Jings, I let that mad pooch off the lead for one minute and he's up to his oxters in trouble.

I was making yet another attempt to find the footpath to Newbridge. We'd come under the main railway line and then under another, into a big field. We were away from roads, so I unleashed Bertie for a run. He sprinted off around the field for a while till that got boring, and was dashing back when something caught his eye on the railway embankment. Rabbit!

Off he went, in full mad mode. Deaf to all commands, determined to get the rabbit. The embankment is, I don't know, 15ft high or something, covered in those special railway rocks and blackberry, with the line running along the top, and it's fenced off. The fence is plain wire, four or five strands, chest-high. He couldn't get over so he squeezed through. And bounded straight up on to the line.

By this time I was hysterical, bellowing at him to COME HERE THIS MINUTE but he ignored me. Until he'd looked everywhere for the rabbit, up and down the railway line, and couldn't find it and got bored with walking on the hurty stones and wanted to come down again. Except now he wasn't all hyped up and couldn't get through the fence.

Sigh.

He couldn't even get close to the fence, on account of all the hurty blackberry prickling his dainty feet. So he stood on the slope looking pitiful, waiting for me to rescue him. I had to squeeze through the fence, drag him (resisting hard) down to the fence, stand on one strand of wire to press it down and lift the one above. Then, with the remaining free hand, I had to lean down and put his legs through, one after the other. The trickiest bit was getting him to move forward after his front legs were through, because his chest is so deep. That hurt, apparently.

After that we went straight home.

At least it wasn't the main line -- there weren't any trains down the line he was on during this little crisis, but there were three down the other line. I learned my lesson early on that one: he ran on to the main line not long after I got him. I had to scramble up the embankment and down the other side to get to the line, where Bertie was standing looking dopey -- those damned sleepers and hurty railway stones are hard to walk on!

Then after I got home I heard the news from New York & had to rush in to work early. An unbelievable story -- bad enough in normal circumstances, but now it's another hammer blow sending the world off in this disturbing new direction. Brrr. Personally I'm not any more afraid to fly than before; the risk is pretty much the same it seems to me. Even less maybe, now there's better security. This latest disaster may be an accident anyway. For me scariest things in the long term are ones we don't even reallly notice at the moment, little bits of freedom being whittled away, options lost. And amid all the militaristic drum-beating it's harder still to feebly bleat: "Give peace a chance."