The cleaning lady was right. For the last two or three days it has been abnormally warm. 23 degrees yesterday. That's 73 in old money. In the garden things are coming into flower that should be budded up cosily for another couple of months. Sophie is up and about at first light to find out the result of the Iowa caucus. She has to wait. In the absence of any news we head off into the little market town early.
Dog and master pass the store that sells old fashioned French candy and head for the cheese mongers. Sophie leads the way. She knows the way from the car park to both the cheese mongers and the butchers.
On our way home an astounding coincidence. We bump into another Polish Lowland Sheepdog. A four year old lady called Lulu. This is the first time we've ever seen another PON outside a dog show. There can only be a couple of hundred, at most, in France and we come across one on our morning walk.
Male Polish Lowlands are cartoon character creatures - tail wagging, affable woofers. Female PONs are of an altogether higher order of creation. Divas without exception. It's clear from the state of her coat that Lulu is a town dog who lives in an apartment. Her paws aren't mud encased. She looks at buzz cut Sophie in amazement.
The meeting of these two is not a quiet affair. It's not unfriendly but borderline wary. Those strange yodelling PON squeaks that indicate excitement blended with an equal measure of uncertainty. A PONette duet. There is much squirming. They part with a breezy 'Who does she think she is dressed like that ?' indifference. Phone numbers would not have been exchanged.
Angus reads a new book on washing. Cleanliness only came into vogue a century or so ago. Until then even the very wealthy spurned water. Louis XIV had two baths in his life. Both on doctors orders. The first was at the age of 27 and the second a year later. The first he found so stressful he became depressed and had to take to his bed. The second was aborted early due to the onset of palpitations. The king didn't see another bath for the remaining 49 years of his life. Most French peasants never washed. They would run a dry rag over their face before the start of the days work. Soldiers would wash their faces before shaving. The book is an intriguing, if a little discomforting, insight into life as it used to be lived. The word 'lice' appears rather too frequently. Thank God for progress. A book I'd recommend.
This was projected onto the White Cliffs of Dover : https://twitter.com/i/status/1223175366421946369
10 comments:
I love the pictures of both 'Town PON' and 'Country PON'. Love the video too. My father, also a WW2 veteran, would have said the same were he still alive.
Cheers, Gail.
Your day was warmer than ours, and we are in mid summer.
2 baths in your whole life. While not a fan of a bath, a daily shower is lovely. We did grow up with one bath a week when we were kids.
Julie
Hari Om
Yup, hygiene at any level rather passed by the majority of our ancestors! That said, there's a goodly number of folk in our current age for whom water is a swear word... lovely vid clip. YAM xx
Oh, my, so THAT's the PON they write about who can live quietly in an apartment! I know how you feel, though - I don't think there are very many PONs in Japan, either, but there are somehow two living in the building next door to ours. I don't think they've had their bangs trimmed nicely, however, as they are unfriendly to the point of being a little scary.
I love my rescues very much, but I do crave another PON. I miss how Merlin listened to my every word...unless he chose not to!
That Lulu the PON on the street is a very pretty girl indeed, but she does not possess the same splendidly magnificent nose as dear Sophie. I had forgotten until now that even as a child, I remembered it being a far more "funky" smelling world than it is today. Only two baths in one's lifetime boggles the mind. Loved the video clip. So sad too.
Could there be a chance that divas, Sophie and Lulu were related? But I know that feeling that you had on seeing one. I know Scotties are not as rare, but I don't seem them very often at all, and a wheaten one like Todd, even more unusual.
Iowa is an unmitigated disaster.
Bathing is yet another thing the Reformation changed. Up until the 17C it was well known that bathing kept you healthy and Western Europe saw itself as the inheritors of the Roman Empire. There were bath houses everywhere and everyone, of all levels of society, bathed. Then post Reformation the Church decided to conduct a campaign to close the bath houses down -- they were unisex and often combo bath houses and brothels, or at least, where men and women could meet in a relaxed way. Simultaneously, population increased and water quality decreased. The campaign to stop people bathing succeeded because by the 17C bathing could kill you. So we see the development of perfumes, and fancy white lace collars and cuffs, which you changed multiple times a day to prove you were clean (if you were wealthy enough to have multiples). It wasn't socially acceptable to be stinky, so people used their washable linen underwear to wipe themselves down, and various scents to disguise odour. Finally, in the 19C with the advent of public sanitation and running water retro-fitted in private houses, bathing eventually came back into fashion.
Sophie and Lulu must be some form of cousins. Her colouring was the same as Bobs. Sophie has some taupe thrown in. The prior two sets of brothers were completely white. The thing about PONs is their size which is small big dog. Seeing one in the street reminds you of things you would never otherwise note.
Amazing to find another PON--made me smile. What a lovely Dover clip....
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