On The Move Again, Again

For the two of you that care, this blog is on the move. It's relocating to Occam's Typewriter, after six years in the wilderness, which I felt was long enough. From henceforth (or hencefifth, if you are reading this on a mobile device) you'll be able to find it here. My thanks to Mr R. P. G. of Gravesend for the technical know-how and the warm welcome.

Bookish Thoughts

Here at the Maison Des Girrafes we only ever had one rule for the kids as they were growing up. Except that it wasn't even a rule. What it was, was this:

No Reasonable Request for Books Will Ever Be Denied

I am happy to report that the Offspring, who have flown the nest, are highly literate individuals currently at college, and are as well-balanced and happy as you'd expect with me as their father. We must have been doing something write right, though, given that a recent study showed that children brought up with more books are generally more literate in later life than those not so fortunate.

Chez Gee is absolutely stuffed with books, as you'd expect, given the interests of the parents. 

Mrs Gee has a degree in what would now be called media studies; is a former journalist, sometime classroom assistant, full-time hoarder and now a student nurse, who's taken up many classes and interests during her three careers, and has left a trail of textbooks, cookbooks, novels, and other stuff in her wake. 

And I'm a writer (a calling that implies a fondness for books), occasional academic, and a longtime editor with a large publishing house, an environment in which to stand still for any length of time means that one runs the risk of being buried in a constantly falling shower of books. Let's see. There are review copies sent to my place of work;  copies of other books that other people have sent me to review; books that people send me because they like me, or because I've sent them some of mine, or both; and books for which whose existence in my extensive library I am at a loss to account, except that I haven't stolen them. 

Our idea of a fun family treat (at least, before the lockdown) was to browse in bookshops, especially secondhand ones -- a love we have passed on to both Offspring, and especially Offspring 2, now studying history. The main suppository repository depository place where books are found Chez Gee is in my Home Orifice, which used to be the kitchen, and which has shelves in every available space.

The Home Orifice, Recently

The Shelves in the Home Orifice are now full, and have spilled out into some shelves in the front hall. And the kitchen. And the sitting room. The rooms of both Offspring are crammed with books. The only rooms where no books are found are the utility cupboard, the bathroom, and our bedroom -- for fear of attracting dust. Although they do tend to build up in small drifts on the windowsill and nightstand if we aren't careful.

I suspect, however, that our home library is modest by some standards (I have visited houses of academics where books are found in the bathroom, for example). I had the pleasure of knowing a senior scientist at a large botanical garden who had lived most of his life in a house that went with the job. Being a botanist and keen antiquarian he had spent his career collecting books about plants. On his retirement, he and his wife (the kids had long since left home) had to find somewhere else to live. They were looking, so he told me, for a house with seven bedrooms. One for them; a spare room -- and FIVE for the books. FIVE.

Still Locked Down and Blue

You'll both no doubt recall that I have started to record some music at home, as a displacement activity while I cannot play with my regular beat combo for reasons that will hardly need to be explained. You can listen to it here, in this free-to-air link on SoundCloud, a social media app for sharing one's own music. The set is called Locked Down and Blue. Here are some liner notes.

Wish I Could (Coleman/ Gee) started an idea from Dominic Coleman, lead singer with the D. C. Wilson Band, with whom I have been writing songs lately. It turned into a monster. Inside my head it became a stadium rock number that might, in an alternate universe, have been performed by Supertramp, latter-day Fleetwood Mac or even Steely Dan. Outside my head ... well, you can judge for yourself.

Strangelove (Coleman/ Gee) was the title of a song written by Dominic, which I'm ashamed to say I discarded entirely but kept the title. It's my first attempt at hip hop, and probably my last, given that I am about as urban as a combine harvester. Writing the song, however, gave ms a new appreciation of the genre, which combines clever external and internal rhyme with witty use of rhythm, stress and alliteration. As a wrangler of words myself, I admire and wonder at people who can do this on the spot. Apart from that, I am rather proud of my funk guitar riff.

Rent Party Blues (Coleman /Gee) is an early collaboration between Dominic and myself. I had intended it to be more of a jump-jive than it is, but I could never get it to work. Eventually I simplified it as if Dr Feelgood were playing it. With Chas'n'Dave.

What BB Did Next (Traditional, arr. Gee) is a new spin on Black Betty, a traditional song whose origins are lost in the mists of time. The identity of the eponymous Betty is a mystery - some say it was a musket; others, a slave-overseer's whip; yet others, a bottle of whiskey. The earliest known recording dates to 1933. By the time Leadbelly recorded it in 1939, Black Betty had coalesced into the blues cliche of the loose-woman-who-done-me-wrong. Leadbelly's recording is as simple as can be imagined - just a singer accompanied by the tapping of his own foot. I first heard it as a teenager in 1977 when a rock band called Ram Jam added instruments and turned it into a hit, a formula since copied by many others, from Pat Travers and Spiderbait to Tom Jones and Norfolk's own Ollie Brown. Although I have always liked the song I found some the lyrical content, frankly, rather noisome.... so I have updated it for the BLM generation. I've also stripped away the rock excrescences to just me and a djembe drum.

 

Girl On The Train - the first ever song I've composed and performed mainly on guitar.  The subject is very personal. I've written on a similar theme before.

No More Cane (Traditional, arr. Gee) is more vintage Americana, this time discovered decades ago in my parents' record collection. It seems that they'd had a brush with the US Folk Revival in the early 1960s. Their records included discs from Pete Seeger and the Kingston Trio, but the ones that stayed longest in my mind were two albums from the Limeliters. This comes from one of them, 14 14K Folksongs, originally recorded in 1963. The arrangement, however, is mine, and is similar to the way I played it in a band called Hippies With Mortgages, in the early 1990s. WARNING: contains accordion.

My Big Boots (Gee) is a song that popped into my head while walking the dogs. I was wearing my big Timberland boots that I've had for 25 years; have trod five continents; and are only now falling to pieces. 

Where Shall I Be? (Traditional, arr. Gee) is another cover of a traditional song, again done by the Limeliters, this time from their gospel album from 1963, Making A Joyful Noise. It was a closing-time crowd-pleaser with Hippies With Mortgages in the late 1990s. When I announced that the next song would be 'Where Shall I Be, when that Great Trumpet Sounds?' the guitarist would say 'listening to Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen'. WARNING: contains accordion.

Average Feat (Borley/ Coleman/ Gee/ Sales/ Stevenson/ Thompson) started as a funky blues riff, at a soundcheck with the D. C. Wilson Band. We thought it was what might result from a collaboration between the Average White Band and Little Feat, hence the name.

Down By The River (Coleman/ Gee) is is a gospel-tinged tune - Dominic came up with the words and the chords just wrote themselves. 

Can't Change The Past (Coleman/ Gee) is another collaboration between Dom and myself.

Wet Dog (Borley/ Coleman/ Gee/ Sales/ Stevenson/ Turner-Hook) came from a rough song I came up with at home. I didn't have a name for it, so for the sake of a label I named it after the first thing that came to mind... I must have just come back from the beach with the dog. Dominic took this literally when the band worked it up at a jam session. It was meant to be fairly light but during the recording I seem to have channeled Jim Steinman.

