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:




....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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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. 

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~

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!
     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…