Day 3 of launch week!
Dogs of London is a fictional novel for adults that I wrote and self-published in November 2021. 100% of the proceeds go to dog charities (all details are on www.nomadthief.com and instagram @dogsoflondonbook). To be frank, sadly that has (so far) turned out to be a disappointingly small sum! a/ because amazon takes the lion’s share and b/ because it didn’t actually go viral as I (rather grandiosely) expected it to. Who on earth could resist buying a book about a group of London-living dogs??!!! What is wrong with people?!
Ah well, never mind! I loved writing it and learnt a lot and it seems that the few hundred people who bought a copy even enjoyed reading it as it garnered excellent reviews including a few from bigwig London writers, which was cool. If you want to check it out (or perhaps buy it for your dog-loving friends) it’s here. THANK YOU to everyone who supported it so far. I particularly loved the photos of people’s dogs with the book (so funny) which you can see on the book’s instagram page highlights. Here are some of the reviews:
My former workplace (European Bank for Reconstruction & Development) very sweetly wrote an article about it (/me):
My talented friend and graphic designer Chloe Smith McDonnell designed the book jacket. She also did the type-setting and proofreading. She’s both amazing and lovely and so easy to work with. Her details are here.
I thought as part of this substack launch week I'd do a post about the book and include an excerpt, as well as some illustrations of a few of the main characters. They didn't make the cut into the book but here are a few of them anyway. If you want to see the whole cast you can find them here
Lastly, the excerpt. I could agonise over which bit to post for hours, so I’ll just take the easy option and give you the beginning few scenes. Thanks for reading!
A Skinny Grey Dog
Two weeks from today, dusk. Somewhere in Kensington Gardens
He feels that night is coming, the sleek grey dog whose ribs show, whose limbs are impossibly slim. The shadows are lengthening, the air is cooling. The park emptied a while ago and the birds have stopped calling to one another, every last one. The little dog is called Grey. He curls up, cold and miserable.
He is feeling lost. Although his human, Lady Human, is mean, she has dictated his little life thus far and he feels adrift without her. He doesn’t know where else to go, and he supposes that this hollow, at the base of this tree, is as good a place as any. Grey looks around, wide-eyed, pivoting his skinny, newly-naked neck nervously. He is trying to get familiarised with the dark; he’s not used to it, not outdoors at least. The wind is still howling through the trees, and the space… so much space! He feels it, even if he can’t see it. Now he understands what the tiny little sausage dog Paquita - one of the park gang dogs - had meant, all that space above and all around terrifies him. It’s disconcerting and makes him feel exposed; vulnerable, and powerless.
In the failing light he can’t see much, so he strains his ears to compensate. There are sounds of rats, mice, worms, foxes, murmuring to themselves or one other as they scurry, patter, wriggle and trot past. He thinks he can understand something of what they say, snatches of their words, although he’s not sure if he’s imagining that. It’s been a long day.
Grey has never felt more alone or more scared in his life and longs to see one of his friends. Lexi, ideally, or Rhett - but Piper or even Rolf would do. Just a familiar face, a familiar smell. Little things are burrowing into his fur, biting here and there. It unnerves him. The minutes pass and as they do, Grey becomes more accustomed to the new sensations. Aware that he can’t stay as tensed up as he is indefinitely, he makes a conscious effort to relax his frame. It’s a trick Rhett had taught him once, when Grey had asked him how he was able to be so brave.
‘Fake it til you make it, Grey!’ Rhett had told him, laughing.
Grey muses on his situation. He thinks about Rhett and what he would do. He feels emboldened, thinking of his casual, courageous friend, and valiantly gives himself a little pep talk. It’s cold, but not that cold. Grey has heard humans say how awful it is to have to sleep outside, but it can’t be that bad really. There must be worse things than sleeping outside! he thinks. Boredom and living with a mean owner, he thinks, that really gets you down. He calls to mind all the things he doesn’t like about his life with Lady Human, all the things he doesn’t like about her; he feels that it is a positive thing to do, under the circumstances. Eventually, the tiredness of the day gets to him. His eyelids droop and he dozes off.
