How (Not To) Holiday With Dogs 1

So here we are on our second night of five away from home on our West Lothian tour of dog-friendly accommodation.

Yesterday we packed the Leaf and drove to Uphall to check in to the Oatridge Hotel, which is quite a nice, clean and upwardly mobile first stop (construction going on in the beer garden (I even saw someone mowing the astroturf!)).

We checked in at 4:30pm or thereabouts and I settled up the remainder of the bill. Then my wife and son went to the local chippy for a special fish for myself, a fish supper for my son, a baked spud for my wife and an additional platter (for everyone, which everyone was too full to eat).

Those of you who have been to Uphall may remember the busy high street and intersection and not immediately be able to envision any green areas for dogs to roam, relax and do their business, but we managed to find a nice walk not too far from the hotel left across the bridge over the Broxburn (which is actually a burn (Scots. valley of the badgers)), up a path and right to a big green square.

Although she’d been fine in the car, for some reason our canine family member was extremely unhappy having to wait outside the chip-shop while my wife and son were inside, and slipped backwards out of her harness completely so I had to grab her between my knees to reapply it. Probably a wolf pack thing. Realised we should maybe have done some separation anxiety training with her little by little to help her get used to us randomly disappearing into shops. Who knows where she would have shot off to had she escaped, as un-street cred as she is. Probably the interior of the chippie.

Tried to watch a terrible movie about dragons on the misnamed Great! Movies on the TV with my son but could barely keep my eyes open. The early 2000s CGI was pretty good, however, and didn’t seem to match the poorness of the hairstyles which suggested 80s straight-to-VHS.

Couldn’t sleep due to worrying about the dog needing a pee, her barking every hour at sounds both real and imagined, me feeling too hot while simultaneously a chilly draft tickled across the small of my back due to not getting enough of the duvet as the dog was sleeping between us on the bed, the window rattling in its frame, birds screeching, the central heating humming and the green unblinking eye of the fire escape sign light above the door.

Hopefully tonight will be better.

Everything You Need From A Store

Yesterday I took a trip down memory lane as my mother asked me to get some groceries and pick up a prescription for her at a small shopping mall near my old high school. This I duly did, looking forward to visiting the old haunt and seeing what, if anything, had changed. 

My old school has long been demolished, rebuilt and renamed and I must say looks very shiny and new and well designed. The modern architecture looks good on it; a step or three up on the communist bloc design of my yesteryouth. I could almost forgive them for erasing part of my life from reality. Almost. But the school lives on in my memory and dreams: its crystal maze-esque one-way system of mouse shoulder-width corridors and stairwells; its ground floor of 'not quite inside not quite outside' pillar-strewn mental space with sharp concrete corners everywhere; its alphabetised Houses of destiny (I was in F) sticking out at right angles towards grass, greenness and glen; its science block plonked on almost as an afterthought; and its playground a prison exercise yard in the centre. My God. Memories gush forth like struck oil. But they're all by the by as I didn't even stop to take a photo of the new place (to which I have no attachment, positive, negative or otherwise except it looks nice and probably smells nice too).

Today I want to talk about the supermarket.

When I was a pre-schooler my mother used to trail me round Safeway on a weekly basis for the groceries. This would have been the late 70s. I clearly remember her allowing me to open 'as yet unpaid for' packets of goodies and then settling up the spent wrappers at the till on the way out. Imagine doing this nowadays. I have absolutely no idea how I am not crippled by debt by this unintended received philosophy even now. Perhaps it was my Dad's mindset that it was better to save up and buy stuff rather than put everything on credit cards which counteracted this. Or maybe I was affected in other ways, as I was too young to understand the economics of such a thing, just the joy of my mum letting me do something slightly naughty and delicious with no concern for the consequences. Perhaps I've been seeking out slightly naughty and delicious things ever since. Who doesn't?

