Last week I had an interesting conversation with a client. I thought we agreed that you would look after my dog for me he said. You know about dogs don’t you. That wasn’t exactly my understanding of what we discussed I thought to myself but demurred and mumbled something along the lines I can do that if you want.

A Social Dog.

My recollection was that the conversation some couple of years ago went something like I think I need to get a new dog. I’ve already had a few but I haven’t paid too much attention to them. I’m not sure what they eat, when they get walked, what their personality is like or who does actually feed, walk and train them.

But still. A new one was called for. And for a while, yes when he wasn’t about I’d look after the dog, making sure it was fed and watered. Making sure it grew and making sure it didn’t get into trouble by barking excessively, biting anyone or showing signs of its personality that might cause a problem down the road.

But there were no instructions on how to look after the dog, how often or at what time it should be fed. When we should let it out for a walk. Or what sort of personality we were hoping to develop. There was no plan for example on what to do if it caused a lot of shit and who would clean it up and how.

I suppose part of the problem was mine for I did not say to the client, yes I have a dog and as a responsible dog owner there are certain things you need to do and not do. For example if you make too much noise and create a lot of crap, the dog warden can some and put manners on you and your dog.

Or, if you feed it the wrong stuff it can have strange effects. If it becomes badly behaved and anti social it will attract negative comments and hostility. You might be happy just letting the dog go with the flow. It may be happy but wildly unpredictable, chasing every seagull, digging up every bone, eating other dogs’ dinners. It may like cats or not. It might even run off with the neighbours rabbit as has been know to happen. Dogs 1, Rabbits nil.

So here’s a few pointers if you do decide to get a dog.

1 Decide what dog you’re going to get. Is it going to be a big dog that needs a lot of discipline, rigorous training? Or is it going to be a small pampered sort of yoke that can be as high maintenance as you like but can still bark loud enough when it wants to.

2 Are you happy letting it off the leash now and then or will you keep a tight rein to stop it going off piste?

3 Is it going to conform to the same diet? Are you going to feed it at the same time every day or go with the flow, taking a bite here and there with no particular concern as to how it turns out?

4 When it does cause a load of crap and really messes up somewhere, how are you going to deal with that? Have you a clean up operation in place. Are you prepared to deal with a bit of crap now and then because you know that it goes with the territory?

5 If you let someone after look after it, are you going to make sure they know how to take care of it so it behaves exactly how you wish it to? And, if you do get someone else to look after it, make sure they have clear instructions.

It’s a bit like social media really.

Some bastard came up our street last week robbing cars.

If only I could have got them my neighbour said. Irate wasn’t the word,

The man’s wife isn’t well, his son’s in a wheelchair

And some lousy scumbag decides to rifle his car.

Not mine though. No they stole two bicycles from the side

Of our house one Saturday night a few weeks earlier.

Birthday presents for the boys

Both, now gone, vanished. We called the police and they have conducted

An extensive investigation into the whole affair.

Detectives carried out fingertip searches of the crime scene,

Suspects interviewed, surveillance carried out, sodium thiopental

Administered, interrogation and sensory deprivation deployed.

Every trick in the book. Guantanamo wouldn’t get a look in.

Where are the bicycles? And the other man’s money? And his

Paraplegic son’s keys? And who scattered that stuff up and down

The street? You scum bastards. But of course none of these things happened.

Well the robbery did in truth. My fault for not chaining the boys’ bikes. My

Neighbour’s for not locking his car. Nothing to do with the way

The others were brought up, dragged up from the dregs to decide

To steal a nine-year-old boy’s brand new birthday bicycle and his brother’s both.

They got someone for the car crime. The police did. There were three in the bed

Together, a gang I suppose, but they couldn’t get him to roll over the

Other two. I would like to meet them and ask them why they

Did it? I’m sure they weren’t into cycling and lycra really.

And when I’d finished I’d simply say

On your bike, your own bike that is and

Fuck away off out of our street, my life,

Our stuff, our gardens, our sheds, our cars, our lean-tos.

Every night now I lock the car religiously.

And make sure the replacement bikes

Are chained. And every cyclist I stare suspiciously at the

Bike he’s on. Is it black? Has it that familiar green writing on the frame?

And what if I did see it? I’d love to stick a stick

Between that particular set of spokes.

The death of Seamus Heaney provoked a savage outbreak of literary grief. In the age of social media, people struggled to post a representative line or two of his work that was less than 140 characters and spaces. If there is one positive to come out of his death it is that a new audience may be introduced to his work.

And by that I mean his work beyond the staples of secondary school. The ubiquitous Digging, Follower, Blackberry Picking and Midterm Break. I read one young woman post on social media that Midterm Break was her favourite poem. A strange choice, for whilst powerful and emotive the story it unfolds is heartbreakingly sad.

For me the resonance of being called out of class to hear bad news is familiar. Aged ten I was called from my primary six class to be taken away home following the death of my father that morning. It has always had a savage ring of truth to it. More than ever too when I bought a copy of Seamus Heaney reading his collected works and Midterm Break startled me through the speakers.

I met Heaney once, at some event or other at the University of Ulster. I was unashamedly there to put spake on him and did so. I had been helping my nephew Ciaran critique Midterm Break the night before for his GCSE coursework and I told the poet this. His reply was ‘a difficult poem for GCSE’. It was a highlight meeting him and sharing a few words, mainly him talking and I listening.