The next morning
Grey awakes with a start from his dreams, which involved conversations with moles and foxes. He is shocked that he has slept through the whole night out here, exposed; at home he wakes often in the night, his mind racing. He looks around, and sees for the very first time the beauty of the dawn, the soft pink blush of it. The park, calm and peaceful, feels benevolent. It is quiet, devoid of people, the gates still locked shut. He hadn’t realised before how much noise comes from humans and the persistent hum of their electronics. Without it, the park feels as if it is holding its breath. The dew makes everything sparkle. The smell of the grass is sweet and fresh and as he sniffs, Grey is overcome with emotion. He feels the weight and beauty of the world, the vastness of it, the sense of possibility and an intense feeling of joy, of love and of exquisite suffering.
Gathering his courage he stands up, thinking to get moving, but then sits back down, unsure. He has a scratch and thinks how lovely it is, not to have that damned thing around his neck. He feels gloriously naked. His leg aches, where he had hit the railings yesterday, but it isn’t too bad. He stretches his body out, tentatively, placing weight on each leg in turn and checking that everything is ok. He ascertains that although his leg is bruised, there is nothing broken. His ear, though, there’s a metallic smell wafting from it, and it feels strange, as if it’s the wrong shape. It makes a funny flapping sound when he moves. He stretches, yawns, and then, uncharacteristically, jumps around a bit, like a spring lamb. He does it not only to warm himself up but also for the sheer joy of it, it feels instinctive. The grass is soft and damp under his feet. He feels a bit guilty, Lady Human hadn’t liked him to ‘leap around like a lunatic’, so he’s conditioned himself not to. He does it again a couple of times in defiance of her. He feels rebellious, and proud.
Grey wishes he could see Rhett to tell him how brave he’s been. He gives himself a big shake, noting the lack of noise that his collar and tag would usually have made, and is surprised to feel invigorated. To think how terrified he’d been last night at the prospect of sleeping outside! Giving the ground a last little sniff, in homage to it keeping him safe through the night, he trots on across the park in the direction of the Round Pond. He is light on his feet and it only takes him a few seconds to hit his pace. He is hungry now, and thinks that he might find some food there - he’s often noticed humans in groups or alone sitting and eating there during the day, whilst he’s been dragged past by his dog walker.
A couple of crows sitting on a branch watch him, idly.
‘Unusual to see a dog on its own here, in London,’ remarks one.
‘Yes. It must have lost its human,’ replies the other.
‘Hope it’ll be ok,’ says the first, ‘they seem to be so dependent these days.’
Grey hears crows cawing. Perhaps they are hungry too, he thinks, although he gets the sense somehow from the tone of the exchange that they are talking about something more sophisticated. He wonders if he really had understood the other creatures last night, and, if he had, shouldn’t he be able to understand the birds, too?
Things look as well as smell different this morning from last night. Grey has only been in the park during its opening hours before and it feels magical to him now, so peaceful and still. A squirrel appears, suddenly, and darts past him, close enough that he feels the brush of its tail. It is followed by another, chattering manically. They sound frightened, their tails are flicking nervously and he hears their words:
‘They’re coming! Quick!’
‘Get to safety, tell the others!’
‘Have you seen little Peter?’
Grey doesn’t know for certain, but they have heard rumours - about a morning culling that happens before the park gates are opened each day. Grey watches them as they shoot up the tree trunks out of sight. He pauses, one paw suspended mid-step, as more twitchy beings scurry and scamper erratically past him. Then, peace resumes, and he carries on, placing his feet more delicately now, thoughtful. He wonders whether he really did hear the squirrels talking or if perhaps, he had just imagined it again.
He walks another ten metres or so, slowing down as he realises he doesn’t really have a plan, except to find some breakfast, and now he doesn’t even feel that hungry any more. The initial adrenalin of waking up free has worn off, and he feels deflated. He sits for a few seconds, uncertain, then steps his front paws out inch by inch in turn until he is laying down on the ground, but straight out like a sphinx - he doesn’t feel relaxed enough to flop over onto one haunch. He crosses his paws and lays his head lightly down on the top one. Only his eyes move, crescents of white showing as they swivel this way and that. He is poised to bolt, to run like the wind, should it become necessary. His heart races and he can’t quite catch his breath. His right flank thuds. It hurts even though there is no wound.
