Enemy sighting

We were having a sedate little walk, taking photos of the crocuses and daffodils to encourage the poor souls still suffering perpetual winter in Toronto, and just minding our own business, when the dog spotted her arch-enemy, our grumpy postman, and took off in hot pursuit. Sadly, he failed to notice.

Zzzzzzzzzz.................

Once upon a time, I had a life. And now I have shredding. It's just about the dullest, most boring thing to do if all you have is a small, noisy domestic shredder, instead of the big fat industrial one we used at work, which could tidy your desk for you in a flash if you were feeling reckless and devil-may-care.

What you see here, underneath My Little Helper, is a second shredder, the first one having burned out, thanks to the shameful amount of work it has had to do in the last couple of days. And why? Because I have finally squared up to the boxes in the attic, and sorted the tattered, yellowing paper evidence of that former life: the phone bills, the bank statements, the payslips, the insurance documents (so many!) and the work diaries. Three large plastic sacks have been filled so far, with more and more paper being brought downstairs in the blue basket, and there seems to be an endless supply remaining. We may need shredder number 3 at this rate. My Little Helper finds it all quite fascinating, but then she can't read or count very well, so she won't see that I had a rather irresponsible overdraft in those days, or, that unlike nowadays, my main expenditure wasn't cat-related.

Some fascinating oddments have turned up in amongst the dreary dross: a hastily scribbled letter from my mother, simply dated "Monday" and written in a terse style, unusual for her, suggesting that she could have managed emails or even texting, had she not been so resolutely technophobic: "PS My pen (same as one I gave you) refused to write. Shop sent it back twice, now at last it writes. Firm says they adjusted the ink flow, shop says it's a new one." I could almost hear her tone of derision.... I wonder which pen it was; she and I shared a love of fountain pens, and each of us had several. It was good to see her bold distinctive handwriting again.

And another letter, many years old, a rather unconvincing apology from the Lovely Son for some offence, long-forgotten; he very rarely wrote except to say sorry or to ask for something, and this letter serves both functions - "sorry I didn't...and could you send me..."

And a sign, written by a delightful young lodger and waved at me from an upstairs window when she was supposed to be revising for her finals: "I'm bord" (sic).

Tomorrow I shall set to on the large box that came with me when I moved offices and that never quite made it to the new office. I bet I'll be bord in no time.

Feet, with kitten attached

15 weeks already....where does the time go?

Feet

Don't mess with your elders and betters

If that kitten pounces on my tail just once more......

What?

Uneventful?

Nothing much happening here. The dog has been under the weather (rain, snow, sleet, sun, snow....), moping and smelling sour, hunched and yelpy to touch, but before I could decide that she should see the vet, she picked up again and is her bouncy little self, especially in her new double-thickness reversible coat that her devoted Sandra knitted. No more cat food leftovers for her though.

The young cats continue to demand and devour vast quantities of the more costly varieties of pet-grade junk meat and fish that the industry produces; reading reviews on the feeding of animals is the most confusing and anxiety-producing activity I know. They also sleep a great deal, heaped up together like hamsters, charging their batteries for episodes of hyperactive hooliganism, then eat and sleep some more. And then there are the litter boxes.....My household budget has shifted to cat litter and cat food; never mind me, I'll just live on lentils.

Old Kevin is almost affectionately great-uncle-ish with Millie; he wasn't suited to a single-cat life, and is doing well. And Millie?.... sigh....she has learned to jump onto the worktops. I fish her out of sinks, off the stove (first time sitting decoratively behind pans simmering on gas burners), scrambling into the fridge, wrecking the houseplants, investigating and helping wherever she ventures, and leaving debris and footprints everywhere. She has escaped into the street twice despite the extreme caution of visitors coming and going, once being locked out for over an hour in the cold and dark, but dashed indoors when I came out and called for her, my voice shaky with panic. Microchipping soon! Except that there are suggestions of microchip-induced lesions in cats with cancer...life was simpler in the days when you fed your cat pink stinky fishy Kit-e-Kat, hardly ever went to a vet, and thought that 10 was a ripe old age for your beloved, and unworrying, moggie. I know I'm giving my age away.