Green To Play The Blues (Borley/ Coleman/ Gee/ Sales/ Stevenson/ Turner-Hook) is another one that came out of a D. C. Wilson Band jam session that happened 'down in the country'. This one started as a riff from guitarist Simon Sales, but I developed it to include an hommage to the late Peter Green, with whom I'd had the immense privilege of joining at a jam session -- twice. The first version of the song featured faux GarageBand guitar played from a keyboard, and I wasn't really very happy with it. However, I updated it with real guitar after having bought an Epiphone Les Paul I-P90 during the recording of this set. I think it sounds a lot better now.

The Gambler (Traditional, arr. Gee) is yet another cover of a traditional song, again done by the Limeliters, also from 14 14K Folksongs. The roots of this song are once again lost in the proverbial mists of time, but it surfaces occasionally with titles such as 'Gambler's Blues' or 'St James Infirmary', so I felt I could give it a new title - especially as I have reworked it extensively. Perhaps the best-known version is 'St James Infirmary Blues' by Cab Calloway (listen here, and watch this bizarre Betty-Boop-Snow-White visuals). And here is Arlo Guthrie, performing another version.

Lockdown Blues (Gee) was something I came up with while walking the dogs. I expect many other people have written similar songs. Here I wanted to recreate the atmosphere of a jam session. The only GarageBand sound here is the stand-up bass. Everything else is 'real' - piano, electric guitar, two acoustic guitars, djembe drum and accordion. I did it in free time, which shows, rather. It's much faster at the end than at the beginning.

A Change AMJ (Cooke/ Holler) is a medley of two favourites, the first by Sam Cooke, the second made famous by Marvin Gaye.

-=0=-

Technical Notes for People Who Like That Sort Of Thing: My recording platform of choice is GarageBand 11, which I have used on a previous project. I trigger the GarageBand sounds with a Keystation Mk3 49 USB keyboard from M-Audio. For anyone who asks, I do not intend to upgrade to Logic or any other platform, for fear of being lost in minutiae and distracted from the business of making music. Yes, it has its limitations, but I enjoy working with (and around) them. 

Nearly all the organ, clavinet and electric piano sounds are from a Crumar Mojo 61 drawbar keyboard, and most of the acoustic piano sounds come from a Yamaha Clavinova CLP20. 

Some of the accordion is from a tiny 12-bass Bell model reputedly once owned by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. The rest is from a great big Galotta 120-bass model I got for my 18th birthday and which still offers hours of innocent pleasure forty years later, for me, if not my neighbours. 

Some of what sounds like guitar is faked through GarageBand.This includes everything that's meant to sound like lead guitar. My capability in guitar is strictly rhythm. What passes for real electric guitar comes from an Epiphone Les Paul I-P90. There is also some real acoustic guitar (a budget 6-string with the top string removed, as I kept bumping into it) and real acoustic slide guitar (a different budget 6-string acoustic). There's also a metal djembe drum, which supplies all the rhythm in Lockdown Blues and is the only instrument on What BB Did Next.

Vocals (as well as accordion, acoustic guitar and djembe) are recorded through a no-name microphone, and all external sounds go into a Behringer Xenyx 802 mixer, which feeds the sound into a 2009 model 24-inch iMac running OSX Lion. (Don't knock it - it's much stabler than my other iMac, which has OSX Catalina, and also has a handy CD slot, so I can burn CDs). Monitoring is through a Behringer Xenyx 302 mixer, Bose bookshelf speakers and Beyerdynamic DT 150 headphones. So now you know.

What I Did In My Summer Holidays

The Gee Family had planned to spend the past week in Wales, but we postponed our trip until next year after a well-placed tzores sauce source told us that there'd be sheep at the border with guns. Instead we vacationed at home. Not that there was much vacationing going on as three of the four human elements of the Gee Family, none of them me, are students involved in various sorts of advanced study. What with the first draft of my book at the publisher, that left me spinning my wheels.

I had therefore promised the world that I'd be spending the week just elapsed making music, jam, and a nuisance of myself.

First, the Music. My beat combo having been temporarily derailed because, you know, the THING, I have set up a small recording studio at home, and have been busily recording things. I have so far recorded five six things, and you can listen to them on this Soundcloud Playlist, Locked Down & Blue. I'll be adding to this list as and when I record more material, so do check back. Some of the things are covers of old blues, folk and Americana: others are originals, either written myself or along with members of the aforesaid Beat Combo, in particular the Main Man, D. C. Wilson.

Second, the Jam. The Lockdown has turned me into quite the countryman. Mrs Gee and I have been growing our own crops, or as much as we can in our small garden. We have our hens for eggs, of course, and I have been baking the family's bread for some months now. It was only natural for me to get out the jam kettle and start preserving things. Now, I usually do a little of this each year, but this time I've been doing it like I really mean it. Here is a portrait of my efforts over the past week.

Jam Today

We have been growing lots of marrows (trans: oversized zucchini), and what with our apple tree, reliably cropping large numbers of cooking apples, each one as large as a baby's head and raining down on the garden at this time of year such that it's advisable to go outdoors with a hard hat, I made marrow and apple chutney. For the recipe I went to the tzores source sauce of All Knowledge and Wisdom, in short, my Mum. Here is her recipe:

MARROW AND APPLE CHUTNEY 

4lbs marrow, peeled and chopped; 
2lbs cooking apples, peeled, cored and finely chopped;
1lb onions, chopped; 1lb soft brown sugar; 
2 pints vinegar ; 
1 teasp. ground ginger;
1/2 oz pickling spice;
3 oz salt 

METHOD: put the marrow pieces into a large bowl in layers with the salt and leave for 12 hours or overnight. Next day, rinse the marrow pieces and drain well. Put into a preserving pan. ADD the apples, onions, sugar and spices. Cook gently UNCOVERED for about 2 hours, stirring from time to time, until the chutney is thick with no excess liquid. Pour into warm sterilised jars and cover with vinegar proof tops.

My Mum said that these days she tends to 'free wheel' with the spices, so, as I couldn't find the pickling spice that Mrs Gee swears she'd ordered from InSainsbury's, I ground up some mustard seeds, star anise, Chinese five-spice, coriander and cinnamon with a handy and mortar and pestle.  It tastes great.

A taste of childhood was my Mum's Marrow and Ginger Jam. Nothing like those golden gingery cubes of marrow on a piece of thick white bread and butter of an autumn evening. Here's her recipe for that, too:

MARROW AND GINGER JAM

2lbs marrow PREPARED WEIGHT (that is after peeling and deseeding); 
2lbs white sugar; Rind and juice of 1 and a half lemons; 
3 oz fresh ginger, grated; 

METHOD: cut the prepared marrow into smallish cubes and STEAM them until they are just tender. Put into a bowl and add the grated lemon zest, lemon juice and the ginger. Add the sugar, mix well. COVER and leave to stand for 24 hours. Put in a preserving pan, heat gently, stirring until the sugar has dissolved and cook uncovered until the marrow is transparent and syrup is thick (about 15 mins) Test for setting point and pot up in sterilised jars.