He looks at the big shape which he’d sheltered close to last night. Shrieking children climb up and run and jump around it in the daytime. His dog walker sometimes meets people near here, just outside the gates, they pass things back and forth, he’s not sure what. Something at the top of the big shape is flapping in the wind. Waves of fear wash over him as he watches it, distrustfully, but he begins to trust that the flapping thing isn’t going to do anything more unpredictable or worrying than that. He lays his head down on his crossed paws again and tries to think over what Rhett had said to him, about escaping.
The bottom falls out of Grey’s stomach as he realises the terrible mistake he’s made. His head shoots up and his eyes widen with panic…
***
Evening Rounds
Holland Park Avenue, dusk
‘Hiya, Dog,’ the doorman at the Hilton shouts over. The rangy brown dog, Rhett, feels that it must be boring for the man, standing there for hours on end, waiting to let people in and out, so he often passes by to say hello to him. Rhett has known what boredom and waiting feels like. It’s almost as crushing as cold, or hunger. Or pain. The humans tend to refer to the mental type of pain as anguish. Rhet shakes his head roughly from side to side, ridding it of thoughts of his best friend, Jessica, and trots over to the doorman.
Rhett barks a greeting, glancing up him, and then stoops to pull a sticky burr off his leg. He spits it out. The doorman crouches down to greet him. Rhett lets him smooth his head. He generally doesn’t like to be touched - especially around the collar area as he is wary of being grabbed and detained. With those he knows are safe he tolerates it, but it still makes him uneasy and he is always ready to twist away if needed. Touch is a way of connecting, even for humans, and the allowing of it is a gesture of friendship on his part, a concession. In the cool calm of night-time, like now, when the frenetic rushing of things and people is to a certain extent suspended, it is easier to separate the strands of everything out and to identify energies and intentions. In the daytime when the whole city is alive, Rhett is jumpy - he fears being ambushed, as had happened to him once before. He’d been young then, and too trusting of humans; it was how he had ended up in that god-forsaken shelter in the first place.
The doorman takes his hand away but stays crouched, gazing at him. Rhett thinks that he is probably admiring the golden highlights on his face, the ones that everyone comments on. He shakes his whole body as the hand is removed and as he does, the tension within him dispels. He likes the doorman, but is relieved that he has stopped smoothing his head. And vigilance aside, anyway he doesn’t like to have human smell on him. Some dogs like it, he knows that, but he doesn’t – it feels strange to him, repugnant even.
‘I ain’t got anything for you tonight mate, sorry,’ says the man, shrugging, looking into Rhett’s amber eyes, eyes that pool black when he is in a panic and turn golden in the sunshine.
‘That’s all right,’ says Rhett, ‘I just passed by to say hi anyway. I’m on my way to see Mick. D’you know Mick?’
The man doesn’t answer, humans often don’t. Instead he stands, knees cracking, the left one particularly badly, Rhett notices. His body generally smells healthy though, and Rhett is glad. It bothers Rhett when he smells sickness in humans; in decent ones anyway. Rhett, knowing that he won’t get an answer, tosses his head at the man by way of taking his leave. The doorman nods back at him, smiling. Rhett turns away from the hotel and its guardian, and trots off purposefully, tail up.
The doorman looks after the big brown dog, wondering. He pivots back to the hotel doors and slowly walks inside to have a chat with Jeanette, the night receptionist. Jeanette doesn’t like dogs much.
‘I don’t fancy all that mess they bring into your home’, she’d told him the other night, when they had discussed it. They talk about a lot of random stuff, he and Jeanette. The nights are long and work to do, sparse. She may not like dogs much, but apart from that she’s ok. Easy on the eye, and always happy to have a chat and a bit of a laugh. Makes the night pass faster. He finds that he daydreams about her sometimes, when he isn’t at work, in a vaguely sexual but non-committal, benign kind of way.
