The Labrador Retriever - part two - Hummock the matchmaker
Over the years, together and individually, Suzy and I have had special relationships with a series of four-legged companions, but the Lab tops the lot…
Labradors are intelligent hounds but Hummock is different, like the oracle from The Matrix skillfully disguised as a black Labrador. She has an aura which implies wisdom beyond human measure, seeing things we cannot see, with a multi-dimensional vibe.
She sees dead people.
Although very loving she has a self-contained independent spirit: never one to sit by your feet, preferring to be just out of reach like the best film star divas.
There was an instant bond when Hummock met my now-wife, Suzy Starlite and I couldn’t believe it when she lay across her lap in the van—the first time she had ever done this with anyone.
I knew there was something uniquely special about Starlite and Hummock confirmed it - so I tend to think that it was Hummock who chose Starlite for me.
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From the Isle of Man to France
When Suzy and I got together we felt it wise to leave the Island; it’s a small place…
We didn’t want to return to the UK and decided to move to France and of course, Hummock came with us. She certainly enjoyed her brief six-month stay there.
Over the past 11 years of being together, Suzy and I have a history of moving to houses and even countries—Portugal being a case in point—that we didn’t visit beforehand. Amazingly, we have not fallen foul of this modus operandi. It must be the Universe.
The Gîte
When we first arrived our first home together wasn’t ready and spent the first two nights in a Gîte also owned by the landlord. Our gear was still on its way from the UK so it wasn’t too much of a problem.
What was a problem were the hoards of grenouilles camouflaged in the adjacent field making a terrible din. From the croaking cacophony, they appeared to be on some stag doo, mating call bender. At first, it was fun but they were on a roll and we couldn’t sleep!
Frogs are loud.
Starlite was enraged and went out to confront the froggy chorus. “Shut up” she cried. It worked, silence. But then one lone amphibian croaked “Fuck you” in defiance quickly followed by the rest of the knot (did you know this is the collective noun for frogs - I didn’t).
The farmhouse
The eccentric landlord told us the house was detached, but we arrived to discover it was actually attached to a barn with horses and two other dwellings. Our next-door neighbours were two British couples, one with two young children.
It was a converted farmhouse, still retaining many of its original features and quite a distance along a quiet country road that wound its way through the vineyards to the southeast of Bordeaux, close to the small town of Duras, Lot-et-Garonne.
Looking at a recent map we see the complex has been made into holiday lets, namely Hameau de Galice.
We needed the space to locate the fledgling Supertone studio, my collection of guitars and amps plus Suzy’s vintage motorcycle. The living room became the studio and our bedroom which was fun. Who wants to be upstairs when you can wake up surrounded by equipment of rock?
Hummock slept in her basket at the foot of the bed.
The three of us hung out. Suzy and I sharing our record collections, writing music and getting drunk on cheap, but excellent quality vin rouge and not-so-cheap Armagnac.
R2D2 chasing Hummock around the kitchen was hilarious.
The garden was surrounded by fields with no perimeter fence and Hummock became an expert at scouting around the edges. As she became used to the place and in full stealth mode, she started to explore - black and smooth in her sleek velvet catsuit (ironic for a hound), wandering off into the woods or trotting up the dirt road to…
The duck farm
At the intersection of our lane and the road was a duck farm - La Ferme du Canard.
Increasingly Hummock would disappear for 25 minutes, which then became 45 which turned into over an hour so that I would have to walk and sometimes drive around to find her.
Often, upon retrieval, she smelt terrible which we later learned was duck shit. If you have ever experienced that powerful ammoniacal niff you will know it’s not very pleasant.
Was it the food - probably - was she eating the shit - almost certainly - but that wasn’t the whole story. One night I drove up in the van to find her with Pierre the black Collie who was attached to a long rope outside a small French barn adjacent to the said ‘canardian’ establishment. Mystery solved.
We were not too worried about the liaison as with all our female hounds she had been spayed - but did wonder about the content of their conversation:
”Sniff, sniff, sniff, snout, snout snout”…
“Bonjour je m’appelle Hummock - je suis an English princess from the Lake District’
”Sniff, sniff, sniff, snout, snout snout”
”Bonjour m’as cherie - je m’appelle Pierre - je pense que tu est trés belle”
…and so on
Starlite is currently writing a series of children’s books based on the adventures of Hummock and our hounds.