It will have escaped the notice of neither of you that the hedgerows are currently groaning with free food. Offspring#1 and I have been out collecting blackberries and with the haul I made blackberry and apple jam, using our own apples. I think I got this recipe from the intertubes:

BLACKBERRY AND APPLE JAM

1kg blackberries;
4 large apples (peeled, cored and chopped);
Juice of 3 lemons;
1 kg white sugar;

METHOD: Put apples, blackberries and lemon juice into the pan and set on a low heat, stirring occasionally. After 15 mins stir in the sugar and boil for 10-15 mins until set. Leave for 10 mins in the pan and then spoon into sterilised jars.

While Offspring#1 and I were foraging for blackberries, we found several bushes laden with sloes damsons bullaces very tiny plums, and picked 1200g in short order. There is some debate about the identity of the fruit, but a quick google revealed that they are all much the same things (that is, plums) and often interbreed. Anyway, I made these into jam as well, and here is the recipe, adapted from BBC Good Food. Not surprisingly, it tastes like plum jam:

FURIOUS DAMSON JAM

A quantity of damsons/ sloes/ bullaces/ plums;
The same weight in sugar;
Water (100ml per 600g of fruit).
Knob of butter.

METHOD: Splosh the fruit and water into the pan and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer until the fruit is soft. Stir in the sugar, ensuring that it is completely dissolved.  Raise once again to a rolling boil. Keep on the boil for 10 mins. Do not stir. When the jam is ready, stir vigorously. Remove from the heat. Skim off any scum, stir in a knob of butter, leave for 15 mins to settle and spoon into jars.

Third, the Nuisance. The dogs need a lot of walking, and what with our shopping largely limited to home deliveries, with few top-up shops or cheeky snacks or visits to cafes, I have been saving money and losing weight. The Offspring are also bringing me up to speed with elements of popular culture. Offspring#2 has reminded me of Torchwood -- a Televisual Emission from the BBC that's a kind of grown-up spin-off from Dr Who. Meanwhile, Offspring#1 has got me as far as the end of Series 3 of an anime called JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which is precisely as billed - bizarre, and adventurous. Kids, eh? Without them I'd have remained in ignorance of manifestations including but not limited to Hamilton (the musical); Frozen (the magic-lantern-production) and Lady Gaga (the popular music artiste). My life has thus been enriched.

The Pandemic notwithstanding inasmuch as which, the Offspring will shortly be returning to their Institutions of Higher Learning. We'll miss them.

We Don’t Need No Edyucayshun

My two penn’orth on the exam-results debacle - What needs to happen is a complete rethink in how pupils are assessed, and before that, a thorough overhaul of education. It’s far too academic, too early. On the whole, education is wasted on the young. They should be taught the basics of English language and elementary arithmetic, basic civics and car and home maintenance, but otherwise encouraged to follow their own stars.

At the same time, there needs to be more provision for continuing education. I did A-level English at 33, and I’m sure I got a more lasting appreciation of literature than had I done it at 17.

Youngsters need to be literate, but not to be force-fed Shakespeare, unless they want to study literature- which they will do if given an opportunity by an alert teacher.

They need to be able to count their change and fill in a tax return, not solve quadratic equations, unless they want to be a mathematician - something that an alert teacher will spot and encourage.

All the science a child needs can be found by futzing  around at home, in the insides of cars, or roaming the woods and fields - a tendency that a sympathetic teacher will spot.

This  won’t happen, of course, because educationalists lack imagination and are cursed with poverty of ambition.

Above all, exams are a lousy way to assess a person’s potential and should be scrapped. Universities and employers should set their own tests to suit their needs - and university degrees should be reorganised on a US-style liberal arts model with a foundation year for all students.

DISCLAIMER - I speak as a former Steiner-school pupil. Waldorf education isn’t perfect, for sure - but I know from experience that it’s far better at producing happy, rounded and able citizens from mixed-ability classes than the current wasteful and misguided system. And yes, I still did GCSE’s and A-levels.

Locked Down and Blue

Lockdown has got to me, people. So much so that I have recorded a slice of vintage Americana. You can listen to it here. The song is 'No More Cane On The Brazos' originally sung by the convicts sentenced to life with hard labour in the sugar-cane fields on the Rio Brazos in the early Twentieth Century. It's been covered widely -- from the Limeliters to Lonnie Donnegan, The Band to Ian Gillan. I did it in a band called Hippies With Mortgages, somewhat later in the Twentieth Century. WARNING - may contain traces of accordion.

I Speak Your Weight

Lockdown Life -- Here at Chez Gee we have tended to view weighing scales in the same way that Queen Elizabeth I viewed mirrors. Despite the reputation that fat people are harder to kidnap, Mrs Gee noted that COVID-19 has a particular fondness for people built in, let us say, a more 'traditional' manner. So we've been on a health kick.

Helped by the fact that we only shop online and put up with what we have, so no cheeky choc bars, bags of M&Ms, take-away meals, cafe breaks with, noblesse oblige, a sausage roll, for all that the sausage roll is a 'diet' sausage roll as some of it ends up in a dog, combined with Mrs Gee's strict portion control, and her strenuous efforts to hide the biscuit tin, as it is a fact universally acknowledged that when I am shut in a room with a packet of biscuits, only one of us comes out alive, and, notwithstanding inasmuch as which the presence of a lively Pupperino means I am taking more exercise, and Mrs Gee is devoted to a YouTube exercise channel for Ladies of a Certain Age -- we have lost weight.

But how much?

Well, the weighing scales arrived yesterday. When I stepped on them I expected them to go AAARGH! and explode, leaving a wisp of purple smoke and a bad smell, or at the very least say NO COACH PARTIES before expiring or announce ONE AT A TIME PLEASE in starchy schoolmarmish tones.

But no! The scales remained whole and entire, and gave a silent, oracular and definitely digital reading, which I couldn't read from 6 feet up. However, the digits persist long enough such that I can read them once alighted, and, noting the numbers, I discovered that my weight is measured in some newfangled units such as steradian parsecs per cubic millisieverts. What the what? A handy google allowed me to convert this, via troy ounce per cubic acre, to something intelligible, which was... wait for it ....

18st 3lbs. 

Now, this means little as I don't know how much I weighed before, but the last time I weighed myself I was 19st and upwards, whence the Elizabeth I attitude to scales. I'm still of a form such that were I to indulge in sea bathing, someone would call the Sea Mammal Research Unit.

However, I have had to make new holes in the short end of my belt, and people have remarked on my relatively svelte appearance in my Facebook profile pic. Mrs Gee, too, has started to assume a sleeker profile. Don't worry, folks, we don't look like the young gods we did when we met ... YET.

*** UPDATE, 1 September 2020 *** 

Yesterday I weighed myself and was

17st 7lbs

So the diet is working.

