Monthly Archives: September 2015

Lurchers for Beginners 2: This Time It’s Personal

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You now know what a lurcher is. You are fully prepared for the general mayhem, and have secured yourself and your home against lurcher-related disasters. At this point we must make it clear that you have missed something. You don’t know what you’ve missed, but your dog does. The lurcher is a cunning beast…

But this does allow us to move onto a few more advanced concepts. There may even be some serious points here, but we did say ‘advanced’.

The Alpha

Lurchers like being in packs, and will happily scoot off into the distance en masse. The pack is a working unit, and there is no finer sight than three or four lurchers shrieking wildly as the entire pack completely fails to climb a tree and get that damn squirrel. In fact, they like packs so much that they will also investigate that pack of biscuits, that pack of wafer-thin ham, and especially that pack of pork chops which you left in the bottom of the shopping bag by mistake.

Most packs have alphas. They may have omegas, as well, but the alphas don’t let them get a word in. Alphas can be female or male, proving that dogs recognised the work of the suffragette movement long before people did. In your home, the alpha dog’s main tasks are to get the food before anyone else (including you), keep the food whether they want it or not, and tell everyone that they’re keeping it in no uncertain terms.

seawaterAn alpha female waits for a dim pack member to discover that seawater tastes yucky

Alpha dogs, remembering the dull time they used to spend in caves, also tend to grab the best and highest places to sleep. Many amusing ‘experts’ make it clear that you, the human, must be the alpha in order to retain control and discipline. This is a sound theory. In practice it is probably why:

a) You cannot get onto the sofa, and
b) If you are on the sofa, the lurcher is on top of you.

In fact, most lurchers, alpha or omega, believe they are lap-dogs. This leads to pleasant companionship until your lurcher is 20 kilos and over, at which point it leads to compression injuries, deep vein thrombosis or cramp. The dog’s fine, though, so that’s alright.

Useful Exercise A: Lock yourself in the bathroom, ignore the scrabbling outside the door and say to yourself “I am the alpha.” ten times. It won’t make much difference, but it’s always good to have ‘you’ time.

Equipment

The wide martingale/greyhound collar is standard because, hey, would you want to be choked twice a day? If you would, then we doubt you have the time or energy to deal with lurchers. Well fitted head-collars (such as a Halti) can also work well, oddly enough both for lurchers and for devotees of peculiar erotic practices.

The next most vital piece of equipment is the lead. Leads are controversial devices, especially with your lurcher(s), but we at greydogtales are here to give you a quick run-down.

A good simple lead can be made of leather, reinforced fabric or nylon. It should be made of combat-tested kevlar/carbon fibre and vetted by NASA to be able to restrain a space shuttle, but it probably won’t be. You will be washing your lead, because your lead will be wet, tangled, muddy, and smeared with fox poo and bird droppings. Nylon is easiest to wash, generally. Leather is nice, but can become very, very smelly and stiff after a while, so needs more care.

Metal chain leads are clanky, heavy and, if you walk your dogs near cattle fences, extremely good at transmitting a surprising electric shock when your dogs pees on or investigates a live fence. greydogtales has been there.

Long-line leads are a Good Idea when training for recall. If you are lucky. Lurchers are known to have two methods for dealing with long-line leads. The first is to stand there until you get bored and take the long-line off, at which point the lurcher runs away at high speed. The second is to run at an equally high speed in a circular motion until you are completely trussed up in 30 metres of durable nylon rope. Some patience is required.

Extendable leads are not recommended, unless you have a thick-necked, very slow old bassett hound which likes to potter at a slight distance. They seem tempting, until the lurcher runs off and hits the end of the lead’s length.  Which they will. Three things can happen at this point:

a) Bits of the dog break;
b) Bits of you break;
c) The ratchet mechanism and/or the clasps break.

None of these make an extendable lead worth the risk.

