TOM UTLEY: My pooch Minnie, her lost dog tag and proof that most people really are kind 

My heart rather sank when a letter arrived at our home this week, addressed in capital letters to ‘MINNIE THE DOG’.

It’s an occupational hazard of my trade as a columnist that, from time to time, I receive anonymous abuse and even the occasional death threat through the post at the Mail’s head office in Kensington.

Female colleagues, I should say, suffer much worse.

Had one of my unhinged tormentors tracked me down to my home address? If so, why had he or she addressed this communication to the family dog?

My heart rather sank when a letter arrived at our home this week, addressed in capital letters to ‘MINNIE THE DOG’ [File photo]

It was no mystery how the sender came to know her name, since I’ve often mentioned it in print — rather too often, perhaps, for the liking of those who don’t share my soppy devotion to our four-footed friends.

Was somebody now trying to get at me through Minnie, perhaps with a threat to harm or kidnap her? (Dognapping, it appears, has become a boom industry during the pandemic, since demand for canine companionship has sent prices through the roof.)

Raising my suspicions further, there was something about the writing on the envelope that reminded me of the letters I used to receive, week after week, from a reader who had a particular use for my columns and liked to send me the malodorous proof through the post.

Trepidation

Somehow he had got it into his head that because I was not only baptised a Roman Catholic but was privately educated, I must be part of a paedophile conspiracy to overthrow the Monarchy and impose a Vatican dictatorship on decent, God-fearing Protestants.

He had also formed the impression, God knows why, that I was viscerally opposed to grammar schools — quite the opposite of the truth, as it happens, since I’ve campaigned for 40 years to expand selective education in the state sector.

I noticed, too, that this week’s envelope contained something round and hard. Had my correspondent sent me a revolting new gift? If so, what?

It was with some trepidation, therefore, that I opened the letter, preparing to hold my nose. What I found inside put my suspicions to shame.

Somewhat unnervingly, my own road runs slap bang through the middle of the small area where ¿surge testing¿ for the variant is to be conducted over the coming ten days. Surge testing is seen above in London

Somewhat unnervingly, my own road runs slap bang through the middle of the small area where ‘surge testing’ for the variant is to be conducted over the coming ten days. Surge testing is seen above in London

Yes, the card it contained was anonymous, giving no return address or any other clue to the identity of the sender. So I have no means of conveying my thanks — unless my correspondent happens to be a reader of this column.

But far from a threat to burn my house down, or eviscerate Minnie, the only message written inside was as follows: ‘Hi, Found this in Dulwich Park. Thought we’d return it.’

Sellotaped to it was the brass dog tag that had somehow come away from Minnie’s collar five or six weeks ago. Engraved on one side of it is her name, on the other our address.

How kind people can be. All right, this was only a little thing. But here was somebody who had seen something glinting in the grass in the park, picked it up and found that it was only a worthless dog tag.

But instead of just chucking it back into the grass or the nearest bin, he or she had considered, rightly, that it must be of some value to Minnie’s owner.

My anonymous benefactor had then gone to the trouble of taking it home, taping it to a card, addressing an envelope, affixing a stamp (OK, a second-class stamp — but that’s still 66p, or more than 13/2 in old money, hardly to be sneezed at) and making a trek to a letter box.

All this for a complete stranger, with no thought of a reward or even a simple thank you.

He or she wasn’t to know that as soon as we’d noticed that the tag was missing, we scoured the garden and turned the house upside down hunting for it, before giving up and ordering a new one over the internet.

Anyway, now we have a spare brass tag for the next time Minnie manages to detach our contact details from her collar. I couldn’t be more delighted.

I’ll say it again: how kind people can be. Indeed, I’ll amend that and say from my experience over the past year: how kind most people are.

Ever since the first lockdown, we’ve seen it again and again in my neighbourhood, as in so many others throughout the country.

Response

No sooner had the Government put us all under house arrest than a WhatsApp group sprang up in our road, inviting offers of help with shopping and much else besides to anyone who needed it.

The response has been extraordinary, with one neighbour after another volunteering to play the Good Samaritan.

A handful of the most recent examples, since our road became an ice-rink in the snow: ‘If anyone needs urgent groceries and doesn’t want to go out, give me a shout. Working from home today and happy to get my walking boots on for a milk/tea bags run if needed.’

‘Does anyone have a fresh red chilli we could steal? Forgot in shop.’ Four minutes later, from another neighbour: ‘We do! Collect any time, or we can deliver.’ ‘Anyone want some kid’s snow boots (see photo). Size 3. Free?’

This past week, the offers of help have redoubled, after our obscure South-East London suburb of West Norwood — ‘West Nowhere’, an uppity friend calls it, since we’re very much on the wrong side of the tracks from swanky Dulwich — hit the headlines on one of the very rare occasions since it first claimed public attention in the middle of the 19th century.

That was in 1865 when Mrs Beeton, of cookery book fame, was buried in the cemetery at the bottom of our hill, after dying a month short of her 30th birthday, poor thing. (Hadn’t you, like me, always imagined her as a formidably mature Victorian matron?)

Our new claim to fame is that one of the country’s first 20 confirmed cases of the South African variant of Covid-19 has been identified here. 

Somewhat unnervingly, my own road runs slap bang through the middle of the small area where ‘surge testing’ for the variant is to be conducted over the coming ten days.

Enough to say that if you relied on the likes of Twitter and Facebook for your view of humanity — those bubbling cauldrons of anonymous bile and bigotry — you could be forgiven for running away with the impression that our fellow beings are a bunch of sneering nutters, conspiracy theorists and other maniacs who hate each other.

Freedom

Look, on the other hand, at the way most people have actually behaved towards each other in the horribly trying circumstances of the past year, and you’ll come away with a very different view.

My own opinion, for what it’s worth, is that most of us have been too ready to submit to the multiple assaults on our freedom, imposed by a Government terrified of being blamed for every Covid death. But then I am as guilty on that score as anyone else.

There is enough of the residual, fatalist Roman Catholic in me to accept that I’m going to die one day — preferably later, rather than sooner, but in the great scheme of things, it doesn’t much matter when.

Indeed, if I had only myself to consider, I would cheerfully take the small risk of dying from this horrible disease, if I could only see my grandchildren and friends and go back to my beloved pub once again, in whatever time is left to me.

So, no, it’s not because of the danger to myself that I obey the rules — in spirit, if not always in practice. Like the great majority of us, I suspect, I’m kept in line only by the fear of harming others.

So let me end with a plea to the Government: please ditch those advertisements, instructing us to look into the eyes of NHS staff and Covid sufferers and tell them we’re doing our best.

This moral blackmail is as unnecessary as it’s insulting — because most people, like my selfless neighbours and my mystery friend in the park, are just jolly nice.

Enough to say that if you relied on the likes of Twitter and Facebook for your view of humanity ¿ those bubbling cauldrons of anonymous bile and bigotry ¿ you could be forgiven for running away with the impression that our fellow beings are a bunch of sneering nutters, conspiracy theorists and other maniacs who hate each other

Enough to say that if you relied on the likes of Twitter and Facebook for your view of humanity — those bubbling cauldrons of anonymous bile and bigotry — you could be forgiven for running away with the impression that our fellow beings are a bunch of sneering nutters, conspiracy theorists and other maniacs who hate each other