Latest news with #BeckyBarnicoat
Business Mayor
26-04-2025
- General
- Business Mayor
The dos and don'ts of good petiquette: four cardinal rules for dog owners
A cross the hours of the day and the seasons of the year, Naseby Park is the place we return to, my dog and I. Surrounded by red sandstone tenements in Glasgow's West End, and roughly the size of a football pitch, this is where we first walked our four-year-old labrador Brèagha (Scots Gaelic for beautiful and she is, uncommonly so, thanks for asking). All I know about the etiquette of dog walking has been gleaned from the humans and animals who have paced its perimeter with us, and these are cardinal rules I have learned … Illustration: Becky Barnicoat/The Guardian Pick. Up. Poop The sine qua non of the dog walkers' code. Nobody wants to discover an abandoned turd, typically on the underside of one's shoe. Poop leavers give the rest of us dog owners a bad name. I've had animated debates with fellow walkers about whether it is ever legitimate to leave a turd. In deep undergrowth on a country walk? Beneath a jaggy bush, when retrieving it will probably require reconstructive surgery? I'm zero tolerance about poop myself, to the extent that I will pick up an unknown dog's mess if I have a spare poo bag on me. Try to see your dog as others see them Illustration: Becky Barnicoat/The Guardian Not everyone will greet your animal with blanket delight. 'You do project your love for your dog on to the general public and that is a mistake,' acknowledges Tim, owner of Brèagha's friend Georgie, a tiny border terrier. To me Brèagha's frantic bark is a declaration of pure joy, having recently evacuated her bowels and discovered a half-eaten kebab by the bins. To a stranger, however, it could be a threat to rip their face off. A responsible dog owner must become an expert interpreter of body language and a keen risk assessor – I can precisely calculate recall time divided by fabric contact as the dog scampers through a mucky puddle and towards that woman in the pristine camel coat. Illustration: Becky Barnicoat/The Guardian Allow a good sniff There is nothing gladder than two dogs spinning nose to tail in a virtuous circle of bum-sniffing. But among primmer owners, there can be an underlying anxiety that being relaxed about this means you're up for everyone sniffing everyone's bottoms, which of course is neither practical nor desirable. Maz, owner of heart-throb labrador Otis, and I agree, we've become more laissez-faire as we've gained experience – both of our own dogs and how other dogs and humans respond to them. 'Of course dogs will snap and snarl,' she says. 'It's how they communicate. The majority of difficulties we've encountered have been with owners, not dogs, who usually know how to handle themselves, and will give dogs who are aggressive or unfriendly a wide berth.' Whenever Otis makes an apologetic attempt to hump Brèagha, for example, he gets short shrift. It's all about the recall Plenty of those I chat to are happy for a dog to be off the lead 'so long as they come back when called'. Indeed, my cat-partial friend Lorna expresses her preference for this over acres of extendable lead lurking in the grass. Given Brèagha's genetic predisposition to greed, she is usually back at my side like a bullet for a biscuit. Illustration: Becky Barnicoat/The Guardian Maz is more militant. She believes some dog owners project their own nerves about control on to their dogs and struggle to keep them on the lead rather than learning how to manage them off. Maz also notes a certain demographic of male who likes to tell a woman how to walk her dog. 'There's an assumption that women don't know how to control a bigger dog. Men are constantly telling me Otis would be easier to control without his knackers. Which I think says more about them. But one word and he is at my side.'