I have a new form of Repetitive Strain Injury: MHS. Mouse Hurler's Shoulder, acquired by endless games of throwing small toy mice up the stairs for two exciteable youngsters to retrieve/beat up/hide under furniture.

Today, as the snow falls and actually accumulates, I am making ice cream. Not an obvious choice for the time of year, but when a yearning for a good grown up coffee ice cream takes you, you gotta listen. Come and visit; thaw out, throw a mouse or two, have a bowl of ice cream, and be careful that a small grey-striped shadow doesn't slink out into the great outdoors as you leave.

Fun!

Blogiversary

What a terrible word. I'm sure I didn't make it up. but absorbed it unconsciously from other blogs.

Anyway, it's not even true: yesterday was the 1st birthday of this benighted blog, so I suppose today is Sorryiforgotiversary.

What do you do on a blog's birthday then? Make some resolutions? (I will not split infinitives so often? I will stop obsessing about my cats? I will only post photos that are properly focused?) But, for someone so fond of a sudden enthusiasm that can drop off the radar without a moment's notice, keeping a blog going for a whole year seems like a major achievement to me. If I wasn't being virtuous (ie fat and determined not to buy any badly-needed new clothes till I'd dropped a dress size) I would make a celebratory cake, take a blurry photo of it, maybe with the cats, and post it here. And boldly go, for another year, perhaps....

C words

This was fun to do, and not so mind-blanking as some memes, which demand that you remember more than one interesting fact about yourself. As allocated by mountainear, I must:

• Write about ten things I love that begin with a given letter - in my case C
• Post the list on this blog
• When people comment on my list, I must assign them a new letter, and so the game will continue.

Easy, I thought, grateful that I didn't get Z, and immediately threw together a long list, whittled it rapidly down to 12, and now, having removed cheese and cashew nuts, here are the chosen 10:

• Children. Especially those under the age of 8, after which they know more than you. And especially under-8s with imagination and strong opinions; they leave me speechless with admiration. Or sometimes just speechless.
  

• Cats come such a close second to children it's almost embarrassing. Tabbies with attitude, fluffy ones with pantaloons and a mincing high-heeled walk - aaah, the very meaning of life-affirming!

• Cake. Both baking and devouring. Especially good old-fashioned plain cakes such as madeira or Victoria sponge, despite both transferring with ease to hip and thigh.

• Chiropractic. Once I discovered this, and got over how weird and assaulting it can feel, my life and my back changed dramatically for the better.

• Carrots. In almost any form, but especially cooked in a tightly sealed pan with only a little butter...... In a Hate List, I would have Carrot Root Fly.

• Cryptic crosswords. Though not as much as when my mother, astonishingly good despite English not being her first language, was still here to ring up late on a Sunday to get through that last difficult corner. "What have you got for 19 down? Oh....of course!"
  

• Camera (digital) and...

• Computer. Both in daily use, although I remain the despair of the Lovely Son for getting worse with practice.

• Candlelight. Not an option at home with the Wild Child while she remains a high speed omni-investigative kitten, but one of the reasons that Amsterdam is such a magical place at dusk, despite always sending you home with candlewax somewhere on your clothing.

• Cashpoints. I am old enough to remember the days when banks intimidated customers by being grand, formal, miles apart, and only opening at the most unreasonable times. Now we can despair about our bank balances while standing in the public thoroughfare.
  

So, if you want a letter and a crack at this, feel free to comment!

Gaslight and ghastliness

Since yesterday's post, I have been thinking a great deal about that childhood introduction to gaslight. My sister and I had gone to stay with my father's stepmother in a small Cumbrian village. This was sometime in the mid-1950s, but could have been a century earlier, if you ignored the electric light, which in any case did not extend to the row of three outside toilets, each with a diamond cut out of the wooden door to let light in. (Three toilets may seem excessive, but there had been a working bakery attached to the house, with staff requirements to be met. My modern sensibilities refuse to dwell on the lack of handwashing facilities,)

The local accent was so unfamiliar that we barely understood a word that was said to us, and the village seemed to be populated entirely by old men in caps, who stared openly at us, and might occasionally offer a peppermint drop from a paper bag. We felt, and were, completely alien.

