Well! The past couple of weeks have been terribly - for want of a better word - mixed. There have been laughs and tears, amusements and annoyances, surprises and predictabilities, joys and distresses, comforts and discomforts.
We've lived through the distress and grief of trying (and failing) to aid a young cat that had been struck by a car. The side-splitting hilarity of Bingo's usually fastidiously clean brother Paddy lying full length in a mud filled puddle and the lovely sight on another briskly cool winter evening of Bingo himself somersaulting into a pile of dead leaves, running round in a dementedly delighted circle and then doing it again. The tearful anger and unhappiness during and in the aftermath of an explosive row between mother and daughter (thankfully resolved in a matter of forty-eight hours, but still incredibly horrid; possibly due to the fact that it is rare enough to be unheard of). The deep irritation of 'Health n' Safety Gone Mad' at The Store which is making everybody's working lives difficult (particularly ours) and the annoyed but (mostly) passive resignation caused by inconvenient but unavoidable shift changes. The rueful but unsurprised observation of what the stress of 'The Season' does to probably otherwise polite and pleasant people; turning them into angry and impatient beasts fully prepared to throw down anyone that gets in their way. The rising pleasure of the sights, smells and sounds of Christmas; of having the scents of pine and bread and mince-pies and cakes and vanilla and coffee dancing playfully together in the nose, and the clamour and clangs of Christmassy sounds ringing in the ears, with the added bonus of walking through the town and being surrounded by glorious decoration by day and twinkling lights by night. The unbridled joy of seeing loved ones again for the first time in years. The worry and unpleasantness caused by various illnesses afflicting various people one after the other. The utterly brilliant experience of participating in a Christmas Gala (the highlight of which was the conductor involving every last man woman and child in a rousing rendition of The Twelve Days of Christmas, with a room crammed with people enthusiastically leaping from their seats at the required time and singing their - mostly out of tune - hearts out); so awesome and overwhelmingly fun and emotive that the feeling it created seems set to carry on for days to come. The embarrassed dismay of one's trousers splitting (luckily, while on the way home). The jolt (unluckily, on the way to work rather than on the way home) of slipping on ice and landing into a puddle, leading to a painful limp and the nuisance of a damp backside. The gloriously enlivening sensation of frost sparkling beneath the feet and freezing air biting at the back of the throat. The nice surprise of being given one's first ever 'Snickerdoodle' to try (it was delicious) and the interest of finally learning what Americans actually mean when they say 'soda' (fizzy pop). The small but potent luxury of slipping on a well loved winter coat after having it dry-cleaned. The child-like thrill of planning a shopping list based solely on things one really really likes rather than needs...
A mixed fortnight indeed, and while quite awful at times, just the tonic I needed to remind me how great it is to be alive.
Thanks, God. The best Christmas present You could have given to me.
Now, roll on 25th December! I wants me some Hovis crackers and chocolate spread!
In gratitude,
Alice xxx
Sunday, 22 December 2013
Friday, 13 December 2013
Yay For Today!
Today so far has been good.
In fact, better than good; today so far has been great. Fantabulous. Good-Egg. Spiffing. Etc.
First off, we had a visit from Area Manager. She was interviewing prospective candidates along with Supervisor for the vacancy of Fourth Cleaning Person (the one that has, discounting the three ill-fated weeks we had Jon, been open since poor Colleague 1 was driven to leave, which was... =counts= ...Oh God, nearly a year ago! Has it really been that long?). Out of the six, two were good, two were OK, one was not OK and one didn't show up (no idea why). The post should be filled, Area Manager is confident, by the New Year.
That, of course, is great, because although we are coping with three people, it is a struggle that, during times of holiday or sickness (which of course leaves two), becomes impossible. But better was to come. Not only had Area Manager arrived bearing a nice big tub of chocolate - and Cadbury's, at that - and a card thanking us all for "all of our hard work", but when I popped into The Store Cafe at the end of my shift to bid the two of them adieu she asked me to wait a moment because she had something to tell me. The something turned out to be that she, Colleague and Store Manager had had a meeting to discuss whether he (Store Manager) was satisfied with how everything was going and that not only was he satisfied, but he was thrilled. He said that our work was "outstanding" and that he had no complaints whatsoever; that he was perfectly happy to leave us to it because the results spoke for themselves. Area Manager then said that she was thrilled too; we had all "been absolutely brilliant" and an "A-Class Cleaning Unit". With the addition at last of the elusive Fourth Cleaning Person so that we had the number of people we needed would merely make things easier for us; she didn't believe that it could GET any better than this! How brilliant was that? It was so good to hear; to know that our efforts are really making a difference, even when it doesn't feel that they are. I left with a belly full of chocolate and a heart full of happiness. A good combination.
Thirdly, everybody I've encountered today has been polite, smiley and considerate of those around them (human and animal). ALL of them. I even got a few cheery "Merry Christmas!"s from a few complete strangers. It was wonderful.
Fourthly - and I am sure, entirely due to how I was feeling after things one, two and three - when I got home I was so energized that I vacuumed the house and then popped a wash in to be doing while I mopped the kitchen; and all of this before I had had a sit down and even any caffeine! Go me.
And finally and fifthly; Bingo and I had a nice twenty minutes listening to music and playing vigorously with some of his toys (Duck and Panda only; for some reason Piggy seems to be out of favour) before lunch, and now he is sat on the sofa next to me with his rump pushed up comfortably against my hip and his head leaning on the arm rest. Nice. Cozy.
Anyhoo; that's my day so far. It's only just half way through, so hopefully it will continue as it has begun.
D'you think it will?
Toodles!
Alice xxx
In fact, better than good; today so far has been great. Fantabulous. Good-Egg. Spiffing. Etc.
First off, we had a visit from Area Manager. She was interviewing prospective candidates along with Supervisor for the vacancy of Fourth Cleaning Person (the one that has, discounting the three ill-fated weeks we had Jon, been open since poor Colleague 1 was driven to leave, which was... =counts= ...Oh God, nearly a year ago! Has it really been that long?). Out of the six, two were good, two were OK, one was not OK and one didn't show up (no idea why). The post should be filled, Area Manager is confident, by the New Year.
That, of course, is great, because although we are coping with three people, it is a struggle that, during times of holiday or sickness (which of course leaves two), becomes impossible. But better was to come. Not only had Area Manager arrived bearing a nice big tub of chocolate - and Cadbury's, at that - and a card thanking us all for "all of our hard work", but when I popped into The Store Cafe at the end of my shift to bid the two of them adieu she asked me to wait a moment because she had something to tell me. The something turned out to be that she, Colleague and Store Manager had had a meeting to discuss whether he (Store Manager) was satisfied with how everything was going and that not only was he satisfied, but he was thrilled. He said that our work was "outstanding" and that he had no complaints whatsoever; that he was perfectly happy to leave us to it because the results spoke for themselves. Area Manager then said that she was thrilled too; we had all "been absolutely brilliant" and an "A-Class Cleaning Unit". With the addition at last of the elusive Fourth Cleaning Person so that we had the number of people we needed would merely make things easier for us; she didn't believe that it could GET any better than this! How brilliant was that? It was so good to hear; to know that our efforts are really making a difference, even when it doesn't feel that they are. I left with a belly full of chocolate and a heart full of happiness. A good combination.
Thirdly, everybody I've encountered today has been polite, smiley and considerate of those around them (human and animal). ALL of them. I even got a few cheery "Merry Christmas!"s from a few complete strangers. It was wonderful.
Fourthly - and I am sure, entirely due to how I was feeling after things one, two and three - when I got home I was so energized that I vacuumed the house and then popped a wash in to be doing while I mopped the kitchen; and all of this before I had had a sit down and even any caffeine! Go me.
And finally and fifthly; Bingo and I had a nice twenty minutes listening to music and playing vigorously with some of his toys (Duck and Panda only; for some reason Piggy seems to be out of favour) before lunch, and now he is sat on the sofa next to me with his rump pushed up comfortably against my hip and his head leaning on the arm rest. Nice. Cozy.
Anyhoo; that's my day so far. It's only just half way through, so hopefully it will continue as it has begun.
D'you think it will?
Toodles!
Alice xxx
Friday, 6 December 2013
A Note To All Cold Callers:
Dear Cold Callers Calling From Various Organisations & For Varying Reasons:
Please, for the love of God, STOP PHONING US! We are never going to buy/sign up for/discuss whatever it is you are aiming to sell/promote/research, so it would be easier on all involved if you would all just bugger off and leave us the Hell alone.
Thank you.
Yours faithfully,
Alice.
Seriously; this is beyond a joke now.
Unlike other (lucky) people, I do not have the option of leaving the telephone whenever it rings and letting the answer-machine pick up the slack. Due to my mother's line of work, if it rings and we are in, we HAVE to pick up the phone; just in case. So unlike other (lucky) people, rather than being inconvenienced every now and again, both my mother and I are inconvenienced several times a day.
I used to feel bad about telling the people on the other end of the phone - as politely as possible - that we weren't interested and hanging up. No longer. After two years of this, with calls increasing in frequency over that time, I am no longer simply fed up; I am incredibly pissed off. I am aware that the person talking to me is not directly at fault (everybody needs to earn a living somehow) and because of this I still try to keep my tone as polite as possible but after politely and firmly saying my piece (usually either "sorry but we don't conduct surveys over the phone. I'm going to hang up now, bye" or "sorry, but we never purchase or order anything over the phone. I'm going to hang up now, bye") I hang up; often while the poor woman/man is still speaking.
How do these companies make any money from this?? They must do, otherwise the business of cold calling would no longer exist (apart from the hawking done on behalf of various 'charities', for instance, the business of calling from door to door to sell varying wares is all but gone), but I'm damned if I know how or why it happens. Nobody that I know appreciates receiving unsolicited phone-calls; nor has anyone I know ever been convinced into buying or signing up for anything.
... =sighs= ...
Sorry. I've had a bad week and three such calls in the past two hours. I'm feeling more than a little cranky right now and it was either scream at the latest lost soul that had the misfortune to ring me at that second (from the sounds of it, with the aim of talking me into agreeing to pay for a computer screening service) or rant on here.
I chose the latter.
Got to go. My mini shift at SENSE awaits.
Alice x
Please, for the love of God, STOP PHONING US! We are never going to buy/sign up for/discuss whatever it is you are aiming to sell/promote/research, so it would be easier on all involved if you would all just bugger off and leave us the Hell alone.
Thank you.
Yours faithfully,
Alice.
Seriously; this is beyond a joke now.
Unlike other (lucky) people, I do not have the option of leaving the telephone whenever it rings and letting the answer-machine pick up the slack. Due to my mother's line of work, if it rings and we are in, we HAVE to pick up the phone; just in case. So unlike other (lucky) people, rather than being inconvenienced every now and again, both my mother and I are inconvenienced several times a day.
I used to feel bad about telling the people on the other end of the phone - as politely as possible - that we weren't interested and hanging up. No longer. After two years of this, with calls increasing in frequency over that time, I am no longer simply fed up; I am incredibly pissed off. I am aware that the person talking to me is not directly at fault (everybody needs to earn a living somehow) and because of this I still try to keep my tone as polite as possible but after politely and firmly saying my piece (usually either "sorry but we don't conduct surveys over the phone. I'm going to hang up now, bye" or "sorry, but we never purchase or order anything over the phone. I'm going to hang up now, bye") I hang up; often while the poor woman/man is still speaking.
How do these companies make any money from this?? They must do, otherwise the business of cold calling would no longer exist (apart from the hawking done on behalf of various 'charities', for instance, the business of calling from door to door to sell varying wares is all but gone), but I'm damned if I know how or why it happens. Nobody that I know appreciates receiving unsolicited phone-calls; nor has anyone I know ever been convinced into buying or signing up for anything.
... =sighs= ...
Sorry. I've had a bad week and three such calls in the past two hours. I'm feeling more than a little cranky right now and it was either scream at the latest lost soul that had the misfortune to ring me at that second (from the sounds of it, with the aim of talking me into agreeing to pay for a computer screening service) or rant on here.
I chose the latter.
Got to go. My mini shift at SENSE awaits.
Alice x
Sunday, 1 December 2013
Ah, Crap.
Just braved the scales and weighed myself.
My optimum weight (i.e. the weight at which my body feels happiest) is between 15 and 16 stone, with my ideal size being between an 18 and a 20*.
What I actually weigh NOW is 18.5 stone, and my size is an average of 22.
Not good. Not good at all.
Action is called for.
Alice x
* I know what you will be thinking; that at this weight and size I would still be fat. I don't dispute it. I would be; very fat, in fact, but I don't care. My body liked it and I was a lot healthier and fitter then than I had ever been (including the years that I was smaller) before or since.
More to the point, however; I was happy. And that's what I need to be aiming for.
My optimum weight (i.e. the weight at which my body feels happiest) is between 15 and 16 stone, with my ideal size being between an 18 and a 20*.
What I actually weigh NOW is 18.5 stone, and my size is an average of 22.
Not good. Not good at all.
Action is called for.
Alice x
* I know what you will be thinking; that at this weight and size I would still be fat. I don't dispute it. I would be; very fat, in fact, but I don't care. My body liked it and I was a lot healthier and fitter then than I had ever been (including the years that I was smaller) before or since.
More to the point, however; I was happy. And that's what I need to be aiming for.
Yesterday Evening The Kidderminster Choral Society Gave A Concert...
...and it was a triumph; an absolute triumph. The performance was absolutely splendid, the music sublime (how could the compositions of Schubert and Mozart be anything but?) and the reactions of the audience a healthy mixture of joy and undisguised awe.
Personally I give my own performance a rating of seven out of ten. I tried my best of course (and perhaps more importantly I got up on the stage and actually went through with it, despite my gut screaming at me to do the contrary), which counts for a lot. But while I was quite pleased with my singing overall, I made several silly mistakes. And to make it worse whilst in the middle of two complicated sections in two separate movements, I sneezed.
So seven out of ten. But that's not bad, is it? On the whole, as I said, I was quite pleased with myself and ended the night, in-spite of aching limbs and a mind so tired it could barely function, feeling utterly jubilant; exhilarated and overwhelmed and very privileged at having had the chance to play a part - a small part but a part nonetheless - in something so unbelievably wonderful. Being a member of a choir is a splendid thing, indeed.
On a practical note, however, two things became apparent.
Thing One.
I need a better pair of boots/shoes, By the end of the show, despite brief periods of respite as we sat during solos, the soles of my feet were throbbing fiercely. For concerts, my regular every-day black boots are less than useless. Footwear specially designed to aid people having to stand still for long periods of time is required, and by golly; I shall have it.
Thing Two.
To aid in thing one and for reasons of space, I really, really need to lose some weight. Seriously.
...Anyway, more on everything later.
Alice. x
Personally I give my own performance a rating of seven out of ten. I tried my best of course (and perhaps more importantly I got up on the stage and actually went through with it, despite my gut screaming at me to do the contrary), which counts for a lot. But while I was quite pleased with my singing overall, I made several silly mistakes. And to make it worse whilst in the middle of two complicated sections in two separate movements, I sneezed.
So seven out of ten. But that's not bad, is it? On the whole, as I said, I was quite pleased with myself and ended the night, in-spite of aching limbs and a mind so tired it could barely function, feeling utterly jubilant; exhilarated and overwhelmed and very privileged at having had the chance to play a part - a small part but a part nonetheless - in something so unbelievably wonderful. Being a member of a choir is a splendid thing, indeed.
On a practical note, however, two things became apparent.
Thing One.
I need a better pair of boots/shoes, By the end of the show, despite brief periods of respite as we sat during solos, the soles of my feet were throbbing fiercely. For concerts, my regular every-day black boots are less than useless. Footwear specially designed to aid people having to stand still for long periods of time is required, and by golly; I shall have it.
Thing Two.
To aid in thing one and for reasons of space, I really, really need to lose some weight. Seriously.
...Anyway, more on everything later.
Alice. x
Monday, 25 November 2013
Odds & Sods (again).
* Why is it now seemingly socially acceptable to stagger down the street at 9:32 in the morning carrying a beer/lager/cider can? When did that happen??
