Friday 8 November 2013

Ozzie revisits


I know I have posted this drawing up a couple of years ago, but I wanted to show it to the relative new-comer, Em Parkinson, because her lovely drawing of Snippet reminded me of it.

Ozzie only came to our compact but adorable city apartment the once, but he made such an impression of me that I was able - after a couple of attempts (see bottom right-hand corner) - to draw him from memory. This impression is more accurate than you might think. The mutt just exuded humour from every pore - paw.

Live animals around our house are an extreme rarity, and always seem to turn up on the rare occasions that I am cooking dead ones in the form of sausages. They hang around me in the kitchen, amusing me for reward as the adults converse in the living room.

You know that startling visual incongruity when you find a precious object lying on a forest floor or the strand of a deserted beach? A coin or a watch, glittering up from a pile of dead leaves - a bright knife half buried in dull mould? Well that's what animals look like to me as they skitter across the pale linoleum of our kitchen.

As a kid, I would deliberately drop some shiny object on the ground or in the grass, just to go back and find it later. I would engineer that frisson of excitement by fooling myself into a temporary suspension of disbelief. That way, I took possession of the coveted thing twice in one ownership.

10 comments:

  1. He's fantastic and so like Snippet. Thanks Tom. His nose reminds me of those fabulous very early Micky Mouse drawings.

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  2. We briefly had a dog named 'Scruffy Doris', and my drawing of her is really quite similar!

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  3. Replies
    1. I almost cuddled it, but then I remembered fleas.

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  4. Dear Tom, that's a promising way to make life exciting (I mean it, no pun). The moment of - a hesitant distant look - a somewhat foreign object on the ground - I might copy that (but only after a prudent look around, not that another person is quicker and snaps my Rolex -- oh, must remember that I don't have one). In Berlin the only animals that come into our kitchen are butterflies, little Ladybirds or some flies - our flat is on the second floor.

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  5. Hi Tom. the drawing reminds me of Gnasher, Dennis the Menaces dog for some reason.

    I love shiny things, but I also love it when I find money in pockets of coats I haven't worn for a time! Treasure

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    1. Yes, Gnasher always had a smile too. I have a friend who found one gram of cocaine and 8 ecstasy pills - forgotten - in her bag when she went on a Hen Night with seven other women to Thailand, after they had all got off the plane. As it turned out, she was a hero (ine), but it could all have been much worse.

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