*** UPDATE, 13 October 2020 ***

 17st 3lbs

So that's a stone lost in two months. Not bad, but still no danger of my slipping between the cracks in the pavement.

Some More Book News

You'll both recall that the UK and Commonwealth rights to my ongoing tome A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth were acquired by Picador, notwithstanding inasmuch as which rights to translations into six different foreign languages have also been acquired (they are German, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Romanian and simplified Chinese).

I can now announce that the US and Canada rights have gone to St Martin's Press, as in this announcement in Publishers Weekly:

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, I have actually finished the first draft. Now I am going through the text scouting for typos, tangled tenses and other wrinkles.

Although I write on a computer, I always do such checking on printouts. Mi$takes that jump out at you on a printout do their best to hide themselves away when read on screen. 'These are not the typos you are looking for', they seem to say, as your eyes just slide over them.

An even better way to spot typos, as my friend the Rev. R. C of Northants recalls one Professor R. D. of Oxford telling him -- is to read the text aloud. Indeed it is, and it's something I counsel all beginning writers. Sentences that seem, on screen, or even in print, to be models of lucidity reveal themselves, when read aloud, as the lexical equivalents of a motorway pile-up. Such sentences can often be halved. Or quartered. Or dispensed with entirely, with minimal loss of semantic content.

One shouldn't be embarrassed to read one's text aloud. One should, however, have an audience, even if it is only a row of stuffed toys, or, better -- a dog.

Dogs will always be pleased with what you write, though sometimes their enthusiasm can extend to eating the printout, a habit that should be discouraged. As Groucho Marx once said: Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read'.

Why Are People So F***ing Stupid?

We are shielding, chez Gee, as one of us has pre-existing health complaints, and another is about to have a surgical procedure. The only person who leaves the house is me, and only to walk the dogs, which I do in quiet woods and lanes to minimize human contact.

So there I was on this morning's walk in a country lane when I sense a cyclist hovering behind me. I turn round, and there's a cyclist, who said she didn't want to startle me. Which was kind. So I pull the dogs to the roadside to let her pass.

She starts to pass but then stops next to me so she could coo over the dogs. I tell her that we are shielding, so she says 'be safe' and cycles off.

What do people have to do to drum the seriousness of this emergency into their heads?

Next time I shall wear my mask... except that these numpties will only stop to ask why I am wearing a mask.

Honestly, if this is the human race, extinction can't come soon enough.

In fact, I am so incensed I have designed a T-shirt. You can see the design in the picture. You can order one here. You're welcome.

A Soft Landing

People often talk about starting books.

People often talk about keeping up the momentum, once one have started.

What people talk less about is how to finish a book.

I have written 11 of the 12 chapters of Sex and Chocolate, but chapter 12, being the conclusion, will need special handling, in terms of pace and voice. I have a bad habit of rushing to reach the conclusion, at least on the first draft, so desirous am I of getting to THE END. This time I am creeping up on it very stealthily, so it doesn't notice.

Therefore, I have distracted myself by going through Chapters 1 to 11, making sure they flow properly. As I wrote them out of order, I am conscious that there will be repetitions, and what movie people call 'continuity errors'. It would be embarrassing if Gandalf appeared in a wizardly cape in chapters 5 and 7, but for some reason wears a green lurex boob tube and a grass skirt in chapter 6.  One recoils in horror at the filming of The Bonfire of the Vanities, in which, midway through filming, the Leading Lady had a breast enhancement.

Even though I have now gone through said chapters, there are still many errors. But I feel that the time is fast approaching coming up to the top of the hour, such that I shall have to start drafting.

I think I now know what to write. I have been spending the time on my dog walks for the past week rehearsing it in my head. But as someone once said, the best laid plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy.

I'm going in.

Cover me.

Chronicles of Pupperino - In Print!

I've been posting my Golden Retriever pup's diary on Facebook for a while. As a result I have been have been deluged with requests for a book version, from, oh, I don't know, maybe two people.

Well, here it is.

It's the first six months of the life of Posy the Pupperino (the first four months are documented here). If you want, you can retrieve it [I see what you did there -- Ed.] from this print-on-demand-site. The cost is for printing, plus postage and packing. I am making no profit on this.

Dick Jefferies (1932-2020) - a Personal Reminiscence

Dick Jefferies, and friend

Sad to say I have reached an age where my old friends, colleagues and mentors seem to be passing on. I had hardly come to terms with the loss of Jenny Clack -- if I ever shall -- when I received news, from his son Bill, that my old friend Dick Jefferies had died, on 23 June, after a long illness, aged 88. I wrote a public obituary, with Bill's help, and you can find it here. What follows is more of a personal reminiscence.

I first met Dr Richard Peter Spencer Jefferies, known to everyone as Dick, in the summer of 1983. I was lucky enough to have been awarded  a summer vacation studentship at the Natural History Museum in London, between my second and third years as an undergraduate at the University of Leeds.

My project involved working in the Fossil Fish section of the Department of Palaeontology. I didn't know it at the time, but the palaeontologists there were radicals, seeking to reform the world of the classification of life using a new method called 'phylogenetic systematics', or to its detractors, 'cladistics'. They included Colin Patterson (1933-1998); his former student Peter Forey (1945-2016), and their longtime associate Brian Gardiner (b. 1934), three of the four authors of a notorious paper that had been published two years earlier and which was seen as somewhat subversive. All I knew was that to most other scientists in the Museum, these people were Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know. To an impressionable 21-year-old, they exerted a magnetic attraction (I wrote about this experience in my book Deep Time). They used to meet in a small coffee room-cum-library (that is, when they weren't at a pub called the Cranley in the Old Brompton Road, don't look for it, it's not there any more).

In the regular coffee-room crowd was a tweedy gentleman who didn't work on fish at all, but whose influence on the others was profound. This was Dick Jefferies, whose fluency in German allowed him to translate key texts on systematics into English. One was Die Ordnung des Lebendigen by Rupert Riedel (Order in living organisms: a systems analysis of evolution, John Wiley & Sons, 1978). He also attempted translations of some of Willi Hennig's work, but not (as I had previously thought) Phylogenetische Systematik: this was published in English as Phylogenetic Systematics, translated by Dwight Davis and Rainer Zangerl. These works were the foundation of cladistics. Over time, cladistics became the accepted way of doing things.

Geologist and polymath, fluent in six languages but absolutely English in every way, even down to his devotion to the Times crossword, I came to see Dick as the Last Victorian Scientist. He was one of those people who really did know everything.

Dick was born in Croydon, Surrey, on 15 January, 1932. Like many of his generation, he perhaps owed his subsequent career to the circumstances of war. He was evacuated to Steyning in Sussex, where rambles in the South Downs nurtured a love of natural history -- and, possibly, the chalk on which it rested. He was educated at Selhurst Grammar School and Gonville and Caius College Cambridge. There he became a geologist, specialising on the chalk over which he had roamed as a boy. His treatise on the Plenus Marls, a component of the Cretaceous chalk, became a standard work.