* The Store's car-park has a resident crow. Just the one, and very big and black and impressive it is, too. Today while we sat huddled in The Supervisor's car during our break to escape the cold, I noticed it stood a couple of feet away regarding us; head on one side and beady eye gleaming with the unnerving air of intelligence that birds have when they glare at you. I don't know what, exactly, it was thinking, but for the few minutes we held one another's gaze I had the overwhelming and disconcerting impression of being observed by something that was far cleverer than I was. And that didn't like me; at all.
But it IS a beautiful bird.
* The bathroom has finally been decorated! It's now yellow and clean and pretty looking. Just the floor to do now and then we'll move onto the landing/stairs. Mother and I are thrilled with it.
One problem, though; the blind was taken down to paint around the window and despite casual assurances from the decorator that it would just "slot right back in", we can't get it back up.
* Bingo has developed the habit of panting heavily when he decides that the fire should be turned down. Not because he is actually too hot, you understand - he deals with that by lying on the cold bare floorboards by the door - no; he does it just because he thinks it should be turned down. As soon as we oblige, the panting immediately stops.
Manipulative bugger.
* I've been re-watching The Tudors. Great fun. Beautiful clothes, splendid acting and fascinating story-lines choc-a-block with violence and sex. What's not to like?
Have also been watching my favourite Doctor Who episodes (out of the million or so that they've made over the decades, I like about 10) to do my bit to commemorate the fact that it's been going for 50 years now. Or whatever it is that the TV and radio has been banging on about for the past week or so.
Incidentally; those two television programs - along with the books I've been reading (this week, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent and The Midwitch Cuckoos by John Wyndham) and the various films and odd episode of C.S.I New York that mother and I have been enjoying together - have led to some very interesting dreams.
* My hair was cut yesterday and is looking neat and tidy again.
Enjoy it while you can. It will be back to its natural state of mad, fluffy, kinked mess within three days; so if you want to see it looking like it does right now, right now is when you need to look.
* Turns out that the nice looking brown and white pony that has been inexplicably tethered in the little common that Bingo and I frequent is terribly friendly and (when you consider horses as a whole) uncharacteristically unafraid of dogs.
It also turns out - as I found out when said horse started amiably walking towards us to say "hello" - that Bingo only likes ponies and horses from a distance. Up close, they scare him witless.
Want to see a visibly disappointed pony? Go to the common near to the canal in Kidderminster with your dog and then apologetically but firmly tell him that he can't come any closer to say "hello" to you because your dog is terrified of him.
Seriously, his head drooped right down and everything before he wandered sadly away back to his water bucket. It was both comical and heartbreaking to see.
* We had our first hard frost this Saturday just gone. At its mildest, the air has a distinct chill to it. By 5 PM at the latest darkness has kicked daylight into touch and taken control until 7 AM the following morning. And last Friday my bottom lip finally gave in to the cold as I trudged to work and split open. Winter is now here.
It's lovely and sunny right now, though. I'll enjoy Bingo's walk, later if it stays like this.
* On the same topic; the night sky is absolutely bloody amazingly magically beautiful. Either all clouded and veiled and mystical or brilliantly clear and so emblazoned with stars that you get an excited chill tingling in your spine and your fingertips every time you look up. And Jupiter is visible at the moment, too. Just a few feet (or so it looks to me) from Venus. Grand stuff indeed.
* During a brief visit at SENSE on Saturday I happened upon a little doggy teddybear with an over-sized head that was due to be thrown away, (because it didn't have the required safety label attached to it; which you need to have in order to legally be able to sell it) and nabbed it before it faced the perils of the dustbin. I thought that Squidgum would love it, and I was right. She does.
It has been christened - at her insistence - "No Name Doggy".
=shrugs=
* I'm back in contact with Adam (have I mentioned him? He was the tutor at computer college. Plump and handsome and cheerful and clever. Fancied the pants off him. First time I've felt anything of that nature since Mike, all those years ago) again. The circumstances could be better; a lot better in fact (long, long story for another time), but we'll see.
Yep. =nods= We'll see. ' Should be interesting, if nothing else.
...Oh, ack! Just looked at the clock and it's 2:45 in the afternoon already!? Where did today go?? I've got Bingo's walk, the housework, a job search and dinner to get done before mother returns at around 5 PM.
I'll have to get moving sharpish if I want to fit everything in...
Toodles.
Alice x
* The Store's car-park has a resident crow. Just the one, and very big and black and impressive it is, too. Today while we sat huddled in The Supervisor's car during our break to escape the cold, I noticed it stood a couple of feet away regarding us; head on one side and beady eye gleaming with the unnerving air of intelligence that birds have when they glare at you. I don't know what, exactly, it was thinking, but for the few minutes we held one another's gaze I had the overwhelming and disconcerting impression of being observed by something that was far cleverer than I was. And that didn't like me; at all.
But it IS a beautiful bird.
* The bathroom has finally been decorated! It's now yellow and clean and pretty looking. Just the floor to do now and then we'll move onto the landing/stairs. Mother and I are thrilled with it.
One problem, though; the blind was taken down to paint around the window and despite casual assurances from the decorator that it would just "slot right back in", we can't get it back up.
* Bingo has developed the habit of panting heavily when he decides that the fire should be turned down. Not because he is actually too hot, you understand - he deals with that by lying on the cold bare floorboards by the door - no; he does it just because he thinks it should be turned down. As soon as we oblige, the panting immediately stops.
Manipulative bugger.
* I've been re-watching The Tudors. Great fun. Beautiful clothes, splendid acting and fascinating story-lines choc-a-block with violence and sex. What's not to like?
Have also been watching my favourite Doctor Who episodes (out of the million or so that they've made over the decades, I like about 10) to do my bit to commemorate the fact that it's been going for 50 years now. Or whatever it is that the TV and radio has been banging on about for the past week or so.
Incidentally; those two television programs - along with the books I've been reading (this week, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent and The Midwitch Cuckoos by John Wyndham) and the various films and odd episode of C.S.I New York that mother and I have been enjoying together - have led to some very interesting dreams.
* My hair was cut yesterday and is looking neat and tidy again.
Enjoy it while you can. It will be back to its natural state of mad, fluffy, kinked mess within three days; so if you want to see it looking like it does right now, right now is when you need to look.
* Turns out that the nice looking brown and white pony that has been inexplicably tethered in the little common that Bingo and I frequent is terribly friendly and (when you consider horses as a whole) uncharacteristically unafraid of dogs.
It also turns out - as I found out when said horse started amiably walking towards us to say "hello" - that Bingo only likes ponies and horses from a distance. Up close, they scare him witless.
Want to see a visibly disappointed pony? Go to the common near to the canal in Kidderminster with your dog and then apologetically but firmly tell him that he can't come any closer to say "hello" to you because your dog is terrified of him.
Seriously, his head drooped right down and everything before he wandered sadly away back to his water bucket. It was both comical and heartbreaking to see.
* We had our first hard frost this Saturday just gone. At its mildest, the air has a distinct chill to it. By 5 PM at the latest darkness has kicked daylight into touch and taken control until 7 AM the following morning. And last Friday my bottom lip finally gave in to the cold as I trudged to work and split open. Winter is now here.
It's lovely and sunny right now, though. I'll enjoy Bingo's walk, later if it stays like this.
* On the same topic; the night sky is absolutely bloody amazingly magically beautiful. Either all clouded and veiled and mystical or brilliantly clear and so emblazoned with stars that you get an excited chill tingling in your spine and your fingertips every time you look up. And Jupiter is visible at the moment, too. Just a few feet (or so it looks to me) from Venus. Grand stuff indeed.
* During a brief visit at SENSE on Saturday I happened upon a little doggy teddybear with an over-sized head that was due to be thrown away, (because it didn't have the required safety label attached to it; which you need to have in order to legally be able to sell it) and nabbed it before it faced the perils of the dustbin. I thought that Squidgum would love it, and I was right. She does.
It has been christened - at her insistence - "No Name Doggy".
=shrugs=
* I'm back in contact with Adam (have I mentioned him? He was the tutor at computer college. Plump and handsome and cheerful and clever. Fancied the pants off him. First time I've felt anything of that nature since Mike, all those years ago) again. The circumstances could be better; a lot better in fact (long, long story for another time), but we'll see.
Yep. =nods= We'll see. ' Should be interesting, if nothing else.
...Oh, ack! Just looked at the clock and it's 2:45 in the afternoon already!? Where did today go?? I've got Bingo's walk, the housework, a job search and dinner to get done before mother returns at around 5 PM.
I'll have to get moving sharpish if I want to fit everything in...
Toodles.
Alice x
Monday, 18 November 2013
Another Day, Another Funny Look...
~START~
The scene begins in the warehouse area of The Store. After stepping aside and waiting patiently for a forklift truck to pass by, Alice then recommences her journey to the cleaning cupboard. After watching this, a member of B&Q staff walks up to her. The following conversation ensues...
MEMBER OF STORE STAFF: Y'know, I've noticed that you always do that.
ALICE: (absently): Sorry, do what?
MEMBER OF STORE STAFF: (approving) Wait for the forklift. I've noticed that you always wait for it. Other people just chance it, squeeze through. I mean they shouldn't, because it's not safe; but they do. But not you. You always do as you're supposed to and keep your distance.
ALICE: (solemnly); Yes, well, I always have the greatest respect for anything that is big enough to crush me like a bug.
MEMBER OF STORE STAFF: (blinks. Nonplussed) ...Er...
ALICE: (smiles serenely)
MEMBER OF STORE STAFF: (doesn't know what to say. Blinks again. Walks off)
ALICE: (shrugs. Continues to cleaning cupboard)
~END~
The scene begins in the warehouse area of The Store. After stepping aside and waiting patiently for a forklift truck to pass by, Alice then recommences her journey to the cleaning cupboard. After watching this, a member of B&Q staff walks up to her. The following conversation ensues...
MEMBER OF STORE STAFF: Y'know, I've noticed that you always do that.
ALICE: (absently): Sorry, do what?
MEMBER OF STORE STAFF: (approving) Wait for the forklift. I've noticed that you always wait for it. Other people just chance it, squeeze through. I mean they shouldn't, because it's not safe; but they do. But not you. You always do as you're supposed to and keep your distance.
ALICE: (solemnly); Yes, well, I always have the greatest respect for anything that is big enough to crush me like a bug.
MEMBER OF STORE STAFF: (blinks. Nonplussed) ...Er...
ALICE: (smiles serenely)
MEMBER OF STORE STAFF: (doesn't know what to say. Blinks again. Walks off)
ALICE: (shrugs. Continues to cleaning cupboard)
~END~
Monday, 11 November 2013
The Question Remains.
The question remains;
Why did they die?
Why were they lost?
On whose whim? On whose lie?
Did they die for their country?
For the rich? For the poor?
Or perhaps for the future;
So the future held more?
Did they die bathed in glory?
Did they suffer much pain?
Did their souls stay there with them,
On that blood spattered plain?
Every year we remember.
Same day, every year.
We take time to remember.
Take time to shed tears.
They died so to teach us,
But the world did not learn.
There were more wars, more death;
More young lives took their turn.
Every year I feel anger.
Shed the same, angry tears.
When will the world learn the lesson?
- Maybe next year.
Written by Alice Collison; 11/11/08 at 11:03am
Why did they die?
Why were they lost?
On whose whim? On whose lie?
Did they die for their country?
For the rich? For the poor?
Or perhaps for the future;
So the future held more?
Did they die bathed in glory?
Did they suffer much pain?
Did their souls stay there with them,
On that blood spattered plain?
Every year we remember.
Same day, every year.
We take time to remember.
Take time to shed tears.
They died so to teach us,
But the world did not learn.
There were more wars, more death;
More young lives took their turn.
Every year I feel anger.
Shed the same, angry tears.
When will the world learn the lesson?
- Maybe next year.
Written by Alice Collison; 11/11/08 at 11:03am
Sunday, 10 November 2013
Friday, 1 November 2013
Happiness Is..... No. 6:
Happiness is.... finding that you have £20 worth of birthday money left and being able to use it to take your mother out to lunch, for no other reasons than you want to and you can.
=grins =
Alice x
=grins =
Alice x
Wednesday, 30 October 2013
A Visit To Pizza Hut.
A large pizza (with stuffed crust), plus two large fizzy drinks: £23.50.
Two puddings (that we knew we shouldn't have had after the pizza, but hey): £6.
Tip: £3.50
A great evening out: priceless.
...But...
Watching the body quivering, tail windmilling, pure and unadulterated joy demonstrated by your dog as he scarfs down the entire large slice of pizza that you brought home just for him*...? Well, that is better than priceless, ladies and gentlemen: that is absolutely bloody marvelously wonderful.
That is all.
Alice x
* To any horrified onlooker that may be reading: I am aware that yes; pizza is a bad food to give to a dog (or a human, for that matter), but no; I don't care. He loved it, it's not something that happens every day, and it's not going to kill him. So! If you disapprove (...as they say on American sitcoms...): bite me.
Two puddings (that we knew we shouldn't have had after the pizza, but hey): £6.
Tip: £3.50
A great evening out: priceless.
...But...
Watching the body quivering, tail windmilling, pure and unadulterated joy demonstrated by your dog as he scarfs down the entire large slice of pizza that you brought home just for him*...? Well, that is better than priceless, ladies and gentlemen: that is absolutely bloody marvelously wonderful.
That is all.
Alice x
* To any horrified onlooker that may be reading: I am aware that yes; pizza is a bad food to give to a dog (or a human, for that matter), but no; I don't care. He loved it, it's not something that happens every day, and it's not going to kill him. So! If you disapprove (...as they say on American sitcoms...): bite me.
Thursday, 24 October 2013
Two Brief Conversations With The Dog:
CONVERSATION 1:
~START~
Scene begins in living room. Alice & Bingo are sat on sofa and bed respectively, the former reading and the latter chewing on a tennis ball, when Bingo leaves his tennis ball, gets up and walks across to where Alice is sat...
BINGO: (walks across, stares at Alice for a moment, then realizing that she is not paying him any attention, hits her hard with his paw)
ALICE: (having been unpleasantly jolted out of wherever the book had taken her, she looks at dog over the top of the her glasses) ...did you want something, Bingo?
BINGO: (wags tail)
~END~
CONVERSATION 2:
~START~
Scene begins outdoors. Alice and Bingo are walking home after a nice, long and successful walk. As it has been raining heavily, not only is the river high against the banks and moving rapidly, but there are large puddles lining the pavement along which they are walking. Alice is both bemused and ruefully amused to note that Bingo is carefully avoiding the puddles by treading with the utmost delicate care along the precariously narrow dry edges. A conversation ensues...
ALICE: (bemused) So, you'll jump into a scarily fast moving river without a moments' hesitation, but getting your feet wet in less than an inch worth of puddle is out of the question??
BINGO: (wags to show willing then goes back to careful and delicate treading)
ALICE: (sighs and shakes head) Right-ho...
~END~
~START~
Scene begins in living room. Alice & Bingo are sat on sofa and bed respectively, the former reading and the latter chewing on a tennis ball, when Bingo leaves his tennis ball, gets up and walks across to where Alice is sat...
BINGO: (walks across, stares at Alice for a moment, then realizing that she is not paying him any attention, hits her hard with his paw)
ALICE: (having been unpleasantly jolted out of wherever the book had taken her, she looks at dog over the top of the her glasses) ...did you want something, Bingo?
BINGO: (wags tail)
~END~
CONVERSATION 2:
~START~
Scene begins outdoors. Alice and Bingo are walking home after a nice, long and successful walk. As it has been raining heavily, not only is the river high against the banks and moving rapidly, but there are large puddles lining the pavement along which they are walking. Alice is both bemused and ruefully amused to note that Bingo is carefully avoiding the puddles by treading with the utmost delicate care along the precariously narrow dry edges. A conversation ensues...
ALICE: (bemused) So, you'll jump into a scarily fast moving river without a moments' hesitation, but getting your feet wet in less than an inch worth of puddle is out of the question??
BINGO: (wags to show willing then goes back to careful and delicate treading)
ALICE: (sighs and shakes head) Right-ho...
~END~
Sunday, 20 October 2013
I've Been Doing This Job For Too Long...
...my last dream consisted of a very real seeming shift at work: sweeping and mopping and so on. Things progressed as normal until I straightened up, wiped my hands together and declared in a bright cheerful voice:
"Right! I'm about to wake up now, so we need to pop the wet floor signs out..."
