On Friendship

It was cream of earl grey today, and we didn’t even bother with a tea infuser. It was still murder to get out of the bag and into the teapot though. We made it up in a large pot, you know, and drank it with a friend. Earl Grey isn’t our go-to black tea, but this particular blend is a staple of the Advent Calendar, and we’ve learned over the years that it holds up black. Also when the cups involved haven’t been lately rinsed with dish detergent. But there’s also something about the sharing of tea that improves it. We like to joke about tea being the eighth sacrament, but like any joke, it has logic in it.

With that in mind, here’s Katherine Phillips on friendship. There are some poets we circle back to yearly, and there’s no one quite like her. She writes about friendship the way anyone else would write a romance – and all before C.S. Lewis was on the scene to write a book to that effect. So pour out a cup of tea, summon a friend, and see what you make of this Carolingian era treatise.

Friendship

Katherine Phillips

LET the dull brutish World that know not Love,
Continue heretics, and disapprove
That noble flame; but the refinèd know
‘Tis all the Heaven we have here below.
Nature subsists by Love, and they do tie
Things to their causes but by sympathy.
Love chains the different Elements in one
Great harmony, link’d to the Heav’nly Throne.
And as on earth, so the blest quire above
Of Saints and Angels are maintain’d by Love;
That is their business and felicity,
And will be so to all Eternity.
That is the ocean, our affections here
Are but streams borrow’d from the fountain there.
And ’tis the noblest argument to prove
A beauteous mind, that it knows how to Love.
Those kind impressions which Fate can’t control,
Are Heaven’s mintage on a worthy soul.
For Love is all the Arts’ epitome,
And is the sum of all Divinity.
He’s worse than beast that cannot love, and yet
It is not bought for money, pains or wit;
For no chance or design can spirits move,
But the eternal destiny of Love:
And when two souls are chang’d and mixèd so,
It is what they and none but they can do.
This, this is Friendship, that abstracted flame
Which grovelling mortals know not how to name.
All Love is sacred, and the marriage-tie
Hath much of honour and divinity.
But Lust, Design, or some unworthy ends
May mingle there, which are despis’d by Friends.
Passion hath violent extremes, and thus
All oppositions are contiguous.
So when the end is serv’d their Love will bate,
If Friendship make it not more fortunate:
Friendship, that Love’s elixir, that pure fire
Which burns the clearer ’cause it burns the higher.
For Love, like earthly fires (which will decay
If the material fuel be away)
Is with offensive smoke accompanied,
And by resistance only is supplied:
But Friendship, like the fiery element,
With its own heat and nourishment content,
Where neither hurt, nor smoke, nor noise is made,
Scorns the assistance of a forein aid.
Friendship (like Heraldry) is hereby known,
Richest when plainest, bravest when alone;
Calm as a virgin, and more innocent
Than sleeping doves are, and as much content
As Saints in visions; quiet as the night,
But clear and open as the summer’s light;
United more than spirits’ faculties,
Higher in thoughts than are the eagle’s eyes;
What shall I say? when we true friends are grown,
W’ are like—Alas, w’ are like ourselves alone.

Hymn to the Marschallin-Cat

In the ongoing saga that is our battle against the parcels of Advent tea, we experimented with a different tea infuser tonight. Whereas our usual is large and bell-shaped, this one is small, squat and house-shaped, what the giver dubbed our ‘tea grotto.’ This makes no difference, if you were wondering, to the elaborate procedure of tea leaf extraction from vacuum-packed plastic bags. We have, however, extracted a considerable number of tea leaves from the rug. Packaging 4: Us nil.

It was another apple tea tonight, appropriately dubbed Apple Cider. It’s supposed to taste like the drink – the wintery, non-alcoholic one. It does too, alternately sweet and tart by turns, depending on the length of steeping. It’s also a herbal tea though, and to our mind is fractionally too sweet. We blame the combination of apple and blackcurrant for a base. Overtop a green tea it would be perfect; as it is, the cinnamon and vanilla don’t quite balance out the fruit.