Rhett goes on up Holland Park Avenue. He ducks into the second side street and to the inset garages, where his friend Mick can sometimes be found. Although he usually sleeps down near the river bank alone, sometimes Rhett keeps Mick company, curling up beside him on the concrete for the deepest hours of the night. Rhett isn’t bothered by cold. It never gets really cold here anyway, not like in Serbia. Sometimes, if he is sober enough, Mick insists on preparing a piece of cardboard especially for Rhett to sit on.
‘Hey, Dog!’ shouts Mick, spotting Rhett coming.
Uh-oh thinks Rhett. Mick is drunk and garrulous, which can be a bit alarming as it makes his movements be wild and unpredictable – he spills drink everywhere, falls over (even from a sitting down position) and sometimes gets into fights, or tries his best to. Rhett thinks that he prefers Mick hungover – although he smells even worse then and is even sadder, particularly after whisky which gives him the lowest crashes. Rhett doesn’t understand alcohol and drugs, he isn’t quite sure how they work. There’s a lot of that stuff going around in their city though, that’s for sure. He can sense the differing whirring and clicking and clacking of the brains and floating and rushing of the bodies; the euphoria, the blackness or the blankness, the strangeness of its oscillations.
Rhett approaches Mick and gazes into his eyes, eyes that are beginning to show the signs of drink and wear. Mick is sad, he can tell. Rhett is sad too sometimes, most often at night, when he’s alone. The sound of the river soothes him, that’s why he sleeps there. Rhett doesn’t like his thoughts to be allowed to flourish as they always turn back to Jessica. His thoughts flourish when there is too much silence, that’s why he has settled in London, where it’s rarely quiet.
‘So, Dog! What’ve you been up to, eh?’ asks Mick, without answering Rhett. ‘Chasing lady-dogs? Having a bit of argy bargy with other dog-dogs? Sniffing out naughty cats? What is it you do all day. Eh?’ Mick sounds genuinely curious but his focus soon fades and he goes into a monologue about a friend he’d had back in his twenties, wondering out loud about what might have happened to him. Only half listening, Rhett wonders why humans talk so incessantly, seemingly just for the sake of talking. He sighs, discreetly, and lays his head down on his big hairy paws.
Mick is lonely, and nostalgic, although arguably less lonely than when he’d lived with his wife, who’d shut him out completely. Now at least he has the soup kitchen crowd, and the Thursday van; there are at least people who know his name, who look out for him and are kind to him. He hopes that one day he’ll meet his daughter again, but he doesn’t see how, and even thinking about it and how it might play out makes him feel ashamed. He knows, in his heart of hearts, that he will never be able to give up the booze, even if the solution to him being able to build bridges with his daughter were as simple as that.
He looks into Rhett’s eyes, shining amber under the streetlight, and smiles. This wire-haired, grinning brown dog is dependable, he checks in on him every few days. Mick-the-drunk is grateful for such things, these days.
He starts talking again, and loses himself in the ramblings and reminiscences which are a comfort to him.
Rhett tunes him out. Mick, like most people, talks a load of nonsense, but it’s important for him to feel like he has an audience. He breaks off his story-telling momentarily with a conspiratorial smile to Rhett. With difficulty, he reaches back behind him into some sort of bag. Rhett wills him not to topple backwards. He does almost over-balance, but letting out a grunt manages to right himself, and draws out a shiny packet, which he unwraps. It has half a sandwich in it. It will have been retrieved from a bin, not that that worries Rhett.
Mick momentarily wonders who had made it; that morning, or perhaps last night, in some kitchen, somewhere. A mother, a girlfriend, a dad, or a big brother? Mick feels briefly sorry that it had been discarded, this small token of everyday love. The drink makes him more emotional. Or perhaps it’s the loneliness that does that.
‘Come on then, boy, come and have some of this, you must be starving!’ Mick says.
Rhett isn’t, actually, there’s no need to go hungry in London, so much half-eaten food thrown away everywhere, strewn about. He rarely refuses decent food when he comes across it though, just in case. He has a fast metabolism and knows only too well how it feels to be hungry, it was some time ago now but he won’t forget it in a hurry. He takes the half sandwich from Mick’s outstretched hand, and makes a big show of chewing and then of gulping it down, hamming up looking ravenous. He licks his lips dramatically, in what he hopes is a grateful kind of way, because although he’s said thank you to Mick out loud in his mind, he’s not sure that humans actually understand their kind of speech.