One day, when I was slightly older, we were in the afore-mentioned Safeway and we'd become separated as I went off to find a packet of sweets. Having selected a tasty option I attempted to return to my mother but couldn't find her anywhere. After a while of carrying the sweet packet in my hand, without thinking I stuck them in my pocket while continuing my search. By the time I found her I had had this sudden heart-thumping and adrenalin-fueled epiphany: I'd just pocketed a packet of sweets in a supermarket and no-one had noticed. I looked around to see if I'd been spotted, but no. All I had to do was walk out with my mum, act natural, and get away with them scot-free! My God! My first taste of the thrills of breaking the law. As we approached the till my mouth became dry. The candy seemed to bulge in my trouser pockets. I couldn't resist staring guiltily at the adults. The cashier smiled at me. I gulped back at her. Act natural! I told myself. NATURAL GODDAMNIT!*

When we got home I scoffed the lot guiltily behind the garage. It never occurred to me until just now that if I'd simply put them in the shopping trolley mum would have bought them for me without batting a 70's mascara'd eyelid. Or even let me eat them and pay for the empty wrapper at the till. But where would the fun be in that? And so began my life of crime.

Another memory I have is of a friend and me going down the glen and collecting two big bin bags of empty beer and soft drink cans, testing them with magnets to see if they were aluminium, and then bringing them to this supermarket carpark where a scrap guy gave us a few quid for them. Happy days.

Back to the present. I pull my Leaf into the carpark to happily discover that Tesco, being the cheap bastards we love them for, haven't even properly painted over the remains of the old Safeway sign. This more than made up for the erasure of my high school from the annals of history. I feel myself return to solidity, like Marty McFly when his parents finally kiss at the end of Back To The Future. Although upon entry to the supermarket I find it claustrophobically small compared to the planet-sized Asdas and Morrisons to which we are now used. How could I have gotten lost from my own mother in such a tiny grocery store back in the day? You can almost see every part of the shop from a standing position near the door. While gathering the requested shopping - fruit, corned beef and decaf cappucino pouches - I can't help chancing eye contact with everyone I meet, perhaps to see if I know them, they me, or anyone has any knowledge of my past transgressions 40 years prior.

Nearby is the fish and chip shop I'd occasionally escape to from high school and patronise (hah, call yourself a chippie?) for a deep fried pizza at lunchtime. Since you ask, I rarely truanted from school; I only have one vague memory of jumping out a ground floor window and strolling off without a care over the grass, but this is so fuzzy it could well have been a dream.

The whole place seems a little run down. The only establishment doing well is the pub - the Bonnie Prince Charlie - enjoying a recent lick of paint and flowers in hanging baskets. One place is a new and worthwhile addition to the square: a Men's Shed, a sign of the times perhaps, or at least something that wouldn't have existed 40 years ago. Looks like a solid place. Might pop in one of these days. 

It being a Sunday though, the pharmacy is, perhaps predictably, closed, rendering the whole trip ultimately pointless. I could have got the shopping at the new LIDL down the road.

*Slightly dramatised for the purposes of artistic licence.

All Ruts Lead To Rome

Today finds me in a ruminative state of mind, and what I'm ruminating about is ... ruts. 

Yes, those deep, narrow canyons in muddy roads worn down by over-frequent tyre-contact, that it's difficult to get out of. I mean habits. Lifestyle. Routines. Repetitive acts into which by chance or design we have fallen. At the age I am now, I have a lot. That's how we survive. We can't continuously scrutinate* every action afresh to judge whether it is worth continuing. We must focus on the other more important things, besides, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? And ruts work. They get you places. I'm goin' somewhere, man. Groove-y! The trouble is, what if you want to go somewhere else? Inject a little spontaneity into your life and suddenly decide you want to visit Quthing, Lesotho for some reason? Then you're gonna want out of that rut. And what happens when we try to get out of ruts? It's hard. It takes effort. If you're on a bike you might fall over and get a mouthful of dirt. 

In short, ruts suck.

But we are in them, often unconsciously, which is of course the nature of the rut. We do 'em on autopilot, allowing us instead to focus on the more important things, like replaying scenes from old films in our minds, such as Jim Carrey squeezing himself out of the ass of a giant rhino.

If you're anything like me, you wake up in the morning. You stretch. You wash my face. If it's a work day and you're prone to unnecessary facial hair, you shave. You go downstairs and play with and feed the dog. You put three cups and a glass on the kitchen counter and prepare the Four Drinks of the Healthy Lifestyle Apocalypse: coffee, warm water, green tea and orange juice. You take them upstairs and imbibe them in the following order: warm water, to clean your insides; coffee, because it tastes nice; orange juice, because it's cold; and finally, once it's had a chance to cool down slightly, the green tea, which if you're not careful can burn the darn mouth off you.