It also sports that most disturbing of things, cream essence. That’s not really a point against it; we’ve seen cream essence in enough teas by now to accept it as mundane. But we would someday like an explanation as to what it is. Is it manufactured? Powdered? Does one wave the prepackaged tea in front of a creamer? The tea proper doesn’t taste creamy and it also doesn’t smell of it, evidenced by the Marschallin-cat’s utter disdain for it. Miss Marschallin, to the uninitiated, has a sixth sense for all things milky.

Miss Marschallin does her best impression of Miss Jean Brodie, also of Edinburgh.

We were going to segue from tea to the virtues of the Marschallin-cat, but it’s late, and she’s quite well-documented here. Less well-documented though is her origin as an Edinburgh cat. She came to us from Lothian Cat Rescue, where the felines are undaunted by quarter hours, flatten others’ scorn under the chariot wheels of their superiority, and, are, of course, in their prime. Certainly the Marschallin-cat is. Accordingly, here’s a hymn to Miss Marschallin. Well, to an Edinburgh cat, name unspecified. But don’t let on, will you?

An Edinburgh Cat

M.L. Dalgleish

There are cats in the Canongate and cats in the Cowgate
Up ad down Lawnmarket and right round St Giles;
Urban cats in Trinity and rural cats at Howgate,
Toms and tabbies purr and prowl for miles and miles and miles.
But not a single cat of them, claims where I wait
High in Ramsay Garden, clinging to the tiles.

From there I peer at Edinburgh with eager eyed felinity.
Traffic and humanity, at work and sleep and play,
From West end to Waverly, from Sun. to Saturday;
All the chase and chatter of the city’s femininity
On bargain hunt at Jenners and Binns, and C.&A.

Storm clouds over Fife, in the Firth the white spray curling;
Loud with the north easter, I shriek a merry mew;
Summer time in Princes Street; kilted dancers whirling
Where the flowery gardens hear my purring all night thro’,
Bagpipers on the Esplanade, and high above their skirling
I sing in shrill cacophony my joy at the Tattoo.

Grey friars Bobby sits smug beside his Candlemakers
A burgess and a movie star grown pompous by renown;
The unicorn of Mercat Cross mounts guard on holy acres,
Law-abiding citizens who view me with a frown;
Yet if I ever fall victim to town planners and house-breakers,
My loss would be catastrophe for Edinburgh-town.

*We can’t go without observing that while we lived many years in Scotland, we never once met a cat that joyed in the Edinburgh tattoo. Come to that we’re not sure we met non-tourists who joyed in it. But if you have, do get in touch!

On Tea – and its Ritual Trappings

Give us time, we said. We’ll try we said. Three days of wrestling with the plastic-wrapped tea really was us trying. Turns out the old saw about Anglicans and lightbulbs is absolutely true; you need one to pour the sherry, one to change the bulb and one to complain about the superiority of the old bulb. Being neither mechanical or keen on sherry, we clearly fall to the complaining. Swap in tea for lightbulbs and it works a treat.

The thing is, it’s not just that the plastic is different. It’s that its badly designed. In spite of assurances that the bag contains ‘two perfect spoonfuls,’ the opening of the packaging is engineered to be at peek narrowness. Consequently any heaped teaspoon emerging therefrom scatters gaily across the kitchen counter. We then sweep the leaves into our hands, and thence into the tea infuser. But since we can’t hold the infuser in one hand while spooning stuff out of a hopelessly narrow bag, that too empties on to the counter. We gather it up. We take out a second spoonful. It spills across the counter. We combine it with the leaves we are now sheltering in the palm of one hand. (Pause here to say a quick prayer that it staysin the confines of one’s hands and doesn’t, say, overrun on to the floor.) We portion the combined lot back into the tea infuser and weep for fellow tea-drinkers partaking in the 24 Days of Tea /Advent Calendar That Isn’t. Are you keeping up? No? Don’t worry, neither are we and we’re living this experience.

Please. For the love of this tea-drinker’s sanity, reinstate the silver and gold tins.

Scrap that. The tins can be whatever colour the cosmos fancies. Blue, green, multicoloured with leprechauns and gremlins. Just bring them back.

