Bringing the dead to life

I'm not sure why I did it, but today I led Tiger, Squirrel and Shark to an assortment of dead dogs in a glass cabinet.

In my head, the hour-seconds toil by in company to the dead dogs.

They subsume me with the finite. My body wants to drop and buckle to the floor. I could try and shout out my defence, but I already know my hollowed words would wither up, so I would howl only DEAD DEAD DEAD. I'd echo it over and over, glassy eyed unblinking, until I am hauled away by mercy staff and given lifeblood by the sight of a fresh green leaf.

That's how acres of dead dog impact on me.

But not for Shark, Squirrel and Tiger.

They peer in at the glass, puzzled and fascinated. Particularly by the curiosity of wet noses and stiff upright tails.

I wonder if it's because they know they can advance, and lift cautious fingers right up to the dead and living faces. These creatures that they dread, the ones they thought were birthed from hell, twitch in reply not a muscle, lift not a paw, show not a tooth from a moist and panting mouth. Not one dog turns so much as a swivelling eyeball.


Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, you confound me. You truly do. Because then you bring these dead things to life. You tell me how you could take a dog from behind the glass, and make it the character of a story. You'd give it a name, and a place, and have it play a part.

It could be a touch and feel story, says Shark, and we could stitch the book with fabrics and furry offcuts, and we could show our story to Bea.

Bea is a life force aged 18 months. Her grandma brings her to stare at our faces and our kitchen walls. Shark says we could show Bea our home-made story book. Perhaps it would be a story about a puppy dog who crosses mountains and deserts and oceans to get home alive.


Children, all I can say, is that you amaze me.

And if you carry on lifting up my beaten, overwhelmed, dead spirit like that, I'm almost considering seeing if tonight, with your support, I can stand upright on the bathwater.

Pleasure and pain

I hardly dare admit it. By the time you are sipping your chilled chardonnay and preparing for another evening of Celebrity Big Brother, I'm already upstairs in the attic bedrooms. Once there, I put on a squeaking voice and pretend to be Mr Wopsle.

If you do not know who Mr Wopsle is, that is probably because you are a well-rounded uptotheminute individual. I bet you live in the twenty first century, know what dongles are, and can converse about the likely trajectory of Vinnie Jones' career.

Think of me, then. Upstairs, I am living in a Victorian drama. I tell everyone I have tried to get out.

I am reading Great Expectations by Dickens, to Shark, Squirrel and Tiger as their bedtime story.

I will admit I quite like Dickens. OK, I confess to a prolonged affair with Trollope too. Sometimes I still gaze at him, wistfully. Then he winks at me from his place on the top shelf, but really, I haven't got the time. I may fondle his crinkly pages again in my retirement.

But Dickens. And Great Expectations. I am upstairs with both. With Dickens, you wade through a lot of prose and strange referencing to Victorian practices of grease-selling, then suddenly there it is. A lawyer with a black chair like a coffin. A man who staggers and falls backwards upon a sofa in the manner of a dying gladiator. The silent frustrations of one who pulls themselves up by their own hair. And I act that out, and Shark, Squirrel and Tiger all laugh, and want another chapter.

Yet although you can guess I strangely enjoy this bedtime book, I also wish it were over.

Mostly, because it is hard work, reading all that long sentence prose when it is evening, and you have to add all the voices, some of the actions, and your audience is getting in and out of the bath while traipsing wet and dripping and towel clad across the story-reading place, which is a furry chair propped up against the radiator on the hall landing.

It's not over quickly, either. This story routine can go on for hours. I'm not telling you that last night I finally managed to coax lights out at 11.30pm.

Then there is all the explaining to do. Why does Miss Haversham want Pip to play? Why did Jaggers bite his finger? Why does Biddy get cross? After fifteen minutes of sounding like an English teacher I want to slap myself around the face to shut myself up.

So this is why despite the pleasure, there is also pain, and I wish it were done.

And if you're wondering, Great Expectations is Tiger's choice. She pulled it off a bookshelf and said, that one. I wanted Kit's Wilderness by David Almond. I'll claim that next.

Meanwhile, I feel strangely cut off from normal life, with Great Expectations in the attic bedrooms. Is Dickens a must-read these days? Do children read him? Do they know who he is? Or is it only us, reading about Jaggers till past eleven, wondering about butter fat and cobweb cakes, knowing there is only one answer to my half-hearted question, Do I really have to read another chapter?