‘You’re welcome, Dog,’ says Mick, chuckling, and Rhett is glad that he’d understood. It has been worth the deceit, worth the easy fakery, he thinks, to see this smile on Mick’s face.
‘Come on then, boy,’ Mick repeats, and this time pats the cardboard he’s managed to lay out wonkily next to him. Rhett doesn’t much like the smell of the alcohol but he senses Mick’s need for contact and he steps around to the side of him onto the cardboard and curls his big body up beside him and tucks his head in, like a swan; a big, brown hairy swan. Rhett feels Mick’s big, cold hand patting and stroking him, in a sporadic non-rhythm, and half listens to Mick’s ramblings, but he can’t keep the other thoughts out of his head. He thinks how much Jessica would have enjoyed that sandwich that he hadn’t needed. If only he could travel through both space and time, he thinks. The pain stabs at him, the anguish.
Rhett looks up into Mick’s face. Mick smiles down at him fondly. Despite Rhett’s highly developed sense of independence, he too finds comfort in small moments of connection with other living beings. He shifts his head onto his paws and sighs deeply. Mick’s hand lays on him heavily, still now, and Rhett finds his touch unusually reassuring.
A clock somewhere not too far away strikes, slowly and lowly, twelve times. Rhett looks up at the sky. The moon is a constant in his life, he sees it as his friend. The clouds part and there it is. He greets it with a truncated howl. Mick chuckles. Satisfied, Rhett lays his head down on his paws again.
***
Locked In
3 weeks from now, 3:35am, at Nero and Neil's home (a basement flat on Sinclair Road)
Nero paces up and down, and circles, restlessly.
Where is he?
His owner, Neil, has never stayed out this long before. He sometimes comes back smelling funny and crashing around, acting strange, but he always comes back. Nero starts to whine.
Something isn't right.
Nero bangs against the door with his shoulder, then does it a second time, now with the whole weight of his body. It should hurt his shoulder, the force with which he hits it, but he’s a tough dog, a German Shepherd, and he doesn’t even register the impact.
He strains his ears.
Nothing.
Nero sits down, unsure about what to do. Listens. He has particularly good hearing, even for a dog. He can make out the noise of the man sweeping the pavement across the road, trundling his cart along a bit, then stopping and starting up again. They pass the man sometimes, when they are out walking, and he pictures him in the moments between the sweeping and pushing the cart leaning on his brush, having a rest, tapping at something squareish in shape which is linked by small leads to his ears. He can hear the big people – female, mostly - screaming at the little people, who he can hear running, their little shoes slapping on the pavement. They are often told to slow down. He’s heard Piper being told that before, he remembers, by Lottie. There’s a building on the corner just opposite which all the little ones and a few of the bigger ones go into and come out of, a building that leaks noises of play at regular intervals but that is, in between, curiously quiet.
Just now there’s nothing but the occasional screech of a fox. It’s just after dawn, he thinks, before the early risers - joggers and the postman. The man with the cart usually comes later in the day though, which puzzles him. He hears the whirring of a bicycle, and he can tell from the rhythm of it, that the person riding it is doing so confidently, joyfully – hands-free, he imagines, not gripping the handlebars tight with tiredness or worry which is the other way he has seen humans do it.
Nero spends many hours home alone so he is accustomed to listening to the sounds of others’ lives and has learnt to use his imagination in order to alleviate the boredom. But the empty silence in the flat, the not knowing when Neil is going to come back or what mood he will be in, and the rumbling feeling in his gut is all starting to get to him. Neil had left without a word some time yesterday.
Where can he be? Nero wonders. Laying prone on the floor, his head on his paws, only his eyes and eyebrows move, and his anxiety mounts.
Nothing!
It feels like forever.
His head jerks up as an idea pops into it. He places it back down on his paws almost immediately though, chastising himself.
Neil would kill me! he thinks.
Neil has a proclivity for anger…