Useful Exercise B: Have a partner or friend take you shopping with a choke chain on, and see how you like being asphyxiated every time you head towards that special offer on malt whisky.

Poo bags are a must. Do practice indoors first, though, and get used to poking your fingers through them and getting something icky all over your hand. Cold, lumpy chocolate pudding is an excellent substitute to use in practice sessions. Also be aware that if there are nettles or spiky bushes around, some lurchers will shove their bums in these, just to watch you struggle. Lurchers have a very keen sense of humour. They will also wait to relieve themselves until you are in full view of nearby pedestrians, grumpy homeowners and slow moving traffic, at which point they will have a graphic bowel movement. It amuses them.

More complex devices for scooping up poo are available, but most make you look like a deranged person trying to hoover the pavement.

Muzzles are another Serious Subject, and may be tackled at a later date, if our alpha allows us to take ours off.

We were also reminded that in the last instalment of Lurchers for Beginners, we did not mention the word W-A-L-K-I-E-S. This is partly because even typing the word is risky, and partly because at greydogtales we have a simple, non-verbal system to alert the dogs that a walk is imminent. This consists of:

  • putting on anything that looks like a coat or jacket
  • going anywhere near the front door, even if you were heading upstairs
  • looking like you were going near the front door
  • moving a lead out of the way to get at the post in the hallway

All of the above spell D-O-O-M.

Useful Exercise C: Try to leave your house without your dog(s) noticing. No? I told you.

And that’s it for now, my dearest listeners. October and Hallowe’en are on their way, and there is spooky stuff coming. Do not abandon ship, though – longdog updates will continue (on and off!).

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Shake Your Scary (Car) Booty

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There is one Forbidden Zone, a Dark Place into which Django cannot look, cannot go. Car boot sales. He is, let’s face it, a bumbling, easy going dog, but he is a piddler extraordinaire. I stand by shops and pretend I don’t know him as he pees down someone’s advertising sign, or heads straight for the display outside the expensive florists. So car boots are a no-no for him. I cannot rummage through the contents of someone’s garage at a leisurely pace knowing that at any minute he’s going to water a box of vintage vinyl collectables.

We go to these events dogless, therefore, throughout the summer, and dig deep. My great joy is the hunting down and capture of old audiotapes. It’s a CD/mp3+ world, and so people gradually offload their stretched, half-magnetised audiobooks, usually into my waiting hands. Car boots are also wonderful for haggling, which I love. The thrill of getting fifty pence knocked off a tatty out-of-print paperback must be the same feeling achieved thousands of years ago, when you saw a mammoth trip over and told your tribe that you did that. Ah, that hunting instinct, finely honed through years of savaging innocent cardboard boxes on a Sunday morning…

Not that it’s relevant, but we also try and pick car boot sales where you can get a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich, with lots of brown sauce, so that we get a healthy balanced breakfast at the same time.horraudio1b

Horror and ghost story audiotapes are my primary prey, as you might expect, for many tapes are no longer available commercially. I love the hiss and thunk of a cassette tape ploughing its way along, and the happy hours spent rewinding one with a pencil, or trying to get the end of the tape back into the spool bit. Yes, I could get the digital download of some of them for my gas-powered computer, but it’s not the same. Making fancy bread, pizza dough and a bloody great sink-the-Bismark fruit cake? Set yourself up in the kitchen with an audiotape, and drift into baking bliss. Flour everywhere, feral brown dogs trying to steal the ingredients and something spine-shivery in the background.

Vincent Price, for example, reading The Speciality of the House, or Christopher Lee’s rendition of The Monkey’s Paw. The Room in the Tower by E F Benson, or one of Saki’s unpleasant little understated stories. Patricia Hodge reading Black Dog by Penelope Lively. All good.

