I'm so sorry, lovely Esme dog.

We chose you because you seemed so relaxed and happy in your kennel, but curious, gentle and friendly when we took you outside.  We knew you were going to need loads of exercise, but we were happy to take you out for two or three hours of walks a day, longer on our days off.  And you'd have the garden to run around in between.

On the journey home, I was impressed with your trust, constantly looking to me for reassurance as I held you safe on the back seat. You must have been so bewildered and scared, but you didn't cry or bark or wee.

We did tons of research and listened intently to the good advice the trainer gave us on our introductory talk, but we still probably did everything wrong that first day.  We did our best to leave you to discover your new home at your own pace, We tried to see whether you knew any commands.  You didn't know "sit" or "here", you didn't even know your name. We tried to get you to play, you didn't seem to know how.  But you seemed to forgive us, and you were so good when we put you to bed.

We knew as soon as we got you home that you were a chewer.  Still, all dogs chew things, and we were prepared for a level of destruction.  The howling that first night was understandable, it was obviously going to take you a while to settle in.  We were sad about the wooden window blinds you ate through, but knew it wasn't your fault, so instead of telling you off we went out and bought a huge crate to put your bed in.  It was the only way the room would be safe from you and vice versa while we weren't in the room.

We knew you were going to be hard work, Esme, but you are one of the sweetest natured dogs I have ever met, and you deserved the effort.  After the first 24 hours, though, you were miserable and we were exhausted.  The only time you were happy was out on walks.  The rest of the time, you paced the house, crying and chewing things.  We could distract you for a few moments with a toy or a chew, but within seconds, you'd be chewing again.  We would have called it separation anxiety, except you did it when we were both there.  I've known big and powerful dogs, but I've never seen one bite great chunks out of solid wood furniture before.  Esme, how could we keep you safe?  You would have eaten everything made of wood or plastic if we took our eyes off you for long enough to go to the toilet, and you didn't care if a bottle you were chewing contained milk or washing-up liquid.  We very quickly ran out of high places to put things on.

Paul and I were down to one meal a day by day three, to spare us the difficulty of coaxing you into your crate several times a day, and to stop you from thinking the crate was a punishment or a torture.  A cup of tea became more trouble than it was worth because you don't yet understand that not everything is for dogs, and would knock it from our hands.

Every waking moment was spent following you around saying no.  What kind of life is that for us or for you?  I know you will learn, but we simply don't have the experience or resources to look after you till you are trained.

It became clear how wrong we were for you the first time you were confident enough to play in the garden.  You raced up and down, but seeing you at full tilt made me realise that an ordinary suburban garden is nowhere near enough space for you.  And that if you saw a squirrel, you would be over our six foot fences in a flash.  So I let you dig up all our vegetables, because at least you seemed happy when you were digging.

The next day I rang the charity you came from, and they were good enough to agree to let us bring you back there on Friday.  I'm telling myself what the charity's vet said - that we have helped you by finding out things about you that no-one could have ever known when you were in kennels.  I'll be recommending that the next people who fall in love with you take you to a home with a very large, very secure garden. And that you need to be with other dogs.  I think that's what you're looking for when you pace around crying.  I found myself telling the vet that you seemed much happier in the kennels than you ever have since we brought you home, and it breaks my heart to realise it's true.

I don't feel sad for you, Esme, because I know we're taking you back to a much better chance than you'll have with us.  I don't think you'll miss us anywhere near as much as you've been missing the company of other dogs.

I am sad that we will miss your company and the pleasure of seeing you gradually grow into the happy well-trained dog you have so much potential to be.  We will donate all your belongings to the rescue when we take you back, and eventually we'll repair the hundreds of pounds worth of damage you did to our house. But I would swap any amount of furniture for the ability to be the owner that you need.

And back to local matters...

this is my other Coventry poem.  It's not terribly highbrow, but it made me laugh.

How The Statues of Coventry Get Around When We're Not Looking

Frank Whittle

Goes for a little walk

around Millennium Square

Lady Godiva

's not a bad driver

But does it still completely bare

Saint Mike

Has a secret bike

And rides it till he gets a stitch

Jimmy Hill

Can't keep still

And cartwheels on the Ricoh pitch

Things I Have Learned From Masterchef India

Thanks to the Lovely Paul's predilection for cooking shows, I have watched Masterchef UK (foams), Australia (cakes), South Africa (meat), New Zealand (things people have shot) and Ireland (cream on everything).  The one I was really looking forward to though, was Masterchef India, and when I discovered it on StarPlus (somewhere up in the 700s on Sky; purveyor of soap operas and talent shows), it did not disappoint.