We did. And as the last one was opened up and placed firmly down, I woke up.
So! Even when I am asleep and dreaming, and my mind KNOWS I am asleep and dreaming; instead of nice happy things - bunnies, for instance, or flower filled fields, or a flying carpet ride with John Hannah - my brain decides that what I need is more work related content.
=SIGHS=
"Right! I'm about to wake up now, so we need to pop the wet floor signs out..."
We did. And as the last one was opened up and placed firmly down, I woke up.
So! Even when I am asleep and dreaming, and my mind KNOWS I am asleep and dreaming; instead of nice happy things - bunnies, for instance, or flower filled fields, or a flying carpet ride with John Hannah - my brain decides that what I need is more work related content.
=SIGHS=
Thursday, 10 October 2013
Bits n' Bobs:
* It's my birthday on Saturday.
Well, Sunday, actually. But I'm working on Sunday, so have made an executive decision to move my birthday to the day before. Hence; my birthday is this Saturday, and it is going to be great. Not only do I have a day out planned that should be highly enjoyable - a dog walk followed by a visit to the SeaLife Centre in Birmingham followed by another dog walk followed by a meal out followed by a couple of nice stiff drinks - BUT, BUT my dear (missing?) reader; there will also be cake. And homemade cake at that.
Good, eh?
* I chased a toddler with my broom yesterday. That sounds really bad, but actually it was an event encouraged by all involved - well, by the toddler and me. His dad didn't appear all that thrilled - and made everybody smile. Until a passing manager saw me and called a stop to it, that is.
Spoilsport. The poor kid looked really disappointed...
* Mother was chased by a spider on Sunday evening in the middle of her viola practice. A big one. So big that she shrieked and didn't stop until I went to investigate. Then she was so hysterical she didn't want me to touch it so I could pop it outside. I had to fetch a glass and a piece of cardboard and physically shove her out of the hallway - also known as our Music Corridor - before I could rescue her from the terror of the spider and the spider from the terror of her terror.
On a related note, once one has pushed one's mother out of the way and realizes that the spider has vanished; "uh-oh, where's it gone?" is NOT a good thing to say out loud. Particularly if one's mother is just on the other side of the door and her hearing is quite acute.
* Did I mention that it is my birthday on Saturday?
There will be cake.
* Bingo has inexplicably started scavenging for cat muck and if I don't notice or reach him in time, he gobbles it up. It's a distressing habit that he has suddenly developed, previously having scavenged solely for food - particularly meat, with bonus joy if it's got bones to crunch - and spent his life seeing muck as something delightfully smelly to roll in, rather than to eat. And I have to say, not only am I ignorant as to why this trend has started, but I am also bewildered as to how to stop it. I can't watch him every single second as he roams around. I can't have him on his lead all the time either, because that would just be cruel. Of course there is the fact that though it's disgusting to us, it doesn't seem to be doing him any harm, so I suppose that is a plus.
Another puzzle, of course, is where all this muck has come from. I thought cats liked to bury their business once they'd finished. When did that stop happening? Ours always certainly have, as do all the cats of all the people I know, so why the sudden influx of felines that aren't bothering??
* The Bitch still isn't back. Apparently she 'forgot' that the sick note that she hadn't bothered to send in was actually for four weeks, not one. And apparently she is still suffering from this breakdown/agoraphobia that suddenly struck her out of nowhere anyway, so we're not too sure what's going to happen now.
Interestingly, though she is now in horrendous debt and also emotionally unable to leave the house, she still has both the gumption and the cash to go out drinking with friends. And also is stupid enough to write about it on that God awful Facebook that she frequents. With pictures.
One good thing is that our new Area Manager (henceforth known as AM) is as bewildered as us by the company's strange refusal to address this (or any other of the problems) and is not happy with either The Bitch's attitude and behaviour, or the lack of effort on behalf of her superiors to resolve it. So she is trying to find a way to force them to take action.
So you never know; there may be hope yet. Watch this space...
* Autumn is in full swing and the air is getting chillier by the day. This makes me happy. The skin on my hands isn't too thrilled with it, but the rest of me is. I love this time of year. My hay-fever is coming to an end, too.
* I know that being stupidly clumsy is part of my nature, but I am getting supremely fed up of continually injuring myself. I tripped over a step and slammed the right hand side of my body into a table yesterday, and the damage I did to the tendons in my left leg when I fell over at work - out of a walk in shower I was trying to clean onto a stone floor - is still causing me to limp three weeks after the fact.
Fed up is what I am. Fed UP.
* It's all change at the SENSE shop. The people that run the show are making some very funny and questionable decisions that are causing reverberations throughout the whole of the company. I am terribly glad that I am only a volunteer and only for 6 hours a week, so my dealings with the results are kept to a strict minimum. I just go in, check and tag stock, serve at the till when needed and then go home again. I'd hate to be a paid employee working there right now.
* There is an ongoing debate raging over the fact that certain individuals have taken to standing in front of the Town Hall - right in the middle of the town centre - and started preaching Hell & Brimstone type sermons to the passing public with the aid of an unshakable belief (that they are right and everyone else is wrong) and a very powerful microphone. One side of the debate is that the law protecting free speech applies to everything and everyone, another is that the right to free speech ends when said free speech is used to loudly heckle members of the public - with examples being cited that prove that in circumstances not involving "the word of the Lord", the law agrees with this - and yet another claiming that sod free speech; his/her/their business is being effected because paying members of the public are being actively driven away from their shops to avoid being shouted at.
Personally, I have sympathy with sentiment three and completely agree with sentiment two. There is a time and a place to share your views and in the middle of a busy town in front of shops armed with a microphone isn't one of them. What's happening here isn't a person opening a debate or trying to exchange views; it's a bully screaming in people's ears - people that are merely going about their business and incidentally, do not have microphones at their disposal to scream back at the bugger - that they are all evil and are going to burn forever in hell because they don't agree with him. And in my opinion, that doesn't equate to 'free speech' being exercised, but plain and simple verbal abuse.
That's what I think, anyway.
...Anyhoo, got to go, so that's it for now. Dinner won't cook itself.
Mores the pity. Don't you think?
Alice x
PS: did I mention that it is my birthday on Saturday?
There will be cake...
Well, Sunday, actually. But I'm working on Sunday, so have made an executive decision to move my birthday to the day before. Hence; my birthday is this Saturday, and it is going to be great. Not only do I have a day out planned that should be highly enjoyable - a dog walk followed by a visit to the SeaLife Centre in Birmingham followed by another dog walk followed by a meal out followed by a couple of nice stiff drinks - BUT, BUT my dear (missing?) reader; there will also be cake. And homemade cake at that.
Good, eh?
* I chased a toddler with my broom yesterday. That sounds really bad, but actually it was an event encouraged by all involved - well, by the toddler and me. His dad didn't appear all that thrilled - and made everybody smile. Until a passing manager saw me and called a stop to it, that is.
Spoilsport. The poor kid looked really disappointed...
* Mother was chased by a spider on Sunday evening in the middle of her viola practice. A big one. So big that she shrieked and didn't stop until I went to investigate. Then she was so hysterical she didn't want me to touch it so I could pop it outside. I had to fetch a glass and a piece of cardboard and physically shove her out of the hallway - also known as our Music Corridor - before I could rescue her from the terror of the spider and the spider from the terror of her terror.
On a related note, once one has pushed one's mother out of the way and realizes that the spider has vanished; "uh-oh, where's it gone?" is NOT a good thing to say out loud. Particularly if one's mother is just on the other side of the door and her hearing is quite acute.
* Did I mention that it is my birthday on Saturday?
There will be cake.
* Bingo has inexplicably started scavenging for cat muck and if I don't notice or reach him in time, he gobbles it up. It's a distressing habit that he has suddenly developed, previously having scavenged solely for food - particularly meat, with bonus joy if it's got bones to crunch - and spent his life seeing muck as something delightfully smelly to roll in, rather than to eat. And I have to say, not only am I ignorant as to why this trend has started, but I am also bewildered as to how to stop it. I can't watch him every single second as he roams around. I can't have him on his lead all the time either, because that would just be cruel. Of course there is the fact that though it's disgusting to us, it doesn't seem to be doing him any harm, so I suppose that is a plus.
Another puzzle, of course, is where all this muck has come from. I thought cats liked to bury their business once they'd finished. When did that stop happening? Ours always certainly have, as do all the cats of all the people I know, so why the sudden influx of felines that aren't bothering??
* The Bitch still isn't back. Apparently she 'forgot' that the sick note that she hadn't bothered to send in was actually for four weeks, not one. And apparently she is still suffering from this breakdown/agoraphobia that suddenly struck her out of nowhere anyway, so we're not too sure what's going to happen now.
Interestingly, though she is now in horrendous debt and also emotionally unable to leave the house, she still has both the gumption and the cash to go out drinking with friends. And also is stupid enough to write about it on that God awful Facebook that she frequents. With pictures.
One good thing is that our new Area Manager (henceforth known as AM) is as bewildered as us by the company's strange refusal to address this (or any other of the problems) and is not happy with either The Bitch's attitude and behaviour, or the lack of effort on behalf of her superiors to resolve it. So she is trying to find a way to force them to take action.
So you never know; there may be hope yet. Watch this space...
* Autumn is in full swing and the air is getting chillier by the day. This makes me happy. The skin on my hands isn't too thrilled with it, but the rest of me is. I love this time of year. My hay-fever is coming to an end, too.
* I know that being stupidly clumsy is part of my nature, but I am getting supremely fed up of continually injuring myself. I tripped over a step and slammed the right hand side of my body into a table yesterday, and the damage I did to the tendons in my left leg when I fell over at work - out of a walk in shower I was trying to clean onto a stone floor - is still causing me to limp three weeks after the fact.
Fed up is what I am. Fed UP.
* It's all change at the SENSE shop. The people that run the show are making some very funny and questionable decisions that are causing reverberations throughout the whole of the company. I am terribly glad that I am only a volunteer and only for 6 hours a week, so my dealings with the results are kept to a strict minimum. I just go in, check and tag stock, serve at the till when needed and then go home again. I'd hate to be a paid employee working there right now.
* There is an ongoing debate raging over the fact that certain individuals have taken to standing in front of the Town Hall - right in the middle of the town centre - and started preaching Hell & Brimstone type sermons to the passing public with the aid of an unshakable belief (that they are right and everyone else is wrong) and a very powerful microphone. One side of the debate is that the law protecting free speech applies to everything and everyone, another is that the right to free speech ends when said free speech is used to loudly heckle members of the public - with examples being cited that prove that in circumstances not involving "the word of the Lord", the law agrees with this - and yet another claiming that sod free speech; his/her/their business is being effected because paying members of the public are being actively driven away from their shops to avoid being shouted at.
Personally, I have sympathy with sentiment three and completely agree with sentiment two. There is a time and a place to share your views and in the middle of a busy town in front of shops armed with a microphone isn't one of them. What's happening here isn't a person opening a debate or trying to exchange views; it's a bully screaming in people's ears - people that are merely going about their business and incidentally, do not have microphones at their disposal to scream back at the bugger - that they are all evil and are going to burn forever in hell because they don't agree with him. And in my opinion, that doesn't equate to 'free speech' being exercised, but plain and simple verbal abuse.
That's what I think, anyway.
...Anyhoo, got to go, so that's it for now. Dinner won't cook itself.
Mores the pity. Don't you think?
Alice x
PS: did I mention that it is my birthday on Saturday?
There will be cake...
Sunday, 6 October 2013
Saturday, 5 October 2013
Alice Has Donned Her Moaning Minny Hat Again:
{WARNING: this is angry and rambling and I'm not altogether certain that it will make any sense. I do need to get it out, however, nevertheless. So bear with me.}
Here's the thing.
I try not to let things regarding MJ to get to me, really I don't. After all, I can't change them, or him for that matter, so why bother? And I try to see it that way, I really do. But every now and again it just...just GETS to me!
Things like:
* He doesn't wash (either clothes or himself). He doesn't work. He doesn't have the WILL to do anything other than eat, sleep and watch television.
* Because of being on benefits, all prescription costs and medication costs (including glasses and dental work) are completely free. I on the other hand have to pay between £16-£20 just to SEE the dentist, or optician, let alone if I need any treatment. The pair of glasses that I am wearing now cost me near-upon £250. The time before that I saved a bit because I was able to keep the same frames, but I still paid £189 simply for the lenses.
* He receives £154.90 every fortnight for doing NOTHING. Until very recently out of this he had to fork out a grand total of £25 per fortnight. Now the benefit system has changed he has to pay a lot more: £120. That still leaves, however, £34 per fortnight to buy food and so forth. Divide by two and you are talking £17 per week. Not a lot, I know, but it is for ONE person. ONE. There may not be a lot left over, or indeed any left over, for treats and so forth, but it's manageable. DO-ABLE. So does he manage it? Does he do it? Does he heck! He has NEVER budgeted, EVER. He ALWAYS runs out of money - and always has done so, even when his only bills were £25 a fortnight and he had a full £129 just to himself to spend on whatever he wanted - within a few days of receiving it; it doesn't even last a week, let alone the two! And it's FREE money. He hasn't earned it; he doesn't even have to deal with the job-centre to get it, because it goes through the doctors (it being 'Incapacity Benefit' rather than Job Seekers Allowance).
* Leading neatly on from the last point; to make up the deficiency he always has because of not budgeting and running out of money up to nine days early, mother tops it back up again, buying him food drink and even cigarettes.
We spend an average of £45 per week on our main weekly shop. Because of MJ, she also spends a quarter or so of that AGAIN on top of it just on him. Every week!
In a fit of (possibly hormone induced) moral outrage, I worked it out:
- Cigarettes (one pack per week) = £4.00
- Fizzy Pop (he always takes at least two of ours, usually without asking) = £1.00
- Bread (on average one loaf worth per week) = £1.00
- Crispy Pancakes (two packets) = £2.00
- Cheese (two 250g packets per week) = £.4.00
- Other (he occasionally walks off with toilet rolls, toothpaste etc) = £1.00
So! That is a grand total of £13 per week, every week, that mother spends on him. And yes, I can hear my reader saying; it IS her money. And yes, she CAN do whatever she wants with it. And yes, doing this helps to ease her conscience over having to turf him out when his mood swings and drug use caused him to become too violent, and also makes him visit so she is reassured that he is still alive and his life - such as it is - is still going as it should be. I know all this, and I tell myself this over and over again, but on days like today when I am feeling as I am it still infuriates me that it should be this way.
And one of the reasons that it infuriates me so is the WAY it happens. For one thing, we can't stockpile any of the things that he eats; taking advantage of offers and so forth, because of the way his brain works. He doesn't see, say, TWO blocks of cheese and think; 'oh, here are two blocks of cheese. That means that ONE of them is for today's visit and the OTHER one must be for my second visit, later in the week'. Nope, he just thinks 'ooh, extra cheese! Whee!', and he eats them both, all at once. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that because, again, of the way his brain works, he will STILL expect to receive another block of cheese on his next visit. Which leads neatly into the other thing. The way in which he RECEIVES these gifts.
Because he isn't grateful, you see - or at least very rarely - for this help. Nope. He seems to feel entitled to it; as though it is somehow his due, something that we SHOULD be doing, rather than a nice thing that we are doing out of the kindness of our hearts. So much so that if something is missing or different to the norm, his reaction isn't so much disappointment as mild annoyance. Take the double cheese on one day analogy for example. On Saturday he would find and eat two blocks of cheese rather than saving one (which mother, or I, would have brought because it was on offer and saved us money buying two at once rather than one two on two separate days) for Tuesday. Then on Tuesday, the following scene would ensue.
"...Oh..." he'll say, as he routs through our - OUR - cupboards to see what is there; "...no cheese then?"
And his voice will be a mixture of jokey, disappointed, and actually annoyed. He is ANNOYED that we didn't spend the extra money all over again and buy him even more.
Of course, there is always the fact that we could have a 'once it's gone, that's it' policy. We should do it like that. Just as we should hit the roof that he takes anything that he fancies that isn't tied down without asking - including any money that he can find - like our toilet rolls and pop and vinegar and...oh, lots of silly things that sound as though they shouldn't matter, but they do.
