Non fiction
Issue #9
Big Dog
Big Dog sits, lies down and rolls over at the corner of Middlewood Road and Hillsborough Park. Caught between these spectral place-names of a lost pastoral—absent woods, colonised hills and a shrunken park—he spends much of his day in a stone-cobbled cloister, a driveway, observing the world through an iron gate. Big Dog walks to heel, cutting through Hillsborough Park along concrete paths. Small dogs and their owners stop to stare as the spectacle approaches: a Newfoundland processing in chains of state, collared and tied.
I look for Big Dog each morning as I descend Minto Road on my way to catch the tram. He is my canine barometer and I am his superstitious admirer. I measure the potential of my day on the basis of his shaggy appearance. Will he be there sitting at his gate? Ah yes, there he is; today will be a good day. Holding court at his iron gates, passers-by pay homage. Fingers and palms, large and small, pass through the bars to ruffle his fur coat. A laying-on of hands. A royal touch for sceptical days. An illusory cure for the new king’s evil: a commuter’s detached, depersonalised malaise.
Do not mistake his look; I suspect the sadness in those hangdog eyes is more a bemused yet resigned stoicism. Big Dog watches the yellow tram, bound for Meadowhall, glide past his iron gates. Fixed track; fixed route; set timetable. Trams and passengers punctuate his day, and I wonder if he too is looking for something. Does he spot the trams? Does he count regular visitors as they appear at his gate? Does he look for me as I descend Minto Road? Ah yes, here she is; today will be like any other day.
Big Dog sits, lies down and rolls over at the corner of Middlewood Road and Hillsborough Park.
Amber Regis