Philobiblon

But I was left berefit – no internet! – when my greyhound Champ, while trying to scratch his way through the doorframe, managed to sever the telephone cable.

Not a total disaster, since I needed to get BT around to sort out a tangle of cables across the floor anyway, and I now have phone sockets in more sensible places.

As for the separation anxiety problem, I’ve decided to try “crate therapy” and the living room is now mostly occupied by said crate – large enough for him to turn around comfortably. The idea is that this is his “safe” space, where he’ll be fed and feel comfortable. Not working yet, but it is early days.

I did this on advice from an Islington dog trainer recommended by the Beaumont Animal Hospital. And after two days of frantic, unanswered calling to the Battersea Dogs’ Home so-called animal behaviour line, which I’m convinced doesn’t actually exist. I left four increasingly frantic messages on the answer phone, since no one ever seems to actually answer calls, and never received a response. I understand Battersea is a charity, but it shouldn’t advertise a service that doesn’t exist. (Particularly since this certainly contributed to my stress levels, and could easily have led me to give up and return Champ.)

If you live in Hackney, Islington or Camden and have dog behaviour problems I’d strongly recommend this guy (who talked to me, and arranged a crate for me, without charging for his time). I won’t post his details for fear of his being swamped, but if you need them, email me and I’ll pass them on.

Britain’s religious hatred bill was at least watered down – chiefly through government incompetence – to at least insist on the necessity of intent to do harm. But it is still a bad piece of legislation.

While races should be protected from vilification – being an innate thing no one can change (although an entirely artificial construct, but that’s another post) – no idea should be safe from the most robust of challenges. (And while of course a religious group should be protected from direct incitement to violence, that is already covered by other laws. Should I decide to try to provoke attacks on, say, people wearing black jeans, that is illegal, as would be targetting a religious group).

Some in Europe at least realise this:

Daily newspapers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands featured 12 cartoons, which have caused a firestorm in the Islamic world.
Editors expressed a wish to show solidarity with the Editor of the Jyllands-Posten in Denmark, whose cartoons triggered violent protests in Gaza, a boycott of Danish goods across the Arab world and death threats against the newspaper’s senior staff. The paper’s offices had to be evacuated last night after the second bomb threat in two days.
… France Soir covered its front with Buddha, the Christian and Jewish deities and the Prophet all sitting on a cloud. The Christian God says: ““Don’Â’t complain Muhammad, all of us have been caricatured.”
Shortly after the paper appeared, however, its managing editor, Jacques Lefranc, was sacked. Raymond Lakah, the paper’s owner, issued a public apology …
French … ministers defended France Soir’s freedom to publish what it wanted. After a Cabinet meeting with President Chirac, Jean-Francois Cope, a minister and government spokesman, said: “France is attached to the freedom of expression””, but adding that respect should always be shown for the beliefs of others.

So which British paper is going to print the cartoons?

If you were to step out of your time machine into the Athenian fifth-century theatre, what you would experience is not what you see at the Barbican Pit in the Gardzienice Centre for Theatre Practices production of Metamorphoses & Elektra. While the scientists are working on the machinery, however, this evening is probably as close as you can get to the sensation – the music, the words, and the confrontation of a wholly foreign world – that a time machine journey would produce.

Gardzienice’s is a theatre aethetic of bodies, and sounds. (Luckily, since few in the audience can have mastered both the ancient Greek and Polish that is mixed in with the occasional English explanation.) The company works with the fragmentary remains of ancient Greek songs (a little of the musical notation survives), then has taken in influences from tours to remote parts of eastern Europe, New Mexico, South Korea and Norway, searching for the elemental in culture and humanity.

This is then reduced and shaped to a carefully rehearsed anarchy, to the point where a group of women in white robes, whirling around the stage to a simple but compulsive rhythm (Sufi mystics by another name), are crying like eerily accurate angry seagulls. Or the Author stands in his cloaks of character masks, defenceless and undefended as they are ripped away. READ MORE

Anyone got a magic cure? After four weeks of apparently being perfectly happy to be left, Champ has suddenly developed severe separation anxiety. Not only is he clawing the door to shreds; he’s whining, and howling, for at least 40 minutes after being left. (I’ve left a tape running a couple of times, so I would know what was going on.)

The radio is left on for him for company; I kept him fairly hungry today and left him with a stuffed Kong (with peanut butter) and a pig’s ear (neither of which were touched); I just don’t know what to do – I can’t just drop everything, although I am going to have to cancel tomorrow morning’s squash game. But equally I can’t inflict that on the neighbours.

I’m going to try to find a dog sitter – someone retired ideally who is always at home, but it is not going to be easy.

Valium ….? (At least for me.)

You might have noticed that since I put up a post with “single woman” in the headline, Google Adverts have been going mad on the dating sites. There’s social conditioning for you …
Apologies.