We should put our foot down about this, and other things as well, but we don't. Because mother doesn't want to. Because mother wants him to be happy and him being happy - or at least not UNhappy - makes HER happy. So she bends over backwards to not do anything that would cause any confrontation or bad feeling, and she asks, neigh, BEGS me to do the same. Which for the most part, I do. Because I want her to be happy. So I put up with her - and often me - being inconvenienced so that he is happy. Because that makes HER happy.
What else can I do?? I make occasional stands and they occasionally - but not always - have an effect, but that effect is temporary; before long things slide back to how they were before and muddle along until I have had my fill and begin seething again.
It's not a healthy way to be. I know that. And as I said, most of the time I let it just roll over me. 'Let the two of them do as they will', I say to myself blithely. But every now again, something will happen and it will just GET to me. Like today. Food and necessities are going up in price alarmingly; enough that we are having to consider cutting back drastically by the end of the month. But not HIS stuff, obviously. The ungrateful scrounging shit mustn't be hurt by the recession; oh no. It'll just be us, the two hard working tax payers, that have to go without.
Anyway, that's set me off. And that, along with a *reminder* text from him to get his cigarettes this morning, means that I am at screaming point.
So now I am going out to see Best Friend 1 and Squidgum and leave the bloody lot of them to it.
Before I really DO start screaming...
Alice x
Here's the thing.
I try not to let things regarding MJ to get to me, really I don't. After all, I can't change them, or him for that matter, so why bother? And I try to see it that way, I really do. But every now and again it just...just GETS to me!
Things like:
* He doesn't wash (either clothes or himself). He doesn't work. He doesn't have the WILL to do anything other than eat, sleep and watch television.
* Because of being on benefits, all prescription costs and medication costs (including glasses and dental work) are completely free. I on the other hand have to pay between £16-£20 just to SEE the dentist, or optician, let alone if I need any treatment. The pair of glasses that I am wearing now cost me near-upon £250. The time before that I saved a bit because I was able to keep the same frames, but I still paid £189 simply for the lenses.
* He receives £154.90 every fortnight for doing NOTHING. Until very recently out of this he had to fork out a grand total of £25 per fortnight. Now the benefit system has changed he has to pay a lot more: £120. That still leaves, however, £34 per fortnight to buy food and so forth. Divide by two and you are talking £17 per week. Not a lot, I know, but it is for ONE person. ONE. There may not be a lot left over, or indeed any left over, for treats and so forth, but it's manageable. DO-ABLE. So does he manage it? Does he do it? Does he heck! He has NEVER budgeted, EVER. He ALWAYS runs out of money - and always has done so, even when his only bills were £25 a fortnight and he had a full £129 just to himself to spend on whatever he wanted - within a few days of receiving it; it doesn't even last a week, let alone the two! And it's FREE money. He hasn't earned it; he doesn't even have to deal with the job-centre to get it, because it goes through the doctors (it being 'Incapacity Benefit' rather than Job Seekers Allowance).
* Leading neatly on from the last point; to make up the deficiency he always has because of not budgeting and running out of money up to nine days early, mother tops it back up again, buying him food drink and even cigarettes.
We spend an average of £45 per week on our main weekly shop. Because of MJ, she also spends a quarter or so of that AGAIN on top of it just on him. Every week!
In a fit of (possibly hormone induced) moral outrage, I worked it out:
- Cigarettes (one pack per week) = £4.00
- Fizzy Pop (he always takes at least two of ours, usually without asking) = £1.00
- Bread (on average one loaf worth per week) = £1.00
- Crispy Pancakes (two packets) = £2.00
- Cheese (two 250g packets per week) = £.4.00
- Other (he occasionally walks off with toilet rolls, toothpaste etc) = £1.00
So! That is a grand total of £13 per week, every week, that mother spends on him. And yes, I can hear my reader saying; it IS her money. And yes, she CAN do whatever she wants with it. And yes, doing this helps to ease her conscience over having to turf him out when his mood swings and drug use caused him to become too violent, and also makes him visit so she is reassured that he is still alive and his life - such as it is - is still going as it should be. I know all this, and I tell myself this over and over again, but on days like today when I am feeling as I am it still infuriates me that it should be this way.
And one of the reasons that it infuriates me so is the WAY it happens. For one thing, we can't stockpile any of the things that he eats; taking advantage of offers and so forth, because of the way his brain works. He doesn't see, say, TWO blocks of cheese and think; 'oh, here are two blocks of cheese. That means that ONE of them is for today's visit and the OTHER one must be for my second visit, later in the week'. Nope, he just thinks 'ooh, extra cheese! Whee!', and he eats them both, all at once. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that because, again, of the way his brain works, he will STILL expect to receive another block of cheese on his next visit. Which leads neatly into the other thing. The way in which he RECEIVES these gifts.
Because he isn't grateful, you see - or at least very rarely - for this help. Nope. He seems to feel entitled to it; as though it is somehow his due, something that we SHOULD be doing, rather than a nice thing that we are doing out of the kindness of our hearts. So much so that if something is missing or different to the norm, his reaction isn't so much disappointment as mild annoyance. Take the double cheese on one day analogy for example. On Saturday he would find and eat two blocks of cheese rather than saving one (which mother, or I, would have brought because it was on offer and saved us money buying two at once rather than one two on two separate days) for Tuesday. Then on Tuesday, the following scene would ensue.
"...Oh..." he'll say, as he routs through our - OUR - cupboards to see what is there; "...no cheese then?"
And his voice will be a mixture of jokey, disappointed, and actually annoyed. He is ANNOYED that we didn't spend the extra money all over again and buy him even more.
Of course, there is always the fact that we could have a 'once it's gone, that's it' policy. We should do it like that. Just as we should hit the roof that he takes anything that he fancies that isn't tied down without asking - including any money that he can find - like our toilet rolls and pop and vinegar and...oh, lots of silly things that sound as though they shouldn't matter, but they do.
We should put our foot down about this, and other things as well, but we don't. Because mother doesn't want to. Because mother wants him to be happy and him being happy - or at least not UNhappy - makes HER happy. So she bends over backwards to not do anything that would cause any confrontation or bad feeling, and she asks, neigh, BEGS me to do the same. Which for the most part, I do. Because I want her to be happy. So I put up with her - and often me - being inconvenienced so that he is happy. Because that makes HER happy.
What else can I do?? I make occasional stands and they occasionally - but not always - have an effect, but that effect is temporary; before long things slide back to how they were before and muddle along until I have had my fill and begin seething again.
It's not a healthy way to be. I know that. And as I said, most of the time I let it just roll over me. 'Let the two of them do as they will', I say to myself blithely. But every now again, something will happen and it will just GET to me. Like today. Food and necessities are going up in price alarmingly; enough that we are having to consider cutting back drastically by the end of the month. But not HIS stuff, obviously. The ungrateful scrounging shit mustn't be hurt by the recession; oh no. It'll just be us, the two hard working tax payers, that have to go without.
Anyway, that's set me off. And that, along with a *reminder* text from him to get his cigarettes this morning, means that I am at screaming point.
So now I am going out to see Best Friend 1 and Squidgum and leave the bloody lot of them to it.
Before I really DO start screaming...
Alice x
Thursday, 3 October 2013
Just For Larks...
...I've updated my profile. Nothing too outlandish, really; editing a few words here and there (apparently I wasn't concentrating too well on the day that I wrote it) and generally tweaking it (is that the correct phrase?) to make it a bit better.
One important change that might be seen as a bit drastic is the picture. No longer when you look at my profile will passers by see me. What they will see instead is a picture that I drew using the 'PAINT' application on the computer I was using during my college course. It is a little yellow chicklet with a green felt-tip pen sort of outline and is, as pictures go, incredibly bad. Nevertheless, I am fiercely proud of it; enough to sign my name to it and use it as my profile picture, anyway.
Why, you ask? Well, two fold. First, because I was bored with the original picture and fed up of looking at myself every time I logged in to write a post. And second...well...simply because I can. So there.
=sticks out tongue=
I'm feeling very mature today. Can you tell?
Tara.
Alice x
One important change that might be seen as a bit drastic is the picture. No longer when you look at my profile will passers by see me. What they will see instead is a picture that I drew using the 'PAINT' application on the computer I was using during my college course. It is a little yellow chicklet with a green felt-tip pen sort of outline and is, as pictures go, incredibly bad. Nevertheless, I am fiercely proud of it; enough to sign my name to it and use it as my profile picture, anyway.
Why, you ask? Well, two fold. First, because I was bored with the original picture and fed up of looking at myself every time I logged in to write a post. And second...well...simply because I can. So there.
=sticks out tongue=
I'm feeling very mature today. Can you tell?
Tara.
Alice x
This Just In:
* It's pelting it down with rain, so I have a dog that is refusing to go for a walk.
Yeah. You read right. HE is refusing to go.
* I nearly fainted as I waited to pay for something in a shop today.
This cold is beginning to royally kick my arse.
* My head is pounding.
The cold again. But I think it merits mentioning twice.
* Choir practice tonight. I feel quite shitty but because I was so tired last week I didn't go, so now this week I have to go.
...Don't I?
* The dog is wriggling on his back. He wants his tummy stroked. My head is pounding. Bending hurts.
But he wants his tummy stroked.
=SIGHS=
EDITED TO ADD: It's ten minutes later and regarding the final matter, yes, I did it. Of course I did it. I had to hold my head with my other hand as I did it, but I did it. So Bingo is happy.
He is now lying with his amazingly bloody heavy head resting on my aching and rapidly going numb foot (which is also cold and damp; having been just seconds ago licked all over for reasons best known to himself).
Ow...
Yeah. You read right. HE is refusing to go.
* I nearly fainted as I waited to pay for something in a shop today.
This cold is beginning to royally kick my arse.
* My head is pounding.
The cold again. But I think it merits mentioning twice.
* Choir practice tonight. I feel quite shitty but because I was so tired last week I didn't go, so now this week I have to go.
...Don't I?
* The dog is wriggling on his back. He wants his tummy stroked. My head is pounding. Bending hurts.
But he wants his tummy stroked.
=SIGHS=
EDITED TO ADD: It's ten minutes later and regarding the final matter, yes, I did it. Of course I did it. I had to hold my head with my other hand as I did it, but I did it. So Bingo is happy.
He is now lying with his amazingly bloody heavy head resting on my aching and rapidly going numb foot (which is also cold and damp; having been just seconds ago licked all over for reasons best known to himself).
Ow...
Saturday, 28 September 2013
Facts Of Life (as they are for A.Collison) Numbers 2, 3 & 4:
FACT 2:
It will be straight after you have mopped the stairs at work that 5 or 6 people will be compelled to take their breaks - which require them to walk up the stairs - all at the same time.
And at least one, if not two of them will need to come back down again less than two minutes later because they forgot - for example - their sandwiches.
Oh, and all of these people will have large work boots. That are muddy.
FACT 3:
It will be around half an hour after you have hung your washing out on the line that the bright sunshine that the weather people had forecast as lasting all day and that warmed you cheerily as you were pegging vanishes, replaced by heavy rain.
And during that deceptive half hour of good weather, of course, you will have had to go out.
FACT 4:
It is when you are feeling at your worst and/or most exhausted that as you collapse on the sofa - after a hard and horrible time elsewhere with no other thought in your head than to just SIT DOWN AND NOT MOVE - your dog will come up to you doing this:
It will be straight after you have mopped the stairs at work that 5 or 6 people will be compelled to take their breaks - which require them to walk up the stairs - all at the same time.
And at least one, if not two of them will need to come back down again less than two minutes later because they forgot - for example - their sandwiches.
Oh, and all of these people will have large work boots. That are muddy.
FACT 3:
It will be around half an hour after you have hung your washing out on the line that the bright sunshine that the weather people had forecast as lasting all day and that warmed you cheerily as you were pegging vanishes, replaced by heavy rain.
And during that deceptive half hour of good weather, of course, you will have had to go out.
FACT 4:
It is when you are feeling at your worst and/or most exhausted that as you collapse on the sofa - after a hard and horrible time elsewhere with no other thought in your head than to just SIT DOWN AND NOT MOVE - your dog will come up to you doing this:
....That is all.
Thank you for reading Facts Of Life (as they are for A. Collison).
Alice x
Friday, 27 September 2013
Fact Of Life (as it is for A.Collison) Number 1:
Buying two packets of tuck cheese sandwich biscuits rather than one, because they are on special offer, will not - as you tell yourself when you put them in your basket - result in you eating a few biscuits a day for a week or so. What WILL happen, instead, is that you eat not one packet of tuck cheese sandwich biscuits but two, all in one go.
Then you will feel sick.
That is all.
Thank you for reading Facts Of Life (as they are for A. Collison).
Alice x
Then you will feel sick.
That is all.
Thank you for reading Facts Of Life (as they are for A. Collison).
Alice x
Wednesday, 25 September 2013
The Past Few Days.
* Chaos is ensuing at work. From tomorrow there are two cleaners rather than the required four. Up to then for the past week there has been one. ME.
Don't ask me what is going on. I have no idea. There are rumours abound, but all I know definitely is that The Bitch is off sick for the foreseeable future (but no clue as to what's wrong with her), The Colleague has been on holiday for the past two weeks (but returns tomorrow, thank God), there is nobody that The Company can send to provide cover for the deficiency (though they still seem to expect the work to get done) and they are still looking for a fourth person to join the crew in any case because yet another one buggered off three weeks ago. Meanwhile, the store is going to hell and I'm pissed off.
* It's that special time of the month again. It's bang on time, of course. It always is; but somehow I'm never prepared for it. Anyway, now everything aches, I'm uncomfortable and I'm pissed off to a near murderous degree by things that usually wouldn't bother me (I think being pissed off by the work thing is justified, though) while also feeling an acute urge to burst into tears at irregular intervals for no reason (or practically no reason) at all.
I know that as symptoms go, this is nothing, but still: meh. Sometimes being a woman sucks...
* My work/dog walking/wet weather boots died today. I had hoped that they could last out until October. My birthday is in October, you see, and I know this sounds mercenary but I was planning on asking people to give me money rather than presents (family, that is; as in the people who would normally buy me presents, rather than total strangers) so that I could get a new pair without breaking into my little emergency buffer. But t'was not to be. After hanging on grimly for a few extra weeks, they died a death today and I had to shuffle my way to the outdoor store and fork out £49.99 for a new pair.
I know that £49.99 isn't all that much for good sturdy waterproof boots. And I know that considering how much use they get, around 8 months is a good long time for them to last. But damnit, 18 days! My birthday is in 18 days!
=makes disapproving growly noise=
* I spent the latter part of today (once I had recovered after work) doing a "full deconstructive recovery" to restore Niles to his factory settings after he buggered up to a degree that ordinary tweaking wouldn't fix. So then I had to put everything back again, which caused problems in itself, because while Google Chrome was loading up a few sneaky applications crept through and latched themselves to the hard-drive like nasty little software limpets. So then I had to sort THAT out, which took ages because the Nasty Software Limpets clung for dear life and made things as difficult as they possibly could.
=makes bigger disapproving growly noise=
* Had a letter from the opticians yesterday. I am six months overdue for my 2 yearly eye exam. Whoopee.
Considering that I am pretty sure that my eyes have deteriorated just enough to warrant yet another new prescription and also considering how much that new prescription is going to cost, they can sod off for now. I'm not driving at the moment and for all the every day things I can see just fine, thank-you-very-much.
* The dog ran off today for ten minutes and came back looking guilty. I don't know what he ate, but whatever it is has given him flatulence so powerful that both of us are struggling with it, let alone just me.
He just dropped another one. Oh, dear GOD, that's bad!
Anyway! It's shaping up to be one of those weeks....
...Oh, shit shit shit! Mother just got back from orchestra, which sent the dog into his usual frenzy of delight, which caused him to knock the table I am sat at, which (because I didn't react fast enough) caused the glass I had on it to go flying through the air, sending a cascade of cherryade after it onto our rug. Our green rug. Which now has soggy red patches all over it.
=SIGH. HEAD-DESK. SIGH=
At least he didn't knock it all over the computer, I suppose. Got to go, anyway. I need to tackle to pop before it dries and becomes impossible to shift.
...Resisting the urge to buy gin, resisting the urge to buy gin...
Sunday, 22 September 2013
I Know, I Know, I Need To Go Away Now, But Just Quickly:
How great is this?!
