Oops

Rummaging around today in a heap of papers, hastily tidied away for Christmas, I found this.



It's B's little Christmas present. B is the delightful housemate of the Lovely Son, a sylph-like creature with a famously sweet tooth, a love of cake, and an enviable ability to consume high calorie treats without visible negative effect. Along with some home made shortbread, a copy of this book, which I use regularly, seemed like an encouraging sort of gift for her.

The Lovely Son took the wrapped presents home for her, and she seemed pleased, so I was puzzled to find the book still in my house today.

I spoke to the Lovely Son - could he look discreetly at what I had given B, and tell me just what it was? Turns out I'd wrapped an old Christmas Cooking recipe book that had been in use during the holidays..... If B looks carefully, she might find the odd handwritten note in a margin, or some ingredient stains, and perhaps wonder why the Lovely Son's mother was sending her an obviously second-hand book and taking the trouble to gift-wrap and be-ribbon it.

Well, it was a busy time, with lots of books lying around waiting to be wrapped....But I do feel a bit old and dotty now.....

Wash day, cat style

If a cat could use a scrubbing brush and scouring powder instead of her own tongue on a small kitten, Lottie would have done so with Millie this morning. But, as an alternative to pouncing, pinning down and waiting for squeaky cries for mercy, ferocious washing has to be an improvement. And little Millie, who has been desperate for some cat-to-cat contact for a whole week now since leaving her mother and sister, endured that unkind wash and purred loudly like a mini-motorbike throughout.

Then she managed to wriggle free from her scary new big sister and ran away. Well, Lottie may well have had more sinister motives for scrubbing her as though she were a baking potato.....

There is more to life in this house than kitten-watching and vigilante-ism, I know, but none of it is as entertaining. Normal activity, and time with the rest of the crew, goes on while Millie has her long sleeps in preparation for her next onslaught on us all.

Life is good

Giving the Death Stare

This was 2 days ago; Lottie was still unsure about Millie - was she food? Would anyone notice if she was quietly 'disappeared'? Would the death stare work?

Things have moved on since then, and I am hiding; typing this with the door firmly closed to keep out 2 cats who are sort of playing, although rampaging is a better term, in a way that is sometimes not quite kitten-friendly. The kitten seems undaunted by the occasional over-vigorous swipe, and charges on, ON! up, over, under, through. It's fun to watch, and just a bit alarming too. The furniture won't ever be the same again.

But, suddenly, this will happen:

Don't be fooled

Some rare moments of tranquillity. At other times, a high-speed stripey blur is mostly what you see.

Thinking and waiting

Another milestone today in the slow and sometimes painful journey back to being fully well and whole again. Two years ago, I had almost a year of being off work through sickness, during which I had to face up honestly to the deep damage inflicted on me by my chosen career in child protection, which (though I say it myself) I had successfully pursued with passion and dedication, until my body called time on the long-established pattern of overwork and strain. The ensuing time, in between doctors' appointments and occupational health rituals, was spent dealing with unfathomably deep exhaustion, resting, walking, weeping a great deal, and coming to terms with what felt initially like devastating personal failure. In addition, I knew more than I would ever wish to, and was haunted by, horrific details of baby murders and extreme neglect, and it took a very long time for these memories and emotions to fade to manageable proportions.

But I also took the time for meditation and calmer introspection, reviewing the past 25 years in this most challenging and never-ending field of work, and eventually accepted that I had reached a point where I had done what I could, and should allow myself to stop the self-criticism and blame. The service I left behind, with a very capable new deputy who could, despite her own anxiety, step into my vacant place and make it her own, was testament to my efforts in recent years to establish high and consistent standards that could stand firm without me. The world would not fall apart if I walked away and said it was time to look after myself for a while.

This was followed by a year of official early retirement, certainly not the path I had once envisaged for myself, during which I slowed down dramatically, walked a great deal under the trees of Jesmond Dene, started reading for pleasure again, and began to wonder what could or should fill the time that work had once so dominated. Blogging was surprisingly helpful, although I found that I couldn't write about the really personal and painful stuff, hence the bias towards trivia and domestic detail, and it held a mirror up to what I did with much of my time. And that was: not a lot. Which seemed to suit me nicely. In that not a lot of doing, there was a lot of being - with myself, with my animals, with friends, with my thoughts, and it has been remarkable in its healing effect. So, in 2009, there will be more of that, I think, and new and interesting things will creep in, I'm sure.

