Dog-walking unplugged, the joy of pubs, and taking a stance on the pumping of turdy slush into the sea

My dog took me for a walk, which ordinarily isn’t news, but you don’t know my dog. He is a four-year-old adopted moron called Bam and he hates walking with me (he does not respect me) and does not like walking in any of our nearby parks (too many incidents to detail here, but in one park he was alarmed by a horse and now we can’t go back).

So when he started pulling at his lead to turn his afternoon outing into a walk to Mile End, I just had to go with it, even though I had no phone, no headphones, and was wearing flip-flops.

In a way, I quite enjoyed the 40-minute detour. Without any distractions, following a 16in-tall dog on a private tour of London led only by the faint smell of urine, I got to experience a different texture to my local area than I might have done if I was plugged into a podcast.

For instance, I noticed a pub around the corner that does a roaring trade even at 3pm on a Monday. I noticed a new blue plaque. I was dragged to an interesting-smelling chip shop. I noticed Bam had a chicken bone in his mouth and it took two minutes for me to wrest it free from him. I noticed he had a Ferrero Rocher in his mouth and that took even longer. Leaves fell yellow from the trees and crunched to dust beneath us and I felt a brief flush of peace.

I am thinking of hiring him out by the hour for people who are overwhelmed by having a too-online life. Flopping home in adilettes, fingers smudged with saliva and coated chocolate, I didn’t crave seeing what Instagram was saying even at all.

Fine, House of the Dragon, then. Sadly, I loved it, so that’s at least 60 more hours of my life I’m going to have to put aside (I can already sense how this is going to go: I am going to read all the recap blogs; I am going to end up deep in the subreddits at 3am, reading a 4,000-word explanation of a flag; I am going to be fundamentally disappointed by the ending). House of the Dragon reminded me of what I most loved about Game of Thrones, which was twofold: it was one of the last true vestiges of event TV, something people all watched at once or woke up early to see so that it couldn’t be spoiled for them; and also it had tits and gore.

Bad time, culturally, for bare breasts and gore. “Why do we need to see tits,” people rail, “and why is there so much gore?” I can see what they mean, but also I like seeing this sort of thing, because it’s fun and I’m an adult. I like seeing someone get a sword stabbed right through them, or see them choke and gargle on their own blood, or have the top of their skull lamped off with a hammer. It’s fun! It’s fun and it’s different.

We live under the PG-13 yoke of Marvel right now, where an alien the size of a building can punch Tony Stark in the head and he gets only a slightly cracked glasses lens, and I think we miss a little something visceral because of it. As soon as Matt Smith took a sword to someone’s penis and chopped it to gristle, I thought: ah, that was gross. And then, immediately afterwards: although … very cool. Please, Matt Smith. Neuter more civilians.

It is funny we’re pumping raw sewage into the sea, isn’t it? It’s just so British, I can’t get over it at all. “The sea? Yeah, the big blue thing we all love to be beside and draw undeniable peace from. Yeah, yeah, one of the most vital ecological systems on the whole planet. Yeah, anyway, the government voted to keep pumping shit into it.” I mean, come on. That’s funny.

I thought this as I floated in the very same sea myself last week – the cool of the water, the sun softly setting egg-yolk orange in the sky, the swash of the water around me – and just as I was on the crest of a calm and peaceful breakthrough, I had the single, intrusive thought: sewage.

At this point you have to assume the government is playing some elaborate game with the British voting public, to see what deranged, beyond-villainous thing it can endorse because it helps business and still have voters try to defend. I’m really surprised we haven’t had a Newsnight special where a landlord in a turtleneck furiously explains that a turdy slush is “good for water” because it “helps fertilise the seaweed” and that this snowflake generation would never get it.

Seems bizarre we’ve come to this point where I have to come out like this politically, but I have to say: I am very anti pumping sewage into the sea. Sorry if that offends.

It rained today, finally, which galvanises what I’ve been suspecting for a while: summer is descending, and in its place comes autumn. I have worn a hoodie twice this week, for instance. At one point last weekend I pulled a small blanket over myself while lying on the sofa. It’s happening.

Normally, I would be thrilled for this – I am an absolute autumn ultra, the season of casseroles and sparklers and the new Fifa – but I cannot help but fear this year’s, and that is because I can hear the rising discourse, now a mere whisper on the wind but set to become a howl: put a jumper on.

Put a jumper on has been a lot of people with warm houses’ answer to energy costs for a number of years, because they think they are the only person on earth who has ever thought to put a jumper on around the house. They walk down mildly from the mountain and proclaim: if you’re cold, put a jumper on before touching that thermostat. And, yeah, obviously. What if I’m still cold then? Then put on a … I don’t know. Gloves? Or if you have a scarf, maybe?

Unless you’ve been truly cold in your home, it’s hard to know quite how miserable an experience it is (one winter I had to sleep in my jumper and my gloves and my scarf and my socks, and still woke up – inexplicably! – sobbing). I do think it’s slightly a failure of state that the idea of being warm at home has gone from a necessity to a luxury to an extravagance, but what do I know.

The news that 70% – 70%! – of pubs expect to struggle this winter fills me with a certain dread, I have to say. I think, weirdly, we undervalue pubs in this country – they are such a keystone of so many people’s social lives (nothing makes you more aware of this than when you’re not drinking, and trying to see friends, and the alternative options are, uhh, I mean I guess we could go to the cinema?), and such a focal point for a lot of communities, and weirdly a really good place to read or do a crossword, and we seem to be living through a period of anti-pub agenda.

A lot of locals barely survived Covid, for instance. The cost of a pint is already creeping fairly dangerously high. Losing another swathe of pubs because running a fridge suddenly costs too much would cause a cultural impact that I fear may be irreversible. If you can, please try to go to the pub this weekend. There’s a good one by me my dog can drag you to.