Today’s tea was ‘Let it Snow’ a lovely green tea that is the tea company’s newest and latest take on our beloved Crumble Tea. As you’ll appreciate, we took great pains not to let that scatter counter-wide. It’s a bit sweeter than the Crumble Tea, maybe not quite enough spice to balance out the apple flavour. But it’s good all the same and we’re guarding the current supply rather jealously. Even if we do have to tip it into a recyclable tin to ensure its used to its full potential.

And for a tea that tastes like an old favourite, here’s a lovely and well-worn poem to go with it. We’ve always skirted it on the blog, thinking it’s probably the obvious tea poem, and everyone familiar with it. They almost certainly are, but it’s lovely anyway.

Tea

Carol-Ann Duffy

I like pouring your tea, lifting
the heavy pot, and tipping it up,
so the fragrant liquid streams in your china cup.

Or when you’re away, or at work,
I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip,
as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips.

I like the questions – sugar? – milk? –
and the answers I don’t know by heart, yet,
for I see your soul in your eyes, and I forget.

Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam, Earl Grey, Ceylon,
I love tea’s names. Which tea would you like? I say
but it’s any tea for you, please, any time of day,

as the women harvest the slopes
for the sweetest leaves, on Mount Wu-Yi,
and I am your lover, smitten, straining your tea.

24 Days of Tea

It’s been an age. But the tea Advent Calendar is back, and so are we. Well, okay, if we’re being technical…it’s the 24 Days of Tea because marketing thinks Advent Calendar might alienate the atheists. The agnostics too. We’d take their point if we thought the average church-goer could still tell you why we call Advent Advent. Alas, we do not, so have faith less than a mustard seed that the atheists and agnostics are ahead of us. Maybe we are unfair. Maybe they are. On the other hand, Lady Marchmaine assures me that if you’re agnostic, you[re practically Anglican. And if you’re an atheist buying a tea Advent Calendar, odds are on you’re more interested in the tea than the branding. We’d imagine.

It was Candy Cane today, by the way. A black tea with pieces of…well…pieces of something it it. Specifically a snowflake-shaped something that gives the tea a liquid After Eight taste and makes the tea sparkle. Really. It’s sort of a filmy-besparkled surface. Our bet is on some kind of mint flavoured sugar crystal. Anyway, it’s very nice if you like peppermint. We happen to. The black tea base counterbalances it well. Be sure to give it plenty of time to steep though. After a good seven minutes, ours was still weak. But then, we use a tea infuser.

It being December, other trivia at this end include the conclusion of the Scottish Country Christmas Dance at our end. Reels, jigs, strathspeys, and lots of metrically complicated things. The upshot is that we now understand a reel of four and the art of set-and-balance. On which note, here’s one of Pat Batt’s poetic gens about the art of the Scottish Country Dance.

THE INTERMEDIATE CLASS

By Pat Batt

Well now I’m Intermediate –
My feet are doing nicely –
The brain still finds it hard to cope
And work things out precisely.
I sometimes feel that I’m a pawn
In a giant game of chess –
But the pattern’s getting clearer
And the chaos getting less.
I’ve mastered chain progression,
I can do a nifty Knot –
But the Rondel and Espangnole,
I admit they’re not so hot.

So – here you find me in the set
And I am number two.
I’m O.K. for the first few bars –
I’ve nothing much to do.
I’ve stepped up very nicely
(It’s lovely to be dancing!)
But – someone’s coming up the set –
Oh, should I be advancing?
Ah no, it’s just a set and turn
And balance in a line –
My confidence comes flooding back
And now I’m doing fine!

I’ve come in for the Allemande
(Arm over on bar one!)
Now I can do it properly
I’m finding it such fun!
I’ve done 8 slip steps to the left
And 8 back to the right,
I’ve turned, and now I’m casting
And the end is now in sight.
I’ve remembered all the proper things
That I’ve been taught to do –
And the nicest thing about it is
My teacher’s happy too!

Before we go, here’s a look at Miss Haden’s Reel to round off your evening. It’s a jig, by the by. One can only presume whoever named the thing was having a laugh at the expense of beginners. Even so, it’s a good bit of fun.

Oxen Kneeling

Appropriately for tonight, we’re drinking a Santa’s Secret, a sweetened black tea with pieces of candy cane. We could be liturgically snippy and say really this belongs in the December 6 box, for St Nicholas, but this is a Canadian Calendar, and Santa has long been associated here with Christmas Eve, never mind the liturgical calendar.