He met his first wife Beryl at a meeting of the Fabian Society, and, after a stint at British Iranian Petroleum he joined the staff of what was then (and to some of us always will be) the British Museum (Natural History). It was 1963. He was to stay there for the rest of his professional life.

The chalk contains many fossils of sea urchins, members of the group of animals called the echinoderms, and it was his interest in these animals that would shape his career. Besides sea urchins, echinoderms include possibly familiar creatures as sea stars, feather stars, brittle stars and sea cucumbers. All of them have distinctive skeletons made of calcite crystals, and a radial symmetry based on the number five. These are the ones alive today. Fifteen, maybe twenty other major kinds of echinoderms have evolved in the past, starting in the Cambrian Period (541-485 million years ago), and have since become extinct.

Although most had a five-way symmetry, some had a three-way symmetry, some were bilaterally symmetrical -- and a few had no symmetry at all. The lure of these very irregular creatures, the stylophora, or carpoids, drew Dick in. A favourite was Cothurnocystis elizae. Dick is holding a model of one of these in the picture above. The real fossils are very much smaller.

In fact, Dick's love of really strange fossils, as well as his towering erudition and total command of a voluminous literature in five languages besides English, made him the Museum's expert on 'Problematica'. That is, fossils so strange that nobody else could work out what they were.

The body of Cothurnocystis sports a series of openings on one side of its body. An earlier researcher had wondered whether these were gill slits, like those of fish (T. Gislén, 'Affinities between the Echinodermata, Enteropneusta and Chordonia', Zoologiska Bidrag från Uppsala 12, 199-304, 1930). Dick was transfixed. He took this idea much further, and in a long series of papers, from 1967 right up to his retirement in 1992, he argued, in immense detail, that Cothurnocystis and the other stylophora were not echinoderms at all, but chordates (the group of animals that includes ourselves). His idea, which came to be called the 'Calcichordate' hypothesis, was that chordates originated from echinoderm-like animals that had lost their distinctive calcite skeletons. Although it attracted virtually no adherents, critics were at a loss to know how to address it, so formidable were Dick's arguments, so immense his knowledge.

I returned to the Natural History Museum regularly, later in the 1980s, when I was working on my Ph.D. Although I had initially been signed up to do a Ph.D. on fossil fishes, in London, a series of unlikely events led me to a Ph.D. on fossil cows, in Cambridge. Being the good cladist that I was, I saw that fossil cows were just highly derived fish adapted for living in water of negative depth, sighed, and got on with it. Nevertheless I kept up contacts with my friends in the Fossil Fish section -- and also with Dick.

At Cambridge, I was enjoined -- as all graduate students are -- to teach small groups of undergraduates, and my task was to tutor them in the origins of vertebrates, a subject that had become of great interest to me, partly under Dick's influence. In those days (it was 1985 or so) very little was known, and the literature was scattered, antique and obscure. There being no consensus, I felt that Dick's ideas -- outré though they were -- were as good as anyone else's, and had the merit of being based on actual fossil evidence. Dick summarised his ideas, together with a truly masterly primer on vertebrate and echinoderm embryology and anatomy in a book in 1986.

I vowed to write a book on the subject that students could use. I embarked on it as soon as I had done with the fossil cows. After one paper on these, I set to work, with great enthusiasm, and the book came out in 1996. I devoted an entire chapter to Dick's work; not because I subscribed to it (I tried and tried, but could never really convince myself) but because I thought that in a field in which nobody really knew anything, all ideas deserved an airing, and Dick's was far better argued than most.

Colin Patterson wrote of Dick's ideas:

Jefferies’ work is original, gives careful attention to method, and has hardly yet been tested by criticism. Good tests will be molecular sequence data and parsimony analysis (e.g. of Jefferies' invocation of multiple loss of the calcite skeleton, and nonhomology of chordate and hemichordate right gill slits). If it passes these tests, the work may set a model for the future in its synthesis of neontology, paleontology, and method. ('page 216 in 'Significance of fossils in determining evolutionary relationships', Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 12, 195-223, 1981)

Indeed, as Patterson had predicted, the calcichordate idea remained on the table until molecular biology caught up with anatomy,  showing that there was absolutely no trace in any vertebrate of the molecular genetic mechanisms required to create an echinoderm-like skeleton. Twenty years after my first essay on the topic, there is now a wealth of literature on vertebrate origins, which I reviewed in a book that appeared in 2018.

Dick was correct about three things, though: that many aspects of the internal structure of carpoids worked as he said they did, irrespective of their affinities, showing that they did have a very chordate-like internal anatomy; that sea-squirts are more closely related to vertebrates than the superficially more fish-like amphioxus; and that echinoderms really did have fish-like gill slits, but lost them early in their evolution. Indeed, genes for forming gill slits seem to be a unique feature in deuterostomes -- the group of animals that includes echinoderms, chordates and marine worms called enteropneusts.

Dick was a fixture at academic meetings on a wide variety of subjects for several decades, and would often ask incisive questions from the floor. He was always keen to learn new things. Once, while on my way to work at the Submerged Log Company, I bumped into him on the Underground - he was on his way, he said, to the Science Reference Library, to read up on developmental biology. 'It's a different language', he said. And this from an adept translator, who knew how to navigate the many subtleties of technical papers in German.

In later life Dick suffered from absent-mindedness, and it became clear that he was slowly going down with dementia. Dick's was among the finest minds it has been my privilege to have known, making dementia especially cruel.  However, his son Bill told me that even in his last days he had a quality of life -- reading about palaeontology, and listening to Beethoven.

After Beryl died in 1989, Dick married Audrey Millar, who died in 2018. His third son, Robert, died in a cycling accident in 2011. He is survived by his two other sons Thomas (b. 1963) and William (b. 1965); three grandchildren, Theo, Alex, Eve and Louise; and an academic legacy far more profound than he realised.

Written with invaluable help from Bill Jefferies. Revised 11 July 2020, with additional material and incorporating corrections from Dr David Williams, with thanks.

Oh What A Lovely Lockdown

I have rather enjoyed the lockdown. I am fortunate in that my job for the Submerged Log Company allows me to work completely from home. As I was working almost completely from home anyway, the only difference, initially, was the removal of the word 'almost' from the initial clause of this sentence. My colleagues and I have discovered how to use video conferencing. This has saved an immense amount of time and energy.
I am additionally fortunate in that I live in a charming part of the country where it is relatively easy to get away from other people.

I also have a garden.

Fortune smiles on me further in that my children are no longer small, or even of school age, so don't require home-schooling. Home from college, they can fetch small objects unattended; willingly do household chores when asked; and even make delicious meals. 

I do, however, have a puppy, which does make a toddler-like mess; occasionally pees on the floor; and whose presence has necessitated my putting up stair gates for the first time in >20 years. But she's adorable so she can get away with it. 

Adorable pup. Some weeks ago. When she was even more adorable than she is now. OK, she's still adorable, only bigger.

 Lock-down has had its benefits.

-- For an antisocial curmudgeon, such as I am, it absolves me from having to come up with any excuse to interact with people. 

