The Art of Losing

A few of you have asked for news of the Hound as we move to Qatar. As she has played such an integral part in WKDN I thought she deserved her own post. Improbably Afghans are banned in Qatar. (The other dogs banned are pit bulls, mastiffs ... what's an Afghan going to do? Accost you with her beauty?) We tried everything, but my lovely girl has had to go home - yesterday the pilot took her back to the place she came from, and she is now living with her mother and grandmother. I sobbed like a baby. The house is empty without her. There's no warm bod curled beneath the table as I write. But, for her, it is the best thing. Wisely the pilot sent me a photo of her positively smiling with her new owner. Which helped. A bit. For those of you in the UK, watch out for her on Crufts - yes, Lola is now a Showgirl :) (her 'real' name is Krishan Ylang Ylang).

So here we are surrounded by packing boxes again. Tellingly I have forty boxes of books and two of clothes ready for storage. Most of the cargo going to Qatar is Lego, naturally. I'm looking at my one box of books and manuscripts wondering if they will make it through the censors. I've been stockpiling coursebooks for the MA - the other day I had two copies of Atwood's 'Oryx and Crake' in my hand, wondering which to take. One copy had pigs on the cover, the other had a nude. Would either get through the censorship that apparently all books are subject to?

We'll see. It's been a chance for a massive clear out - furniture has gone to a local homeless shelter, anything that I can bundle into a binbag before the children spot it has gone to charity shops. I've tried to stick to the old 'use or beauty' gauge - but it is relative isn't it? The tiny rompersuit, the ticket stub from a cinema in 1990 ... another person's junk but beautiful to me. Who knows when the boxes will ever be unpacked again. Maybe you know this poem by Elizabeth Bishop? As I saw the pilot drive off with Lo's lovely face peering out of the back window, I thought of it:

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.