You might not need to know about the first or the last of those—we’ll see—but you definitely need to know about the middle one, and it would feel strange to tell you about that without mentioning the day song, because we Lamberts for a long time viewed them very much as a pair.
So, Champ has a day song and a night song. His day song was adapted—by Mum, who else?—from the song “You Are My Sunshine.” Mum doesn’t know how to write tunes, so she takes famous songs, changes the words, and then calls them “her” songs, as if she’s written them.
As I made my slow and full-of-dread way downstairs on the Day of the Policeman, I heard Mum whisper to Champy that she was sorry she was too upset to sing him his day song. The last line was the problem, she explained, and she didn’t want to start and thennot be able to finish. Nor did she feel together enough to come up with a new last line.
As I heard her say those words, I made a vow to myself: “When this battle of ours against the Gaveys and Cambridgeshire Police is won—which it will be, by me, with or without help—Mum will once again be able to sing Champy’s day song to him all the way to the end without crying. That will be my measure of victory. When she can do that again, that’s when I’ll know everything’s okay.”
I was naive to imagine that singing the song happily would be possible for Mum ever again, even after the most resounding triumph over our enemies. We cannot always forget miseries and traumas of the past, unfortunately.
Here’s how Champ’s day song goes:
You are my Champy,
my only Champy.
You make me happy
when skies are gray.
You’ll never know, Champ,
how much I love you.
Please don’t take my Champy away.
The thing is, if you’ve lived for nearly nine years with the mild anxiety that someone might report your first occasionally bitey (though never with malicious intent) dog to the relevant authorities, leading to him being taken away and possibly worse, and then it actually happens to your second—a policeman comes to the door and threatens him, using lies and ominous hints as weapons—thenyou’re unlikely ever again to be able to sing the words “Please don’t take my Champy away” without bursting into tears. So far, Mum hasn’t managed it.
I used to be jealous of Champ’s sunshine song. For a while, I had a bit of an obsession with picking holes in it. I’d tell myself that it didn’t make sense and that the lyrics were stupid, that they only worked if the song was being sung about a person who could remove themselves from a relationship with the singer if they wanted to. Champ was never going to take himself away from Mum. Dogs never want to do that, if their owners love them—apart from briefly, maybe to the other side of the room or to the garden. But they always come back. And even if the song is being sung about a person, the lyrics are confusing. One minute the “you” character is being told theyaresomething; then the next minute they’re being begged not to take away that same something, as if it’s a different object. Yes, the meaning is clear, but it’s still clumsy.
I’ll admit, it’s also true that I’d never have thought to pick holes in a harmless song if I hadn’t been jealous—which I’m absolutely not anymore, I’m pleased to report. My envy was extinguished in about two seconds flat when I remembered Mum’s and my trip to Abbots Langley to learn how to meditate, and that Mum chose my name as her star word—just mine, not as one of many or alongside the rest of the family’s. I choseRickyand she chose me. (I don’t love Ricky more than Mum, Dad, or Tobes, by the way. I do almost worship him, however.)
Champ’s night song was supposed to be his bedtime song, but he’s never accepted that he has a bedtime. Even when he’s tired, he’ll sit in the lounge with Mum and Dad and try to watch TV untilhe gets bored and starts chewing a rug tassel, or the leg of a chair, or a corner of a cushion. Eventually he falls asleep, stretched out and belly up, and stays like that until Mum and Dad go to bed. He’ll then follow them upstairs and do his best to sleep balanced across Mum for the rest of the night. That’s why Mum started calling what was originally his bedtime song his “night song” instead, because it would have taken her too long to say, “Taking Champ Out for a Wee in the Middle of the Night Song.”
This is Champ’s night song, and when you see the lyrics you’ll wonder, if you’re sane and sensible, how on earth it managed to cause so much controversy. You need to sing it to the tune of “Land of Hope and Glory” by Arthur Christopher Benson and Edward Elgar:
Land of cute and furry—
Champy, you’re the best.
You’re barky, not purry!
You pass every test!
Louder still and louder
Does thy snoring get.
God who made thee cuddly
Make thee cuddlier yet!
God who made thee cuddly
Make thee cuddlier yet!
I’ve noticed that I said something inaccurate and I have to correct it, because Lamberts aren’t liars: Champ’s night song didn’t “cause” any controversy. Every single bit of the trouble was created not bythe song but by evil people. Nothing went into Mum’s version of it apart from her love for Champy. It wasn’t about England. It wasn’t about a country. It was about a dog, and anyone who couldn’t see that was and is a fool who cares about absolute nonsense more than they care about saving the life of an innocent Welsh terrier.
I seem to have got myself riled up, so I’m going to save the story of Auntie Vicky and the Facebook business for another time. I wouldn’t enjoy telling it in my present mood.
