by Tony Hawks
I successfully followed directions to the railway station, thus completing my last obligation on the pedalling front. I bought a ticket to Totnes, and made it to the platform with considerably more ease than when I’d set off earlier in the week. I was a veteran of pig travel now. I understood Titch, and she knew how to communicate to me. Quite what she thought I’d been up to every day was anybody’s guess, but she’d grown to accept my need to pick her up, shove her in a sling, and cycle her about the country. Pigs, bright beasts though they are, probably don’t grasp the concept of fundraising. Titch didn’t need to know. She just went with the moment. She was Zen. She was mindfulness embodied. A cool little pig.
The train journey, unlike the two-wheeled extravaganza that I had just completed, was swift and uneventful, and it was not a happy one. I knew that I would soon be saying goodbye to Titch. Buying her off Chris was not an option. He’d made it very clear from the outset that she was not for sale.
‘She’s too precious,’ he’d explained. ‘A pig with a lovely temperament like hers is very rare. We’ll need to keep her for breeding.’
So it was definitely goodbye Titch. Lovely Titch. Sweet Titch. No longer would I be able to transform the mood in a room with the unzipping of my coat. Oh, I could try. But I’d need to be wearing one hell of a jumper.
Thinking about the missing bag was hurting, too, especially the loss of a fairly decent wedge of money that was meant for a far-off children’s care centre.
‘Bollocks,’6 I mumbled under my breath, causing a nearby elderly lady to raise an eyebrow, and banish me from her list of passengers in the carriage with whom she was prepared to engage in eye contact.
The train pulled into Totnes station, and Titch and I made our way out to the car park.
‘Tiiiiitch!’ said Fran, as she rushed towards us.
Right at the very last minute, she remembered the conventional running order for greetings following time away from your partner and, quite properly, she kissed and hugged me first, before turning her attention to the piglet.
‘How is she?’
A look from me.
‘I mean, how are you both?’
That’s better.
‘We’re good, thanks.’
‘Where’s your bag?’
‘I’ll explain on the way to Pennywell Farm.’
The warm and comforting familiarity of Fran, the smells and touch of the van and the feel of ‘normal’ transport, all set to work on dissolving the memories of the week’s events. Did I really do that? The flimsy nature of memory was under assault from the solid, unflinching, towering stature of the present. Had all that stuff really happened? My sense of time was skew-whiff. Posing for the photo with the staff from the Bedford Hotel seemed like something that had happened at the beginning of the week, not just a few hours ago. Collecting Titch and introducing her to our home, standing in Ilfracombe harbour and staring up at a statue of a pregnant woman with half of her belly exposed, getting down on my hands and knees and disinfecting the ground on which Titch had walked – these all seemed like things done months before.
As we arrived at the farm, my mobile phone rang. It was Radio Devon telling me that my bag had been located. A dog walker had found it by a gate and had carried it to a local shop. The kind owner of said shop – Richard, at the Corner Shop, Yelverton – had found in my bag a business card that I’d been given at the cafe in Fremington Quay. He’d called the number on the card and spoken to its owner, who must have guessed that the bag had been mine, and directed him to Radio Devon.
‘Sorry, Fran, but we’ll have to drive all the way back from where I’ve just come. But it’s worth it. There’s a lot of money in that bag.’
***
Titch sat on my lap as Fran drove us back across Devon. Richard, kind Richard from the Corner Shop, had returned my bag and the fundraising money was all present and correct. As we left Yelverton and headed back across Devon once more, I began to see sections of route that I had cycled only that morning. Distant memories from a few hours ago. I stroked Titch and realised that this lovely, warm, little creature would be out of my life soon.
I’ve never liked goodbyes much. They rarely happen at a time that is ideal for all parties involved. Either the other party would prefer you to stay longer, or you would like to hang around but they’re anxious to see the back of you. Finding the right words is hard. We may have to dance around the truth. ‘Thanks so much for having me, I’ll definitely be in touch if I’m passing this way again’ could easily mean ‘I’m glad I’m out of here. In any other circumstances I would have stayed elsewhere. Take a good look at me, because you’ll never see me this close up again.’ Equally, being on the receiving end of ‘It’s been an interesting visit, stay in touch’ may mean ‘You’re hard work. Go. And please, limit any future communication to email. OK?’
There’d be no need to find the right words for Titch. She heard only sounds with no meaning, much like it is for us when we listen to a politician. The van pulled in to Pennywell Farm and I felt a tug in my heart. Titch. Little Titch. She’d be gone soon.
My little Titch.
We were welcomed warmly by a hearty Chris, who led us to Titch’s pen, firing pig anecdotes at us, and keeping my mind from the sad moment that awaited us. Moments later, I was standing and holding Titch, ready to lower her into her sty and to reunite her with her two cousins. I cleared my throat, which for some reason had a little lump in it.
‘So this is goodbye, Titch. You have to restart your life with pigs instead of humans. Let’s see if you can stand it.’
And in she went. Her two considerably larger cousins immediately began jostling her, in a manner that looked less than welcoming.
