POODLE

Yesterday I heard the sad news that my children’s poodle, Rolo, had been killed when hit by a train after he had scurried down an embankment presumably after a rabbit. Rolo was great enthusiast for food although in recent months, on a strictly controlled diet, had managed to lose several pounds and to shed the epithet, ‘Porky Poodle’ perhaps unkindly bestowed on him by my wife.

But whether porky or not, Rolo always maintained a sailor’s gait (although his name derived not from that but from his colouring which resembled the well-known sweet). And this gentle sway when walking, belied the fact that he was – when food in the form of game: rabbits or pigeons, was in the offing – as a quick as a Welsh wing three quarter when the try line was in sight.

Rolo’s speed from a standing start was matched only by his speed (and enthusiasm) for getting whichever creature he had just dispatched down his mouth before someone could – at some peril to themselves – attempt to take it away from him. Indeed there had been a couple of occasions when the first thing anyone knew that he caught something was the sound of small bones be enthusiastically crunched.

Poodles are intelligent dogs and Rolo was no exception. But he wasn’t the first intelligent one I’ve known. My first doggy memories are of my father’s black poodle, Jasper (a name which led me until no more than three days ago to think that the stone ‘jasper ‘ was black rather than shades of russet). And Jasper, whose portrait hangs in Oxford (as does Rolo’s – but in a different house) led me to be fond of ‘Nigger’, Guy Gibson’s dog and of the standard poodle, Coco so wonderfully described by Dilys Powell in her book of the same name.

Jasper, I assume but don’t remember, died or was put down at in old-age and Coco was still alive at the time of writing and so fades into literary eternity. Rolo, however, has been cut off in his prime and will be much missed. Unlike my dog, Scuffle, Rolo was the head of his household which manifested itself, for example, in his constant effort to be higher – physically higher – than anyone else and to ensure that his favourite chair was his alone.

His favourite chair is now be empty.

STICKING FINGERS INTO THE LANGUAGE

Have you heard about 'finger fluting' a neologism seemingly coined by American anthropologists at Cambridge University and released to the waiting world via segments on Radio 4 this morning?

Finger fluting is not, as one might expect - or hope - a new method of teaching the recorder; nor is it a decorative style arising from dragging the fingers through soft material such as clay.

In fact finger fluting is prehistoric painting: swirls, lines and zig zags smeared by stone age children onto the cave walls (inevitably in the Dordogne) where their parents were depicting antelope, an occasional mammoth and the inevitable crowds of bison.

I am glad children of those far-off times were allowed such artistic licence. Certainly my two have never had a great deal of parental support for their efforts in recolouring the wallpaper. Clearly times have changed in the past 10 or 12 millennia.

Leaving the visual arts aside, I am much more concerned with the words that have come to describe this speliological endeavour. Why 'fluting'?

I've just been through the full Oxford English Dictionary (yes we do own one in the office) to find nothing that would bring us close to the concept. Indeed fluting implies a more complex series of manual processes that simple markings in paint.

I suspect alliteration is to blame. Something that goes with fingers ('nails' not starting with an 'f').

But with that in mind, should anthropologists not have come up with 'digital daubs'?

SKIN DEEP

I am not really blogging - not just at the moment. It's more that I'm taking a break from ironing.

Yes, I iron. Actually I rather enjoy it and I also enjoy the faux military neatness that I can achieve (only to destroy the impression with a lost button or, worse, an ironed-in stain). And I suppose it gives one time to think, or to listen to the radio or to think about amusing lines.

Did you hear about the diner at the café who asked if there was any alternative to the Quiche Lorraine. "No," replied the waitress, "there's no Flan B."

Leaving this aside, I have to tell you that I am slightly worried about my face - one of those parts where the iron must not reach. I was seduced into buying face products the other day. Well accurately a couple of parties I've been to recently were giving patent unguents away and so I felt I should buy some as well.

I have Facial Fuel and something from Cetuem which has 'Active Ceramides' and also I have something from Kiehls that comes with a glass eye dropper although I rather suspect the eyes are the last place this smoking liquid should be dropped.

But the thing is that the treatments aren't working and it looks as though I am never going to achieve my ambition of rejuvenating in the same way that Captain James T Kirk of the Starship Enterprise easily does in the later Startrek movies. In fact, I seem to be going the other way.