So what's my point, I hear you ask, or in the comments, read. Well, my point is, as busy as my past year has become, I've been forced to prioritize, which has meant pruning my own personal tree of life. Snipping off the branches which, perhaps were nice to have, in order to make room for the more important trunk. 

Perhaps I've pruned too much. Maybe the tree of life needs those branches, otherwise it's nothing but a pointy, brittle, fruitless, birdy-less stump, no more able to grow or bend than dry, dead wood.

It strikes me that a rut is basically a long, narrow, endless cage, with the same windowless view on either side that we sleepwalk along like automatons; blinkered shuffling sheep-zombies guided towards inevitable sheering, dipping, or worse - death. 

On a happier note, solutions abound! Skive a day off a week just to do something different, new, fresh. Take risks. Leave your phone at home. Talk to strangers. Embark on journeys without knowing the destination. Do some of the stuff you haven't done for ages just for the hell of it.

Here, rather than me publish a long list of things I used to do that brought happiness, why don't you take out a piece of paper and a pencil and write down all those things you have fond memories of doing, but have not done in so long. Keep going until you can think of no more. Then stick it to your wall or door - wherever you can see it. Dip into it whenever you feel you're in a rut.

*I know.

Smoke Without Fire

In February last year the Scottish government took it upon themselves, in their infinite wisdom, to order all households to install interconnected wifi smoke alarms. This meant that if an alarm went off in one wing of the house, all would go off. It came at a time during lockdown when the seemingly unnecessary expense of a hundred pounds for something that only people with big houses would benefit from, struck many as excessive. Eventually I only capitulated in case we had a fire and insurance was mitigated by the fact we didn't have them.

So I splashed out and ordered Amazon's choice of two smoke alarms and a heat detector for the kitchen. When they arrived, I distinctly yet fuzzily remember taking one out its box, along with instructions and tiny remote control, and having a mess about with it to try and see how it worked. After that, my memory is a blank. Try as I might, I could not find that smoke alarm or the instructions and began to question that I'd ever experimented with that particular device. The second smoke and heat alarm were still in their boxes. I dutifully affixed them to the walls in the desired places near the old alarms which I left up.

Fast forward a year later, 4:30 am, and the wifi smoke alarms all go off at once. I run downstairs to see what the story is, note the absence of any smoke or heat, and do my best to assure our new puppy that everything is okay. In my sleepy dazed state and after confirming the house is not in fact burning down, I depress the front of one of the alarms until it stops its infernal racket and return to my blissful slumber, only to be awoken once again ten minutes later.

Hooda guessed smoke alarms have snooze buttons?

I leap out of bed and repeat the process, wondering if maybe it's carbon monoxide. The puppy regards me with the expression 'Dude, wtf, again?' But the CO detector in the kitchen flashes silently and reassuringly. And anyway, we have an electric cooker now, which surely must reduce risk of CO poisoning, unless they'd not capped the gas off properly? I don't know.

Anyway, I rotate the alarms out of their holders and hold the front buttons again until they are silent. This they duly were. For another ten minutes. 

At their dratted shrieking I get up, press the front buttons longer this time (of course you can't just take the batteries out anymore), wrap them both in oven gloves, stuff them in a drawer, and go back to bed like a responsible dad.

And there they stayed. We still had the old ones attached, so it didn't bother me too much the damn new-fangled things were out of commission.

Anyway, weeks go by and we got back to normal, or as normal as you can be, getting your puppy used to doing its business outside. Late one night when I was 'peeing the dog' I heard a distant beeping noise which sounded like it was coming from a neighbour's garden. I shrugged, murmured, 'Hmm,' under my breath and thought no more about it.

A few nights later it happened again. 'Bloody neighbours,' I mused. 'Can't even get their bloody electronic gadgets from bloody bleeping.'

The next night the same thing. 'What a second,' I thought, 'Is that coming from our shed?' On further investigation I wondered if it might not have been emanating from the compost bin. It sounded like one of my son's old toys. But why on earth would it be coming from the compost bin?

Despite the rain and dark I put a head torch on and got the spade out, upended the wheelbarrow and began digging compost out like a crazy person. I was a man obsessed, determined to get to the bottom of this, literally if needs be. So much to our puppy's joy and amusement, I transferred rotting food waste from the compost bin to the wheelbarrow as the beeping noise seemed to get tantalisingly closer and closer until finally - tap!

