on the importance of noticing things as a writer

plus animal blessings for thanksgiving

Once a year my local Anglican church holds animal blessing ceremonies. I only know about it because they put up posters round the neighbourhood. Seeing them always provokes an odd mixture of feelings. When I first moved to Kensal and had tiny babies I remember thinking, Oh! How sweet! I should take the boys. But we didn’t have a pet then, so it seemed a bit weird.

Now we do — Thomas Cromwell, a five year old tabby mouser — but given Thomas’s pragmatic, unsentimental nature (and the fact he was named after a Lutheran atheist) I doubt he’d appreciate. Plus the lads have moved on to football now.

Still, the animal blessing posters continue to give me pause. As a writer I tend to notice what I notice and try to understand why. I’ll be struck by something for no particular reason and think, Ah, yes, there’s something in that. I might use it one day — but not know how. It’s my own struckness — the fact that a detail has held my attention — that counts.

With the animal blessings it might be a scene in a future novel or even just an observation I might use about the passage of time. My changing response to the posters over the years is interesting I think— it takes me back to the earnestness of new motherhood, when I strove to be perfect, often fretting myself into a state over details I’d now dismiss as trivial. Still. I miss that time. I saw the sweetness and cuteness in everything and tried to cultivate more of it everywhere I went. My scope of vision was certainly narrower than it is now but there is joy in that. I was so completely focussed on the boys and the state of our house back then. I never considered my own pleasure or how my hair looked. Everything was batch cooking, kitchen gadgets, behaviour charts, Rainbow Music and Gymboree. How to get them to self-soothe, how to sit with the feeling, how make the perfect roast potato… Their hungers and tempers and sleeping patterns were far more interesting and important than my own back then. They’re still important, I just have more of my sense of myself and the playing field seems bigger, though in reality it probably isn’t.

Now when I see the animal blessing posters I think, Maybe one day when the boys are both launched I’ll get a rescue mutt for company and take it to church to be blessed.

I also like to imagine the sort of people who might rock up to an animal blessing — because surely someone must. Perhaps the cranky old transvestite who wanders around the neighbourhood in tennis skirts and trainers (legs immaculately shaved) might take his dying cat? Or the harried Mum with three kids under five who impulsively got a Christmas puppy might turn up in the hope of getting in with the local Vicar for a school place. Or the beautiful young woman who’s having a tortured affair with her married boss might take her flatmate’s stupid chihuahua because she just needs somewhere to sit quietly and cry off her hangover... I love the consistency of animal blessings. The fact that someone makes a point of stapling posters to trees at the same time every year. The posters are everywhere, but only in the local vicinity. Soon it will rain and they’ll melt off the plane trees. As far as I can tell the blessing isn’t advertised online. It only exists in the real world. There is no need to register in advance or download an app or scan a widget, which is nice.

I imagine you just go with your pet on the the appointed day at the the appointed time and sit in a pew where you listen to a little sermon about King Solomon (lover of animals and women). Then I bet you queue up with your pet so the Vicar can sprinkle some holy water on it and feed it a chicken-flavoured wafer. It’s probably chaos, but of a charming, affable sort. Lots of Labradoodles straining at leads and old ladies clutching terrified cats and children with quivering hamsters in their pockets. Like I said, I’ve never been so I really don’t know. Perhaps one of the reasons I haven’t gone is because I prefer to imagine what it might be like and if I went, then the blessing would be demystified or worse, a disappointment. Sometimes it really is more fun not to know.

I’m happy and grateful such ceremonies exist for people who want to go to them even if I’ll never be one of those people.

Do you have things you notice in this way? Tiny unremarkable details of life that repeatedly give you pause? If so let’s pass the collection plate, by which I mean tell me about them in the comment section.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.