Not only does unguent a (or b or c) hurt but the facial results, the morning after, put me in mind of one who has spent the hours of darkness wrestling with the undead only to become one himself.

Lines? There are more lines than Hamlet and deeply engrained (not only in the skin but increasingly in the psyche).

Bags? Ditto the conveyor belts at Heathrow.

Eyes? Not really visibly to my eye (if you see what I mean).

Whatever happened to Wright's Coaltar Soap with its distinctive smell of failed chemical experiments (a far superior product to Lifebuoy if you ask me)? I mean that was a real cleaning agent. I left some on my flannel one night long ago at boarding school and the next day it have gone right through. It became much more popular after that but not perhaps in the way the manufacturers intended - after all boys will be boys.

THE BIGGEST RUSH

I suppose I should write about the riots although there has undoubtedly been too much 'ink' (to use an old-fashioned phrase) spilled on this subject already and we haven't seen the half of it yet.

You know, the politicos and the chattering classes seem, generally, to agree that this outbreak of lawlessness that affected quite a number of English cities, was a key indicator of some sort of breakdown in society.

Maybe, but I am less inclined to think in such dramatic terms.

The line I find most telling about this whole affair was the comment made by one of the defendants in court when asked by the judge why she went on the rampage, as it were. She answered that it was the "biggest rush" she'd had felt in her life.

And that's the point. Think about it. Suddenly you have the opportunity to run around the streets, being chased as if in a video game (only this time for real!) by the boys in blue and you're more or less free to break windows, torch cars, steal those things you've always wanted to own and - at the same time - you have a very good chance of not being caught. Being caught means you lost the game.

For me, this explains the rapid spread of the disturbances. There was, just briefly, a sort of riot tourism. People came into the cities to smash and grab and the very time that the frightened masses - the workers, you and me in other words - were hurrying in the other direction. It was indeed a rush - nothing like it had ever occurred, ever been available, during the (thus far short) lifetimes of the rioters.

Does this explain arson and the deaths - were these a mere function of over-exuberance getting out of hand? No of course not, it neither explains nor condones. These darker issues almost certainly arose from long-time criminals working under cover of the confusion for their own ghastly purposes or, alternatively, from racists seeking to settle scores (or to open wounds).

None of this makes things right but I think it's as good an explanation of any other. Society is, if you're young (and whether dispossessed or not) boring. Yes of course there are role-models we wish all the young folks would follow, but no everyone can be an Olympian or, indeed, an Eagle Scout but almost everyone, at the age of the majority of the rioters, was energetic and somewhat hormonal and, no doubt, keen not to be told what to do (at least for a while).

SHETLAND WEST OF WALES

Pembrokeshire is often described as "little England west of Wales". Be that as it may, the 'house' where I've been staying for the past 12 days is, from its twee Scots name, a little piece of Shetland on the Pembrokeshire Coast.

It would have been better had it been England!

Here's some holiday advice - particularly if you, like me, are somewhat suspicious of the Scots and their purposes: Do not hire a Scottish house (accurately 'terraced cottage') in Wales from people who live in Essex. The combination is not agreeable even if the location, Newport Pembs, is very attractive indeed.

OK, Ok. I know I'm very tall but the doorways were low even by dwarfish Shetland standards. One puts up with that sort of thing (just) even though it means having to creep about like an octogenarian. But what about that architectural afterthought than an estate agent might risibly describe as the 'bathroom complex'?

Do you know the old joke: "When I was young we had an outside lavatory; then we saved up some money and bought a house." Well there was something of that.

Let me take you in by the front door. As you enter you are immediately faced by an unexpected and, to be fair, attractive black laquered staircase rising to the two small bedrooms. Avoiding this one ducks left into a parlour with a floor embellished with rush matting held to the rather worn tiles by silver gaffer tape.

Crouch through a door that even Mickey Rooney would have trouble with and into the kitchen area where on the left, in a nod to geography, is a Welsh dresser stacked with non-descript china that one may not use - it's there for the look.

Duck under an arch for the tiny washing-up 'zone' and then again duck (having moved no more than a further six feet) through what was originally the back door.

Notice something missing - like the loo and bathroom for instance?

Aha. Now we're into an outhouse with a second back door to the left and rough concrete flooring underfoot. There's a captivating display of old shoes and boots to the right and an Edwardian wood and cast iron drying-rack above, just in position to give a good whack to the cranium just in case one has managed to dodge all the other obstacles to that point.