I'd struck something. 

I dug around with my gardening gloves and took out an unidentified composting object, round, plastic, covered in a decaying, soft plastic wrapper and beeping self-importantly.

The other smoke alarm.

How in all mulching Hell had it gotten in there!?

Over the years we've found some strange items in our compost bin. Numerous bits of plastic, a fork, a potato peeler, the head of Alfredo Garcia, and now this. It's like the universe's last ditch place to hide items that don't want to be found. 

"Hey, Universe, I need a place to lie low for a while. I'm done forkin', peelin' or detectin' smoke."

Universe: "I have just the place."

So what I deduced is this: in my office I have three wastepaper baskets - one for recycling, one for general waste, and the third for compost.  Sometime in the past year, the smoke alarm I'd opened and messed about with must have slipped off a shelf or table into the bin destined for compost, and remained there hidden and activated until I threw it without much ceremony into the compost bin outside. There it lay, waiting patiently for the perfect moment in the cold, wet dark. As more and more kitchen waste got thrown on top of it, the soft plastic wrapper slowly disintegrated until finally some liquid or bit of decaying food matter pressed its way smoke-like in between two sensors, and-

Blam!

Operation POACH (Piss Off And Confound Human) is initiated.

Dog Days

And so a new month finds us. Behold July 2023! What surprises and challenges do you bring? What delicious secrets lie buried just below your surface, waiting patiently to be discovered? A gold coin perhaps? A magical artefact? The potatoes I planted?

Yesterday morning I awoke with a start following a dream our dog had been lost somewhere in the highlands of Scotland. There was no way she could find her way home. She was out there, alone, fending for herself. It was horrible. 

It wasn't like the dream of losing a child, like in a big city, which I've also had, and which was also terrible. But my child is at an age now where he has a pretty decent understanding of the lie of the land and how to communicate and get around. Our dog has only been in this world seven months. She's cute and cuddly, yes, but her communication skills are a little lacking. Opposable thumbs are few and far between. Using a credit card, even contactless, may be outwith the bounds of her skillset.

For these reasons having a nightmare about a lost puppy seemed to hit, not harder, but in a slightly different, more sensitive area, where one is not accustomed to be hit.

Upon returning to reality I felt such a wave of relief wash over me, it was indescribable. But let me try. Big. 

Even though it was still an hour before she habitually woke me up, I went straight downstairs to reassure myself that she was safe and sound on the sofa, and there she was, oblivious to the torment I had just suffered at the hands of my subconscious. "What are you doing here?" she seemed to think. "You still have an hour." Needless to say, cuddles and tummy rubs ensued.

Need someone to write mildly amusing doggy blog posts? Hold my beer.

How to Live a Low Carbon Lifestyle

In other news, I was pleasantly surprised seeing the numbers of our June energy usage, which I check the 1st (week) of every month. It being the middle of summer, they are naturally low, but due to our solar panels and the selling of the car, our carbon footprint is way, way down. Like silly small.

Red means winter, green summer. Far right column is year's CO2 output to date.

If my calculations are correct, in June 2023 we output less than the weight of our dog in carbon emissions. 20kg.

This is not including any land-based public transport usage by family members, as I consider the additional weight of a human on a vehicle which is traveling overground somewhere anyway negligible.

I'm talking about the energy for which we are directly responsible.

The gas we use for central heating and showers.

The electricity we use for lights, the kettle, the cooker, the fridge.

The petrol and carbon debt of the car, spread out mile by mile throughout its lifespan.

Note yellow line representing half of solar generation (estimated unused and going back into the grid) which is negative.

20kg of CO2 in a summer month is the lowest since I started taking records of our energy usage going to back to 1st Dec 2018. The closest is 44kg in July 2020 in the midst of the Corona lockdowns. In the winter of early 2019, when I regularly commuted by car to Edinburgh, it was as as high as 533kg. Half a tonne.

I'm not telling people how to live their lives and I know some folk depend on their private vehicles but damn, if you want to rid yourself of carbon guilt and feel better about the planet, sell your car. Tremendous mental health relief. Get a decent road bike with rack and panniers for shopping. Re-acquaint yourself with the sociability of public transport and sharing lifts. Normalise a slightly less convenient, smaller, slower world. Use the capital to install solar panels on your house.

