Mickey, star of the show

First published in edition 197 of The Northumbrian, Dec/Jan 2023/2024

This week, Charlie is mostly feeling nostalgic for a long-gone guinea pig

My first pet was called Mickey. He was a rather handsome russet guinea pig. I think I’d wanted a mouse, but as the youngest of four, any present (especially a furry one) was very welcome. Anyway, Mickey made extremely pleasing noises and was fun to have around.

Not long after he arrived it was time for the Weeton Show. Held in early summer, it was like events of its type throughout the country. Tents smelling of dead grass full of jam and stick dressers, joyful children towed around on a tarpaulin behind a tractor, and of course various animal judging competitions. These ranged from ruddy-faced farmers in their best tweed parading prize sheep and cattle, to the other end of the spectrum, the pet competition, and it was decided that I should enter Mickey.

The great day arrived and I spent considerable time combing Mickey, making sure he looked his best. He seemed to take all this in good heart and let out a few satisfied whistles as the Action Man comb brought his fur to a conker-like glossiness.

I didn’t expect him to win, but I thoroughly enjoyed taking part and spent at least five minutes answering searching questions from the judge, Colonel Strangely-Brown, who had nearly as many whiskers as Mickey. He moved on to inspect dogs, cats, tortoises and budgies and Mickey and I wandered off. Later, my red-faced sister found us loitering around the sweet stall: “Quick Charlie, come back to the judging tent!” she cried, and to my surprise Mickey had won first prize. We were paraded in front of the local press, Mickey sitting on a huge silver salver with me grinning toothlessly behind him.

I next saw the silver salver at school the following Monday morning. The headmaster was clutching it at the front of our classroom and my stomach balled up at the thought of being called to the front to have Mickey’s achievement celebrated. But then the headmaster’s face clouded and his eyebrows (which at the best of times resembled a pair of huge hairy caterpillars) collided at the sight of the citation on the salver. The winner of the 1972 Weeton Show pet prize was engraved for all eternity as Mrs B E Bennett, and she wasn’t a pupil in Class 1A.

I guess the engraver simply put the name of the person paying for the class entry on the salver, and that was my mum. Years later, my niece won the same trophy, and I laughed it off stoically when she spotted granny’s name for 1972. But after 51 years ruminating on this injustice, I am of the firm opinion that it should be the name Mickey, the squeaky russet guinea pig, that was engraved on that salver.

After Mickey, I progressed to larger pets. My first dog was called Ginger (you can guess why). His mother Dinah, our dog, had a litter of nine puppies and my mother was rightly keen to get them sold. However, I was not letting Ginger go, so I scooped him up and locked myself in the loo with him. My mother kindly relented and I was allowed to keep him. He was a great dog, full of life and excellent company for a young boy, and particularly good at smiling when he was happy, which he did by tucking his top lips under his canines.

Probably his greatest skill was fishing. Once, sitting on the beach in Norfolk scoffing Cheddars washed down with orange squash, he appeared out of the waves holding in his mouth a huge fish that was still flapping. I can’t remember if we ate it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we did.

Since Ginger, we have had numerous dogs and our current three are building up their own wealth of stories. But I’d like to focus on probably our most famous dog, a border terrier called Reg.My mother-in-law’s family have been breeding borders since God was a boy. Indeed, one grandfather had 30 (we have a photo of him in a chair wearing about half of them), and Reg was one of the descendants of this family.

Sadly, his first owner hadn’t been able to keep him, so my wife Charlotte and I took him on. It didn’t take him long to start building his reputation. On his first night with us I took him for a walk on Clapham Common. Unbeknown to me, his previous owner had given him little or no training, and in a two-year-old terrier with a will of his own, this was bad news.

As soon as I let him off the lead, he was off, making straight for an area where, well... what can I say? A place where people like to get to know each other better. I ran in shouting, “Reg, Reg you little [expletive] come here…” and suddenly heads started popping up. It appeared that the name Reg might be known to this little community. Red-faced, I turned tail only to find my Reg had moved out of the woods to the pond where he was eyeing up a Canada goose.

This was the start of a long and eventful life into which he jumped with the carefree abandon of a marauding Viking. He was at heart a good egg, so I’m guessing that when he finally shrugged off his mortal coil at the amazing age of 16, he made it to the pearly gates. There, however, Saint Peter doubtless had quite a charge sheet to run through, including chasing squirrels to their demise in Green Park in front of horrified tourists, eating my aunt’s favourite hen, and getting stuck down a badger hole causing my wife to dislocate her shoulder trying to extract him.

There was also chasing all the pheasants from our best drive before it started, me in pursuit using similar expletives to that mentioned before (my guests said it was the best moment of the day). He once latched onto a boxer dog in Hyde Park and, while he caused no damage, the owner still insisted on a silent taxi journey to a wallet-cooling emergency appointment with her vet.

When Reg went for his meeting with Saint Peter, I buried him in his favourite wood, a place where he had regularly dug up baby rabbits for fun. But rabbits have long memories, and it wasn’t long before they in turn dug him up. He is now buried with a large stone on his grave and I smile every time I pass it, often putting a wildflower next to the rabbit droppings.

To round this story off, I’m going to tell you about my latest pet. I’m not sure if the descriptor ‘pet’ is entirely accurate, as he is a pigeon, thus I don’t own him, and he doesn’t own me. However, I do feed and water him and he seems to listen when I go to talk to him by the bird table.

I have named him Walter. He is huge and waddles more than he walks. He also looks vacant, but he is far from stupid and has worked out that if he leaves the sparrows to mine into the fat balls, he can muscle them out of the way and fill his crop.

I have named him Walter because he looks like a neighbour of ours when I was a kid, who was called Walter Pickard. He was a pigeon-shaped man, with a smallish head and round glasses on a round body and shortish legs. He and his wife lived in the cottage next to us. They were kindness personified and when my brother fell ill (I think with mumps) they looked after him.

During this time, the human Walter passed his extensive knowledge of the sport of kings to my brother and every morning they would religiously study the Racing Post, deciding who was going to win the 3.30 at Haydock Park and the like. It soon became clear that my brother Jim, at the tender age of seven, had an eye for a winner, so Walter placed his bets on his new protégée’s recommendations and soon they were both in the money. It didn’t take my dad long to spot an opportunity either, so he started funding the operation, and all was well until my mother got wind of the cartel next door when my brother’s new petrol Go Kart was delivered.

Actually, I’m not sure how she found out, but she makes Miss Marple look amateurish in the sleuthing stakes and the boy who broke the bank at Monte Carlo recovered from his mumps and returned to school, probably with more valuable life experience than formal education would ever give him.

Walter pigeon doesn’t impart racing tips, but in time he too will have his place on the wall of pet fame, because I know the pets of my life have enriched it to such an extent that I couldn’t think of a life without them.
Charlie Bennett and his wife Charlotte own the Middleton North estate near Wallington, where they work to support existing wildlife and attract new species alongside sustainable stock farming designed to add to the diversity of wildlife in the area. For information, visit:
www.middleton-north.co.uk

• To enquire about volunteering at Middleton North, please email charlie.bennett@middleton-north.co.uk

• Charlie’s book, Down the Rabbit Hole, the Misadventures of an Unlikely Naturalist, is out now in hardback, available at bookshops and at:
www.charliebennettauthor.co.uk