It took a few episodes to absorb the differences between the Indian show and some of the others in the franchise.  In India, Masterchef is firmly a game show.  The celebrity guests aren't chefs, they're tv presenters and comedians.  The team challenges aren't focussed on scallop-fed fine diners, but snack-hungry passers-by.  The contestants are not let loose in Michelin-starred restaurant kitchens, but are taken to different parts of India to learn about local specialities.

This last is interesting, as, compared to other Mastercheffy countries, India has such a vast geographical, ethnic and cultural spread that it's hard to pinpoint a "national" cuisine.  So it makes sense that they choose the contestants via a series of regional public cook-offs.  Of course, this gives a slightly higher than average proportion of people who just want to be on the telly, but even the most persistent of squeaking, hopping drama queens on the show at present can at least cook.

The challenges are much more compelling than the ones on UK Masterchef, having been devised with a cackling insanity worthy of the Generation Game.  Challenge one: here is a sumptuous platter of fruits, vegetables and dairy for all the contestants to coo and marvel at.  Before they've finished plotting their spectacular dishes, the goodies are whipped away and replaced with the real ingredients for their invention test: the stems, rinds, whey and other leavings from what they thought they were getting.  They're cooking with a compost heap.  Now that's a challenge, sod the "ooh, whatever am I going to make with just a jar of larks' tongues, an ox and a fistful of razor clams" vapours that tend to overcome the UK contestants.

You'll notice, as well, that there was no meat or fish in that challenge.  It is genuinely not an issue.  The vegetarian is not a second class citizen in India, and it's the first cooking show I've seen, from anywhere in the world, that takes vegetarian cooking seriously.  One of the best cooks in the competition (a young man named Happy Singh who was eliminated shockingly early) had recently become vegetarian, and this was hardly remarked upon.  When he was required to cook chicken, a team-mate tasted it for him with the same casual air that the presenters assumed when helping the talented, popular and illiterate Kokhu with written recipes.  The participants seem to automatically adjust the competition to be fair.

Compare this with the New Zealand  Masterchef-before-last, when the unlovable presenters made some poor vegetarian bastard force down a sausage in front of them before they'd let him progress to the next round.  Surely a good chef should be able to make an excellent meal without using meat?  (and don't get me started on how the Aussies call meat and fish "protein", as if vegetarians somehow magically survive on just carbohydrates and fat.)  Anyway, even Ishrat - who went out first and always had sauce in her hair - is a better bet to make a good veggie dinner than most meat-obsessed Michelin starred chefs (with the exception of Angela Hartnett, whose vegetarian food I have enjoyed as she seems to regard it as a challenge rather than a nuisance).

It's endlessly fascinating to watch, but obviously a culture shift for the average Brit viewer.  As a non-Hindi speaker, I'm reliant on subtitles, and though they're generally excellent, now and again one finds oneself derailed by a "terrain of dedicated coconut".  Health and safety appears rather casual (here, have a feel of this dry ice), though I haven't noticed many fingers seemingly stuck back on with blue plasters, a look UK Masterchef contestants seem to favour. The Indian judges, to me, seem to enjoy playing god a little bit too much, but then most Masterchefs tend to try and convince viewers that they hold much more drama than any meringue-based situation actually deserves.

A big difference is the AMOUNT of food cooked.  In one challenge Doyel and Devyani each had to fill a metre-high sundae glass with some kind of multilayered falooda pudding.  What happened to it afterwards?  Was all that food simply wasted?  It wasn't the sort of thing that could easily be packaged up for the crew to take home for their kids, or given to homeless people.  It would be bad enough being homeless, you wouldn't want to be sticky as well.  In other Masterchefs, quantities are so tiny that the question is never raised.  Saira, highly placed in the UK version recently, defined fine dining as "food that there isn't enough of".  This caused John Torode to raise his eyebrows in what he imagined was a wry fashion, and me to applaud.  Is the difference because most of the Indian kitchen superstars have learned their craft cooking for family, so are used to making in bulk?  Or is Western dining over-dainty?  It's something that hasn't come up in any other Masterchef I've watched, so while I can't say huge quantities are peculiar to India, there must be something going on that I haven't understood.