-- It's been so very, very quiet that we have been able to enjoy the wildlife.

-- I have learned to make bread, and now do almost all the family baking. 

-- I've made good progress writing my next book.

-- Mrs Gee has long-term health complaints, so we have been shielding, and she is a stickler for COVID-19 hygiene. 

Anything that comes through the postbox is quarantined for three days. 

We shop for food online (actually, we shop for everything online), and when the delivery comes, we store dry goods in the shed for three days, and anything to be used immediately has to be washed down with disinfectant. This is such a chore that we shop for groceries only once a fortnight, and make do with what we have. We use leftovers. There are no top-up shops. 

This means that I have lost weight for the first time in years. My trousers are as loose as the pantaloons in a clown costume, and would fall down were it not for my belt, which is now on the tightest setting. You could say I have dropped a dress size.

-- Because we no longer dine out, or go to the pub, or stop at a café for apres-plage, this loss of weight means that I have gained pounds, of the sterling variety. What with not having to commute, or pay hotel bills when I visit the London office of the Submerged Log Company, or having to buy much in the way of fuel for the car, my bank account is healthier than it has been for a while.

Now, I understand that many are not so lucky. They might be without a job, or be cooped up in a tower block with screaming kids, abusive partners and so on. The easing of the lockdown will be a welcome relief for many. Not least the economy, on which everyone's livelihood depends (mine included).

For me, on the other hand, I meet it with a certain amount of fear and trepidation. I have gotten used to the peace and quiet. I tremble that it is now being disturbed. I feel rather like Pa Ingalls, that rugged pioneer and Patron Saint of the Curmudgeon, who said that a neighbourhood was getting too crowded if he could hear the sound of another man's axe.

Leeds Alumni Quiz - the Action Replay

I'm sure you'll both recall that I had the privilege and pleasure to be part of the team of alumni from the University of Leeds that triumphed in the Christmas University Challenge competition earlier this year.

Partly as a result of that, the Leeds Alumni association put together an online pub quiz, raising much-needed funds for supporting students in this time of crisis.

It went out live on 31 May, to an online audience which, if put together simultaneously, all together, at once, and at the same time, would have packed out a fairly large pub.

If you missed it, don't worry: you can watch the action replay here. Think of this as the '+1' channel.

Why not give it a go?

Cliche In A Time of COVID

In these unprecedented times, shouldn't we be having a conversation about how the use of cliche is on the rise?

As a thought leader, I am shocked and appalled - fed up to the back teeth, even. I'm passionate about pushing back against such poverty of expression. It's no longer fit for purpose and should have gone out with the dinosaur.

We should reach out to our halo groups and give them a heads-up, incentivising them to leverage cutting-edge pedagogy and ramp up language from the Shakespearean playbook, even though it might be out of their comfort zone, so we need to show them that it's on the table.

Whatever we do, we should tick all the boxes and touch base to ensure that we are all singing from the same hymn sheet. We need to deep dive into the issues until we can get it over the line. People will need to pivot to avoid getting thrown under the bus. Let's cascade this, roll it out, and drill it down.

This wake-up call could be a game-changer, going forward.

Remember: the clock is ticking.

That Book Announcement In Full

Picador press release, as published in The Bookseller:

‘Picador has landed A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth by senior Nature editor Henry Gee.

Ravi Mirchandani, editor-in-chief, acquired UK and Commonwealth plus translation rights from Jill Grinberg at Jill Grinberg Literary Management. A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters will be released in spring 2022.

The book draws on the latest scientific understanding, much of it first published in Nature, for “a tale of survival and persistence, illuminating the delicate balance within which life exists”.

Its synopsis explains: “For billions of years, Earth was an inhospitably alien place—covered with churning seas, slowly crafting its landscape by way of incessant volcanic eruptions, its atmosphere in a constant state of chemical flux. And yet, despite facing literally every conceivable setback that living organisms could encounter, life on Earth has learned and adapted and continued for over four billion years. From the earliest humble slime that filled the atmosphere with oxygen; to the sponges that cleansed the oceans for other animals to live in; to the venturesome fishes with legs that sought life beyond the sea—and, by way of amazing amphibians, dramatic dinosaurs, to the thrilling and unlikely story of ourselves.”

Gee is senior editor at Nature, and a former Regents Professor at the University of California. His journalism has been published in the Guardian, Times, Le Monde, El País and the Hindu.

Mirchandani said: “I have admired Henry Gee and his writing literally for decades, so it is an enormous pleasure to be publishing his new book. Reading Henry's telling of the story of life on Earth is as gripping and fascinating as watching a time-lapse film of our planet, as continents move, icecaps grow and contract and, throughout, as species emerge and fade into extinction, life adapts and thrives and continues, despite everything, undaunted.”’

Advice to Authors - Get An Agent

I expect you'll both recall that I have been busily writing a book, and have been doing so for some time. I had, in fact, finished it, and the manuscript got well into Version 2.0, which is when my wonderful agent Jill Grinberg gave it a good working-over.

Jill has represented me for more than twenty years. She signed me on the strength of my one academic book, and a very rough synopsis called Thirty Ghosts, and worked with me to get it into a saleable proposition. The result was Deep Time.

She has worked her magic yet again, and following a lot of late-night conversations, email exchanges and a great deal of thought, the draft turned from a long and rambling grimoire into A (Very) Short History of Life On Earth, in which I tell our planet's history as a narrative, with heroes, and villains, anters vast and deserts idle, and, notwithstanding inasmuch as which, hair-breadth 'scapes i' th' imminent deadly breach, and so on, and so forth, in like fashion. Under Jill's guidance I boiled down the concept into a killer synopsis.

And, what do you know? We've found a publisher who likes it as much as we do. I am thrilled to say that the UK and Commonwealth rights  have been taken up by Picador - an excellent fit, as A (Very) Short History fits their mission statement, that 'we believe the way a story is told is just as important as the story itself'. And, as the editor of Deep Time told me, what you must do, above all else, is tell the story. Good advice to say, and to hear, but harder to achieve.

Quite a lot of the story had been written, in the sense that I had a large pile of words, not all of which were in the right order. While I was putting the synopsis together under Jill's direction, I was pulling these words apart, rejecting many of them, recycling others, but mostly casting the whole thing anew, and editing it, and editing it again. And then editing it a bit more. 

I am now more than half done. The book is due by the end of September, and, with luck and a following wind, will be published in the Spring of 2022, which, as coincidence would have it, is when I turn 60. 

Now, I've been writing books since my twenties, but take heart from the fact that The Lord Of The Rings wasn't published until its author was over 60, so I'll be in good company. But I wouldn't have gotten far as an author without my agent to offer a sympathetic but critical eye; offer good advice on what will sell; and, let us not forget, fight my corner in the business department.

It has worked out well for me. People sometimes ask me for advice on writing books. My first advice is to get an agent. That's also my last advice. And, indeed, all the advice in the middle.

