Che Guevara & Yorkshire Terriers

There were two anxieties that unnerved us at the place where we checked in for a long weekend. Not in a Norman Bates way as in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller ‘Psycho’; thankfully. The first anxiety was the lady owner. We were confident she would not sneak into the place with a knife while one of us was having a shower or deliver “some milk and sandwiches” at the dead of night. She just gave off this air of knowing all our movements and appearing out of nowhere. The second anxiety was her Yorkshire terrier. Such a little thing with a face like a gremlin crossed with a Tasmanian devil and the attitude to match.

That “attitude” included having a very loud piercing bark that sounded like fingernails going across a blackboard in a discordant staccato. We could just about cope with that because the owner would eventually tell the offending little yapper to “shush”. What it is also did to fulfill its character stereotype and in the words of its owner because “it did not like men” was to scamper to my ankles, bare its teeth, snarl and lunge to take a bite. “She’s only playing…she doesn’t like men”.

On our last evening I decided to go for a walk and explore the nearby area.

I closed the door as quietly as I could and crunched my way across the driveway to the main gate moving lightly and swiftly. At the main gate I thought “Made it”. As I was opening and about to go through and into the lane the little ground hugging canine equivalent of an Exocet or Scud missile scampered across the lawn and driveway. There it was. Snarling and ready to snap at my ankles. I slammed the gate behind me. I had escaped unscathed into the village of North Mundham near Chichester in Sussex and freedom from the canine Exocet.

As I walked along the lane the terrier tracked me from its side of the hedge. When I passed the end of its territory it gave up.

"The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of men" Charles Darwin.

I was not feeling very noble at the start of my walk.

Less than a mile away I went through a lytch gate into a churchyard. The churchyard was covered in a cool shade from the ancient yew trees and the church building. How many times and how many people had done the same as me on a summers Sunday evening since the church was built in the 13th century?

Some of the headstones were anonymous. Identifying engravings had been eroded by the elements over centuries. Some were new and fresh. That is if you can call headstones thirty or forty years old “new”. Their engravings were as sharp as the day they had been carved by the stone masons.

It was peaceful. No traffic, no people and best of all; no dogs.

My circuit of the churchyard was nearly complete. I was in my own world thinking about what we had done yesterday, today and on the way home tomorrow. All the people buried around me. What were there stories? Were they rich or poor? What were their lives like? What would they think if they could come back today and see their village or even the wider world? Could they see without coming back?

All wistful wonderings and reverential thoughts which were sharply interrupted by the sound of a dog scampering along the path behind me. Then came the yapping that sounded like fingernails going across a blackboard staccato.

“Damn! It’s that bloody dog from the house………it must have escaped and followed me.”

I looked down and near my ankles was a Yorkshire terrier just like the one back at the house.

Further away behind me I heard a man’s voice.

“He’s only playing.”

Well, as this little yapper was a “he” it could not be the one from the house, but it could be a sibling. That same facial hybrid of gremlin and Tasmanian devil. The same bark coming through the snarling lips and bared teeth. The similarities had to be more than coincidental.

And no, he is not playing. He is nipping at my ankles and baring his teeth. I expected the man to complete his statement with “He doesn’t like men”.

I stopped and looked back to where the terrier had come from and saw a middle-aged man in a crumpled track suit walking towards me. In his hand was a can of very strong lager. “Liquid electric” to give it a colloquial and generic name. As he got closer to me the fumes of an alcohol infused breath enveloped me. When he was closer, not quite within the polite and comfortable distance, something about him made me feel uncomfortable.

“Hello” I said to him as he passed more from nervousness than politeness.

“Che Guevara! Che Guevara! He was no hero mate. Freedom fighter. No! He wasn’t. Hero! No! He was a terrorist……murderer……racist……absolute bastard! Icon! Shouldn’t have his pictures anywhere, especially on T shirts” the man exploded at me without making eye contact or breaking his stride pattern. Thank goodness.

The target of his vitriol was my T shirt. I had changed into it back at the house to enjoy the luxury of wearing something clean and fresh at the end of a long day in the fresh air. It had the iconic and stylised graphic image of Guevara on the front. There were also dark stains of fresh sweat under my arms. Shock or adrenaline? Most likely both as it was far too cool in the churchyard to cause perspiration.

I didn’t choose to wear that T shirt that evening to that churchyard to make a visual statement about Marxism or rebellion to a man walking his Yorkshire terrier. I didn’t choose it to be radically chic without understanding the full back story to the image. I had bought it earlier in the day in a charity shop for £1 when I realized I had run out of clean tops for the rest of our break. That was my back story which, sadly, the scruffy man with the dog and a tin of liquid electric didn’t want to know about.

“You should be ashamed wearing that shirt! He wasn’t a hero! He wasn’t a freedom fighter…..where’s that bloody dog gone?”

Deliberately I slowed my pace to let him get as far ahead as possible. I could see which direction he was going to take and then I could choose the opposite one. From the lytch gate I saw the terrier slip through a gap in the hedge bedside the lane. I didn’t know what was behind that hedge and I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting as much distance between myself, the man and that terrier. The man took a swig from his tin seemingly to give him strength to slip through the gap in the hedge.

From behind the hedge and over the crackling undergrowth the rant continued. “Irresponsible” was repeated between questions about the location of the dog.

To settle my nerves and dry off my armpits I walked along another lane between thatched cottages that were English in the sense they would look good on any postcards or lids of chocolate boxes. Tidy rose gardens, neatly trimmed hedges, close clipped striped lawns and high-end cars on the gravel driveways which were the only concessions to the 21st century.

Maybe Che Guevara was all those things as described. I don’t know enough about him to make that sort judgement. Maybe the man with the dog and the tin was a learned scholar of Latin American history, guerrilla warfare, Cuba, Fidel Castro, the Congo and Bolivia where Guevarra was executed and had his hands removed for later identification with the fingerprints. Whatever he was and despite his intake of alcohol I have to commend him for not using really bad language.

My nerves were settled and sweat marks dried out by the time I returned to the gate of the house. I opened and closed the big gate using the maxim of ‘work slow work fast’ and work quietly. No terrier. Only ten yards to the front door. I can make it and I did to the handle of the door.

No! My attempt at stealth had failed.

From nowhere, like the owner, the terrier had appeared snarling and snapping at my jeans. The owner appeared from nowhere but unlike her dog was not snapping at my jeans.

“She doesn’t like men. She’s only playing” she said without snapping and snarling at my heels “Did you have a nice walk?”

At least she didn’t question my choice of T shirt like everyone else I had seen in the village that evening.