‘They’ll bully her for a bit,’ said Titch’s lucky owner, Chris. ‘They’ll want to establish who is boss for a while.’
‘Can I come visit her?’
‘Yes, you can come visit. She’s your special friend now.’
She was indeed. Just how special I didn’t bother to say. It was none of Chris’s business who I slept with.
14
What’s In a Name?
My uncomfortable feelings about the Dartmoor National Park Planning Authority had been entirely justified. When we got back to the house, having returned Titch to the family fold, a letter awaited us giving notification that our planning application had been refused. This wasn’t great news. We’d rather set our hearts on the new kitchen extension. Never mind. We consoled ourselves with two facts.
(1) We were only weeks away from an event that would put it all into perspective.
(2) We could appeal against the decision. This was what our architect advised, on the grounds that their objections were without foundation and they had failed to follow their own planning guidelines.
As it turned out, we had support amongst our community.
Every member of the local parish council wrote letters to the National Park in support of us, and many people in the village stopped to encourage us and tell tales of woe regarding their own failed planning applications. We may have been refused, but there was no point in getting angry or fed up about it. Life, like President Putin, is too short.
Unappealing a prospect though it was, we would appeal.
***
The rain continued to beat down throughout a brutally wet winter. Sod, the malevolent and spiteful God whom I first described in Chapter 3, had decided to make us suffer in return for the blissful hours of sunshine He had provided over the summer. High winds and driving rain did the job exceptionally. Inundation was what He chose for many. We were lucky enough to live at the top of a hill and our only discomfort, beyond many an unpleasant dash to the car, was the sound of brooks and streams running high as they gushed down to swell the rivers in the valley below. Surprisingly, the kale that we had attempted to grow in the summer and which had been decimated by the caterpillars, started to make a comeback. So there you have it – endless winter rain is better for kale than it is for those livin
g on flood plains in Somerset.
As I re-emerged into village life, post-Titch, there was some excitement amongst the villagers who had followed my progress in the local media. ‘Where’s Titch?’ was the most common question, just as ‘Where’s your fridge?’ had been the most prevalent after I’d completed Round Ireland With a Fridge. It seems that people, deep philosophical beings that we are, need to know the whereabouts of things.
‘I READ ABOUT YOU IN THE PAPER!’ called Reg, at his customary volume that was, let us say, enthusiastic.
Reg lived with village hall committee member Ann, but they were not a couple. As far as I understood it, 86-year-old Reg had formerly worked for Ann and her husband. When the husband had become terminally ill, he’d asked Reg to look after Ann once he had passed away, and that was what Reg had done. Ann and Reg lived like incredibly old student flatmates. I’d been popping round to their little farm (nobody seemed to be sure which one of them owned it) to buy eggs for quite a few months now and I’d always enjoyed our little exchanges, which often became extended over a cup of tea and biscuits. I’d grown to like the way Reg bellowed at you, as if you were the other side of the room.
‘YOU GONNA TAKE MY TRACTOR OUT ON A FUNDRAISING TRIP?’ he demanded.
Reg, like Ken, was a great lover of tractors. Men in the countryside seem to develop this trait, just as men in cities grow to like Porsches, or develop irrational loyalties to football clubs. Reg had renovated a 1960s’ Zetor, a Czechoslovakian tractor, and he was inordinately proud of it. Having read about my antics with the pig, he now saw me as a man who would take on any challenge that was laid before him, and he wanted to see his tractor in the headlines after I’d driven it from Lands End to John O’Groats.
‘I’m not sure that I’ll have the time once the baby’s born,’ I pointed out.
Reg shot me a look that came straight out of the Confirmed Bachelor’s Handbook. As a man who had never married, nor sired any offspring, I suspect that he couldn’t comprehend why anyone would willingly subject themselves to such a fate. I hoped that in the years to come, I would be able to make a strong case in its favour. For the moment, I just felt like a man on parole awaiting a lengthy trial, the verdict of which was far from certain.
‘WHAT WAS THAT PIG OF YOURS CALLED?’ demanded Reg, changing the subject completely and, pleasingly, failing to make the more common enquiry as to its geographical location.
‘Titch,’ I replied.
‘GOOD NAME!’ he said, in a tone that suggested I needed his approval. ‘GOOD NAME!’
Reg was right. Titch, of course, was an excellent name for the pig that I had just spent so much time with. It was a name that meant something, and most names don’t. Not that Fran and I had any names lined up for our future progeny, and one of the problems with having chosen not to identify the sex of our baby was that we had to refer to the bump as ‘it’.
‘It’s due on the twenty-fourth of March.’
‘It’s getting bigger.’
‘It’s kicking.’
Given what we’d been told in one of the many books we were beginning to plough our way through, calling the baby ‘it’ could be detrimental. According to some American doctor with a lot of letters after his or her (or its) name, the baby can hear our voices long before it is born. Apparently we ought to be talking to, encouraging, and singing lullabies to our baby. So identifying our baby as ‘it’ might mean that ‘it’ would arrive in a grumpy sulk.
‘Oh, you’ve given me a name now, have you? Why bother? Why not just carry on with the “it” business that I’ve had to endure for the last nine months? Don’t mind me while I cry for four hours. It’s called revenge.’