I adore Vincent Price’s range, his ability to convey menace in quite soft tones, never needing to overdo it. The Price of Fear is a great series, well worth getting if you can. And Christopher Lee must be familiar to you anyway, with those deep tones which make you shiver.

horraudio2bEven better than audiotape, how many people here have got a copy of The King of Elfand’s Daughter LP on vinyl? A concept by two members of Steeleye “All Around my Cat” Span, the album not only has Mary Hopkins (!) and Alexis Corner, amongst others, but features Christopher Lee as the Elf-King himself.

“Why should my daughter be taken by pitiless time? This… Shall… Not… Be!”

Stunning stuff. I can’t say I like every song, but Christopher does deliver his part. I’m sure Lord Dunsany, the original author, would be tapping his toes to it, had he not died in 1957.

My favourite modern narrator, as mentioned weeks ago in Horror without Wires, is Wayne June. He reads, amongst other things, a great series called The Dark Worlds of H P Lovecraft, which really do the job. Six CDs or downloads of HPL’s creepy stories, about 20 hours (I’m guessing) of something nasty in the brain-shed. Inasmuch as I would ever recommend anything to my innocent, trusting listeners, I back these to the hilt.

(Which is odd for me, because I don’t like being told what to like. I deliberately buy strangely-named cheap toothpaste with arabic writing on it in order to take my stand against TV adverts, for example. “No, I’m not a dentist, but my white coat makes it clear that I know more about toothpaste than you do.” Bugger off. It’s my mouth. The rest of my teeth are going to fall out without the insidious influence of multi-global corporations, thank you very much.)

But I lost track there (or a number of tracks). Wayne June conveys menace without shouting at you, by letting it sink in instead. I don’t mind the odd horror film where everyone shrieks “I’m very upset! And “This is BADBADBAD!” but when you have audio only, you want his beautifully paced narration telling you just how awfully worrying things are, or are about to become.

So it’s official – Wayne June is more scary than seeing your rye and seed dough collapse right before you put it in the oven.

Or Django edging inches closer to someone’s perfect display of antique porcelain and slowly, slowly cocking his leg…

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How Not to Be a Writer, Now with Added Lurcher

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Sir Arthur Conan Grant, acclaimed author of Sandra’s First Pony, explains…

Many people ask me what it’s like to be a writer. How do you cope with the constant praise, the sparkling reviews and all the money, they ask. And yet despite your busy and glamorous lifestyle, your dogs have such glossy coats – is that Pantene you use?

It’s always good to ask questions. I regularly question Twiglet, for example. “Where’s my bloody cup gone now?” I ask playfully, and “Why are you lying right across the doorway trying to kill me?” But as to writing…

Writers commonly believe that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people are out there, just dying to read their books if only they could get them published. They are sure that there is a huge audience for their brilliant plot ideas and their devastating use of the English/Chinese/Icelandic language.

This is Not True. The world is a cold and hostile place (unless you have a lurcher to hold).

I believe, on the other hand, that no-one is especially bothered about what I write, or why. And that there’s no particular reason why anyone should want to sit through my literary output. This makes things much easier, because it is then clearly my job to do little more than the following:

1) Bludgeon everyone repeatedly with my stories until they groan and give in.
2) Trick them into buying my stuff by pretending to be their friend and an all-round Nice Chap.
3) Sound like a proper author with meaningful things to say, and separate those pesky intellectuals from their wallets.
4) Become popular enough in the media so that you buy my books but don’t read them.

All of the above will eventually make me money, even if you don’t enjoy what you buy. Or even open it. Money is useful. You can’t, for example, feed three large dogs on Morrison’s own-brand bargain baked beans for long before the house becomes completely uninhabitable. I tried this experiment, and I can assure you that about three hours was quite enough. We don’t even talk about the left-over chili con carne.

They say that the writer’s lifestyle is a lonely one. This is also Not True. My lifestyle is constantly interrupted by scam phone calls, e-mails asking me if my paved drive is big enough, people at the door wanting to tarmac my manhood, the family wanting to be fed and so on. Did Tolstoy constantly have to unblock the toilet whilst writing Pride and Prejudice? I think not.

