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Looks like some bucolic dream constructed from a half-forgotten childhood book - the kind you would request every night until the very mention of it causes PTSD flashbacks in yr care-giver. This would be the last page. The book would be called "Dillon, Vincent and Dowd's Big Day at the Lake".
Dillon is the name of my real dog. He's a springer spaniel not a lab, but he has that same look of happy friendliness. He's in the vets recovering from a knee operation and I miss him terribly. His biopsy came back all clear which is good because why? Because fuck cancer. But a human I met was not being best animal friend to me. A stranger at the pub (a plane-spotter I think - I live next to and RAF base) volunteered to "beat him to death for me" because it "would be cheaper than the vet" (this operation is costing me a few grand, which isn't fun when you're unemployed. Thankfully he's insured, so I get the money back, but it wasn't easy to raise that sort of capital. I had to exhaust all of my sources of good will, with the biggest donors being my church congregation, and my local pub (where this fellow was visiting) and the airmen stationed here, who generally know who impotent you feel when someone you love is sick and you're a long way from home. So most of the humans were being BAFs, just not this guy.
Now, I know this plane-spotter was just trying to be funny or something, and he did apologize later saying "a dog bit him when he was a kid" but who the fuck says something like that to someone they don't even know? Thankfully I'm on the wagon, and a mild-mannered pacifist, but that's the kind of thing that gets you into trouble in my experience.
Anyway, I named the about elephant Vincent because he reminds me of the late, great, Vincent Schiavelli. So yeah, my best animal friend will hopefully be back. Dillon will not be allowed walks for at least 3 months to convalesce, so I'm planning a Grand Adventure for him when he's better. I've painted a large canvas with impressionistic rubbish of how I feel about the past, and belonging somewhere, and missing my dog, and while he's not able to get up and about I'm going to read to him all about the history and the folklore of my area (to be honest, Dillon's not a big fan of abstract art, maybe because I only paint when I'm down in the dumps, but he does like exploring) and once he's up on all four paws (he can only hop about on three at the moment, not that it slows him down) we're going to explore all the mysteries of the maps I've found. Like, why are there two Leuchars Castles on the 1800 map, when I think there is only one, and it's really an iron age barrow some asshole Earl built a house on. What happened to all the wells and mine shafts that pepper the early maps and why, in a village of a few hundred people, did they build a jail next to a girls school? What were things like when the railway ran past my house? If my local church was built in the twelfth century then by whom, and for what purpose (the congregation must have been a Lord and 3 serfs judging by the population at the time), These things and more will by explored (with great diligence - getting stuck down a mineshaft or abandoned well until Dillon gets help would be romantic, but it doesn't sound like fun.
And somewhere along the way we'll meet an elephant named Vincent (I'm actually seen a photo of an elephant outside a nearby pub about a century ago, which no one remembers or can explain) and we'll sit on the grass by a loch together and look for deer (lots of deer here) like in the photo above. Which will then be the last page of a book which I won't read to kids because it will be kind of slow and sad.
http://maps.nls.uk/atlas/blaeu/page.cfm?id=953 description of where I live from 1654 http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/16512 wee bit of a map from 1887 https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/4415_108584142533_7067619_n.jpg BEST BELOVED DILLON