You know it makes sense...

Hydrocarbon Hangover

Since selling our Toyota on Friday the 9th June, it's been a week of utter carlessness. 

Over the years our hybrid accounted for a third of our carbon footprint. I used it a lot for work, driving all over the country to film weddings and such.

But it has slowly become obvious it's now time to at least attempt a footloose and car-free existence for the following reasons.

• We as a family can no longer afford a car. It would cost £600 to repair the intermittent brake sensor problem, which we don't have. To me that's a signal to sell the car. Yes the Toyota gave 53 miles to the gallon, but our lifestyle sadly cannot stretch to that. Wise man say: live within your means.
• We as a species can no longer afford cars. You may or may not believe in human-caused climate change. But to me it's staring us in the face. It's a logical result of us burning a whole load of fossil fuels and cutting down a whole load of trees. Less rain, record temperatures every year, receding ice caps. Wild fires. Water shortages. The time to make sacrifices is here, if not past. We have to make changes on a personal, local, national and global level. Burning fossil fuels was a mistake at first, then a lie. Now it's unsustainable. The truth is, we were never meant to fly in jet planes. We were never meant to drive gas guzzlers. Those things were temporary luxuries. The golden age of burning oil willy nilly is over. We need to get back to cycling, horse-riding, hang-gliding - something, anything else. We need to accept that our worlds must shrink back to the smaller, slower way they once were.
• I've lost the taste for driving. Fighting to keep my eyes open while weaving home after midnight post-filming an event. Cars veering in off the slip-roads expecting you to move over. People not using indicators or driving on their phones. Feeling sick at the wheel. Being encased in a glass, metal stuffy coffin, hurtling along at break-neck speed. Back pain. Everyone complaining you're driving too fast, you're driving too slow, you're driving too badly, you're driving too well. Actually no-one's ever complained that.
• There are too many cars on the road. The days of cruising down the open road are long gone, because every other person and their lover are doing the same. It's nose to tail. Instead, you can undertake long lines of cars on a bike at the lights while inhaling their noxious exhausts and feeling the heat bouncing off their chassis.

I realise the hypocrisy of what I'm saying. I spent many air miles flying around the world. But shirking life changes due to fear of being called a hypocrite is just another excuse.

Yes, I overindulged carbon like there was no tomorrow. But now I've woken up and it is tomorrow. And must face the hydrocarbon hangover.

Case in point. Yesterday I traveled by train to visit my mum. Usually it takes 47 minutes one way in the car. It took four hours round trip. Instead of getting in the car in the driveway I had to walk a mile to the station with a heavy bag. Rather than focusing on the road, straining to hear music over the sound of the wind and worrying about drivers behind and cyclists in front (we need more cycle paths!) I sat at a train table, wrote the first half of this blog and did my accounts. I gazed out the dirty window at the passing scenery. I thought about life. I drank tea and guzzled an empire state biscuit. That leg lasted an hour. 

At Glasgow I got out and relieved myself in the (now free to use) Glasgow Central toilets, after almost going into the Ladies. I got on the train to my home town. It was too hot. I drank water.  Things cooled down a bit once we got moving. I looked out the window and pondered my next novel. I napped. I drooled. I spotted a missing playpark of my youth which had been turned to grass. This leg was half an hour. One leg shorter than the other. Strangely I was exhausted and beginning to realise I'd vastly overestimated the number of books I would read on the train. I climbed the last incline to the family home, lamenting the fact it was on a hill and has been for the past sixty odd years. Two hours later I'd arrived.

On the return journey I was too exhausted to even read on the train, and took the time instead to deal with the possibility of my phone getting hacked when I'd responded to a scammer's text to download a link, too late realising something was amiss. 

Changed trains again at Glasgow Central, where someone was expertly playing the free piano and bringing joy to a father on Father's Day. In the carriage, two older women dressed to the nines in pinks and yellows sat down at my table and ate a MacDonalds. Through the windows in the adjacent train a group of young girls were dancing and singing and waving at us. They stuck their 'American Catholic Trip' tickets to the windows to communicate where they were going or had been.

