21st-Century Yokel

still only three, had become Rosc, then Roscins, then Ruskin, and had often recently been addressed as Anglia Ruskin College. I’m sure Fuckmittens would not have remained Uncle Fuckykins had I adopted him, and I had to admit, as I listened to his traction-engine purr and he padded my thighs, as if trying to extract seven months of missing love from them, I did briefly picture a scenario in which I had and fantasised about some of the new names that might emerge from such a union. It was pure fantasy now, though. He would be incarcerated here for the night before his original owner came to collect him, then, unless he regained his wanderlust, I would never see him again. Thoughtfully, Steph the nurse housed him on the opposite side of the building to Roscoe, who was in no state to be reunited with her former tormentor, even in a purely aural and olfactory fashion.

After I’d said bye to Fuckmittens, I was taken by Steph to say hello to Roscoe in the cage where she was recovering. I’d prepared myself to be shocked by her state, so my shock at seeing the mess her side and rear were in, no longer protected by all that fur, was a fortified kind of shock, but it was still shock. Steph told me the vets were happy with her recovery so far, and I might even be able to take her home in a couple of days. As if to confirm this, a druggy-eyed Roscoe staggered over to me and nutted my knuckle like a loving but essentially violent wino. Two days later, armed with a bag full of cooked chicken slices and a small hospital’s worth of medication, I transported her back home, the two drains the vet had placed in her side to take the fluids from her wound still present. I was glad and slightly amazed to have her back in the house, but something didn’t feel right. She still seemed like a very ill cat and overnight refused the food I put out for her, sitting plaintively inert beneath the chest of drawers in my bedroom. In the morning I took her back to the surgery, and another vet, Dermot, found that her temperature was very high and the infection had re-entered her abdomen. She would need a repeat operation, and it would be expensive, costing significantly more money than I had in my bank account. Was I sure I wanted to go ahead? Of course I was sure. I would find a way to cover the cost, no matter what it meant for my own future.

What do you do while you are waiting for a phone call to tell you whether an operation to save your cat’s life has been successful? I certainly wasn’t going to get any work done, so, as before, I walked. It was no sane weather to be out on Dartmoor, but going there felt like the right thing to do. I plotted a route hastily on an OS map still dog-eared and a little soggy from my last walk: six and a half miles, rising steeply from the flat land, past the appealingly named village of Owley, then around the back of the desolate expanse of Ugborough Beacon, returning over its peak. A short hike by my standards, but by no means an easy one.

I entered the edgelands of the moor via one of its most Gothic gateways, beneath the tall Victorian railway arches supporting the London-to-Plymouth line. By my reckoning, by the time I returned the surgery would be finished, and the vet would be due to call. Ahead of me the Beacon was hidden in plumes of occult-looking cloud. Gloopy churned mud slowed my progress, arable winter Devon encapsulated in each footstep. I looked forward to getting onto the high part of the moor, which though much wetter would have better drainage that would make the going easier underfoot.

My phone rang when I was barely halfway to the summit, before I reached the part of the moor where the signal provided by the network became merely a figment of a new planet’s imagination. Dermot the vet was on the other end of the line. He was part-way through surgery and wanted to tell me that the infection from the dog bite and the resulting internal damage was even worse than he’d suspected. He felt it best to warn me now, due to the risks involved and the even greater expense. I listened carefully, learning even more about the inside of Roscoe than I had already since last Monday, which was a lot. As I heard about all the damage done to my small sweet cat by the large jaws of a dog let off its lead by a thoughtless owner in a place where it wasn’t permitted to be, the rain rat-a-tatted more heavily on my anorak. The two largest segments of darkness in the sky looked like a pair of bullies edging in on what pathetic slither of daylight there was. I looked up towards the moor, two fat droplets of rain ran down my cheeks and I felt like I was in a film scene put together solely to labour the point of what a relentless, remorseless monster winter can be.

I am someone who sometimes struggles with the lack of light in winter, and the more rural you get, the more that lack of light can overwhelm the senses. For many people the tough time is January and February. I can see why: January can feel like fumbling about for comfort in a big unlit hall and feeling only bones, and February tends to come across as an unnecessary extra encore that winter does to please its hardcore fans. But for me it’s always December that’s been toughest: that sensation, growing more acute as the solstice approaches, of nature locking itself up, of each day being a narrowing wedge carved out of cold black slabs of nothing. This