I know I hate what I call Text-Slang usually, but: 'LOL!' seems appropriate here.
OK. I'm going now, really.
Alice. x
I know I hate what I call Text-Slang usually, but: 'LOL!' seems appropriate here.
OK. I'm going now, really.
Alice. x
Because I've Nothing Better To Do At This Moment In Time...
...and as it's been avidly requested by my fans (well, my fan. And she just mentioned it. Once), I've had a tinker around with my Blog and as a result I've figured how to put pictures in! Cool or what?
Anyway, without any further ado:
Here is Bingo!
Isn't he lovely?? My darling baby. I do love him so.
=beams=
Y'know, it took me an hour of hunting (for the first 55 minutes, in completely the wrong place) to find that little "insert image" button.
I'm so clever...
Alice. x
Anyway, without any further ado:
Here is Bingo!
Isn't he lovely?? My darling baby. I do love him so.
=beams=
Y'know, it took me an hour of hunting (for the first 55 minutes, in completely the wrong place) to find that little "insert image" button.
I'm so clever...
Alice. x
Today My Brain And My Body Had A Fight.
My body wanted to lie down and rest after slogging it out at The Store for hours this morning.
My brain however, was alert and wanted to stay awake.
...My brain won.
=SIGH=
Of course, on the plus side, my house is a lot cleaner now...
Alice x
My brain however, was alert and wanted to stay awake.
...My brain won.
=SIGH=
Of course, on the plus side, my house is a lot cleaner now...
Alice x
Question:
Dear Bloggersphere;
Does anybody else make efforts mend the favourite toys of their dog(s) to prolong their lifespans (the lifespan of the toys, that is, not that of the dogs)? Or is it just me?
Sincerely,
The Girl That Cannot Sew Particularly Well, But Spent The Last Twenty Minutes With Needle And Thread Gamely Attempting To Salvage A Well-Beloved Cuddly Duck, Lest Her Much Loved Dog Pine For It.
PS: In case you are interested, I succeeded. Despite the great tear across its' stomach and another down the back, along with my lack of skill with t'needle, the duck lives to quack another day.
Go me.
Does anybody else make efforts mend the favourite toys of their dog(s) to prolong their lifespans (the lifespan of the toys, that is, not that of the dogs)? Or is it just me?
Sincerely,
The Girl That Cannot Sew Particularly Well, But Spent The Last Twenty Minutes With Needle And Thread Gamely Attempting To Salvage A Well-Beloved Cuddly Duck, Lest Her Much Loved Dog Pine For It.
PS: In case you are interested, I succeeded. Despite the great tear across its' stomach and another down the back, along with my lack of skill with t'needle, the duck lives to quack another day.
Go me.
Thursday, 19 September 2013
=SNEEZES=
Dear Mother Nature;
I want to start off by saying that apart from one problem, I enjoy being out in your world. Gazing in awe and pleasure at the wonders you have created and carefully maintain is simply marvelous and I am continually amazed by the great beauty and variety of landscape and flora around me.
Anyway, the one problem stopping me from fully appreciating all of your creations is that unfortunately I am allergic to a fair share of them. Not fatally, you understand; but bad enough to make me feel rather badly poorly and quite miserable quite a lot of the time - should I have to venture outside - while your plants are at their most fertile. Which is a great shame because, as I said, I really enjoy being outside otherwise.
Now, I understand of course that nature has to replenish itself and therefore pollination is necessary. I accept that with grace, really I do. But surely by late September you've had more than enough time to get this done and that by now things should be wrapping themselves up?
I'd say so. After all, we ARE well into autumn now.
Seriously; you've had at least 7 months to get your rear in gear and now I'm fed up. Hay-fever sufferers like to enjoy being outside too; we shouldn't have to wait until the world is cold enough to be covered in snow to and ice do it.
So to sum up: enough already! For the love of God, please stop with the pollinating!
Sincerely,
Alice.
I want to start off by saying that apart from one problem, I enjoy being out in your world. Gazing in awe and pleasure at the wonders you have created and carefully maintain is simply marvelous and I am continually amazed by the great beauty and variety of landscape and flora around me.
Anyway, the one problem stopping me from fully appreciating all of your creations is that unfortunately I am allergic to a fair share of them. Not fatally, you understand; but bad enough to make me feel rather badly poorly and quite miserable quite a lot of the time - should I have to venture outside - while your plants are at their most fertile. Which is a great shame because, as I said, I really enjoy being outside otherwise.
Now, I understand of course that nature has to replenish itself and therefore pollination is necessary. I accept that with grace, really I do. But surely by late September you've had more than enough time to get this done and that by now things should be wrapping themselves up?
I'd say so. After all, we ARE well into autumn now.
Seriously; you've had at least 7 months to get your rear in gear and now I'm fed up. Hay-fever sufferers like to enjoy being outside too; we shouldn't have to wait until the world is cold enough to be covered in snow to and ice do it.
So to sum up: enough already! For the love of God, please stop with the pollinating!
Sincerely,
Alice.
Wednesday, 18 September 2013
Random Snippets:
* Saw a bunch of pigeons sat along a fence yesterday; twenty or so on the top row and fifteen or so on the bottom one. They were all hunched up because of the drizzle and glaring at passers by, looking fairly menacing. It was like a budget version of 'The Birds'. Almost as scary but not quite.
Incidentally, among the mass of purple-ish greys there were two anomalies; one white pigeon with grey spotted wings and another one a gorgeous chocolate brown.
* Something interesting that I have noted at work: while I am cleaning the customer toilets first thing in the morning, 99.9% of the members of staff that repeatedly squeeze past to use the facilities and otherwise get in my way are men. And when I am cleaning the staff toilets later on, 99.9% of the members of staff that repeatedly squeeze past to use the facilities and otherwise get in my way are women. There must be a reason for this, but I'm damned if I know what it is.
...Well. At least I find it interesting...
* Speaking of work; personally I think that if one earns one's living as a cleaner, then one's house should magically manage to somehow clean itself. That would be really good, I feel. And just; terribly just.
* Why is it that you slog your guts out and deprive yourself of treats for a week and only lose 1lb, but conversely if you allow yourself one day of transgression you gain three times that amount in one go?
* I think I may have accidentally vacuumed up Suzie's ball bearing. If so, this is a catastrophe that our relationship may not recover from.
...Where would one go to purchase another one? Where did she get THAT one from??
* The temperature is dropping. On the one hand; this is good because it is now pleasantly cool (for me. Everybody else is complaining that it's cold. Wimps), but on the other hand; it means that we are one step closer to winter, which means that we are one step closer to ice all over the pavements.
I hate ice. Snow is OK. Due to climate change Britain is slowly but surely returning to its blizzardy winters of yesteryear's, but I don't mind that (I have snow boots! D'you remember me mentioning my snow boots? Worth every penny I paid, fabulous things). But not ice, I hate ice. There is yet to be a shoe invented that can grip consistently effectively (and therefore safely) on ice.
Or at least so far as I know. Perhaps one has been now. If so, I would go into debt to buy it.
* Choir has started again (joy!). A full years' subscription is £130 (that's including the extra section that I joined in with last time, the Summer Singing), which is a lot all in one go when you work 19 hours a week on average, but thankfully Mummy has paid it for me in full as an early birthday present. Bless her.
Of course, that means I shan't be getting a wrapped present this year. That sucks.
Of course, of the two, I'd rather have my choir membership than a wrapped present anyway, but still. Meh.
* Speaking of birthdays, mine is now =counts= 35 days away.
* Casserole is a lovely and (comparatively) inexpensive meal to have. The only problem is that when it starts to properly cook in the oven and you can smell it, your taste buds start tingling and you want it NOW.
=checks time= ...another 30 minutes to go. =SIGHS=
* Why is it that I (and many other women) look ridiculous at best and terrible at worst in hats actually designed for women, but generally quite fetching in hats designed for men? This seems somewhat backward.
And do some men, I wonder, find that they have the same problem?
* One of the aunts of Best Friend 1 has apple tree that had a massive crop these year. She had the bright idea of giving some to me a couple of days back to offload a few of them, and d'you know; after months and months of eating mostly bananas as my daily fruit, I'd forgotten how good they taste. It's a shame that Cox's apples (like the ones I have been given) are so rare these days. Those are my very favourites. Yummy.
* =checks time again= ...25 minutes to go now. =SIGHS=
* Anybody reading this that occasionally feels that they are stupid and useless (as I do), I advise that as a form of feel-good therapy you take a peek at the 'Darwin Award' books. They are a great read - provided you have a slightly morbid sense of humour of course, I suppose - and I can guarantee that within 3 seconds of starting any of the tales within you will be feeling miles better about yourself.
Trust me. It works wonders.
* You have never seen a funnier sight than a wasp drunk on lager trying to fly. Truly.
I laughed so hard that I developed a stitch.
* I'm going to be walking Bingo by the canal tonight once it is dark so that I have a chance of star-gazing. Considering that it's been threatening rain all day what are the chances, d'you reckon, of the sky being unclouded enough for me to actually see them?
Yeah. That's what I thought...
* I want a bright red thick woolen cardigan. I don't know why. I don't need it and I'm fairly certain it shan't suit me, but I want one all the same. =shrugs= I just do.
That is all for now. One last thing, though:
* =checks time= ....20 minutes to go now. =SIGHS= Hungry hungry hungry...
Alice x
Incidentally, among the mass of purple-ish greys there were two anomalies; one white pigeon with grey spotted wings and another one a gorgeous chocolate brown.
* Something interesting that I have noted at work: while I am cleaning the customer toilets first thing in the morning, 99.9% of the members of staff that repeatedly squeeze past to use the facilities and otherwise get in my way are men. And when I am cleaning the staff toilets later on, 99.9% of the members of staff that repeatedly squeeze past to use the facilities and otherwise get in my way are women. There must be a reason for this, but I'm damned if I know what it is.
...Well. At least I find it interesting...
* Speaking of work; personally I think that if one earns one's living as a cleaner, then one's house should magically manage to somehow clean itself. That would be really good, I feel. And just; terribly just.
* Why is it that you slog your guts out and deprive yourself of treats for a week and only lose 1lb, but conversely if you allow yourself one day of transgression you gain three times that amount in one go?
* I think I may have accidentally vacuumed up Suzie's ball bearing. If so, this is a catastrophe that our relationship may not recover from.
...Where would one go to purchase another one? Where did she get THAT one from??
* The temperature is dropping. On the one hand; this is good because it is now pleasantly cool (for me. Everybody else is complaining that it's cold. Wimps), but on the other hand; it means that we are one step closer to winter, which means that we are one step closer to ice all over the pavements.
I hate ice. Snow is OK. Due to climate change Britain is slowly but surely returning to its blizzardy winters of yesteryear's, but I don't mind that (I have snow boots! D'you remember me mentioning my snow boots? Worth every penny I paid, fabulous things). But not ice, I hate ice. There is yet to be a shoe invented that can grip consistently effectively (and therefore safely) on ice.
Or at least so far as I know. Perhaps one has been now. If so, I would go into debt to buy it.
* Choir has started again (joy!). A full years' subscription is £130 (that's including the extra section that I joined in with last time, the Summer Singing), which is a lot all in one go when you work 19 hours a week on average, but thankfully Mummy has paid it for me in full as an early birthday present. Bless her.
Of course, that means I shan't be getting a wrapped present this year. That sucks.
Of course, of the two, I'd rather have my choir membership than a wrapped present anyway, but still. Meh.
* Speaking of birthdays, mine is now =counts= 35 days away.
* Casserole is a lovely and (comparatively) inexpensive meal to have. The only problem is that when it starts to properly cook in the oven and you can smell it, your taste buds start tingling and you want it NOW.
=checks time= ...another 30 minutes to go. =SIGHS=
* Why is it that I (and many other women) look ridiculous at best and terrible at worst in hats actually designed for women, but generally quite fetching in hats designed for men? This seems somewhat backward.
And do some men, I wonder, find that they have the same problem?
* One of the aunts of Best Friend 1 has apple tree that had a massive crop these year. She had the bright idea of giving some to me a couple of days back to offload a few of them, and d'you know; after months and months of eating mostly bananas as my daily fruit, I'd forgotten how good they taste. It's a shame that Cox's apples (like the ones I have been given) are so rare these days. Those are my very favourites. Yummy.
* =checks time again= ...25 minutes to go now. =SIGHS=
* Anybody reading this that occasionally feels that they are stupid and useless (as I do), I advise that as a form of feel-good therapy you take a peek at the 'Darwin Award' books. They are a great read - provided you have a slightly morbid sense of humour of course, I suppose - and I can guarantee that within 3 seconds of starting any of the tales within you will be feeling miles better about yourself.
Trust me. It works wonders.
* You have never seen a funnier sight than a wasp drunk on lager trying to fly. Truly.
I laughed so hard that I developed a stitch.
* I'm going to be walking Bingo by the canal tonight once it is dark so that I have a chance of star-gazing. Considering that it's been threatening rain all day what are the chances, d'you reckon, of the sky being unclouded enough for me to actually see them?
Yeah. That's what I thought...
* I want a bright red thick woolen cardigan. I don't know why. I don't need it and I'm fairly certain it shan't suit me, but I want one all the same. =shrugs= I just do.
That is all for now. One last thing, though:
* =checks time= ....20 minutes to go now. =SIGHS= Hungry hungry hungry...
Alice x
Tuesday, 17 September 2013
Our Family Part 1: The Cat.
{WARNING: wrote this in bits over a period of days. VERY VERY LONG}
Our cat is called 'Suzie'. Spelled with a 'z' rather than an 's'.
We found her. Or rather that is, Michael James, 15 at the time, fond her; limping through our garden one day. She was small and fragile and disheveled with a hugely swollen belly. Her hind left leg dragged behind her, twisted and useless. Stricken with worry, he picked her up - she let him - and brought her inside. He placed her in our cat basket, lined with a blanket, leaving the cage door open in case it frightened her. She let him do that, too.
Then he sat there, with the cat basket beside him, in the kitchen, waiting for one or the other of our parents to come home so that he could show them what he had done and tell them what he hoped they would do afterwards. He made no effort to touch her during that time, after he had carefully lain her onto the blanket; he was afraid if he did that he might hurt her, somehow. She didn't seem to mind. Just lay quietly and calmly and looked out through the open front of the basket. He described her expression as one that was simply relieved, not only to be safe but to be surrounded by comfort and luxury beyond their wildest dreams.
Twenty minutes later our father arrived home. Two minutes after that he phoned our mother and told her the straight truth: MJ had adopted a cat. Well, a kitten, really; she couldn't have been more than six months old. Such a tiny thing, she was, and frail; so very, very frail.
As we already had two cats and a rabbit and were financially stretched to the limit (stretched past it, actually, by several thousand, due to my father's spending habits, but nobody else in the family knew about that and anyway, it's a tale for another day) as it was, mother was understandably not pleased. In fact, she was furious; how DARE they just bring a cat home and say "hey, she's ours now" without so much as a by-or-leave to her? She was the only consistent bread winner, anyway, and stressed out of her brain with worry and exhaustion as she struggled through university...
Of course, when she saw Suzie - as MJ had named her - for herself all that melted away and she fell in love, head over heels and helplessly and there was no question at all but that we would be keeping her, money worries and university insanity notwithstanding. From the moment MJ had laid eyes on her, she had transitioned from an anonymous stranger to a member of our family, definitely and unequivocally. That was just how it was.
The vet was the next stop, obviously. We asked him to give her a general checkup and to hopefully find out what was wrong with her leg. Her swollen belly was a worry, too. MJ checked at the library; apparently it was possible for a female feline to become pregnant from as young as four months - though it wasn't advised - and poor Suzie was obviously very far along. She was so rounded in just that one area that moving or even sitting and lying comfortably was impossible. We had no idea how to deal with it, so it was worrying; particularly as she had been so obviously neglected.
As it turned out, however, we were all wrong. She wasn't pregnant at all. She was starving. It was common for animals close to collapse due to lack of food to drink a dangerous amount of water, the vet told us; it was an instinctive act to try and stave off death, with often tragic results. We had taken her in not a moment too soon. Within a few days, at most, she would have been dead. Oh, and the problem with her leg was that it had been fractured. And due to the position and the type of break, it was incredibly likely that rather than being struck with a car or injuring herself in a fall or a fight, she had been kicked. Very hard.