Besides, we’ve always loved the little human embroideries of the biblical narrative. Christ falling three times during Stations of the Cross, for the humanity and frailty it gives Him, the tabby cat who got her M-shaped marking on her forehead when Mary blessed her for keeping the Christ warm in the manger, or the cherries she plucks from that cherry tree in the carol. Did any of them happen? Impossible to say, but someone, somewhere once believed that they did, and ever since people have cleaved to them in various degrees, and have kept adding. Santa and his sleigh, the tree that craved great purpose and so became the Cross -and here’s another for you.

An old English superstition says that on Christmas Eve the oxen kneel at midnight to greet the Christ. It’s immortalised forever by Thomas Hardy in poetry, who crammed such superstitions into all his writing. We’ve shared superstition and poem before, but the old-world awe of the image of the oxen kneeling is one that never loses its beauty for us. Perhaps we’ll find a better Christmas Eve poem in the New Year, but until we do, have the oxen kneeling.

The Oxen

Thomas Hardy

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

“Now they are all on their knees,”

An elder said as we sat in a flock

By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

They dwelt in their strawy pen,

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve,

“Come; see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know,”

I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

No oxen to kneel here, but all the same, a happy Christmas from all at Dawlish-uder-snow!

White Cranberry Bark and Advent Carols

We spent this afternoon catching the last performance of The Messiah for this season’s run. It was wonderfully done, with zest and energy even in the slower pieces. The orchestra had a light touch, and the highlight of the performance for us was the choir. (No, we’re not biased at all, why would you think that?) Their diction was good, their sound bright, and they were -oh rarity -always together. In a large choir, that’s no easy feat.

As ever with The Messiah there was a fair bit of elasticity, and pieces were sung by parts we normally associate with others. On that note, we wanted to give you this communion hymn that ambushed us the other week. We never expected to like anything with a tambourine (they’re too often used to soppy effect) but the jocundity here is contagious. You may or may not recognise the text as Comfort Ye My People. We associate it with Handel’s Messiah, but that’s about all they have in common -well, that, and as it happens, we love both arrangements. We hope you will too.

Now, the concert over, we’re drinking a tea billed as being White Cranberry Bark. It’s herbal, pink, and tastes tart -the cranberry, presumably. You have to let this one steep. Our first effort was impatient and it tasted mostly of hot water, but about ten minutes into brewing the cranberry came through, and the white chocolate is merely a culinary afterthought. So you see, we can like a tea with chocolate in it after all. Though we still think it’s a bit odd.

And on the subject of oddities, we’re taking a risk here and giving you a poem we haven’t made up our mind about. We first heard it two or three years ago when the St Salvator’s Chapel Choir, St Andrews, premiered a carol cycle arranged by a composer we now forget -possibly John MacMillan. It was interspersed with poetry, and we found this Advent Carol in verse. See what you make of it.

The Midwife’s Carol

Michael Symmons Roberts

Deserts freeze and oceans glaze,
The polar sun turns blue,
Then on winter’s whitened page
A single star prints through.

New-made maker, helpless king,
Born to joy and suffering,
Our rescuer, our child,
Our rescuer, our child.

I haul my catch into the world,
I shake him into breath,
His cry, so clear it splits the skies,
Could wake a man from death.

He cries for milk who gave it taste,
He aches for touch of skin,
Yet he spun every human hair,
And ushered love begin.

I count his fingers, wipe

his eyes,
Then whisper in each ear.
I wrap him in my thickest shawl,
Bound tight to keep him here.

My hands have cradled many heads,
Cut countless cords and cauls,
But never held eternity
Within such fragile walls.

The maker of all worlds is made,
Infinity becalms,
From speed of light to feet of clay,
My saviour in my arms.

