Black dogs

Steerforth, Dickens’s dark and moody fatally flawed hero, referred to that not-quite-afternoon/not-quite-night period of a Sunday twilight as a dreadful, mongrel time of day.  Of course, Steerforth resided in an age when gentlemen spent their Sunday pms indoors in gloomy rooms, watching the sky gradually get darker, lounging on a sofa, and having floppy hair, all key contributors to a gloomy mood in an age when the only distraction available was poking the fire, and even then you had the servants do that.  (Poking the servants on the Sabbath was frowned upon).
In these more enlightened times, Sunday evenings mean ‘Countryfile’, where a gurning twat in a fleece holding a lamb is all the assurance you need that things go better when you’re perky.  For the modern gentleman, thanks to Jamie Oliver, the period of noon to bedtime is spent, if you really know what you’re doing, in the kitchen preparing, then cooking, then consuming, some sort of roast bird, whilst others are left to wonder why your marinade requires two bottles of surprisingly really rather decent Australian merlot.
Churchill fought depression as keenly as he fought the Nazis, calling his gloomier periods ‘black dog days’.  If ever a man had an excuse for being a little very dark blue now and again, it was surely the man leading the lonely fight against a truly evil foe in the darkest days of the war.  Churchill knew then what we all know now, if the Nazis had won, there would be no ‘Countryfile’.  The Nazis famously abhorred brightly coloured fleeces, lambs and perkiness of any sort.
It’s unkind, and unfair, to characterise depression as a canine feature.  Dogs may be many things, but they are not really an animal I associate with not being cheerful, especially when you show them a tennis ball.  In these days of NHS cutbacks, when people are seeing somebody they sincerely hope is actually their doctor via Skype, we’re probably a whisker away from having puppies prescribed rather than lithium as an antidepressant.
The most famous black dog is of course Black Shuck, the Norfolk Hell-hound the legend of which inspired ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’.  Again, not an animal that one associates with depression.  Fear, terror and a tourist board wondering how to turn a folk tale into a plush toy, yes, depression, no.
Indeed apart from humans, it’s almost impossible to think of an animal that characterises depression.  Even that donkey from the Pooh stories has, thanks to the merchandising machine that is Disney, become a beloved toy cherished by toddlers everywhere.  Like all childrens soft-toys, as soon as it’s out of the carrier bag it becomes largely drool, but that’s a sign of affection surely.

Postcard from Blenheim Palace

Blenheim Palace is so posh that even the grass in the car park is posh. It’s been parked on, walked on and driven over and yet it still remains a comfortable and complete carpet of green, so unlike the municipal quagmires or off-roading challenges that normally typify parking at visitor attractions, leaving your car looking like you’ve just completed the Welsh mountain stage in a rally and your passengers stress-eating wine gums if you have them or chewing the magic tree air freshener if you don’t.


Blenheim is one of the self-proclaimed ‘Treasure Houses of England’. From what I can work out this is a collection of grand houses that are still owned by the families that built them a few centuries ago, a collection of posh people who have realised they can turn a profit by hanging on to the house and flogging ice cream and coffee to tourists, rather than those posh people who lurk in the private chambers of their houses now owned by the National Trust, silently seething with resentment as the tourists plod round their former pile. The Treasure House group have realise that if you brand something, people will regard it with the same kind of affection as they do English Heritage or the National Trust, and immediately start looking for the gift shop in search of lavender scented things.


The other way in which these places turn a profit is hosting events. This is why you see incongruities such as Hip Hop artists playing castles and stately homes. The event on the day we pitched up to check out the gift shop and attached stately home was a bike race. Or rather, bike races. There appeared to be several going on.

The first was a time trials for people in lycra with thighs about as thick as my torso. There were also amateur competitive races I think, because there were a lot of young couples in matching lycra wandering around, looking like they wanted to have a water fight with their Foska bottles and then collapse giggling into a hedge for some fit giggling nooky.

There was also a race sponsored by Brompton, the manufacturers of those bicycles that fold up quite small so as to fit on a train but not so small as to not be a bloody nuisance on a crowded commuter train. The people in this were racing on their Bromptions. It’s one thing to see some gent unfold his bike and whiz off down the platform to the office, quite another to see it being used like a proper bicycle. It was like watching something out of its element, like a bird elegant in flight waddling on land, or a middle class person in Asda. A Brompton is designed to weave in and out of traffic and be sworn at by cabbies, not whoosh down wide open avenues.

With all the races happening, I was rather hoping that they didn’t all meet at the crossroads and, if they did, there would be some sort of motorcycle display team riding going on as they pass one another at right angles, missing by inches, until the inevitable catastrophe, resulting in an almighty crash, the sort of bell ringing normally associated with a royal wedding, some groans and a single Brompton wheel rolling into the distance.


Blenhiem Palace itself is spectacular, no doubt about it. If you think the car park is well looked after then wait until you see the formal gardens. The house itself is stately home standard, lots of portraits look down from the walls wearing silk knickerbockers and enormous wigs. There is a portrait of the current lady of the house to keep things current, it certainly looks current – is it possible to botox a portrait?

There’s the usual heavy, dark furniture, the usual vast library of books in good condition (aristocrats prefer hunting, shooting, fishing and fleecing to reading) and surprisingly ugly pottery. In fairness there is also some rather beautiful pieces, Persian and Asian, that have been trusted to the public gaze. Best of all, for any boy or bloke, Blenhiem’s military connections means that there are more than your average amount of toy soldiers. Not just the lead soldiers that were played with for generations of the family, but cases where the British Modeller’s Association display some rather excellent dioramas. Made me nostalgic for the days when happiness was an Airfix kit, some glue, some paint, some thinners, an inadequately ventilated room and an out of body experience.


It’s also the birthplace of Churchill and had a museum with artefacts connected to him, principle among these being the letters that young Winston wrote home from boarding school and some paintings, as well as a rather curious collection of Hallmark cards that used his paintings.

Having been to Chartwell and now to Blenhiem, it’s clear that every place related to The Great Man jealously guards whatever treasures it might possess. I rather hope that out there somewhere there is a village with a preserved telephone box where he stopped off to make a call, converted into a very small museum containing a little tin of dropped cigar ash (viewing by appointment, post cards available in the gift shop).


As stately homes go, it was stately. It had manicured grounds that obviously took a couple of centuries to knock in to shape, less decking and more ‘let’s plant here and come back in fifty years’. It had a little train to transport delighted visitors from one part of the estate to another. Nothing delights quite like a little train. Finally, it had statues. Many many statues. Some sat on ledges, some hid in alcoves, some held things up and some perched atop pillars. They fulfilled the function of classical statues everywhere – bringing a touch of the splendour that was Rome to a corner of the Oxfordshire countryside, and sporting little willies so as not to make the big knobs feel inadequate.