pool (1km in total) twice a week and 32 lengths (1 mile) on Saturdays, and, most importantly, I looked forward to getting in the water

We managed to maintain that regime until May. Since then I've lost my momentum. I ran the Great Manchester 10k, picked up a nasty calf injury and found it hard to get back into a regular training pattern. As swimmers have to wear wetsuits in the Great North Swim I should have had more practice in open water in a wetsuit. So far, I've only been in twice, once in Rydal Water and once in Lake Bala.

And now I've got a horrible cold. 5 days to go and I feel lousy. I've felt so confident until the last couple of weeks. We went on holiday to Majorca earlier in August and I swam at least 40 lengths of the hotel pool every day. I even swam in the sea, and dived off a pontoon moored out in the bay. That was a major event for a water-wimp like me. I know I've come a long way, and on Saturday I really want to be part of that wave of swimmers splashing their way around the course in Windermere. Time to feel the fear and do it anyway.

The first dog

This is a picture of Moss. He was given to my dad when he was a few months old. He'd been taken from a litter on a farm and given to one of dad's workmates, who was nearing retirement. That was a doomed relationship from the start, given that Moss had a propensity for nipping heels, chewing soft furnishings and scratching deep claw marks in every door he came across. The old guy and his wife figured that Moss needed a livelier pack and that 3 boys under 10 would be the best companions for him. He became our brother and, I now see, our pack leader. Dad was the alpha, and Moss would never mess with him, but with us he was always jostling for position and putting us in our place. And we loved him, played with him, fought with him, and protected him, as brothers. 

In the late 60s and early 70s dog owning was, in many ways, a more casual pursuit than it is now. Although we would take him out for walks, we would also, like all of the other dog-owners on our estate, open the front door in the morning and let him go off on his own. It seems bizarre now to think of that. We'd quite often have packs of dogs, Hairy Maclary style, roaming up and down the street because there was a bitch in heat. Moss would regularly get into fights, especially with a large Alsatian 7or 8 doors down. In those days people didn't seem to have Pitbulls, Rottweilers, or any of the macho status dogs that are around now. However, it wasn't unusual for them to have German Shepherds, or Alsatians, as a guard dog, sending a message out that these were people not to be messed with. Moss's nemesis was a big, mean bugger and he would attack him at any opportunity. We'd usually hear the snarling and barking, and possibly screams and shouts from bystanders and we'd have to charge up the street and try to stop it or, more likely, wait for it to end. The denouement was predictable, and painful. Moss would be left, shivering and bloodied, his back legs unable to move because the big fella would bite his back in a way that caused temporary paralysis, and I'd have to carry him home. He'd recover pretty quickly, and would often be game to go back for more.

When dad died, he grieved, in his own way, with us and maybe for us. He became meaner, his bites more likely to draw blood. We would still occasionally tumble around together, but we'd all been exposed to a horrible truth that meant that we couldn't be pups any more, and maybe the grip of his teeth gave us a way to feel the pain, anger, and resentment of our loss. While we were all adapting to the instructions of well-meaning adults and trying to be good boys for our mam, Moss was taking the occasional lumps out of us, giving substance to something we were all feeling, the shittiness, the unfairness, the hatred. 

I'm reading The Philosopher and The Wolf, By Mark Rowlands at the moment and it's helping me to understand and appreciate what I learned from my brother the dog. I resisted getting another dog for a long time and, although I love Benji, I've not let myself get as close to him and in many ways I'm glad of that.

One of the seven great dogs.

When I finished reading Straw Dogs I did what any man who has been exposed to the wilful hopelessness of the human animal would do. I took the dog for a walk.

Our dog is Benji. As you can see, he’s a handsome character. We got him from a rescue centre 5 years ago and he’s now 13 going on 14, or mid 70s in dog years. He’s completely deaf, but he’s sprightly and affectionate, a good companion. Having him as part of our family has, I think, brought out the best in all of us. It’s put us more in touch with our immediate surroundings because of having to go out for walks. He’s also helped us to brush up on our pack mentality. If we’re all in a room and he’s not there we feel incomplete, and we’ll bring his bed in so that he can lie there, sleeping and twitching and farting. And we feel good, being together, and having him there.

Our walking territory is the Mersey Valley, riverside woods and meadows reclaimed by nature from their former purpose as a sewage works. The area is now an urban country park, bordered on one side by the streets of Chorlton and on the other by the M60 motorway. We’ve now spent 5 years walking its paths in all seasons and all weathers. Although I now see them on a regular basis, I’m still thrilled at the sight of Jays, Herons, the Canada Geese nursery school that appears on the river every spring, and the kingfishers that we very occasionally spot on the brook that feeds into the river. We’ve seen all manner of small, and not so small, rodents, including a mink that stared defiantly at my wife from the opposite bank of the brook one day. We’ve heard, but never seen, woodpeckers. The electricity pylon in the distance in the picture below is a landing point for the Cormorants that frequent the river and the Water Parks, so we've come  to know it as the electric cliff. 

It’s a whole world of nature that Benji, in his understated way, has gifted to us. And now he’s a bit off colour. He’s old, and in many ways content. He has good days when you could easily think of him as a frisky young dog, just past being a pup. And he has the other days, like yesterday, where he’s reluctant to leave the house to go for a walk, and his breathing can be a bit wheezy, and I hate to think of him not lying there in front of the TV, dreaming and whimpering. Our stinky old friend. Our dog.

The title of this post is a reference to a film that came out in 2008, and which has become a family (pack) favourite. It’s called Dean Spanley. Any attempt at a synopsis wouldn’t really do it justice. It’s about life and death, loss and grief, and it’s funny and sad. One of the main characters confidently states, more than once, that there are only ever 7 great dogs. For us, Benji is the greatest of them.