How The Light will be Zooming In

As I expect you both know, I have been invited to take part in a festival called How The Light Gets In, which takes place in Hay-on-Wye between 22 and 25 May. This festival, which is distinct from the better known Hay Festival, is a grand conglomeration of music, comedy and ideas. This year's festival theme is Uncharted Territories, which is very much my kind of thing. Now, I was to have attended physically and in person, but, well, I can't, and neither can anyone else.

But don't worry! The programme has moved into cyberspace, and you can catch a lot of very important people and me by registering at the Festival Website and buying the appropriate tickets.

Here are the events at which I shall be making an appearance:

The Key To Progress (Friday 22nd at 8:30pm; discussion at 9:20pm) It was the vehicle of progress and the solution to the world's ills. The core philosophy of the West and our time. But the halo has slipped. Science is now seen by some as a potentially malevolent force. A key element of the industrial military complex, challenging the environment and supporting a damaging raid on world resources. While many doubt the idea that science is the single objective version of the truth. Should we welcome this shift in our perception of science as the end of an unquestioned belief in a false god? Or is it a dangerous and potentially disastrous slide into prejudice and superstition, that will leave us poorer, less safe, and less in control of our lives? Senior editor of Nature Henry Gee; Scientist Gunes Taylor and philosopher and author of Galileo's Error Philip Goff evaluate the scientific establishment.

After the debate come and join the speakers and chat.

Extinction and Renewal (Saturday 23rd at 13:00) Citing evidence that species are becoming extinct at a thousand times faster than the background rate, many argue the Sixth Great Mass Extinction is already upon us. And for the first time caused by a single species, humankind. Others contend that at current rates - 100 species a year - it would take a 1000 years to lose just 1% of current species. In the meantime the number of new species is continuing to grow - exceeding the number of species lost. Are we facing a profound crisis? Do we need to radically change our behaviour and way of life to save the planet's animal life? Or are our conservation efforts proving effective and nature stronger than we suppose and capable of creating entirely new life forms without our help? Green Party Peer Natalie Bennett;  senior editor of Nature Henry Gee and co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association David Pearce get to the bottom of the apparent extinction crisis.


On Sunday 24th at 3pm I'll be giving a solo talk entitled The Limits of Knowledge:

The more we discover, the more we realise we have yet to learn. So says Nature editor, Henry Gee, as he explores the limits of knowledge, and dares us to look over the edge.

Just after that, at 4.45pm, I'll be taking part in a more intimate Inner Circle seminar:

What makes humans special? According to senior editor of Nature and author of The Accidental Species Henry Gee: absolutely nothing. Join him to discuss humankind's place in the world.

So now you know.

The Festival website has all the details and is constantly being updated, so visit it often. You can also follow it on Twitter at @HTLGIFestival, just as you can follow me at @EndOfThePier.

Things That Go Crunch In The Night

This is Miss Posy Fossil, she of the Chronicles of Pupperino, who is a little over 5 months old, and a cross between a loveable teddy bear and a waste disposal unit.

A few nights ago, at around midnight, she sicked up a pile of vomit the size of a loaf and with a smell that one struggles to describe.

Luckily she cleared it all up herself. She is helpful, like that.

At 4am Posy and her friend Lulu woke up and asked to be let out.

When they came back in we all kipped on the sofa. Posy lay down with her muzzle close to my ear.

Crunch crunch crunch.

As one never knows what she has in her mouth and whether it might precipitate an emergency trip to the vet, I woke up, plunged fist down throat and pulled out a piece of foil from a sweet wrapper. Washed hands. Kipped down. Posy lay down with her muzzle close to my ear.

Crunch crunch crunch.

Oh no - what is it this time? Plunged fist down throat and pulled out piece of fabric with button attached. Where on Earth...? Washed hands. Kipped down.

Crunch crunch crunch.

Not AGAIN?

Plunged fist down throat and pulled out a coat button in a small plastic bag. Washed hands.

That's when I spotted it.

Posy's friend Elvis the cat had knocked over and smashed an earthenware pot in which had accumulated all sorts of bits and pieces, and this was where Posy was getting her choice morsels.

Swept up mess. Washed hands. Kipped down.

This time Posy slept with her bottom in my face.

And farted.

It was a long night. Golden Retrievers. Don't you just love 'em?

Do Writers Keep Regular Hours?

As you both know, I am busily engaged writing my next book. I had actually written the entire manuscript, but in consultation with my agent I decided to take a different tack, and the project moved in a new (but related) direction. Thanks to a new and improved synopsis - providing a secure roadmap - I am now well on the way to completing the new text. More on this at another time.

However, in the meantime, I have found that regular working hours really drive things along - and they don’t have to be too arduous.

As I am not a full-time writer (by day I work for the Submerged Log Company) the time I have to write is limited. I spend no more than 12 hours a week at the book - between 7pm and 9pm each day, except Friday, when Gardeners’ World is on the TV. This is quite enough to rough out 1000 words or so, which is as much as I can do in one go without losing focus. So, at 7pm sharp, I shut myself away in the home orifice, shut the door, pipe some loud instrumental rock music into my headphones, and write.

I find it essential to have a place where one can work undisturbed. Having a home office is great, especially one in which you can shut yourself away - but it’s not essential.

The Home Orifice. Recently.

More important is the cooperation of one’s family or housemates, with whom you can agree that these hours are sacred. That’s why relatively short, intense bursts work. It might be too much to ask one’s family for one to absent oneself for too long. This is also why I’ve found that regular long-distance commuting by train is a gift: when I regularly traveled between Norwich and London, a journey of two hours, this was enough for me to draft, in two-hour bursts, an entire novel.

Blasts of loud noise into my headphones is also helpful, to minimise distraction from outside sauces tzores sources. I have invested in recording-studio-quality, over-the-ear headphones, and play instrumental rock - loud and noisy to get the adrenaline pumping, but with no distracting vocals. My playlist includes lots of Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Focus and Jeff Beck, and more obscure and jazzier artists such as Scott Henderson and Shaun Baxter.

I expect that most professional writers, of which I am not one, will keep regular office hours, and will sit down and write, whether they feel the muse is with them or not. At times, when I have a lot of writing to do, I have taken two weeks off, commuted to an office or library, and worked from 9:30 to 5:30 with an hour for lunch. But it is hard to justify this when one has familial responsibilities. Even less suitable is taking oneself off to write, as a vacation - I tried this once and it was a disaster.

Equally important is that one does not work on one’s book outside these hours. The time must be strictly circumscribed. One should avoid the temptation to go into the office and scribble a few lines whenever the fancy takes you, apart from, perhaps, making the odd note. This makes the time spent writing more important, and helps minimise feelings of guilt at not writing, outside these hours, and also allows one to spend more time within the family circle and doing other important things such as walking the dogs, doing the garden and being sociable.

It's important to spend time with members of your family.

But whatever works, works. Each writer will have a different way of working. I’ve found that two-hour bursts in the evening, after dinner, but before the good stuff on TV, works best for me.

What works best for you?