Within three days from that awful moment of revelation, dad had a violent altercation with her original 'owner' (using the term incredibly loosely).
He had initially intended to ask around the neighbourhood to find out where she had come from, in case anybody knew, but as it turned out that wasn't necessary; because the man in question - a truly dubious character who lived about ten houses away and had a whole menagerie of neglected and abused animals to his name, including around 20 nearly feral cats - came to find us himself. They were moving away, apparently, and one of the few of their 'pets' that they were intending to take with them - the rest of them apparently could hang for all they cared - was little Suzie. According to one of his (many, many) children, she had been seen being picked up and brought into our house a few days before, so he had called round to ask - neigh, DEMAND - that we give her back.
Dad's response, unsurprisingly, was no. In fact, his exact words were; "No. Fuck off"; which of course sounds unpleasant and coarse, but considering the circumstances (along with the particular type of pond-dweller he was talking to) nonetheless understandable, I'm sure you'll agree.
Our pond-dweller, being quite a big fellow and as well as drinking his days away in a lager induced haze, having behaviour unpredictable enough to have him known as insane enough to be avoided by everybody as much as possible, was unused to being addressed in such a way and asked dad - blasting him in the face with a foul lager fused breath as he did so - to repeat what he had said, with a half scandalized, half angry; "WHAT?"
Dad, also being a big fellow himself and while not having a scarily violent streak close to his surface, currently furiously angry and in the mood to draw blood from the scab stood in front of him being as he was personally responsible; for if not little Suzie's broken leg but her overall condition, was unimpressed.
"I said no," he repeated, in a calm, soft voice. Fun fact; the calmer and more soft spoken my dad is, the more scared you should be because the closer he is to snapping. But of course our pond-dweller did not know this; "fuck off. (and, for emphasis) You are not taking the cat."
"Oh yeah?" the pond-dweller sneered; "and who's going to stop me, eh?"
"That," Dad replied, drawing himself up to his full height of six foot one (grossly fat as he is, he sort of slouches most of the time and looks a lot shorter than he actually is); "would be me."
"Oh yeah?" the man sneered again (though less certain this time).
"Yeah," dad sneered back.
The pond-dweller stood still for a minute or two, seizing him up, then did the worst thing he could have done and aimed a drunken swing towards dad's nose; which dad blocked with the ease of a skilled fighter that isn't addled with booze before giving the pond-dweller a firm no nonsense push.
Infuriated (and uncomfortably aware that not only MJ and me but also five or six of his own brood were watching events unfold with open mouths) pond-dweller regained his balance and pushed himself up as close to dad as he could go; pressing their chests together as he put his nose to dad's and shrieked the war-cry of;
"who the hell do you think you ARE, FUCKER!"
Dad's response is one that remains etched on my memory for all time, albeit one that could be said to be setting a terrible example to the young impressionable minds of us gawping kids. Removing his glasses - another bad sign to those In The Know - he yelled back: "I'm the fucker that is keeping your cat, you arsehole!" and then he nutted the bastard full in the face.
Good, eh?
Anyway, that was the end of that conversation. Pond-dweller skulked away, holding his hopefully broken nose with both hands and that was the last we heard from him about that matter, or any other come to that. The day afterward the entire family upped and moved and that was that. Suzie was ours, for good and all.
It took weeks for her leg to heal, but in the meantime other improvements were made. Her fur, which had been missing in great patches, grew back then and added to itself all over, becoming thick and sleek. Her great bloated belly that had caused her to struggle to walk and get comfortable subsided. Her starvation ravaged body padded out, becoming thicker. Her muscles, therewith-or withered and fragile, strengthened and then strengthened some more. And above all she grew, and grew. Very quickly she transformed from a tiny, malnourished, flea-ridden adolescent kitten into a fully grown cat; tall and long and stout with rippling muscles and black and white fur that gleamed with health.
One thing that bothered us, though, was her demeanor. Her eyes were constantly wide, her ears constantly listening, her body constantly ready for flight; a tensed, coiled spring that could shunt joltingly into action in a split second. She adored all of us; MJ, mum and myself (ironically, dad, after his heroism in securing her place in our little nest, buggered off soon after), that was self evident, but the slightest movement, the slightest sound that she wasn't expecting and she was off. During her mealtimes was a particularly sensitive time, leading us to decree that "nobody - not family, not guests, not even the Queen - is allowed to leave the living room and/or come up or downstairs while the cats are eating". Even so, she regularly took fright and left her dinner for Simba (another cat to be talked about another time) having had only a few tiny mouthfuls, if that.
When not attempting to eat or creeping outside to empty her bladder, her favourite place to be was under mother's bed in the little box room - Squealer having previously appropriated the top of it some time ago and being as she was unwilling to share - and there, for the most part, she tended to stay, curled up in blissful contentment among a chaos of boxes and odds and ends. Occasionally she would venture downstairs and join us in the living room, usually commandeering the top of whichever of the sofas Squealer was trying to claim as her own when she did. But it was rare. Rarer, once Bingo entered our lives. It wasn't that she was afraid of him, in fact she was the only one that from the start wasn't as it turned out, but that she simply disliked him intensely. And in any case, Suzie preferred to be under the bed. That was HERS, a place that not even the undisputed head of the household - Squealer - could come into without her permission.
Years dragged on with a backdrop of family heartbreak and drama and laughter and love and argument and tension disruption carrying on alongside the every day scheme of living, and life for the three cats carried on much the same as it always had - with the exception that all three now used a litter tray rather than going outside rather than risk being attacked (long bloody story) - until two things things happened in quick succession. Firstly Squealer, God rest her soul, passed from the earthly plain into the afterlife. Then secondly and within twenty-four hours of that we moved house and poor Suzie found her life in total disarray.
The day it happened she sat quietly and composedly in one of two borrowed cat baskets - three cats (two living), only one cat basket to our name and a distinct lack of funds; it was either borrow two more or risk prosecution for stealing them - while beside her the normally placid and lazily amiable Simba flung himself against the bars with yowling anger and desperation - and watched as the house was systematically dismantled before her eyes. Then once me, Suzie and Simba (and the basket containing Squealer, of course; we couldn't bear to leave her behind, deciding instead to bury her in our new garden) were safely installed in the new building, the two cats were let out to explore.
Ironically, as I mentioned, it was Simba - so laid-back that he was practically comatose - that reacted the worst to the shift. Having been freed from his prison (after two nearly successful escape attempts, one of which had sent the barred door bursting open and teetering on its damaged hinges), he shot around every room and up and down the stairs like a demented pinball, yowling and growling as he went. Suzie, on the other hand, took a different approach. Jumping up onto my lap (a first) she lay down on it (also a first) in a decisive gesture of possessive ownership and began serenading me with her soothing purrs. The only negative emotion she showed was to glare every now and again at the dormant gas fireplace in front of us, as though daring it to make a false move toward her and her pet (that'd be me).
It was later on that she reacted the way we had expected her to. The first thing was to refuse to venture downstairs to eat. After a while of caving in and plopping her dinner bowl next to mother's bed, we toughened up and showed her what was what. After a few days of us tensed up and waiting to see which of us would give in first, thankfully she did; so that was that. Then we began to worry about another thing: she wasn't using the litter tray. We knew she wasn't going outside either. So where was she going? If she had gone inside, we'd have known - well, you would, wouldn't you? Phew! - so it seemed she wasn't going at all. And that was worrying, because, well; if you don't, well, go, for a continual stretch of time, serious health threatening complications can ensue... As it turned out, we feared needlessly, for nature took over and she went. AAALLL over the bathroom floor. Then again aaalll over mother's bedroom floor. Then again...you get the picture. And all within twelve hours. Wow. Poor thing must REALLY have needed it.
After that another distasteful event started taking place. As well as still occasionally pooing in the bathroom (though she started using the tray and it became a rarity), she began regularly urinating on our beds. Or on any clothes and/or coats that should accidentally fall onto the floor, but mostly it was the beds she aimed for. Over and over again. She just didn't stop. If we caught her in the act we would show her we were cross and if possible make a grab at her and march her down to the litter tray to show her (yet again) where it was and that yes, we DID want her to wee in THAT and not in or on our furniture, but to no avail. Nothing worked. It got to the point that I had to shut my bedroom door during the day, whether I was in there or not, to keep her out - nighttime wasn't a problem because Bingo slept with me and she'd rather have died than share a room with him - and mother, who couldn't at the time shut her door, had to buy one of those fitted waterproof sheets to put on top of her mattress and duvet. Quite a palarva it was; every night before she went to sleep she had to fetch her pillows, which wouldn't fit under the sheet, from her cupboard so that she could lie down and every morning she had to put them away and pull the sheet back up before she did anything else - even take a few moments to go to the loo - or risk having to wash and dry yet another duvet and clean and air out the mattress yet again because truly those few minutes were all it took for another "fouling incident" (as the vet called them) to occur to devastating effect.
Of course, we both resented very much at first having to take these precautionary measures - we had never had to act that way before with any pet, even Squealer as she became ill and began to lose control of her bladder - it was an unexpected unpleasantness that marred an otherwise blissful residence in our new and happy home. Mother especially felt that way, as it was her that was most effected.
The funny thing was that other than peeing with glorious abandon when unsupervised - as I said, nighttimes were fine; as mother slept she merely curled up with her quite happily on the bed and slept too - she seemed far happier here than in the old house. The entire first floor became hers, with Simba taking the majority of the ground floor and Bingo having to make do with the tiny living room during the day and while he still chose to do so my third floored bedroom at night (which he could only get to by passing through the areas owned by the cats; including Suzie's landing, which she patrolled fiercely). Mealtimes and litter usage returned to normal (or as normal as they had ever been for Suzie) and she seemed perfectly contented to spend her time in mother's room on the bed. On top of it, no less. And that was during the times when she wasn't preoccupied with sleeping in the bathtub or stretching out in the sunny spot before the bathroom window. Or playing in the bathtub. You wouldn't believe how much fun a cat that had never shown much interest in playing full stop can have in an empty bathtub with nothing but a lid off a shampoo bottle for company; or even with nothing.
It was wonderful. After a year or so had passed in this way, Suzie relented and Simba was at last permitted entry upstairs. The two of them took to curling up at opposite ends of the bed, safe in the knowledge of one another's company. Suzie, I noticed, always had the pillow end, which despite there not being any pillows appeared to be a way of emphasizing her authority.
A year after that, we lost Simba; tragically and unexpectedly and suddenly, taken from us by a massive heart attack. His spirit remained for some time, hanging around*, which explains how calmly Suzie reacted to his supposed absence. In fact, for several months she acted as though nothing had changed, until Squealer and Jasmine came to visit me** and then took him with them when they left. She reacted then, though so subtly at first that we barely noticed it.
She began to properly cry at mealtimes, for one thing. One of her little quirks had been to squeak rather than meow; so much so that for the first twelve years of her life we were utterly convinced that she couldn't properly cry out like other cats. But now she cried, long and loud, when mother or I fetched the can of food from the cupboard and grabbed her dinner bowl, and then she cried again when she finished, as though announcing to us "behold, for I have finished". Bingo was quick to pick up, of course, on the fact that the second set meant now free to go and check if she had left any food behind, which she often did.
Of course once we started noticing, we couldn't stop. Over and over for weeks something new would emerge about our cat. Whether truly new or simply previously passed over, we can't be sure, but here are a few facts that we know - now, if they were around before - about our lovely, quirky little cat:
* She runs up and down in the bedroom, particularly after her meals; her little paws pounding on the bare boards and her hefty bulk (she's a nice stout girl, our Suzie; weird considering how little she eats) landing with a shuddering thud as she jumps on and off the bed.
She does this, seemingly, for no other reason than she can.
* Having unexpectedly begun on for reasons best known to herself, she now greets me in the mornings when I first stagger out of bed and head for the bathroom. The door is propped open most of time - yes, even when we are using it, and why not, after all? It's just us girls - so she can come and go freely, and she certainly does. At 5:AM every morning, after I have plonked myself on the seat, she trots in and I end up sitting there numbly, staring ahead of me; a sightless, half asleep zombie stroking blindly at the eager black and white furry blob rubbing and purring her way round my bare legs.
She follows me downstairs afterwards, too, right to the bottom step; and woe betide if I don't turn and fuss her after every few steps. To transgress from the routine is to sin, grievously.
* She often talks, murmuring and mewling softly whether to herself or to us or to Simba (or Squealer, or Jasmine, or anyone else for that matter) we're not sure, but it's a pleasant thing to listen to, coming from our previously mostly silent family member.
Her purring, too, has gotten louder and more persistent as she has grown older. It now resembles Simba's 'lawn-mower' type growl. And her growl itself is something to behold. Not that it happens often; generally only when being dragged out of the basket on her yearly visit to the vet, but still...
*When indulging in a few minute sit down with her on the bed, she shows her appreciation of your company by pacing happily up and down and headbutting you hard when you fail to stroke her just how and in what position she likes.
And she tells you when she would like you to leave her alone by retreating to her favoured spot under the bed - it's between two storage boxes and in front of an old holdall - where you can't reach her. Can't get fairer or more clear than that, can you?
* She comes down to the bottom step to stare at you while you are preparing food, in case it is something she would like and therefore something you would be morally obliged to give her. Ham, for instance, or cheese. But only GOOD cheese; only cheddar. To give her any other kind will cause her to give you a long hard stare of outraged hatred and she will henceforth refuse to show you any affection for the next twelve hours.
* Following on from above, she also turns up on the bottom step more often than not to watch the dog get ready for his walk; simply, I am sure, so that when he trots up to her in high excitement to show her that he is about to go out she gets the chance to hiss at him menacingly and cause him to back away hurriedly . Her original opportunity ceased, you see, the day he decided to save his aching legs the walk and sleep downstairs. Before that she had two glorious years of utter glee in being able to stop him in his tracks with a single glare, making him look at me with a pleading whine, asking for support. Once when she spat at him he jumped backward straight legged on all four paws down four steps...
* She runs around in circles in the bathtub during late night rainstorms and has a (previously mentioned in an earlier post) ball-bearing that she enjoys pattering around after when she is sure nobody will disturb her.
Both make a nice amount of noise, though considering the timing, the latter is far more enjoyable to us than the former.
* She curls up on the bed underneath the waterproof blanket- yes, she fits, but can't position herself to wee, so it's alright - during cold winter daytimes; a cat shaped lump in the centre of an otherwise smooth sea of white.
It appears that she believes that she is so well camouflaged that we can't see her and neither one of us has had the heart yet to let her know that despite her brilliant attempt at blending in, we do actually know that she is under there...
...And that is it so far.
18 years of Suzie. Fragile yet well muscled; terrified of everything and everyone yet brave enough to tell a huge black dog and various spirits where to go; greedy with snacks yet restrained with her main meals to the point of near abstinence; solemn in company but highly playful in private; jittery but composed... a lover of cheddar and hater of any cheese that isn't; a compulsive urinator of bed-covers and tight circle runner of bathtubs; a contented sprawler in sunny spots through mottled bathroom windows and a cunning 'hidden' white lump underneath a water-proof bedspread...
My darling, funny girl.
Long may she continue to be just the same, and never change.
Alice.
* I am sometimes sensitive to spirit presences; particularly those of animals. The first I noticed fully was Jasmine. It's a story for another time and I'm also acutely aware that many people believe such sensations to be figments of overactive imaginations, so I'll leave it at that for now. Just popped this in by way of explanation.
** Squealer and Jasmine are sisters, reunited by Squealer's passing four and a half years ago - Jasmine died after living for just one year and had waited for her ever since, visiting me periodically to purr by my ear and make a nuisance of herself to the dog by running across the bed at high speed and then leaping off of it using his nose as a launch pad. The poor boy didn't enjoy her routine stop overs nearly as much as I did, I fear.
Our cat is called 'Suzie'. Spelled with a 'z' rather than an 's'.
We found her. Or rather that is, Michael James, 15 at the time, fond her; limping through our garden one day. She was small and fragile and disheveled with a hugely swollen belly. Her hind left leg dragged behind her, twisted and useless. Stricken with worry, he picked her up - she let him - and brought her inside. He placed her in our cat basket, lined with a blanket, leaving the cage door open in case it frightened her. She let him do that, too.