Le Tip Top et MM. Julie
France is a lovely country, but living in the countryside is tricky, especially when so close to the expat haven of the Dordogne.
Understandably the French do tire of the behaviour of the Brits and one seasoned expat who had lived there for many years told us that they waited for the Brits to start drinking anticipating ‘the show’ that would follow. Embarrassing.
Duras is the heart of wine country and during the day is busy with the French going about their business - whatever that may be.
Like most French villages, in the evening, it became a ghost town, the only bar open being the one frequented by the dreaded expats which we stayed clear of as much as possible, visiting only once. We wanted an authentic French experience as opposed to a theme park folly.
Le Tip Top was the other bar on the main street, run by the formidable MM Julie and frequented by the locals - which was much more us.
Abrasive, impatient, and generally rude, MM Julie was a chip off the old block of crusty bar owners who disliked customers in general and had a unique brand of disdain for the British. It felt like being metaphorically slapped across the cheek with a soggy baguette au jambon et fromage.
We had a plan to melt her heart and get MM Julie to like us by Suzy deploying her best schoolgirl French - very sexy incidentally - and me trying but each time sounding more and more like Officer Crabtree.
It was an utter failure, a combination of scenes from ‘Allo ‘Allo and Faulty Towers.
It didn’t look like things were going to change, but one day Hummock made the breakthrough. She must have got a whiff of some delicious French food as she escaped from her lead and dashed inside the restaurant and headed for the kitchen where she promptly started eating the cat food in a bowl on the floor. We thought we were in big trouble.
Not the case as out came MM. Julie with Hummock wearing a beaming smile. She knelt down and started chatting to us whilst stroking and kissing our hairy heroine. We were astounded - you could almost hear those victory bells a-ringing.
Sadly, it didn’t last long and the next time we returned, so did the deployment of the damp baguette: I still have the bruises.
The French love dogs
To their considerable credit, the French love dogs, allowing them inside bars, cafés and restaurants.
They also have fabulous restaurants (no shit Sherlock) and there was many a time we took Hummock into very fancy establishments to be greeted by enthusiastic staff and water bowls at the ready.
Of course, extensive training in pubs, eateries and gigs has made her very well-behaved apart from her penchant for achieving maximum visibility, usually in the middle of a walkway, ready to receive admirers.
We have met many cool people through our hairy social manager.
Monsieur Pig
Our futon bed was in the studio on the ground floor and one fine morning, we looked out of the window to behold a medium-sized pig in the garden staring straight at us.
Naturally, medium-sized is relative to your experience, as apart from some swine my mother and father had at their farm and the one’s Starlite saw at the Ripley family’s farmstead in Herefordshire, we know nothing about hogs.
Hummock went dashing outside and instantly fell in love. She was besotted and they were inseparable. Of course, we spent that time in detective mode trying to find out who the owners were as a) we appreciate pigs are valuable; b) we don’t know how to feed them and c) we didn’t want to be swamped in pig shit.
Daska our wonderful next-door neighbour owns horses and knows the local farmers. We called around, described our porky predicament and she started the search.
Our other neighbours, Rachel and Bill had a horse box so the four of us attempted to coax the stubborn beast into the trailer but to no avail: if they don’t want to move, they don’t. Not even the promise of an apple worked. Monsieur Pig squealed and ran - first across the lawn, then hid in the bushes, and back again across the lawn and so it continued.
Pigs are heavy.
It was a comedic scene where four adults were outrun and outwitted by our short-legged snouty friend.
Pigs are fast.
It quickly became apparent that Monsieur Pig wanted to stay with Hummock and that the feeling was mutual.
It was getting dark and we all decided it would do him no harm to stay overnight and next morning found him hanging out again on the lawn. Hummock was delighted. We were delighted, he was one cool fucking pig.
Later that afternoon, two people on horseback arrived outside the house and with a call (in French of course) Monsieur Pig scurried off to greet them. We all waved adieu and they started to make their way home together.
It transpired that our porky friend lived in a vineyard across the next valley and had set off on an impromptu adventure. We will never forget the sight of Monsieur Pig gayly trotting up the lane behind the silhouette of two horses and their riders, happy as a pig in shit, merrily, merrily on his way home.