Now approaching the end of the series, the producers, in one of their beloved "twists" have brought back contestants who were previously eliminated, so at this stage it is anyone's game (my favourite is Yasmin, who seems to know enough about food to be confidently experimental, but tends to just quietly get on with producing excellent dishes).  The "real-time" aspect of the show means that we genuinely can't guess the outcome, unlike the UK version, filmed months before it is shown, and also means that the programme can exist in the real world - it's Holi: create a celebration dish!, it's Chef Sanjeev's birthday: bake him a cake!

I will be sad to see the series end, as the gameshow format allows us to get to know the contestants (as does the Australian one, which makes them all live in a big house together, and once threw someone out for having a mobile phone).  However, once I'm not spending my time actually watching it, I'll be able to try out all the new recipes and techniques I've learned, with the aid of subtitles and search engines.  What does holy basil taste like?  How do I use jaggery?  This is going to be fun.

Bad Cover Version

Just in case anyone was in any doubt, this is what Into the Valley is supposed to sound like.  If you prefer it tweely tapped out on a glockenfuckingspiel, then that is up to you, but personally, it makes me want to shout incredibly loudly into the face of the marketing director of Halford's for about twenty minutes.  
Why is the world now full of weedy covers?  I am guessing it's the same trend that started at the turn of the century with the likes of Nouvelle Vague, and even the Mike Flowers Pops offering a fresh new take on the punk and electronica that had become our classics.  It was an interesting diversion, and made us pause for a second to consider the inherent structures and melodies of the music we loved, and see that while, say, Teenage Kicks as performed by the Undertones was ours, the song itself was universal.  It was a fleeting reflective moment in pop history.  SO WHY IS IT STILL GOING ON?  The weedy cover is actually starting to proliferate and choke anything original.  We now have acts like Ed Sheeran whose entire ouvre sounds like a series of weedy covers of something much better.  
Why are people making and buying this stuff?  Is it spite?  Is it possible that my generation had all the best tunes, and so modern artists have set out to ruin them?  Is it subversion?  Are the weedy coverists trashing the past like the Sex Pistols did when they thrashed Stepping Stone into noisy unrecognisability?  Or is it simply the reduction of art to the lowest common denominator?  One of the most terrifying examples of a weedy cover came in a recent car ad (as so many do), in which some wispy Euromodel was juxtaposed with a weedy cover (possibly Nouvelle Vague's, come to think of it) of the Buzzcocks' Ever Fallen in Love.  At the end of the commercial, the model was shown on a stage with a full band playing their hearts out, sweatlessly punching the air and miming to this faint echo of a tune, AS IF THIS WAS THE MOST FUN POP MUSIC COULD EVER POSSIBLY BE.  
I have been made aware, via Asda FM, of a cover version of Soft Cell's Say Hello Wave Goodbye (the internet is inconclusive, but the perpetrator is possibly David Gray) which not only scrubs the original up so brutally that all the beautiful patina is lost, but to add insult to injury changes the excellent noun "sleeparound" to "runaround", whatever that may mean.  Is it really the case that modern listeners cannot cope with noisy instruments or faintly mucky words?  Are we all now eight year old puritans constantly trying to take a nap?  And why is the weedy cover synonymous with the car advert?  (that's not a hard one actually - manufacturers are presumably keener to identify their product with soppy wistful young women than with screaming death metal, but even so...)  One hopes and believes that this can all only be the lull before some incredibly noisy and impolite storm.

A Visitor's Guide to Coventry

(probably a poem but putting line breaks in is hard...)

Look up: they don't look up in this city any more.  Up there is where the trouble started, where the burning bones came from, the splinters of fire, the drownbreath of bereavement. But that was old when Death was a baby, and still they fear it, even their granddaughters don't look up.  Let's look up.  There's another city in the canopy, hotels of hope and brave tower blocks.  Aspirational Ikea.  Well, it is round here - this isn't Birmingham you know.  They pulled all the blue from the sky; we can see it every day now.  No need to look up.  But if you look up there are the spires.  See, the roads aren't the only way out of the city.  The saints are up there stained and waiting.  Air ghosts.  And peregrines, they lift tiny lives in pigeons to their exalted nest, like angels, like bombs.  Look up and there's a plaque for rude heroes and a towering Godiva.  Look up, an ancient and haunted kebab shop.  Look up: a space where an elephant once was.  Look up if you can, history holds down your eyes but still you can.  Look up.