Then he sat there, with the cat basket beside him, in the kitchen, waiting for one or the other of our parents to come home so that he could show them what he had done and tell them what he hoped they would do afterwards. He made no effort to touch her during that time, after he had carefully lain her onto the blanket; he was afraid if he did that he might hurt her, somehow. She didn't seem to mind. Just lay quietly and calmly and looked out through the open front of the basket. He described her expression as one that was simply relieved, not only to be safe but to be surrounded by comfort and luxury beyond their wildest dreams.
Twenty minutes later our father arrived home. Two minutes after that he phoned our mother and told her the straight truth: MJ had adopted a cat. Well, a kitten, really; she couldn't have been more than six months old. Such a tiny thing, she was, and frail; so very, very frail.
As we already had two cats and a rabbit and were financially stretched to the limit (stretched past it, actually, by several thousand, due to my father's spending habits, but nobody else in the family knew about that and anyway, it's a tale for another day) as it was, mother was understandably not pleased. In fact, she was furious; how DARE they just bring a cat home and say "hey, she's ours now" without so much as a by-or-leave to her? She was the only consistent bread winner, anyway, and stressed out of her brain with worry and exhaustion as she struggled through university...
Of course, when she saw Suzie - as MJ had named her - for herself all that melted away and she fell in love, head over heels and helplessly and there was no question at all but that we would be keeping her, money worries and university insanity notwithstanding. From the moment MJ had laid eyes on her, she had transitioned from an anonymous stranger to a member of our family, definitely and unequivocally. That was just how it was.
The vet was the next stop, obviously. We asked him to give her a general checkup and to hopefully find out what was wrong with her leg. Her swollen belly was a worry, too. MJ checked at the library; apparently it was possible for a female feline to become pregnant from as young as four months - though it wasn't advised - and poor Suzie was obviously very far along. She was so rounded in just that one area that moving or even sitting and lying comfortably was impossible. We had no idea how to deal with it, so it was worrying; particularly as she had been so obviously neglected.
As it turned out, however, we were all wrong. She wasn't pregnant at all. She was starving. It was common for animals close to collapse due to lack of food to drink a dangerous amount of water, the vet told us; it was an instinctive act to try and stave off death, with often tragic results. We had taken her in not a moment too soon. Within a few days, at most, she would have been dead. Oh, and the problem with her leg was that it had been fractured. And due to the position and the type of break, it was incredibly likely that rather than being struck with a car or injuring herself in a fall or a fight, she had been kicked. Very hard.
Within three days from that awful moment of revelation, dad had a violent altercation with her original 'owner' (using the term incredibly loosely).
He had initially intended to ask around the neighbourhood to find out where she had come from, in case anybody knew, but as it turned out that wasn't necessary; because the man in question - a truly dubious character who lived about ten houses away and had a whole menagerie of neglected and abused animals to his name, including around 20 nearly feral cats - came to find us himself. They were moving away, apparently, and one of the few of their 'pets' that they were intending to take with them - the rest of them apparently could hang for all they cared - was little Suzie. According to one of his (many, many) children, she had been seen being picked up and brought into our house a few days before, so he had called round to ask - neigh, DEMAND - that we give her back.
Dad's response, unsurprisingly, was no. In fact, his exact words were; "No. Fuck off"; which of course sounds unpleasant and coarse, but considering the circumstances (along with the particular type of pond-dweller he was talking to) nonetheless understandable, I'm sure you'll agree.
Our pond-dweller, being quite a big fellow and as well as drinking his days away in a lager induced haze, having behaviour unpredictable enough to have him known as insane enough to be avoided by everybody as much as possible, was unused to being addressed in such a way and asked dad - blasting him in the face with a foul lager fused breath as he did so - to repeat what he had said, with a half scandalized, half angry; "WHAT?"
Dad, also being a big fellow himself and while not having a scarily violent streak close to his surface, currently furiously angry and in the mood to draw blood from the scab stood in front of him being as he was personally responsible; for if not little Suzie's broken leg but her overall condition, was unimpressed.
"I said no," he repeated, in a calm, soft voice. Fun fact; the calmer and more soft spoken my dad is, the more scared you should be because the closer he is to snapping. But of course our pond-dweller did not know this; "fuck off. (and, for emphasis) You are not taking the cat."
"Oh yeah?" the pond-dweller sneered; "and who's going to stop me, eh?"
"That," Dad replied, drawing himself up to his full height of six foot one (grossly fat as he is, he sort of slouches most of the time and looks a lot shorter than he actually is); "would be me."
"Oh yeah?" the man sneered again (though less certain this time).
"Yeah," dad sneered back.
The pond-dweller stood still for a minute or two, seizing him up, then did the worst thing he could have done and aimed a drunken swing towards dad's nose; which dad blocked with the ease of a skilled fighter that isn't addled with booze before giving the pond-dweller a firm no nonsense push.
Infuriated (and uncomfortably aware that not only MJ and me but also five or six of his own brood were watching events unfold with open mouths) pond-dweller regained his balance and pushed himself up as close to dad as he could go; pressing their chests together as he put his nose to dad's and shrieked the war-cry of;
"who the hell do you think you ARE, FUCKER!"
Dad's response is one that remains etched on my memory for all time, albeit one that could be said to be setting a terrible example to the young impressionable minds of us gawping kids. Removing his glasses - another bad sign to those In The Know - he yelled back: "I'm the fucker that is keeping your cat, you arsehole!" and then he nutted the bastard full in the face.
Good, eh?
Anyway, that was the end of that conversation. Pond-dweller skulked away, holding his hopefully broken nose with both hands and that was the last we heard from him about that matter, or any other come to that. The day afterward the entire family upped and moved and that was that. Suzie was ours, for good and all.
It took weeks for her leg to heal, but in the meantime other improvements were made. Her fur, which had been missing in great patches, grew back then and added to itself all over, becoming thick and sleek. Her great bloated belly that had caused her to struggle to walk and get comfortable subsided. Her starvation ravaged body padded out, becoming thicker. Her muscles, therewith-or withered and fragile, strengthened and then strengthened some more. And above all she grew, and grew. Very quickly she transformed from a tiny, malnourished, flea-ridden adolescent kitten into a fully grown cat; tall and long and stout with rippling muscles and black and white fur that gleamed with health.
One thing that bothered us, though, was her demeanor. Her eyes were constantly wide, her ears constantly listening, her body constantly ready for flight; a tensed, coiled spring that could shunt joltingly into action in a split second. She adored all of us; MJ, mum and myself (ironically, dad, after his heroism in securing her place in our little nest, buggered off soon after), that was self evident, but the slightest movement, the slightest sound that she wasn't expecting and she was off. During her mealtimes was a particularly sensitive time, leading us to decree that "nobody - not family, not guests, not even the Queen - is allowed to leave the living room and/or come up or downstairs while the cats are eating". Even so, she regularly took fright and left her dinner for Simba (another cat to be talked about another time) having had only a few tiny mouthfuls, if that.
When not attempting to eat or creeping outside to empty her bladder, her favourite place to be was under mother's bed in the little box room - Squealer having previously appropriated the top of it some time ago and being as she was unwilling to share - and there, for the most part, she tended to stay, curled up in blissful contentment among a chaos of boxes and odds and ends. Occasionally she would venture downstairs and join us in the living room, usually commandeering the top of whichever of the sofas Squealer was trying to claim as her own when she did. But it was rare. Rarer, once Bingo entered our lives. It wasn't that she was afraid of him, in fact she was the only one that from the start wasn't as it turned out, but that she simply disliked him intensely. And in any case, Suzie preferred to be under the bed. That was HERS, a place that not even the undisputed head of the household - Squealer - could come into without her permission.
Years dragged on with a backdrop of family heartbreak and drama and laughter and love and argument and tension disruption carrying on alongside the every day scheme of living, and life for the three cats carried on much the same as it always had - with the exception that all three now used a litter tray rather than going outside rather than risk being attacked (long bloody story) - until two things things happened in quick succession. Firstly Squealer, God rest her soul, passed from the earthly plain into the afterlife. Then secondly and within twenty-four hours of that we moved house and poor Suzie found her life in total disarray.
The day it happened she sat quietly and composedly in one of two borrowed cat baskets - three cats (two living), only one cat basket to our name and a distinct lack of funds; it was either borrow two more or risk prosecution for stealing them - while beside her the normally placid and lazily amiable Simba flung himself against the bars with yowling anger and desperation - and watched as the house was systematically dismantled before her eyes. Then once me, Suzie and Simba (and the basket containing Squealer, of course; we couldn't bear to leave her behind, deciding instead to bury her in our new garden) were safely installed in the new building, the two cats were let out to explore.
Ironically, as I mentioned, it was Simba - so laid-back that he was practically comatose - that reacted the worst to the shift. Having been freed from his prison (after two nearly successful escape attempts, one of which had sent the barred door bursting open and teetering on its damaged hinges), he shot around every room and up and down the stairs like a demented pinball, yowling and growling as he went. Suzie, on the other hand, took a different approach. Jumping up onto my lap (a first) she lay down on it (also a first) in a decisive gesture of possessive ownership and began serenading me with her soothing purrs. The only negative emotion she showed was to glare every now and again at the dormant gas fireplace in front of us, as though daring it to make a false move toward her and her pet (that'd be me).
It was later on that she reacted the way we had expected her to. The first thing was to refuse to venture downstairs to eat. After a while of caving in and plopping her dinner bowl next to mother's bed, we toughened up and showed her what was what. After a few days of us tensed up and waiting to see which of us would give in first, thankfully she did; so that was that. Then we began to worry about another thing: she wasn't using the litter tray. We knew she wasn't going outside either. So where was she going? If she had gone inside, we'd have known - well, you would, wouldn't you? Phew! - so it seemed she wasn't going at all. And that was worrying, because, well; if you don't, well, go, for a continual stretch of time, serious health threatening complications can ensue... As it turned out, we feared needlessly, for nature took over and she went. AAALLL over the bathroom floor. Then again aaalll over mother's bedroom floor. Then again...you get the picture. And all within twelve hours. Wow. Poor thing must REALLY have needed it.
After that another distasteful event started taking place. As well as still occasionally pooing in the bathroom (though she started using the tray and it became a rarity), she began regularly urinating on our beds. Or on any clothes and/or coats that should accidentally fall onto the floor, but mostly it was the beds she aimed for. Over and over again. She just didn't stop. If we caught her in the act we would show her we were cross and if possible make a grab at her and march her down to the litter tray to show her (yet again) where it was and that yes, we DID want her to wee in THAT and not in or on our furniture, but to no avail. Nothing worked. It got to the point that I had to shut my bedroom door during the day, whether I was in there or not, to keep her out - nighttime wasn't a problem because Bingo slept with me and she'd rather have died than share a room with him - and mother, who couldn't at the time shut her door, had to buy one of those fitted waterproof sheets to put on top of her mattress and duvet. Quite a palarva it was; every night before she went to sleep she had to fetch her pillows, which wouldn't fit under the sheet, from her cupboard so that she could lie down and every morning she had to put them away and pull the sheet back up before she did anything else - even take a few moments to go to the loo - or risk having to wash and dry yet another duvet and clean and air out the mattress yet again because truly those few minutes were all it took for another "fouling incident" (as the vet called them) to occur to devastating effect.
Of course, we both resented very much at first having to take these precautionary measures - we had never had to act that way before with any pet, even Squealer as she became ill and began to lose control of her bladder - it was an unexpected unpleasantness that marred an otherwise blissful residence in our new and happy home. Mother especially felt that way, as it was her that was most effected.
The funny thing was that other than peeing with glorious abandon when unsupervised - as I said, nighttimes were fine; as mother slept she merely curled up with her quite happily on the bed and slept too - she seemed far happier here than in the old house. The entire first floor became hers, with Simba taking the majority of the ground floor and Bingo having to make do with the tiny living room during the day and while he still chose to do so my third floored bedroom at night (which he could only get to by passing through the areas owned by the cats; including Suzie's landing, which she patrolled fiercely). Mealtimes and litter usage returned to normal (or as normal as they had ever been for Suzie) and she seemed perfectly contented to spend her time in mother's room on the bed. On top of it, no less. And that was during the times when she wasn't preoccupied with sleeping in the bathtub or stretching out in the sunny spot before the bathroom window. Or playing in the bathtub. You wouldn't believe how much fun a cat that had never shown much interest in playing full stop can have in an empty bathtub with nothing but a lid off a shampoo bottle for company; or even with nothing.
It was wonderful. After a year or so had passed in this way, Suzie relented and Simba was at last permitted entry upstairs. The two of them took to curling up at opposite ends of the bed, safe in the knowledge of one another's company. Suzie, I noticed, always had the pillow end, which despite there not being any pillows appeared to be a way of emphasizing her authority.
A year after that, we lost Simba; tragically and unexpectedly and suddenly, taken from us by a massive heart attack. His spirit remained for some time, hanging around*, which explains how calmly Suzie reacted to his supposed absence. In fact, for several months she acted as though nothing had changed, until Squealer and Jasmine came to visit me** and then took him with them when they left. She reacted then, though so subtly at first that we barely noticed it.
She began to properly cry at mealtimes, for one thing. One of her little quirks had been to squeak rather than meow; so much so that for the first twelve years of her life we were utterly convinced that she couldn't properly cry out like other cats. But now she cried, long and loud, when mother or I fetched the can of food from the cupboard and grabbed her dinner bowl, and then she cried again when she finished, as though announcing to us "behold, for I have finished". Bingo was quick to pick up, of course, on the fact that the second set meant now free to go and check if she had left any food behind, which she often did.
Of course once we started noticing, we couldn't stop. Over and over for weeks something new would emerge about our cat. Whether truly new or simply previously passed over, we can't be sure, but here are a few facts that we know - now, if they were around before - about our lovely, quirky little cat:
* She runs up and down in the bedroom, particularly after her meals; her little paws pounding on the bare boards and her hefty bulk (she's a nice stout girl, our Suzie; weird considering how little she eats) landing with a shuddering thud as she jumps on and off the bed.
She does this, seemingly, for no other reason than she can.
* Having unexpectedly begun on for reasons best known to herself, she now greets me in the mornings when I first stagger out of bed and head for the bathroom. The door is propped open most of time - yes, even when we are using it, and why not, after all? It's just us girls - so she can come and go freely, and she certainly does. At 5:AM every morning, after I have plonked myself on the seat, she trots in and I end up sitting there numbly, staring ahead of me; a sightless, half asleep zombie stroking blindly at the eager black and white furry blob rubbing and purring her way round my bare legs.
She follows me downstairs afterwards, too, right to the bottom step; and woe betide if I don't turn and fuss her after every few steps. To transgress from the routine is to sin, grievously.
* She often talks, murmuring and mewling softly whether to herself or to us or to Simba (or Squealer, or Jasmine, or anyone else for that matter) we're not sure, but it's a pleasant thing to listen to, coming from our previously mostly silent family member.
Her purring, too, has gotten louder and more persistent as she has grown older. It now resembles Simba's 'lawn-mower' type growl. And her growl itself is something to behold. Not that it happens often; generally only when being dragged out of the basket on her yearly visit to the vet, but still...
*When indulging in a few minute sit down with her on the bed, she shows her appreciation of your company by pacing happily up and down and headbutting you hard when you fail to stroke her just how and in what position she likes.
And she tells you when she would like you to leave her alone by retreating to her favoured spot under the bed - it's between two storage boxes and in front of an old holdall - where you can't reach her. Can't get fairer or more clear than that, can you?
* She comes down to the bottom step to stare at you while you are preparing food, in case it is something she would like and therefore something you would be morally obliged to give her. Ham, for instance, or cheese. But only GOOD cheese; only cheddar. To give her any other kind will cause her to give you a long hard stare of outraged hatred and she will henceforth refuse to show you any affection for the next twelve hours.
* Following on from above, she also turns up on the bottom step more often than not to watch the dog get ready for his walk; simply, I am sure, so that when he trots up to her in high excitement to show her that he is about to go out she gets the chance to hiss at him menacingly and cause him to back away hurriedly . Her original opportunity ceased, you see, the day he decided to save his aching legs the walk and sleep downstairs. Before that she had two glorious years of utter glee in being able to stop him in his tracks with a single glare, making him look at me with a pleading whine, asking for support. Once when she spat at him he jumped backward straight legged on all four paws down four steps...