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cry When the Baby Cries by Becky Barnicoat review – the black and white truth about motherhood
It's a mark of the brilliance of Becky Barnicoat's Cry When the Baby Cries that it worked for me, testing my patience only occasionally: as I've been known to tell people, while I like children a lot, I could never eat a whole one. I have a hunch that her book's bracingly truthful tone will indeed make new (and new-ish) mothers feel very seen, just as some of the quotes on its jacket promise: no subject is for her off limits, from leaking breasts to dubious stains. But the more important thing by far is that it's very funny and even sardonic. At her best, Barnicoat reminds me of Claire Bretécher (1940-2020), the great French cartoonist and one of the geniuses of the form. This is a very analogue book and all the better and more uplifting for it. Mothers, log off! When I was growing up, my mother hung one of Brétécher's strips on the kitchen wall. In it, a woman with a baby is visited by a friend who drones on obliviously about her marvellous life. In the last frame, the friend has gone, and the woman, who now looks vaguely despairing, is holding her baby over the bin. (Honestly, I'm not very traumatised.) In Cry When the Baby Cries, Barnicoat is often on similar territory, her attention as much on the isolation that comes with having a baby as on the practicalities (though she's good on the buggies and bottles, too). She's lucky: she's in love with her tiny son, who arrives thanks to IVF. But she's lonely as well, and scratchy with exhaustion. My favourite page in the book is the one in which she turns the newborn days into modern art. It's perfect! Why is he crying? is after Edvard Munch. Why am I crying? is after Picasso. Night Feeds is after Francis Bacon. Need … to … Sleep … is after Bridget Riley. Barnicoat mixes it up, avoiding relentlessness (a constant danger, I fear, with baby books) by varying the pace with all kinds of pastiches and games, checklists and charts. She sends herself up wildly, and without vanity, her hairy legs and newfound animal instincts bringing to mind Quentin Blake's illustrations for one of Roald Dahl's darker books. However, if you're older than her, as I am, the most interesting – and worrying – things she has to say all connect to social media. If WhatsApps groups can be a blessing for new mothers, they're also a curse; motherhood as it's depicted on Instagram is just another standard of female perfection that can never be achieved by any regular mortal. When she draws herself staggering from the house with her baby kit like a dromedary about to cross the Sahara, I thought back to the birth of one of my younger sisters: however fed up or tired my mother was, at least she wasn't under constant pressure to compare herself to beautiful strangers; to buy endless stuff that she couldn't really afford, and didn't really need. All of which makes Barnicoat's decision to draw in black and white beautifully apposite for me. This is a very analogue book, somehow, and all the better and more uplifting for it. Mothers, log off! Here's the antidote to all that striving; here is the muddle that will set your minds at rest, even if it won't actually rock your baby to sleep. • Cry When the Baby Cries by Becky Barnicoat is published by Jonathan Cape (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
The Guardian
10-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Cry When the Baby Cries by Becky Barnicoat review – the black and white truth about motherhood
It's a mark of the brilliance of Becky Barnicoat's Cry When the Baby Cries that it worked for me, testing my patience only occasionally: as I've been known to tell people, while I like children a lot, I could never eat a whole one. I have a hunch that her book's bracingly truthful tone will indeed make new (and new-ish) mothers feel very seen, just as some of the quotes on its jacket promise: no subject is for her off limits, from leaking breasts to dubious stains. But the more important thing by far is that it's very funny and even sardonic. At her best, Barnicoat reminds me of Claire Bretécher (1940-2020), the great French cartoonist and one of the geniuses of the form. When I was growing up, my mother hung one of Brétécher's strips on the kitchen wall. In it, a woman with a baby is visited by a friend who drones on obliviously about her marvellous life. In the last frame, the friend has gone, and the woman, who now looks vaguely despairing, is holding her baby over the bin. (Honestly, I'm not very traumatised.) In Cry When the Baby Cries, Barnicoat is often on similar territory, her attention as much on the isolation that comes with having a baby as on the practicalities (though she's good on the buggies and bottles, too). She's lucky: she's in love with her tiny son, who arrives thanks to IVF. But she's lonely as well, and scratchy with exhaustion. My favourite page in the book is the one in which she turns the newborn days into modern art. It's perfect! Why is he crying? is after Edvard Munch. Why am I crying? is after Picasso. Night Feeds is after Francis Bacon. Need … to … Sleep … is after Bridget Riley. Barnicoat mixes it up, avoiding relentlessness (a constant danger, I fear, with baby books) by varying the pace with all kinds of pastiches and games, checklists and charts. She sends herself up wildly, and without vanity, her hairy legs and newfound animal instincts bringing to mind Quentin Blake's illustrations for one of Roald Dahl's darker books. However, if you're older than her, as I am, the most interesting – and worrying – things she has to say all connect to social media. If WhatsApps groups can be a blessing for new mothers, they're also a curse; motherhood as it's depicted on Instagram is just another standard of female perfection that can never be achieved by any regular mortal. When she draws herself staggering from the house with her baby kit like a dromedary about to cross the Sahara, I thought back to the birth of one of my younger sisters: however fed up or tired my mother was, at least she wasn't under constant pressure to compare herself to beautiful strangers; to buy endless stuff that she couldn't really afford, and didn't really need. All of which makes Barnicoat's decision to draw in black and white beautifully apposite for me. This is a very analogue book, somehow, and all the better and more uplifting for it. Mothers, log off! Here's the antidote to all that striving; here is the muddle that will set your minds at rest, even if it won't actually rock your baby to sleep. Cry When the Baby Cries by Becky Barnicoat is published by Jonathan Cape (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
The Guardian
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Blood, sweat, tears and body shaming: a cartoonist's guide to becoming a mother
• This is an edited extract from Cry When the Baby Cries by Becky Barnicoat, published by Jonathan Cape on 13 March at £25. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at
