Ghost Dog

We had lunch in an old pub yesterday- and Ailz saw a ghost.

It was the ghost of a small dog- some sort of terrier possibly. It was shadowy. It came through a closed door and disappeared under our table. It did it more than once which shows it's running on a loop- as most hauntings do. There's no consciousness there; it's simply a recording of something that happened once and got fixed in the ether because it was connected to strong emotion.

I won't tell you the name of the pub or its location because people can be funny about such things. Some establishments are happy to trade on their ghosts while others would prefer to keep quiet about them.

Ailz mentioned the dog to the barman and he replied, noncomittally, that they'd been told they had a ghost. They probably have several. A lot goes on in a pub, a lot of emotion gets expended. There will have been fights, trysts, births, deaths, murders even. Most pubs are haunted- even modern ones.

Gigadibs The Literary Man

There's a new statue of Kipling in the centre Of Burwash, the village where he spent the last 30 years of his life. The sculptor is Victoria Atkinson. It was installed in February of this year and someone has already smashed its giglamps- which is rotten poor form.

I like it. It's a reasonable likeness. But more than that it has soul- and a certain air of valediction. It's as if the man had returned to his home for one last fond look around.

"There's a rumour down the field where the year has shot its yield
And the ricks stand grey in the sun.
Singing, 'Over now, come over
For the bee has left the clover
And your English summer's done.'