* She runs around in circles in the bathtub during late night rainstorms and has a (previously mentioned in an earlier post) ball-bearing that she enjoys pattering around after when she is sure nobody will disturb her.
Both make a nice amount of noise, though considering the timing, the latter is far more enjoyable to us than the former.
* She curls up on the bed underneath the waterproof blanket- yes, she fits, but can't position herself to wee, so it's alright - during cold winter daytimes; a cat shaped lump in the centre of an otherwise smooth sea of white.
It appears that she believes that she is so well camouflaged that we can't see her and neither one of us has had the heart yet to let her know that despite her brilliant attempt at blending in, we do actually know that she is under there...
...And that is it so far.
18 years of Suzie. Fragile yet well muscled; terrified of everything and everyone yet brave enough to tell a huge black dog and various spirits where to go; greedy with snacks yet restrained with her main meals to the point of near abstinence; solemn in company but highly playful in private; jittery but composed... a lover of cheddar and hater of any cheese that isn't; a compulsive urinator of bed-covers and tight circle runner of bathtubs; a contented sprawler in sunny spots through mottled bathroom windows and a cunning 'hidden' white lump underneath a water-proof bedspread...
My darling, funny girl.
Long may she continue to be just the same, and never change.
Alice.
* I am sometimes sensitive to spirit presences; particularly those of animals. The first I noticed fully was Jasmine. It's a story for another time and I'm also acutely aware that many people believe such sensations to be figments of overactive imaginations, so I'll leave it at that for now. Just popped this in by way of explanation.
** Squealer and Jasmine are sisters, reunited by Squealer's passing four and a half years ago - Jasmine died after living for just one year and had waited for her ever since, visiting me periodically to purr by my ear and make a nuisance of herself to the dog by running across the bed at high speed and then leaping off of it using his nose as a launch pad. The poor boy didn't enjoy her routine stop overs nearly as much as I did, I fear.
Wednesday, 11 September 2013
A Little Bit Of Funny To Brighten Your Day:
...well, at least, I found it funny...
~START~
Scene is set; mum and Alice are walking into Tesco's. Mum intends to buy her usual weekly lottery ticket and joins the queue for the kiosk to do so, £1 coin ready in hand. Giving Alice her purse she instructs her to purchase a packet of painkillers from the pharmacy before off-handedly remarking that as well as the lottery ticket, she would get a "print out of last weeks numbers" so that we could check them against last weeks' numbers to see if we'd won. You never know, she says (as she does every sodding week); somebody has to win and this time it might be them. They might be millionaires right at that very moment. Alice, used to this but unable to pretend to be optimistic, as her mother does, smiles wanly and agrees that one never knows. Then she leaves. Spotting something in a nearby fridge, however, she comes back again...
ALICE: (hopeful) mum...?
MOTHER: (pleasantly distracted by whatever tune she is humming in her head along with the thought of the possibility - however slim - of being a millionaire) yes darling?
ALICE: If it turns out that we HAVE won the lottery and are millionaires, can I have a 'Crispy Creme' doughnut?
MOTHER: (instantly alert, distracted smile switched off.) Where are they?
ALICE: (alice points at the fridge) there. The sign is in green and white.
(faced with this unpleasant and unexpected hypothetical demand, mum peers suspiciously through her glasses at the £1.35 price tag, then after a few moments of purse-lipped consideration, finally gives tongue)
MOTHER: (very grudgingly) Well. I suppose that that's fair enough...
ALICE: (amused) Ta.
MOTHER: (serious) You're welcome. Now go and buy the paracetamol and remember; The Grandmama wants them coated.
ALICE: (leaves)
~END~
~START~
Scene is set; mum and Alice are walking into Tesco's. Mum intends to buy her usual weekly lottery ticket and joins the queue for the kiosk to do so, £1 coin ready in hand. Giving Alice her purse she instructs her to purchase a packet of painkillers from the pharmacy before off-handedly remarking that as well as the lottery ticket, she would get a "print out of last weeks numbers" so that we could check them against last weeks' numbers to see if we'd won. You never know, she says (as she does every sodding week); somebody has to win and this time it might be them. They might be millionaires right at that very moment. Alice, used to this but unable to pretend to be optimistic, as her mother does, smiles wanly and agrees that one never knows. Then she leaves. Spotting something in a nearby fridge, however, she comes back again...
ALICE: (hopeful) mum...?
MOTHER: (pleasantly distracted by whatever tune she is humming in her head along with the thought of the possibility - however slim - of being a millionaire) yes darling?
ALICE: If it turns out that we HAVE won the lottery and are millionaires, can I have a 'Crispy Creme' doughnut?
MOTHER: (instantly alert, distracted smile switched off.) Where are they?
ALICE: (alice points at the fridge) there. The sign is in green and white.
(faced with this unpleasant and unexpected hypothetical demand, mum peers suspiciously through her glasses at the £1.35 price tag, then after a few moments of purse-lipped consideration, finally gives tongue)
MOTHER: (very grudgingly) Well. I suppose that that's fair enough...
ALICE: (amused) Ta.
MOTHER: (serious) You're welcome. Now go and buy the paracetamol and remember; The Grandmama wants them coated.
ALICE: (leaves)
~END~
Sunday, 8 September 2013
Now That I'm Back, Here Is 'Part 1' Of My (originally hand-written) Holiday Log:
HOLIDAY LOG, PART 1:
2nd Sept. 2013.
Well, wow; where to begin? It’s been such a fantastic day and despite spending the majority of my time on the coach, I have seen so many amazing things already!
2nd Sept. 2013.
Well, wow; where to begin? It’s been such a fantastic day and despite spending the majority of my time on the coach, I have seen so many amazing things already!
It was wonderful,
to start with, how quickly all the crowded towns and cities were left behind
and countryside and farmland took their place as far as the eye could see. Many
of the late summer flowers were at their peak, with grasses and heathers
blooming as well; the result was very pretty indeed.
Then a rest stop,
which despite how comfortable the coach is overall, my bottom was very grateful
for, before the main section of the journey into Scotland itself began. This part
was mostly by motorway, so you’d have expected – or at least I did – that
things would become noisy and dirty and busy again, but they didn’t; in fact,
the scenery on either side of the huge roads actually got better. The
spaces allotted to commercial farming became smaller and the wild open areas
bigger the further on we drove; and before long the wild areas got wilder and
the large industrialized farms disappeared completely, leaving small holdings
with contented herds of sheep and/or cows loosely fenced by crumbling stone
walls into areas that at their smallest were twice the size of football fields.
Many herds simply roamed free, with no apparent restrictions at all.
The landscape
began to change as well; the reasonably flat ground becoming more and more
uneven and the small English mounds giving way to the steep slopes and rolling
hills of the North. And these stark changes only became more pronounced the
further on the coach drove, with the hills becoming giants and then mountains.
I found myself sat open mouthed and gazing upwards in awe. Something I feel
will happen a lot on this trip. Being open mouthed in awe, that is.
Clouds and mists
obscured the highest of the peaks, as though the sky above them were a lady too
shy to reveal them and choosing to genteelly hide them beneath the hem of her
billowing grey and white skirts. The land had so many contrasts of form and
colour that I didn’t know where to first look. The exposed rocks; some smooth,
some wrinkled and some jagged, jutted out in places from beneath the earth.
Some were chalk white, others dark grey, others coal black, and still more of
them a peppered mixture of two or more of the above. The trees were spattered
in sparse patches or in ones and twos in some areas and so densely carpeted in
others that you could barely see past them and certainly not through them; and
comprised of more shades of green than one would consider possible. The grass,
too, wasn’t uniform: thin to near non-existence in large patches on the sheer
slopes and lush and moist and thick lower down towards the flat; with colouring
that rivalled that of the trees.
There were
mosses, too, and lichens and ferns; spread over flat and slope alike in vast
areas and coating the ground in a blaze of colours; purples and reds and browns
and yellows.
So much was going
on for the mind to take in, and on top of that there was the water. So much
water; I had never before seen that much all at once, not least in so many
ways. It trickled determinedly through streams, babbled bubblingly through
brooks, churned turbulently in vast lochs, seeped lazily along canals and lakes,
raced rapidly along riverbeds and tumbled its way down grooves carved deep into
the mountains and hillsides in a series of narrow channels and gushing
waterfalls. It was as though there was too much liquid to be held underground,
so it spilled out of it over onto the land; for even in places with no rivers
or brooks or lochs or waterfalls you could still see it, glistening amongst the
grasses and glittering on the rocks.
The weather
meanwhile, not to be outdone by the landscape, was wildly varying too;
switching on a pin head between sunny and raining, clear and fogged and
clouded, blue skied and black. The constant swapping meant that I had the
chance to see everything, the mountains and lochs and glens – they’re not
called ‘valleys’ in Scotland ;
they are called ‘glens’ – in many more ways than I otherwise would have. Each
view was different and in it’s own way breathtaking; even when the lady of the
sky threw a sulk and flung out her skirts of cloud over the entire area,
leaving the merest hint of an outline to tell you what lay beneath.
It was all
incredibly beautiful, and I felt incredibly lucky. And blessed.
When at last we reached the hotel a part of me was
disappointed inside, as it had wanted it all to go on forever. The bulk of me,
however, no matter how nice and wonderful it had been, was relieved, as my
entire body – particularly my legs and bum – was a mixture of aching and numb.
The interior of
the hotel was nicely decorated and carpeted and altogether ‘plush’ looking, as
when I went to change for dinner, was my own cozy little room. The restaurant
was even nicer; not overdone, but with just the right amount of luxury to make
it feel terribly special.
I was escorted to
my seat by a waiter. Then another one came to take my order – I played safe
that time and ordered the soup and breaded fish with assorted vegetables – and
yet another one delivered it. There was a confusing array of cutlery that
muddled I had to be guided – thankfully gently and non judgementally – through,
but other than that the whole experience was wonderful and to make it even
better the food itself was delicious.
A simply dreamy
chocolate truffle mousse dessert followed and after that, as I had promised my
stern grandfather; I indulged just a little bit more and enjoyed a “wee dram”
of whisky – very “wee”. The price made me grip the side of the bar – sat at a
table by a huge window that overlooked the main tree lined road of Fort William
and a little further on past it part of its impressive loch, lined on the far
side by the outlines of fogged mountains.
My mind wanted
desperately after I had finished drinking to go for a walk, but my body was
even more desperate to go to sleep and in the end after a fierce battle of
wills between the two the latter won and I gave in and went to my room. I did
nip outside for just a few moments though – in spite of the rain. That drew a
few startled looks – to take a photograph of the illuminated front of the
hotel, and the darkened loch. We’ll see how well those come out. To be honest, knowing of my inability to keep my hand from moving as I press the buttons and also countering in the fast failing light, fog and pouring rain; if they are in any way recognizable then makers of the disposable cameras that Boots sells should be hailed as absolute geniuses.
And now here I
am; exhausted but oh so very happy.
Tomorrow beckons. Here’s hoping it’s as good (if not better)
than today has been…
Wednesday, 28 August 2013
Happiness Is.... No. 5
Happiness is..... lying in bed taking your mind off your headache and stomach cramps whilst listening to the sound of your cat happily chasing a ball bearing up and down over the floorboards of the bedroom on the floor below.
It's even happier when she bats it into the air and then tries to catch it in a frantic thudding flurry.
Truly. One of the best sounds I've heard for a long time.
Alice xxx
PS: in case you are wondering, actually watching Suzie play with the ball bearing (a small metal ball the size of a large pea. Goodness knows how and where she found it, but it's hers now, in any case) is unfortunately impossible. Thanks to the treatment she received before she came to us (dealt out to her by people that will some day, I am sure, be rotting in Hell having the same treatment dealt out to them as punishment), she is far too shy and skittish for that. The best we can do is listen to her and smile, imagining what it would look like.
Anyway: ball bearing plus privacy plus a nice wooden floor equals a happy cat.
= smiles =
It's even happier when she bats it into the air and then tries to catch it in a frantic thudding flurry.
Truly. One of the best sounds I've heard for a long time.
Alice xxx
PS: in case you are wondering, actually watching Suzie play with the ball bearing (a small metal ball the size of a large pea. Goodness knows how and where she found it, but it's hers now, in any case) is unfortunately impossible. Thanks to the treatment she received before she came to us (dealt out to her by people that will some day, I am sure, be rotting in Hell having the same treatment dealt out to them as punishment), she is far too shy and skittish for that. The best we can do is listen to her and smile, imagining what it would look like.
Anyway: ball bearing plus privacy plus a nice wooden floor equals a happy cat.
= smiles =
Thursday, 22 August 2013
Tuesday, 20 August 2013
For Your Amusement; Some Things I Overheard:
SNIPPET NUMBER 1.
~ START ~
Scene begins in Kidderminster Town Centre. Alice is walking along singing - can't remember what - inside her head. Two other women are walking behind her. At a crossing, with everyone paused ready for the traffic to come to a stop, she hears a snippet of the conversation....
WOMAN 1: (balefully) ...so then he asked me to "drive over the roundabout".
WOMAN 2: (after doubtful pause) ...you DIDN'T actually go 'OVER' the roundabout...did you?
WOMAN 1: (indignant) well *I* didn't know! How could I know??
WOMAN 2: (stifles giggle) what happened after that?
WOMAN 1: well, he wasn't very pleased...
~ END ~
SNIPPET NUMBER 2.
~ START ~
Scene begins soon after SNIPPET NUMBER 1 as Alice pauses again at a different set of traffic lights in Kidderminster Town Centre. Two men pass by and part of their conversation becomes audible...
MAN 1: ....Then she asked me if she looked fat.
MAN 2: (pauses. then, incredulous) Tell me you didn't say "YES"??
MAN 1: (sheepish) Well...
MAN 2: Oh, Bro; Never, EVER...
MAN 1: Well I KNOW NOW!
~ END ~
And while I'm in the mood: SNIPPET NUMBER 3.
~ START ~
Scene begins as Alice boards a bus (many moons ago). Two girls are waiting in line behind her as tickets are purchased, talking about their day at school...
GIRL 1: It's so unfair! THREE detentions in one week! And I have to scrape chewing gum off of all of the desks and stuff. Gross. I think Mr. Paddock's really horrible.
GIRL 2: (doubtful tone) well, to be fair, you DID set fire to the...
GIRL 1: (interrupts angrily) that was an ACCIDENT!
GIRL 2: well, yeah, but still...
~ END ~
~ START ~
Scene begins in Kidderminster Town Centre. Alice is walking along singing - can't remember what - inside her head. Two other women are walking behind her. At a crossing, with everyone paused ready for the traffic to come to a stop, she hears a snippet of the conversation....
WOMAN 1: (balefully) ...so then he asked me to "drive over the roundabout".
WOMAN 2: (after doubtful pause) ...you DIDN'T actually go 'OVER' the roundabout...did you?
WOMAN 1: (indignant) well *I* didn't know! How could I know??
WOMAN 2: (stifles giggle) what happened after that?
WOMAN 1: well, he wasn't very pleased...
~ END ~
SNIPPET NUMBER 2.
~ START ~
Scene begins soon after SNIPPET NUMBER 1 as Alice pauses again at a different set of traffic lights in Kidderminster Town Centre. Two men pass by and part of their conversation becomes audible...
MAN 1: ....Then she asked me if she looked fat.
MAN 2: (pauses. then, incredulous) Tell me you didn't say "YES"??
MAN 1: (sheepish) Well...
MAN 2: Oh, Bro; Never, EVER...
MAN 1: Well I KNOW NOW!
~ END ~
And while I'm in the mood: SNIPPET NUMBER 3.
~ START ~
Scene begins as Alice boards a bus (many moons ago). Two girls are waiting in line behind her as tickets are purchased, talking about their day at school...
GIRL 1: It's so unfair! THREE detentions in one week! And I have to scrape chewing gum off of all of the desks and stuff. Gross. I think Mr. Paddock's really horrible.
GIRL 2: (doubtful tone) well, to be fair, you DID set fire to the...
GIRL 1: (interrupts angrily) that was an ACCIDENT!
GIRL 2: well, yeah, but still...
~ END ~
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