Sport! What is it good for?

I haven't got a clue about sport but I insisted on watching the Olympics Opening Ceremony, mainly because I was convinced someone was going to shoot Boris Johnson and I didn't want to miss it.  Apart from that disappointment, a couple of things struck me:


Britain is stupid.  Lots of people online in the first twenty minutes complaining that all this grass-and-farmers stuff is really old fashioned, and do we want the world to think we're still like that.  Despite the fact that we still had a good three hours of history to go.


I am stupid.  I was moaning about tokenism (precisely one black mill-owner, one wheelchair dancer, etc), until I was reminded that most of these people were volunteers and producers simply had to pick the best performers for each thing from whoever turned up, so it was probably pretty representational.  In any case, all the performers were good and handled it with as much dignity as one can have while dressed in a top hat and performing interpretive dance about the industrial revolution.


No, it is Britain that's stupid.  Lots of different people online complaining that the production was "far left".  One expects this kind of spluttering from the Daily Mail, that's their job, don't do it for them.  There are many millions of things more left wing than saying "actually, world, we're quite proud of our healthcare system and the people who work in it".


Danny Boyle is of a similar age and background to me, and thus has exquisite taste in music (I'll let him off Frank Turner, since he did get the Who in twice.  I would have preferred Billy Bragg singing Jerusalem though).  


Trevor Nelson's cousin was in one bit, you know.  Nice to see #stoptalkingtrevor trending worldwide, as well as in our house.


The forging the ring bit was fantastic, but watching it without thinking of Tolkien was like listening to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.


I now get the point of sport a bit better.  I picked up lots of geographically educational stuff just from watching the parade of athletes.  Including the fact that our lot looked rather like a combined stag and hen party composed of budget airline crew. I really enjoyed all the background facts though - Bhutan didn't get telly till 1999!  The flag of Paraguay is different on each side!  


Maybe Boyle could now do some spinoff shows (The Adventures of Queenie?  Tim Berners-Lee and the Texting Teens?) to keep us amused for the next two weeks.  Or would the nation rather watch someone we don't know do something marginally more quickly than someone else we don't know?  Oh.

Was that a goal?

I was so delighted at being welcomed to Coventry by the nice ladies in the official purple Olympic shirts that I didn't notice the rest of my party explaining to them that, lovely thought and everything, but we don't need welcoming, thanks, because we live here.  Oh yes, so we do.  The stewards got on with welcoming everyone else - the fans who'd travelled from New Zealand and Cameroon, the general fans of women's football, and the rest of us who thought that it would be fun and interesting to go to an Olympic Game.  


The stadium is walking distance - it's the same place we saw the Specials last year, temporarily named the City of Coventry Stadium, as Ricoh weren't going to cough up the cash to be official sponsors.  Their punishment has been to have their name unscrewed from every sign in the place, leaving faint ghosts of clean lettering everywhere.  One tiny "Ricoh" remains, like a fingerprint, on the soap dispenser in a ladies' toilet.


It was hard to choose a team to support, as New Zealand holds happy memories and a good friend with her lovely Kiwi family, whereas Cameroon had nicer outfits. For me, it was more fun to not pick a side and just enjoy the game, particularly as I'm not really sure what a football match is meant to look like.  My highlight:  "official wine", a Brazilian Shiraz in an Olympic-branded bottle.  I was also really impressed by the Cameroon supporters who cheered and applauded both teams throughout, even though they lost.


I wonder what football supporters from around the world have made of Coventry?  Friends who've visited us tend to be pleasantly surprised, maybe because they get edited highlights - here's the Priory ruins, here's the Cathedrals, here's the museum, here's a wonky mediaeval pub, here's a Tudor street, here's a Pizza Express housed in a sixteenth century building with unpredictable floors.  Quietly cut adrift some of the less lovely shopping precincts, and Coventry would make a perfectly nice small town.  I hope our visitors got a chance to look around.  We've got a bit more crime than New Zealand and a bit less scenery than Cameroon, but we're as much part of "Team GB" as London is, and what's more, we have a 6 metre tall Lady Godiva who is currently making her way to London on a massive horsey-cycle thing.  I hope she accidentally treads on Boris when she gets there.