But today's milestone? Another healing experience, one that answers a need that goes back to my early childhood: to be surrounded by cats, those amazing, magical, comical, fascinating companions that I have so loved and enjoyed all my life. In response to this need, and to rescue poor old Kevin from the wilder demands to play inflicted on him by a determined young Lottie, who is in desperate need of a livelier playmate, we are to be joined this afternoon by Millie. Not much of a milestone, you might be thinking, but after so many years of my old boys ageing and dying off, the homing of two young cats, full of life and energy and hopefully with many years ahead of them, seems like a statement that the bleak time has passed, and that hope, life, fun and enjoyment lie ahead. 2009 - the year of the kittens - what larks!

Happy New Year, kittens!

I hope you all had the most lovely Christmas and New Year, and that 2009 will be a happy and fulfilling year for you. And me too.

Or maybe...

...just hanging out in a dignified way with the pyjama-clad Adored One might have been enough for some...

Was it fun?

Did you have an exciting and uproarious time this Christmas? Did the wrapping paper hold more thrills than the presents? Did you dash about, wide-eyed with delight, full of fun and mischief? Did you eat little special-treat things that weren't dinner, till you couldn't face dinner? Did you collapse later in the day and sleep soundly till it was time to wake up and do it all over again? If you can answer yes to these questions, then you are probably either a very small child, or Lottie.

Finished? Unfinished? Who cares!

Today I made a mountain of shortbread biscuits (aka cookies!) as little stocking fillers, as this is the only mix I can make that rolls out easily - none of that rolling between sheets of non-stick paper nonsense for me - and holds its shape in the baking. They are a jumble of shapes, some Christmassy, some picked on a whim. The Andrex puppy and Hallowe'en cat are clearly unimpressed by the star and the angel. Suzy and I each ate a cat that had a broken tail, very sad. And deliciously short, and crumbly....

The cake decoration is never going to get finished, I know, as I have so much still to do, and so little time in which to do it, and have lost my way with it anyway through fretting so much about the cake crumbs looking like mouse droppings. So this year we are a having a less-is-more cake, which I suppose is more recession-friendly, although the bumpy and dinted icing will be horribly exposed.

The Lovely Son arrives tomorrow. The fridge is groaning, and his bed is made up, and that's probably enough preparation for now. However, I'm prepared to take bets on how soon after his arrival he remembers people he hasn't brought a present for, and the traditional last-minute panic will set in, with some bad language and frustration about the crowds and the queues in Borders. He can borrow the car; I shall sit on the sofa and listen to carols.

Midwinter

Coming home in the deepening dusk, I found flowers on my doorstep.

It's the winter solstice, a time laden with hope and meaning. Today we need all the light we can get, but tomorrow we can start to say, tentatively, "The days are getting longer...."



from FOUR QUARTETS by T.S. Eliot

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark.
The vacant interstellar spaces......
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

birthday

Lovely presents, lovely friends and family. Dreadful photography.

It may be the new 40, darling, but....

Tomorrow I shall be 60. And I really don't mind greatly. My teens were ruined by Twiggy, and by the time I accepted that I would never be taller than 5 ' 1" or weigh as little as my mother, and my skin had cleared, I found it hard to care much about the advancing years. I thought my 30s were the best years, and later had far more to think and worry about than my age. Anyway, I am always more aware of the progress of time when it is my son's birthday, rather than my own: "He's going to be what? 37?? But he was a cute toddler only moments ago!"