Which brings me on along the road. Upon his death my niece remarked how difficult Heaney’s poetry is to understand. Someone else declared all poetry boring. My brother a Professor of Medicine said he didn’t like poetry but liked Heaney.

Today Leo arrived home from school to say that people in his year 8 class said Heaney’s poetry was depressing. Not having read it I wondered aloud how 11 and 12 years olds could have formed this view.

I sent Leo to the shelf to take down Opened Ground and directing him to Markings, told him to read it aloud to me. I then played him the recording of Seamus Heaney reading the piece. Our Leo is a footballer in the Park. The image of ‘four jackets for four goalposts’ so familiar it is routine. The account of the game of football describes an activity that goes on every evening in Flowerfield and every open space where boys his age gather to play football.  I was able to discuss with him how often he and his brother Peter had kicked ball until darkness fell ‘As the light died and they kept on playing’.

How as a child he imagined games in the stadium of his mind where Henry Shefflin and Ricey struggled for possession in some sort of hybrid game dreamt up by himself and his brother, ‘Because by then they were playing in their heads.’ I did it myself, we all did, it’s an abiding memory of autumn in Omagh the light falling but where ‘There was fleetness, furtherance and untiredness/In time that was extra, unforeseen and free.’ To only have some of it back.

I then played Midterm Break and he looked out of sad comprehending eyes. He understood what was being said. One day I’ll tell him why it has a resonance with me.

And then there was St Kevin and the Blackbird. The wonderful tale of the Monk in his beehive hut arms outstretched in prayerful supplication when a blackbird lands and lays its egg.

‘The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside

His cell, but the Cell is narrow, so

One turned up palm is out the window, stiff

As a cross beam, when a blackbird lands

And lays in it and settles down to nest.’

A few years back on Inis Mór we went to visit the beehive huts and we took a photograph of my hand reaching out of the cell window in the manner of St Kevin. Leo explained to me how the poem was about unselfishness and doing things for other people and how St Kevin was kind to the blackbird. The poem itself explains that selflessness can bring pain ‘Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?/Self forgetful or in agony all the time.’

It is a poem that has been pinned to our kitchen cupboard until it is now yellow and read over and over again.

Some day when I’m in Bellaghy I’ll maybe call into Seamus Heaney’s grave. Not least to say a prayer of thanks for the wonder of his poetry. And also for his act of helpfulness when he donated a manuscript of that poem Markings to our club for auction when we were constructing our pitch. It was arranged through a mutual friend, Professor Bob Welch, now sadly also gone. It raised a very generous sum and afterwards I wrote to tell him that there was ever a corner of Pairc Eoghain Rua that he could call his own.

In the meantime I’ll listen and read and read and listen to his word-hoard. I would encourage you to do the same.

The word Cynical first applied to the Greek philosopher Diogenes who was born in Sinope and who lived and acted unconventionally in order to expose the falseness of modern conventions.

He was some boy was Diogenes, exiled from Sinope for defacing the currency of the time, possibly encouraged to do so by the Oracle at Delphi.

Diogenes lived like a tramp, sleeping in a tub in the street, begging, going to the toilet unceremoniously when the urge required it. He also pleasured himself in public in the market square, observing he wished he could ease his hunger as easily by rubbing his stomach.

For those that would sling the word about with abandon, ‘Cynic’ is derived from the word ‘Kunikos’ which means ‘dog like’. Anyone who has a dog will know that it capable of many things. But fundamentally it acts on instinct.

I have a new dog. It hasn’t pleasured itself in the market place just yet, but its tongue certainly reaches the parts. One of the abiding principles of Cynicism is that if an act is not shameful in private, the same act is not made shameful by being performed in public.

Our man Diogenes when asked by Alexander the Great to name his one wish, replied pithily: “I wish you would stand out of my sunlight.’ He once went out and about in Athens in broad daylight carrying a lighted lamp seeking ‘one honest man.’ Such was his impact on Alexander, the Great man observed to an associate ‘If I weren’t Alexander, I wish I were Diogenes.’

In their approach they were certainly anarchic these Cynics. They avowed an ascetic lifestyle which they found necessary for moral excellence because it made them resistant to pleasure and pain.

Of late, the word cynical has been the most over used word in our lexicon. Cynical fouling. That is what a dog will do. And that indeed that is what Diogenes did. Physical activities without standing on ceremony. Take a crap. Take no crap. Makes no difference. Not a jot.

The Cynics preached the universal brotherhood of man, they were cosmopolitan and anarchic. Lived life their own way. Acted as they pleased. Their Cynical views unthinkable to other Greeks.

Antisthenes was a Cynic too, and teacher of Diogenes. He had witnessed the death of Socrates. Of other people casting their opinion he remarked: ‘It is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead and in the other case while alive.’

We’ll leave the last word to Diogenes the tub dwelling, public wanker and cynical fouler who had little time for sportsmen: ‘Why are athletes so stupid,’ he asked before replying to himself: ‘ Because they are built up of pork and beef.

Depending on who you talk to Diogenes died from either holding his own breath, being bitten by a dog or eating raw octopus. Take your pick.

Cynical or what.