We shared a large feather bed with a satin eiderdown, and the whole thing was so high that once in our pyjamas we had to take running jumps at it from the bedroom door, often failing to vault in far enough, and slithering hilariously down to the floor again. That, and watching the trains that ran past the long garden, was the most amusement we had, as I recall. Grandma was a gruff, very large woman who wheezed, walking with great difficulty and two sticks, and perhaps if we had seen her more often, and got used to her, we wouldn't have found her quite so daunting. Or, if I'm honest, rather frightening. Poor Grandma; she would no doubt have been shocked to think of two small girls being scared of her, but we were perpetually on our best behaviour, and were probably seen as two rather dull children, with little life in us.

One evening I was taken over the road with her and introduced to Grandma's neighbours. With the distortion of time and more than a tinge of horror, my memory of that visit was of a dark cavernous kitchen, lit by one flaring gas lamp on the wall, and a group of people sitting round the table, who smiled and nodded at us in the shadowy gloom. One of the women was plucking a goose, which lay limply across her knee, the feathers falling into a zinc bathtub beside her. The whole scene had an intense bad-dreamlike atmosphere, and could have been lifted from a 19th century engraving of domestic life, from one of Dickens' less cheerful scenes.

The next time the possibility of a visit to Grandma was raised, my sister and my father went together, and I was, most mysteriously, permitted to stay at home with my mother and the baby. The relief that this decision brought me remains as vivid in my memory as that first visit to a strange and incomprehensible world. Years later, visiting again, I found that it had lost some of its terrors, aided by the kindness of an aunt, now grown up and able to see that a paintbox and colouring book might occupy a child more happily than being marched round the village for inspection.

A few years ago, I drove past Grandma's old house, long sold up to strangers, and was struck again by its grimness, set on a featureless main street in a village blasted by wind, rain and economic depression. I recaptured instantly some of the feelings of the child I had been on my first visit, in knitted cardigan and ankle socks, who had endured what was supposed to be a happy holiday, instead accumulating memories that my mother would never have intended for me as she packed our little suitcase and sent us forth to the bosom of my father's family.

And peppermint drops? No, thank you (said very politely).....

Green, dismal and depressing

Well, I recycle, I freecycle, I compost, I hardly ever waste food, I have stopped buying clothes that I won't wear, I walk rather than drive, and I'm so saintly and earnest about it all that I revolt even myself (and many others when they hear that I save cat hair for birds-nest material in Spring), but the one thing that is unbearable is having to change to energy-saving lightbulbs.

My home, always cosily-lit despite varying stages of dilapidation and disorder, is gradually acquiring a bleak, chilly, unwelcoming and, well, unhomely look as these new monsters take over. Changing lampshades doesn't work that well, telling myself that we'll all get used to them doesn't help that much, and rearranging furniture so that some of the cold, stingy, mean-spirited light actually reaches me when I'm reading doesn't encourage settling down on a winter's evening with a good book. A 100-watt-equivalent went up in the hall today, and had to be removed once it had lumbered up to full strength, because the hall, already too pinched and narrow, was not improved by being lit like a shed. A lower-watt bulb on the first landing is grimly reminiscent of the gaslight which I saw once as a child, in my Cumbrian grandma's neighbours' house, and which impressed me enormously and lastingly as both ghastly and frightening.

I haven't read details of all the health concerns about these lightbulbs that are beginning to emerge; that would be altogether too depressing. The Lovely Son calls them Suicide Bulbs, and on dark, damp afternoons such as today's, I can wholeheartedly agree.

Knotty problem

Lottie is surprisingly un-prone to having tangled or matted fur, but recently she has had a series of small tight knots of fur on her chest, which are tricky and uncomfortable to have combed out.

During the night I discovered their origin. I woke to hear very loud purring from the kitten, accompanied by equally loud sucky-slurpy noises, as she nuzzled into her big sister's bosom. Poor patient Lottie - the demands of a kitten can be tiresome and rather over-optimistic, but she endures it all. Amusing and often delightful though Millie is at present, I think we will both be relieved when this little tot grows up into a sedate and dignified cat.

