Noe: It is so nice to know that many readers are remembering their pets with joy and sadness.
Keep the joy on the high tide.
EPISODE 486 PETS; DAISY AND SONNY…
Alan skeoch
Dec. 2021
SONNY AND DAISY
THERE IS A TIDE…WHICH TAKEN AT FLOOD
Remember that line from Shakespeare where Brutus speaks
“There is a tide in the affais of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and miseries,
On such a full sea are we afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.”
(William Shakespeare ‘Julius Caesar;
Some fragments of Shakespeare got locked in my mind. And this is one of them.
The meaning I made of the tide reference went far beyond the trials of Brutus..
T o me the meaning was as clear as sunshine. There is a tide in our lives…moments
of optimism, adventure, excitement, Moments that only come on special occasions.
Moments that disappear like the waves of the sea. Moments that must be grabbed
or they will be lost forever.
Our family life with Daisy and her son ’Sonny’ were days of that full tide. Just how full
I never realized until we talked about it…Marjorie and I…today. We realized how
lucky we were to have summer holidays, two children, a used van and second hand pop
up trailer those special summers when the ’tide’ was very full. You will see three dogs
because we adopted poor little Maxie from a retiring farmer who planned to shoot him after
the farm auction. Like SAM the cat, MAXIE lived with us for short spell. But those days…those
years…were full tide years for SONNY and DAISY.
\SONNY AND DAISY on a raft in our farm pond (swamp)
WE Decided to take the boys and dogs across Canada on two successive summers
First we headed to Newfoundland. Our target was L’anse aux Meadows where the
Vikings landed a thousand years ago. To get there we bought a pop- up trailer which
slept 7…4 humans, 3 dogs,
Both DAISY AND SONNY spotted something strange on the east coast waters when
a huge pod of little capelin fish beached themselves rather than be eaten by
the whales waiting in deeper water.
Sonny liked fast food milk shakes.
copy taken from John Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’ … He pictured farm families fleeing
the poverty stricken farms of the 1930’s. We were not that desperate.
Daisy must be off exploring…see Sonny and Maxie
We found a bunch of slightly damaged lobster traps and carried them to a small
fishing village. “No, we don’t want them…we get government grants for lost gear.”
Back home we gathered a gang of kids, five bikes, and two dogs
for a race to the farm. These were wonderful days caught when
the tide was high.
Enough? More than enough some readers must be feeling.
And some readers might feel that SAM THE CAT was neglected as
I only seem to have the picture of him on top of the refrigerator .
Well…I found another pic of SAM (below)