For our money, if you’re interested, if that italicised bit is a chorus, it’s unnecessary. Strictly speaking, its superfluous anyway, but if it’s meant to repeat, well, look for us cowering in a corner somewhere waving a cross in the general direction of all things uncomfortably sentimental. And yes, there are probably quite a few Victorian hymns that fall under that description too, we include them here. But strange italics aside, there are some lines here that give us shivers even on the nth rereading. For years people have been trying to articulate the strange duality of the infant Christ, and for us this comes as close as anything to articulating His humanity and divinity simultaneously. If nothing else, it has nerve. That’s a great thing in poetry.

What do you think? Are we too hard on the italics? Is it altogether gloopy anyway? Let us know. We’re collecting opinions.

Lyrical Ballads in Peppermint

It’s late here, and the end of a long week. Christmas is approaching apace, and in the spirit of that we’re drinking something by the unlikely name of Candy Cane Crush. To be clear; we have no great love for candy canes. We think they were largely invented to hang on Christmas trees.

We do like this tea. Whereas the Moroccan Mint of earlier in the calendar was too minty even for us, this is a black tea with added peppermint, and it’s more like drinking a peppermint cream. Peppermint creams in liquid form are, according to us, an entirely acceptable way to greet Christmas.

It’s still Advent on the calendar though, so here’s that poem we’ve been promising, with hints -we think -of Advent in it. Snow, otters, dreams, and the journey we take on trust. We found it quite by accident the other day, but its opening lines won us over immediately. There’s almost a Lyrical Ballads feel to it, the glorifying of something as mundane as an otter in the river. See if you agree.

Midnight Snow

James Crews

Outside in the creek that feeds the lake

and never freezes, an otter slaps the water

with his paw to feel the current’s pulse—

Slip in, lie back. Slip in, lie back. He shuts

his eyes and obeys, knowing the layers

of hair and underfur will warm him while

he floats on a faith we wish could carry us.

The sound of his splashing fades, but not

his joy in being pushed, light as driftwood,

back to the mouth of the den I have seen

carved out beneath the roots of a fallen fir

now packed with snow and lined with leaves

that promise his sleep will be deep.

Because no dreams wait softly for me,

I open the woodstove and strike a match,

hold the bloom of the flame to kindling

that catches quick as my wish: To be that

slick body sliding into the lake that holds

the moon, bright portal to glide through

without so much as a shiver, no doubt

about where I’m going, how to get there.

Cause for Carolings

It was Hot Chocolate Tea tonight, for the shortest day. We don’t usually care for chocolate in tea, but we make an exception with this tea because the creaminess of it is a nice compliment to the chocolate. It’s also more black tea than it is chocolate, not a balance people always get right when they blend the two. It’s featured before on this blog, and at the time we wondered if milk would enhance the taste or confuse it. We still haven’t experimented, and don’t think we will. As a flavoured black tea it is rich and full-bodied, and we’ve mostly decided adding milk would make it cloying. It would also drown the hints of vanilla that run through it.

Now, we promised you a poem the other night, but you still have to wait on it. Don’t worry, no Apocalyptic Wailing tonight about technology. But we wanted something hopeful for the shortest day -it’s such a drear, dark occasion. We did dither about giving you this one, as we’ve used it before here, and haven’t established what our rules are about repeating a poem. But the dithering was before we got a repeated tea. We think that completely justifies us in going back to what is for us the most beloved winter-themed poem of the English canon. Read it, enjoy it, and carry a bit of light through the growing gloom with you.

The Darkling Thrush

Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter’s dregs made desolate

The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be

The Century’s corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

And I was unaware.

*Remember a while back we said you could sing most Hardy to any hymn tune? Try it with this one. Our especial favourite is Aurelia, but Repton is good too. Don’t cleave to those though -be inventive!

Do Not Pick Up the Telephone

Look, we’re sorry. You were going to get a lovely poem about snow, otters and dreams. You’re getting it tomorrow. Somewhere between now and then Skype demanded our password, we failed to guess what it was, Skype attempted to make us reauthorise the account…you don’t want the details. Suffice it to say we railed against technology, gave it access to the keychain (whatever that is) and somehow got technology to work.

But it was such an ordeal that now you’re getting a poem from the man who invented fear of technology. We, meanwhile are making more of tonight’s tea. It’s called Carrot Cupcake, and this slightly dubious name hosts a rooibos with carrot cake spices and cinnamon. It should be dire. We love it. It tastes of autumnal warmth and the crackle of a fire. You know, the kind of fire you can use to destroy recalcitrant technology if you’re so minded and then curl up with a book beside.