The Chronicles of Pupperino: The First Four Months

Hello. My name is Miss Posy Fossil. I am a Golden Retriever. I was born under a wandering star / in a trunk in the Princess Theater in Pocatello Idaho on 2 December 2019. On 26 January I said goodbye to my mother, brother and sisters and moved to my new home. Here is what happened next.

Day 3. Dad works at home. I've worked out that I should lie across one of his feet, in case he has to get up -- to feed me.

Day 5. Today I visited this great place. It's called the 'vet'. I got a lot of cuddles. Here is my new fren Louise.

Day 6. At the end of a busy day spent running around, playing, and eating, all one can do is wrap oneself in a scarf and go flomp. It’s exhausting being this adorable.

Day 7. I think the natives are beginning to accept me as one of their own.

Day 7 (continued). Today I am two months old. My plan for world domination is taking shape. One day soon any object placed on this coffee table will fall victim to my swishy tail.

Day 8. Already I have proven my worth. Today I saved the house from invasion by large pink aliens.

Day 9. Tried to launch myself onto Dad’s lap but bounced off. I have however managed to climb six steps up the staircase, which is more than the Daleks achieved. Galactic domination can only be days away.

Day 14. Mid-morning. After running around madly for the past four hours, it’s all finally caught up with me.

Day 15. These tiny golden retriever puppy teeth are the sharpest teeth in the world. They could rip the strap of this croc clean off. So I have just one question. Do you feel lucky?

Day 16. I’m now big enough to climb onto the sofa and therefore onto Dad’s tummy while he’s having a shluf. No corner of the house will be spared my adorableness! Except that Dad’s put a gate in the hall so I can’t go upstairs. I’m too tiny, they say. TOO TINY. Harumph. We’ll soon see about that.

Day 17. I can has my Mummy where I want her.

Day 21. It is a fact universally acknowledged that all human footwear must be chewed/gnawed/thrown around/hidden/combinations of the above. But sometimes one has to admit de feet.

Day 22. I found this spoon. I feel strangely stirred.

Day 24. I have a new fren! OffSpring#1 is visiting. He obviously needs a cuddle.

Day 31. Celebrity Personal Appearance at the Vet, which I enjoyed. Here I am again with my fren Louise. Also, first day on a leash - not so much.

Day 32. Elvis says I'm not allowed to put my paws on the table. Er... hang on...

Day 35. I'm three months old today! Where has the time gone? Time for a comfy snooze.

Day 38. A big day today. I went to the beach. I had never been to the beach before. If you’ve never been to the beach, you should go. It’s AMAZING. At first it seemed awfully big. But then I met some new frens and ran around and paddled in a tide pool. Then I went to Henry's Cafe and was very spoiled . Then I went to sleep. Zzz. I hope I go to the beach again, it was GREAT.

Day 40. Here I am at Henry’s café, my favourite place to be for aprés-plage. If I’m especially good I get treats and some of Dad’s sausage roll.

Day 41. Playing on the beach with my new fren Spud.

Day 44. This is me having a well-earned snooze at 8:30 this morning after chasing Dad around for 3 hours. Honestly. He was terrible. Stopping me doing things I wanted like going outdoors, coming in again, going outdoors five minutes later, coming in again, snarfling the cat food, barking a lot, disemboweling the sofa and stealing Mum's shoes.

Day 45. Here I am with my good fren Elvis. He’s a very chilled doggo. He doesn’t mind it if I chew his ears or suck his head.

Day 46. So, we're on the beach, and Dad throws this blue thing called a 'ball'. 'Fetch!' he says. I chase it, because, you know, that's what I do. I'm a dog. But when I get there I don't know what to do with it. Do I pick it up? Do I bury it? What? Dad picks it up again and throws it into the sea. Does he think I'm going in there? I don't mind the water -- but the sea is just so big. You know, noisy, with waves, and everything. 'Call yourself a Retriever?' says Dad. 'I want my money back!' But he doesn't mean it because I'm so adorable, and, anyway, we went to Henry's Cafe for treats.

Day 51 (or thereabouts. What do you expect? I'm a dog). I love going to the beach. The best thing about the beach is finding new frens to play with. The other best thing is digging holes. As you see I now have this very fashionable harness that Mum and Dad bought me in Coastal Pets in Cromer. A nice lady at the shop gave me a special fitting. Mum and Dad are staying at home a lot and looking worried. I cheer them up by inventing new games for them to play. The best one is Find-The-Footwear. I am very good at hiding Mum's new expensive shoes. I hid Dad's nice boots. He has found one of them but has no idea where I have hidden the other. Now he has to go around in his hiking boots. The laces are a bit chewed. I can't imagine how that happened.

Day 54. Went to Trimingham Beach with my frens Lulu and Ronnie. Lulu is teaching me how to play ball, but she won’t always let me have a go. But I don’t mind cos I’m a Golden Retriever Pup running around in the sunshine and that’s the BEST.

Day 55. Mum and Dad went to the shops to get some new engraved pet collar tags for me and my frens. And probably loo rolls. They came back with this brand new secondhand sofa from Sue Ryder specially for me. If I stay very still I just merge into the background.

Day 56. Here I am relaxing with my fren Elvis who is also a very good doggo. I don’t know what sort of doggo he is. I have asked him but he won’t say. He just purrs.

Day 57. I found this spoon. It’s my spoon. It’s the best spoon. Okay, so now it’s just a very chewed piece of wood. But it’s still my spoon. I love my spoon.

Day 58. I think I might have overdosed on shoes.

Day 59. Gosh I have been busy. I have spent all morning in the garden chewing sticks, and helping Dad plant potatoes. Now I am helping my Mum doing some baking, and hoping she’ll drop nice things on the floor. Edible or not, it’s all the same to me, as long as I can get it down the bone chute.

Day 60. Mum has been trying to do her degree course at home. She says I am a ‘pickle’. So Dad has just taken me for a long walk (‘my ration of one daily exercise’, he calls it.) We went with my frens Ronnie and Lulu. Dad wouldn’t let us talk to the other dogs because ‘social distancing’. But now I am pooped.

Day 62. Phew. What a day. I helped Mum take an online Nursing Practice exam. This involved a lot of running around barking. After that I helped Mum sort out her revision notes. I might have eaten some of them. I can’t remember. It’s all a blur.

Day 63. The family has been spending lots of time watching box sets. First we had The Lord of the Rings. Now we are well in to The Hobbit. I’m not really interested in these so Mum gave me this wooden spatula. It’s mine. My own. My precioussss...

Day 64. I am on the sofa cleaning one of Dad's shoes. My special fren Elvis, the purring doggo, has come to see what I am doing. I might let him help clean Dad's shoe with me. Jobs like this are much more fun with two.

Day 66. Dad is working from home - I love to help. He lets me do useful things like shred envelopes and bank statements.

Day 67. Today I am 4 months old. As I am now a big grown up doggo Mum and Dad let me stay up to watch the News at Ten. So many people are isolated and on their own. I wish I could go visit them and be their fren. I’d cheer them up with entertaining games like ‘hide-the-shoe’ and ‘guess-what-disgusting-thing-I-have-in-my-mouth’.