Tired out

A gentle reminder

Ignoring the hugely inaccurate and gloomy weather forecast, I've done a lot of walking today. And that means a lot of thinking too, as I never remember to take my little radio or ipod - somehow it seems more than enough having to check that I have my keys, dog bags, house keys of whoever's cat I'm feeding, gloves, the right shoes (or just shoes, as in not my slippers), some tissues, sometimes an apple, and, of course, the dog. Today we had a brisk walk over to Lynn's house, fed and fussed over her lovely tabby, and came home again. The birdsong is developing a distinctly different tone, almost Springlike, and Jesmond Dene is about to have a massive facelift to improve the woodland, increase its diversity, and improve the sightlines on the paths, to help us all feel safer. That will be good, as the dog is not the kind of beast one automatically feels safer with, more the type who runs yelping dramatically in the opposite direction from any perceived threat.

Then pausing only to change my shoes, I told the team the usual whopper, "Stay there, I won't be long", and walked into town. I loathe going into town, and only do it when I have no alternative. I collected the specs that have had their 3rd set of lenses put in (the 1st lot kept popping out, and the 2nd lot seemed to have been made to someone else's prescription), had a little mooch about John Lewis, totally forgetting that I'd intended to have a look at the vacuum cleaners, and went off to the bus station office to ..... wait for it!..... hand in my application for a bus pass. A pensioner's bus pass. After a jolly conversation with the staff in their dreary office, of the usual "You don't look your age!" variety (thanks to my genes, not some special skincare regime - but personally I would rather have had genetically-bequeathed longer legs) and hearing how one of them was waiting in dread to turn overnight into an aged person at 40, just like her dad did, I walked home again. The bus pass is unlikely to be used much, if ever, but it seems like a Good Thing to have handy, like umbrellas and flea spray. The sun shone, the students milled about talking nineteen to the dozen, the flower seller was there with her ancient knitted bonnet, and everything seemed bright and busy and rather cheerful.

Passing the Civic Centre, where I had worked for some years, and skulking slightly in case I was spotted, I watched hordes of staff pouring out of it in their lunch break. And how sharply it took me back! Trying to get everything done in a rushed foray into the city centre, including buying lunch to eat at one's desk, because the canteen menu, which often sounded adventurous, invariably yielded nasty school dinner-style food, queuing in M & S for something untroublesome for the evening meal, groaning at the queues in the post office, and landing back at work feeling distinctly unrefreshed, and dismayed at the number of voicemail messages that had accumulated on one's phone in the time away.

I walked for the remaining 20 minutes to home filled to overflowing with relief that I was no longer tied to a workplace regime. The team were all waiting for me, the dog at her neighbourhood watch spot in the bay window, the girls on their radiator beds, looking sleepy and pleased to see me. As I took off my boots, surrounded by a swirl of little animals, I could have wept with the sheer joy of being able to come and go when I pleased, to no longer dread Mondays, to take as long as I liked in shops and not feel resentful at precious minutes lost in queuing, and to be able to choose to go out walking, or stay at home with pets and slippers, exactly when I want. Retirement is wonderful, and I am so so lucky to be in it, bus pass and all.

A great day

Inauguration Day, and I shall say nothing about it, as I've watched too much television, absorbed too much of other people's emotion and excitement, and now I am tired, and incapable of writing anything but the worst cliches. You have been spared.

The Lovely Son sent me this:

http://obamicon.me

We've come a long way fast

I'm a Kitten Owner: Get Me Out of Here!

The never-ending script:

Where are you? Get out. Get down. What are you doing in there? What happened? Oh dear. What's that? How did you get up there? No, not for you. Leave it/him/her alone. No. No. No! Go away. It's too early. Ow. No, not my ear. Let go. That's the dog's toy. Leave her alone, she'll thump you. Oh, see? Told you. Don't eat that.

Hello! You awake now? What? Hungry? Aaawww..... Good girl. Who's a sweetie? Look what I have for you. Want me to throw it? Again? Did she snap at you? Oh dear. Come and have a cuddle. Ow. OW! Look what Auntie (insert one of many names here) has brought for you. Ooh, aren't you clever! What a loud purr. Oh, back again? Busy bee! Come on, lovely girl, let's play.

And so on and so forth.....all day, every day. Yes, it's fun. Yes, it's exhausting. Lottie has adopted a long-suffering look, probably modelled on mine.