Finally to the right we have a bathroom and separately a loo where the lavatory itself is only barely attached to the ground (I hesitate to say 'floor') and gives the impression - should one choose to shift position and set off a bout of rocking - of being at sea. There's something about water in the lavatory pan slopping about to confirm one isn't at home.

ROWING RANT

I am very raw. I feel the stupidity of one who has committed himself far to enthusiastically to a cause and, in so doing, involved other people as well, only to find fulfilment ripped away literally at the final second by a twist of fate (and, candidly, the stupidity of a cox).

I won't do this again, I won't be supporting my old college at Oxford's Summer Eights regatta or anywhere else. I will not to sucked in to the ambitions (and emotions) of others who I barely know and with whom I have nothing in common barring an occasional tendency to wear Pembroke College pink. (And the way I am feeling, I won't be doing much of that again either).

I wanted the Pembroke Woman's First Eight not only to win but to go Head of the River. They are the only college women's crew since about 1976 whose names I have known and whom (in some cases) I have met and spoken to on more than one occasion.

And they should have done. With two World silver medallists (also winning blues) plus others of a calibre much better than anything in any other college, what we had here was arguably the fastest Women's Eight ever put out by an Oxford college.

And what happened? On Thursday they got away with rowing into the bank. At the time, because it came out OK, everyone thought this was a lucky thing - a piece of serendipity but no, we should have foreseen that one piece of bad steering or bad control can lead to another; can lead in fact to missing a bump that was sitting, in the middle of the river, waiting to be taken.

And then making such a cock-up of the post bump phase (a phase where the bumpee had refused to acknowledge that anything had happened bump-wise): Stopping, starting. God there was a chance they could have ended at the bottom of the Divison not the top.

I am writing this before I know the outcome of appeals. But Head Crews are not removed on appeal and even if Bailliol do go down to Pembroke, who cares now? It's the riverbank where these things count not a desk somewhere in OUBC.

I feel sorry irrelevantly for me but I feel dreadfully sorry for Natalie Redgrave, a woman for whom I have huge respect and, today, an equal amount of sympathy.

Well rowed Bailliol.

IS JUSTICE BLIND ENOUGH?

I am becoming increasingly concerned about the growth of victim culture - this idea that the victim of a crime should have some (perhaps a considerable) part to play in the decision about the sentence meted out to a convicted offender.

This unsatisfactory notion reared its head again the other day with a Commission talking about burglary and saying that the sentencing of the burglar should take account of the 'value' of items stolen in a much broader sense than just financial.

An example was given of a thief who took - for no known reason - an ultrasound picture of a baby in utero something, the mother who lost the photo said, correctly, could never be replaced. Such a heinous act should carry a heavier penalty than simply whipping away a microwave, so members of the Commission seem now to be saying and when challenged with the reasonable comment that the burglar could not be expected to know what was psychologically valuable and what was not, one expert replied that this was part of the risk a burglar ran.

Attractive as this idea may seem at first sight, I upon examination find it profoundly disturbing. The reason the statue of justice over the Old Bailey is blind-folded is to symbolize that such considerations should not be included within the judicial process.

Burglary is burglary, it is worse the more that is taken and thus the penalties for being caught carrying off the neighbour's toaster are lighter than those for stealing a private jet (not strictly burglary, I agree unless one has an astonishingly large house and keeps the 'plane inside it). But it should not be for the victim to list the emotional value of items taken to add extra days/weeks/months to a custodial sentence or pounds to a fine.

Running this to absurd extremes, let's take the case of a house and contents owned in common by husband and wife that is burglarized (to use that horrific neologism). Some items will have much more 'value' or at least meaning to one or the other party and in (as I say) 'extreme' cases, one side might be happy to see the back of a whole series of items whose disappearance leaves the other, heartbroken.

Shoud one party be able to strengthen a sentence because an emotionally charged china cat was taken and the other be able to reduce the sentence for the same reason? Certainly I'd be happy to see a burglar knocking off some of the family portraits that infest our walls.

More seriously, the dangerous issue is allowing those who are emotionally affected by a crime to bring that emotion to the sentencing table. Justice must be impartial and set out and organized by the clear-headed to protect those who, for whatever reason, are not.