But what about where the work is actually done? Some writers have a study, a retreat or even a cabin in the Lake District in which to concentrate on their work. I have two special places in the house for my creative endeavours. The first one is trapped at my computer desk, unable to take a break because the dogs have laid down under the wheels of my swivel chair (I’m terrified of running them over and ending up with thousands in vet’s bills).

The second place is lying on the floor with a longdog on top of my notepad, trying to push my glasses off. Neither of these positions is ideal. “Look,” I say, “Isn’t that a squirrel?” Then I hope that they all shoot off into the garden and leave me alone for long enough to write at least a paragraph.

After that, I usually go upstairs to consult a reference book, or check some period detail in a Victorian story. Not fooled by the squirrel trick for long, the dogs pile up after me, convinced that I am about to brush my hair and take them out. The crucial plot element which was about to come together is swept away in a tide of tangled leads and escaping poo bags, most of which float high across the street like little blue doves receiving their freedom (and that’s proper writing for you, Mr So-called Dickens!).

Of course, in line with Objective 2) above, I should admit that Django, Chilli and Twiglet are actually Equity-paid acting dogs, hired to make me seem like a jolly dog-loving person. They pose for pictures on the moors, lie on a sofa or two and then all go back to their trailer to play poker and drink bourbon. Chilli always wins, but I think she keeps a spare ace under her tongue.

So is writing satisfying? Well, I do enjoy those moments not talking about it, not doing it and not reading my rejection slips, so yes, it has its perks. In my spare time I also enjoy not fishing and not collecting stamps. This leaves me with many hours of relaxing past-times, such as re-plumbing the bathroom because I’m a writer and can’t afford to get someone qualified to do it. I now know more about olive nuts, copper piping and soldering than I do about semi-colons, so life isn’t all bad.

reprintcart2And there you have it, the exciting life of a writer, with added lurchers. Of course, there is always one final question which visitors to Grant Manor ask:

But Sir Arthur, do you have to have longdogs to become a really successful writer?

I’ll tell you the answer when my next cheque comes in…

Coming up on greydogtales in the next month or so:

Harry Potter: A Warning from History
Living Hell in the Swamplands of Southern Borneo
My Paranormal Life
Lurchers for Beginners: The Advanced Class

Consumer warning: Some of these entries may not be real

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At Last – CSI: Edinburgh

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OK, who can tell me what connects Silence of the Lambs with Edinburgh Old Town in the 1830s? Yes, the girl at the back, with the green hair and the switch-blade. No, sorry, it’s nothing to do with butchers this time. Not directly, anyway.

It’s the actor Brian Cox, of course.

So, that’s the end of another blog, and next time, we’ll…

What? You want to know why I asked? Oh, alright.

You see, I love Inspector McLevy. I think anyone who likes crime and detective stories, or police procedurals, would enjoy McLevy. He isn’t occult, psychic or any of those weird things you’ve come to expect from me. He’s a tough cop in a tough city. Rebus without a Saab.

And he was a real person, whose history I came across a while ago when I was looking for Victorian period detail. You know, like what brands of mobile phones they had in 1850, that sort of thing. I’m a meticulous writer.

James McLevy (1796-1875) was, by many accounts, the first proper police detective in Edinburgh, in the cheery old days of hanging and transportation.

Magistrate: Why did you steal that loaf of bread, you little vermin?
Street Urchin: ‘Cos I wanted to be a-feedin’ of them kangi-roos dahn under, guv’nor.
Magistrate: Oh God, just string him up anyway.

After time as a nightwatchman with the Edinburgh police, McLevy was given the rank of detective in 1833, and had a successful career which spanned thirty years and a reported 2,220 cases.

This might all have ended up as a minor historical note, except for two things:

1) McLevy wrote up his cases in a number of books from 1860 onwards, around his retirement. How much of what he recounts is true, we can’t tell, but they are not wildly exaggerated tales. They cover the ups and downs of policing Edinburgh Old Town, with its slums and theatres, cobblers and cut-throats. Dickens without the silly names, so to speak.