Even now if you shout to Hummock, “Where is Monsieur Pig?” she will excitedly run around looking for her French companion. True love.
The abandoned amusement park
We take our hound swimming whenever possible and discovered an abandoned amusement park in the middle of the French countryside: time for some stick retrieval…
The seed
Bill and Rachel are lovely people, which is lucky as we hadn’t planned on having neighbours at all.
In the mid-summer, Bill’s mother June arrived and we were invited one afternoon to a BBQ, all sitting outside drinking beer and having fun while Hummock played with their older black Labrador called Dolly. June planted a seed in our minds when she said Hummock looked a bit lonely.
The thought had never crossed our minds before. What harm would it do to have two hairy beasts? It made sense, especially as we are on the road a lot. Our next pup could be Starlite’s so that we would be a balanced and united family unit as Starlite-Campbell’s.
We emailed Jan at Highhouse Labradors which is situated in the magnificent Lake District, England, where Hummock was born. She came straight back to say a single brown Labrador was available, just born from a litter of one.
It was meant to be and told Jan we would take her.
From France to Spain
It was July 2013 and we asked our friends what the winter weather was like, grim we were told - not UK grim, but still unpleasant certainly in an isolated rural community.
We wanted vibrancy and music which in France is generally confined to the major cities and Bordeaux was an hour away along dark windy roads.
Suzy and I were wary of being drawn into the expat scene during the colder months and also needed to be detached due to the racket we create, specifically at night.
Forever young
Neil Young was playing at a festival at Parc des sports d'Aguiléra, Biarritz supported by one of our favourite artists Johnathan Wilson. It was a part of his Alchemy tour and we decided to go. The town is not far from the Spanish border and my old school friend Anthony Alonso - aka Ant - lived close by in Donostia (San Sebastián).
I am not sure how I knew this as we hadn’t spoken for forty years. What I did know was that he had bought my Yamaha SGV electric guitar from me (my first proper instrument), his mother was British and his dad was Spanish, from Donostia.
It’s fuzzy but think I discovered he had moved back to Spain when I connected up with his best mate and another school friend Costas Constaninou - who happened to be the General Manager of PWL (Peter Waterman Limited) when I was working with Peter (a long story). Do you remember Stock, Aitkin and Waterman?
Anyway, I called him and asked if we could stay and more importantly leave Hummock with him overnight. It was cool and we arrived to find him living with his then-partner Maria, a self-confessed witch in a low-rise apartment above her shop called Ur.
The gig was great. Neil and Crazy Horse were on fire and Wilson looked like a stoned Jesus. Stoned not STONED.
We stayed with them for a couple of days and gave an impromptu performance outside Ur.
The bull of fire
Ant told us it was imperative that we see the legendary bull of fire and promptly marched us all through the charming streets of Donostia, regaling us with story upon story about this mystical and magical event we were about to witness.
Our appetites suitably wetted we held our breath in anticipation.
Alas, we had been led down the metaphorical garden path. After this massive build-up and expectations running high, the bull of fire turned out to be a small boat decorated in the shape of a bull, which a man lifted up and put over his head like a pantomime horse.
Suddenly a load of fireworks attached to the bull ignited and the man started running through the square with screaming children running ahead and behind like the Pied Piper!! Hilarious.
There’s a place for us // and the ground will be red…
During a drunken session, Ant told us his life story after we last met when I was 18. The account was harrowing and almost unbelievable: perhaps another time.
Later we asked him if and where we should move to in Spain? The weather had to be good and have plenty of social/musical action.
He sat there with a fag hanging out of his mouth and said:
“Si. You need to go where the ground is fuckin’ red - not fuckin’ greeeeen.”
Any went on to say that Valencia was a good place to go. He nearly opened a bar there once, it is right on the Mediterranean and the ground was fuckin’ red…
So we made plans to take a reconnaissance trip down the eastern side of Spain, south from Figueres - the birthplace of artist Salvador Dalí - to Valencia. Finding where the landscape turns from fuckin’ green to fuckin’ red and naturally taking our beautiful hound with us.
Who better to lend their approval when checking out a future home than Hummock the Oracle.
Next up in part three
The Spanish sojourn, the recycling bin incident, recording an album, a banana bonanza, the arrival of Bobby and the trees of shame…
Thank you. Always entertaining and educational 😎🐶 Hummock knew Suzy was a keeper.