Because I had a wooden mug rack attached to my bag the two women at my table asked if I'd just moved house. I said no, I was clearing out my Mum's and this used to be mine. "You make assumptions, don't you?" the woman next to me said chattily. I wasn't chatty. I was tired. My back hurt from too much sitting. I realised they would have been old even in the 80s. But they were nice. I made minimal courteous replies hoping they wouldn't try to seduce me.

At a station on the way home, we stopped at a platform with significant police presence. I fought the urge to alight with my wrists out to confess. "It was me officer, I did it!" "Did what, son?" "I don't know. What's been done recently?" 

I walked home thanking my stars we live downhill from the station.

Life without a car is hard, but not impossible. Dare I say it, it's healthier and better for the planet. 

And more interesting.

The Luminari Launch

This weeks sees me finally getting my finger out and publishing The Luminari. This is a story I've been working on since November 2020 (what!?) and is Jake Jones's 3rd case after The Old Mice Killer and The Coffee Cup Killer. Happily it is the first of Jake's adventures to reach novel length, coming in at 54k words. 

In it, Jake investigates a mysterious cult in the desert, alleged by his new client Lucida Grande (shortly before she is incapacitated by a poison-laced cigarette) to be brain-washing members and stealing their personal savings and identities, replacing them with font names. He is tasked with finding her sister, Gill Sans, which sounds simple enough. At first.

I blatantly stole the idea from fellow West Lothian Writer, Nadine Little, and ran with it. She seems to have given me her blessing and magnanimously refused accepting ten percent of the profits, unless I make it big. Nadine also was kind enough to write a brilliant foreword for the book, as well as gave lots of great feedback advice and many hours of her time checking for errors (any that remain are definitely mine and not hers).

After approaching several agents and publishers with the story and seeing it rejected time and again, I confess I became disheartened. Felt I was knocking on Heaven's door until my knuckles bled. One or two publishers were tempted but put off by the fact that it wasn't the first in a series, but the third. Was it ever destined to see the light of day? They say you should never give up, and I told myself to keep going until I got at least 100 rejections. Which is easier said than done. The inner child in me was beginning to think, "Screw this," for which I harshly chastized it and told it to get back up the chimney and keep sweeping, dammit.

The light was going out of my writing life. I'm sure you'll agree there's a big soulful difference between creating colourful characters, dropping them in amusing situations and enjoying watching them dig themselves out, versus compiling multiple sightly different pitches to send out to established people in the publishing industry morning after morning, guardians of the golden goose, only to be knocked back again and again. 

For this reason my heartfelt thanks goes out to Twitter pal Andy Crosby, who saw value in, and convinced me to return to, the project. The Luminari will therefore be published under the Raptor Filmz banner (my small media business), as with the first two.

You can pre-order The Luminari ebook here and through the power of science it will be beamed directly to your device on Wednesday 17th May.

The paperback version will be live from Wednesday 17th May too. Those of you who think it's already live are mistaken. It can't be. That would be improper. 

I'm even currently wrestling with the document to craft a hardback version, and recording an audiobook too just for the heck of it. I've already received a proof of the 6" by 9" hardback and it's very nice I have to say. Just needs a few tweaks here and there before finalising.

The audiobook is a whole nother beast. Recording the story in the voice of Jake Jones (who turns out is from a fictional city crossed between Brooklyn and Boston) and maintaining consistency, is not easy. Add to that so many other characters who are from completely random places around the world (decided purely on whether I can do the accents or not) just pours more petrol on the pyre of pandemonium. Why is Freda from Liverpool? Why? No reference is made to this in the text. Why did she move to the US and decide to look after young offenders? Why has her accent not been Americanized? Why have Big Caslon's jaws been wired together? It makes no sense. And not only do I have to do impersonations of characters, I have to do impersonations of Jake doing impersonations of those characters, as he is the one telling the story... It makes me want to pull my hair out, and hopefully you yours.

Anyway, it's a lot of fun and it certainly adds a whole new dimension to the story. Many thanks to John Perivolaris for his mic vocal popper shield that enabled me to get this done. Hopefully it will be completed this week.

So on Wednesday 17th May at, let's say, 12 noon, I'll do a livestream to mark the launch, probably on my Facebook page. If you have any questions you'd like to ask me about the writing or publishing of The Luminari, or any of the Jake Jones stories, please email me at chrisryoung75@gmail.com or just ask me in the livestream.

Looking forward to seeing you then!