2) Actor/writer David Ashton decided to create a series of radio plays about McLevy’s fictionalised exploits. These are quite superbly done, terrific fun, and occasionally rather moving. There are TEN series of McLevy now, most of which can be tracked down via the wonderful web (Ashton has written four novels in the same vein, as well).

The real McLevy was a hard worker. He had an insight into criminology, employing stings and forensic techniques. He seems to have had a certain sympathy for the miscreants in his parish, and was not without mercy at times. Eventually he became well enough known to be consulted by parliament and social reformers on the subject of how to deal with criminality.

51NOiJnpXuL._SX330_BO1,204,203,200_Some claim that because he consulted the medical school of the University of Edinburgh, where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle later studied, he might have influenced Conan Doyle’s creation Sherlock Holmes. Pushing it a bit, maybe, but McLevy was better known back then. Conan Doyle might at least have considered some of the cases when constructing his own stories.

On the radio, Brian Cox gives what I believe is one of his best performances yet as Jamie McLevy, thief-taker in the Parish of Leith. He brings humour and humanity into what can be quite brutal tales, covering such diverse subjects as:

  • Revenge tragedies;
  • The horrors of the Crimean war;
  • Women’s rights;
  • Deadly rivalry between brothels, and
  • Victorian pornography.

Ashton’s McLevy is instantly accessible. Don’t think “Oh no, boring historical detective with archaic foibles.” He’s dedicated to his job, cranky and occasionally eccentric. He needs his coffee. He has a dry wit, and he eats too many sugary sweets.

The good Inspector (not as high a rank as it is now) has a love-hate relationship with Jean Brash (played by Siobhan Redmond), the owner of a body house, or brothel, called the Happy Land. I’m guessing that there is intended irony from Ashton here, as the real Happy Land was a tenement/slum area in Victorian Edinburgh.

The National Galleries of Scotland
The National Galleries of Scotland

If I wanted to sound really mock-academic, I could point out that it’s also referenced in an 1838 hymn:

There is a happy land, far, far away,
Where saints in glory stand, bright, bright as day

‘The Happy Land’ was therefore sometimes mentioned by spiritualists as where the souls of the departed would end up – if they were lucky.

Curiously, while James McLevy was an Irishman who came to Scotland as an immigrant in his teens, Brian Cox is himself a descendant of Irish immigrants to Scotland. A match born in… well, somewhere up there. David Ashton, for fun, plays Lieutenant Roach, McLevy’s superior.

The other notable character on the radio is Constable Mulholland, McLevy’s assistant, who spends his time getting exasperated with his Inspector, fishing, keeping bees and hitting people with a big stick. And he likes the ladies, but is not the luckiest of fellows. Mulholland is supposed to have been a real contemporary of McLevy’s, but I can’t prove that bit.

I’m always mithering on about occult detectives and period crime, so I look out for spooky references in everything I read or listen to. The radio series does have a subtle, unsettling element sometimes – odd presentiments, a sense of the violence and death which follows McLevy, and a prophetic vision or two from the locals – but the original James McLevy gives little shrift to spookiness. The best you get is the ending of The Cobbler’s Knife:

“This is the only dream-case in my book; and I’m not sorry for it, otherwise I might have glided into the supernatural, as others have done who have had more education than I, and are better able to separate the world of dreams from the stern world of realities.”

And to finish, you’ll have guessed the connections by now. If not…

The brilliant Brian Cox plays Inspector McLevy, but he also played Hannibal Lecter in the original 1986 movie Manhunter, the film adaptation of the book Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, who wrote Silence of the Lambs. In Manhunter, the lead FBI agent/profiler hunting Hannibal was played by William Petersen, who, of course, was Gil Grissom in CSI.

And none of the above are actually from Edinburgh.

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