What does get to me though, isn't the accelerating rate of decline, physical and mental, that comes with having lived all those years (a horrifying prospect when we were 16 and thought our friends' older sisters were over the hill at 21), but the paraphenalia that comes with the decline; the hair colourants, the upholsterery where once was lingerie, the spectacles. Ah yes, the spectacles. As if they weren't bad enough in themselves, the trendy ones being so expensive and too numerous to choose from, why, in this high-tech age, are they still so uncomfortable and able to make an unpleasant notch across the bridge of one's nose? Why does one lens keep popping out, to be found in the car, in the sofa, and (months ago, probably never to be found unless it starts a major grass fire) in Sydney Botanic Gardens? Where are all my specs, anyway? I must have eight pairs, mostly old and from supermarkets, but all I can find are the two pairs with a missing lens each, (yes, I know what you're thinking, and I thought of it too, but have you tried wearing two pairs of reading glasses at once?) and the ones that catch my hair, and that I fear will in time create a little bald spot at my temple. Reading glasses alopecia.

Suzy came up for a cup of tea this afternoon, in order, she said, to have a last look at me before I turn 60. I'm not sure what she will expect to see tomorrow; I hope she doesn't know something unpleasant that I don't.

A bloodless coup

It didn't take her long, did it. This is the trophy chair, and Kevin was on it first, fast asleep. They may look like they're snuggling, but I suspect he's just being squashed.

At home

and feeling quite comfortable and relaxed, thank you.

It's Lottie!

Harry died in September. Missed terribly, he seemed impossible to replace, but Kevin moped, I moped, and the dog, seemingly impervious to the loss of a rival, certainly missed all the leftover cat dinners that a poorly cat donated. The household felt, and was, miserable and dull. Gradually it became time to look for a new companion through the local cat rescue websites. And suddenly, there she was.

The rescue centre's photo (that I posted here on the 11th Dec.) was all I had to go on before she came to me, with a brief description of her as apricot and tabby, but when she arrived, semi-hysterical and covered in her own poo after a frightening car journey, I saw that to look at she could have been Harry's little sister. She isn't exactly a Harry clone, and has a very different personality, but the physical similarities are remarkable and strangely comforting.

She no longer stinks to the heavens, which is a relief, given her extreme friendliness. She was in the rescue centre's foster home for a month, losing her emaciation, and has a great deal of energy to run off - she does this by charging up and down the stairs at high speed. Her need to play is very obvious. She has stalked the dog, who ignored her, being more interested in her toys, especially that whirring little chicken one that is crying out to be terrier-torn to shreds. She has tried everything to engage Kevin, all to no avail, even when she boxed his ears. All her bouncing, stalking, and throwing herself in front of him leaves him fairly unmoved - watching them, I felt it was like seeing an extremely old man regarding a lively toddler, mildly interested but firmly uninclined to join in the play. Her gleaming white paws are currently soot-coloured from her attempts to look up the chimney, and her curiosity is boundless.

Several names have been tried, and Lottie seems to be the one that gets the most enthusiastic response from her. She is utterly delightful, and I suspect that she may be younger than the guessed-at 18 months, and that an ancient cat and a middle-aged dog aren't going to be the most lively companions for her.

(See where this is leading? In January, the foster carer has a plump grey mackerel tabby kitten ready to rehome.....)

Meanwhile, she is just what was needed here, and as my mother used to say, I can feel my heart dropping back into its right place.

It's me, that's who!

I'm a rescued cat, and underneath all this fur I am very thin, despite 4 weeks of feeding up in an animal shelter. But I'm young (18 months) and full of life, curiosity and energy, and I think I've found a lovely new home with a doting owner who is eating out of my paw already, 2 hours after my arrival . I don't know what my name will be yet, but sweetiepie and darling and lovely girl seem to be used rather a lot. I think she's going to be a pushover.

I'm not keen on being picked up much yet, but as I had an embarrassing accident in the travel box on my way here, and had to be cleaned up on arrival, the doting human isn't too bothered. She says she can wait a while before I settle down on her knee. The dopey dog isn't a challenge, although she steals my toys, and the old ginger creature upstairs will be fine in a day or two. We exchanged courtesy hisses, but then he went back to sleep; I can see I will have to make my own fun round here .

Who is this?

You will have to wait and see, just as I must.

Wet snow, suffering dog

Looks nice, but the dog hates it, and tries to drag Sandra back home. If your tummy was only 4 inches off the slushy ground and your thermal tartan coat was already wet, you'd have views on this matter too, perhaps.

It's all a bit of a shock

All day frost in the city. Winter is here at last.