French bulldog portrait on a finger

The dog is still waiting on the wall at Porthgwidden, I'm told, though the tide has taken her husband's boat three times since Michaelmas. You'll think I've gone soft writing about a bulldog, but Ruth Pascoe's Maud came down to the quay every evening with her bowl and sat with her ears up, watching the mouth of the harbour as if she could will the boats home. Her ears are the first thing you notice, two great bat wings that catch the wind off the bay.

Ruth came to me last week asking whether I'd take the dog out on the Morwenna in the spring, since the ban on the lower grounds lifts and somebody has to haul the pots. I said no. Dogs and nets are a bad mix. Then Maud walked straight up the gangplank, sat on the coil of rope by the wheelhouse and stared at me with those dark, sorrowful eyes until I laughed.

So she's coming. Ruth says she's a good sailor, which I doubt, but she hasn't been sick once in the three trips she's made with us, and she's already learned the sound of the winch. Last Thursday she barked once at a grey shape coming out of the fog, and it was the Lady Anne, limping home with a split hull and nobody lost. Ruth cried, and I pretended it was the spray.

Write me back. Tell me the kettle still whistles the way Dad's did.

Love, Tom