Do Not Pick Up the Telephone

Ted Hughes

That plastic Buddha jars out a Karate screech

Before the soft words with their spores
The cosmetic breath of the gravestone

Death invented the phone it looks like the altar of death
Do not worship the telephone
It drags its worshippers into actual graves
With a variety of devices, through a variety of disguised voices

Sit godless when you hear the religious wail of the telephone

Do not think your house is a hide-out it is a telephone
Do not think you walk your own road, you walk down a telephone
Do not think you sleep in the hand of God you sleep in the mouthpiece of a telephone
Do not think your future is yours it waits upon a telephone
Do not think your thoughts are your own thoughts they are the toys of the telephone
Do not think these days are days they are the sacrificial priests of the telephone

The secret police of the telephone

0 phone get out of my house
You are a bad god
Go and whisper on some other pillow
Do not lift your snake head in my house
Do not bite any more beautiful people

You plastic crab
Why is your oracle always the same in the end?
What rake off for you from the cemeteries?

Your silences are as bad
When you are needed, dumb with the malice of the clairvoyant insane
The stars whisper together in your breathing
World’s emptiness oceans in your mouthpiece
Stupidly your string dangles into the abysses
Plastic you are then stone a broken box of letters
And you cannot utter
Lies or truth, only the evil one
Makes you tremble with sudden appetite to see somebody undone

Blackening electrical connections
To where death bleaches its crystals
You swell and you writhe
You open your Buddha gape
You screech at the root of the house

Do not pick up the detonator of the telephone
A flame from the last day will come lashing out of the telephone
A dead body will fall out of the telephone

Do not pick up the telephone

The Theology of Dogs

. We’re drinking spiced green tea tonight, a worthy successor to the Crumble Tea sacramentalized by the Anglican Inquisition. If that sounds like dubious theology, it probably is. You must understand that the Anglican Inquisition is comprised of one Anglican, two Presbyterians and an atheist, among others. Ecumenical Inquisition is just a mouthful though -even if not even the tea shops expect them. Besides, we’re not the only ones with suspect doctrine.

Pictured above are the Dachshunds of Dawlish. We don’t mention them as often as we do the Marschallin-cat, which is a grievous disservice considering their adoration of the the Human Pillow. Though as you will gather from the pictures, the theology of Dachshunds is fairly fluid. Buffy (she sits right) is also a sun-worshipper and a coveter of warm floor tiles and heat vents. Augie (pictured left) is braw, blue, and frequently pays fealty to the Fabulous Orange Ball. No one, not even his fellow Dachshund, understands why. Of course, he’s not averse to a spot of sun-worship either.

Or to crossword solving:

Or, as it turns out, to baking, though we failed to document evidence of this, being too taken up the other evening with the shortbread. Here they are petitioning for food though. All that hopeful watching is hungry work when shortbread is at stake.

Anyway, in loving and long-overdue tribute to the Dancing Dachshunds of Dawlish (who are also by turns delightful, devious, and decidedly stubborn) here’s a poem about their canine contemporaries and the things they put their trust in.

Pete’s Theology

Donald Marquis

god made seas to play beside
and rugs to cover dogs
god made cars for holidays
and beetles under logs
god made kitchens so thered be
dinners to eat and scraps
god made beds so pups could crawl
under them for naps
god made license numbers so theyd find
lost pups and bring them home
god made garbage buckets too
to pry in when you roam
god made tennis shoes to chew
and here and there a hat
but i cant see why god should make
mehitabel the cat

pete the pup

The Marschallin-cat, by the way, has no doubt about why God made Dachshunds. They exist to have their noses hit. Dachshunds, are, after all, at optimum nose-hitting level. What you see in the picture is the rare and amicable convening of the Dachshund Embassy with her Imperiousness. Augie, alas, has yet to make any headway. Only girls allowed in this particular club. But he lives in hope. And in the meantime there’s spiced green tea, illicit sandwiches, shortbread crumbs, rugs and cars and beetles under logs. Dachshunds really do have an idyllic existence.