Not that we’d have been able to come up with a name, even if we’d known the sex. Naming a child, we were now discovering, was fraught with complications. There are all sorts of factors that we hadn’t considered. For a start, when we parents name our child we make a statement about us. Calling a boy John, or a girl Sarah (perfectly nice names), might indicate that we’re unimaginative or boring. Why? Because these are really common names, and there are hundreds of Johns and Sarahs already. However, going too far the other way and naming one’s child after a fruit (Apple) or a country (India), then we might be declaring ourselves to be so unimaginative and boring that we need to give a clear signal to the world that this is exactly what we’re not.
Of course, we don’t have to pick the name from those available from our own cultural name pool. There’s a boy’s name that is quite popular in Spain and South America.
Jesus.
Was that an option if we had a boy, I wondered? Or would that be placing too much expectation on the lad? Seemingly not a problem for the Latinos to name their child after the alleged Son of God,1 nor for our Muslim brothers to opt for their great spiritual leader, Muhammad.
The British, however, seem to be more literal. If you call your child Jesus, it must be because you either think your child is the Son of God, or that he’s jolly similar. Undoubtedly he will be teased and bullied by his childhood peers, and his inability to turn water into wine will be heavily criticised during his student years. Not only that, the poor lad will never know when people are calling to him or not. Every time someone stubs a toe and exclaims ‘Jesus!’, he will come running over, only to be sworn at and sent packing. Deep emotional scarring. Best not to deliver that to a child simply by the choice of a name. There are so many other ways of achieving the same results, so no need to rush it.
Foreign names are fun, but most are synonymous with a particularly famous film or pop star from that country. Or a mad politician or dictator. (The name Adolf really fell in the popularity stakes in the 1940s and ’50s.) And then again, do we really want to be seen to be naming our child after someone?
I certainly wasn’t going to suggest to Fran that we went down the route often taken by Americans (one that they shamelessly stole from our royal families), of giving the child the same name as the father and then slapping a number at the end.
Oscar Hammerstein II
Loudon Wainwright III
Tony Hawks II
This name says more about the father than the mother. Presumably she has played little part in the name-choosing process. She may, at some early stage, have whimpered that she quite liked ‘Daniel’ or ‘Sam’, only to be shouted down by the tyrannical father, desperate to have his name and specialness prolonged on this earth. Another similar trick, and one that the kings and queens of England rejected, is just to whack a ‘junior’ at the end.
Sammy Davis Jr
George Bush Jr2
It says a lot about the male domination of society that this kind of thing is acceptable. The poor woman has already been asked to surrender her family name, but now she has been trounced again. ‘Look, darling,’ explains the father, ‘never mind that you’ve carried this thing around in your belly for nine months and heroically endured the physical challenges of childbirth, we’re giving it my name, OK? Good. Thought you wouldn’t mind.’
Our former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson must have been tempted to run with Nigel Lawson II for his first son, but I imagine he recognised this as an American fad with which he wasn’t comfortable. The perfectly acceptable name of Dominic was picked. However, he rather let himself down when his first daughter was born two years later. The name Nigella was chosen. Nigella is a genus of about fourteen species of annual plants in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae, native to southern Europe, north Africa, and south and south-west Asia. It’s not a recognised girls’ name. OK, Daisy, Rose, Lily, Iris and Jasmine are all names derived from flowers – but they are flowers with which we are familiar. Did Nigel really name his daughter Nigella because he loved the flower and thought she was just as pretty? Or did he go for it because it sounded quite like Nigel? Which just happened to be his name. I don’t know. But given that I’ve never liked his politics, or his quite irresponsible climate change scepticism, I’m quite prepared to hazard an ungenerous guess.
Fran and I developed a new game of batting names around over dinner every evening. We came up with very few that were acceptable to both of us. One of the main problems seemed to be that the name, however much we both liked it, nearly always had some unpleasant connotation for one of us. It had been either the name of a rotten teacher, a child who had once bullied us, or someone who had jilted me or made fun of Fran’s dresses. So few names were free of a negative connection to the past. Even if they were the names of people you liked, there could be a problem, too, as the unreasonable thought popped into your head – what if they became too opinionated?
‘Ah, Fran and Tony must think so much of me to name their child after me.’
Of course, there was the option of avoiding this pitfall by just making a name up. Names, well they are only sounds, after all. ‘Mark’ is a sound. Why not reverse the sound and call your child ‘Kram’. Mitt Romney’s parents did that with ‘Tim’. Or what about simply rearranging the letters of the existing name that seems to most suit your child, thus preserving a notion of individuality?
So ‘Simon’ becomes ‘Somin’ or ‘Smoin’, and ‘Jane’ becomes ‘Jena’ or ‘Naje’.
No doubt this method was what resulted in the invention of the name Cnut. Presumably by some parents who didn’t exactly think the world of their new offspring.
The idea of inventing a name did appeal. The problem was the kind of names I kept making up. They just didn’t sound right:
Spettle
Ignomia
Egremont
Egremona
Earnley
Thelft