On cats and dogs - their roaming habits - and missing animals.

One of my favourite stories to read to small children is Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy by Lynley Dodd. It has lovely illustrations and bounds along with a nice rhythm as Hairy McLairy, scruffy black dog, sets out for a walk with his doggy friends, only to be scared home by the local fierce cat. 

It occurred to me that the author must be of my generation. When we were children it was accepted as quite normal for stray dogs to be around. I swear some people just let their dogs put in the morning when they went out to work and left them to fend for themselves until the owners returned home. There were certain routes to school that I avoided because of dogs we knew would be out and about. Nowadays you just don’t see the likes pf Hairy MacLairy and friends roaming the street. 

Now, cats are a different matter altogether. I almost said they were a different kettle of fish but really that would be too many domestic pets for one post. Cats wander at will as a rule.

I am going on about wandering cats and dogs because my son and family contacted us last night to say their visit this weekend might have to be postponed as one of their kittens had gone missing. 

They used to have an ancient cat called Audrey. Audrey was born under our oldest granddaughter’s bed and for the first six months of her life she was known as Mitch. But my daughter’s household had too many cats and so Mitch went off to London to live with my son and his then girlfriend, now wife. And Mitch was renamed Audrey. The granddaughter under whose bed Mitch/Audrey was born solemnly told her uncle that when she was grown up and had her own house she would reclaim her cat. By the time Audrey became old and infirm and was costing money in vets’ fees, the original owner had forgotten her promise and, besides, had other pets of her own in her house. Audrey finally passed away just over a year ago, much to the distress of the small girl in the family. 

Then some six to eight months ago they decided to get two kittens, clearly feeling the need to add a little chaos into their busy lives. Truth to tell, there may have been some pressure from the small girl who ignored Audrey throughout her earliest years but in the couple of years before the cat died became very attached to her. And then it was not just one replacement cat but two - siblings!

Yesterday my daughter-in-law put out one of those distress calls on Facebook because one of the kittens had gone out in the morning and not returned by late afternoon. There was really no way they could travel north not knowing the fate of Buttons! The small girl set her favourite toys on her window ledge looking out for the missing cat. This morning as they set off to take the small girl to school, in walked the missing moggie, cool as a cucumber, clearly wondering what all the fuss was about. Typical cat behaviour!

The granddaughter under whose bed the original Mitch/Audrey was born has now commented that this is why her current cat, an agoraphobic rescue cat who refuses to go outdoors, and any cats she has in the future will all be indoor cats. This strikes me as going against the nature of cats, but there it is.

Anyway, the consequence of all this drama is that my son and family did not set off as planned at midday today. At mid afternoon he sent a message to say their lateral flow tests were all negative - hurray! - and that they were packed and ready to go. They’ll arrive early this evening, traffic permitting.

The cats, by the way, will be fed by friends and neighbours. We hope there will be no more untoward incidents.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Family Christmas - yes or no? Obeying instructions -yes or no? Children playing. Trees and spiders.

My son phoned last night to check if we still feel safe about his driving up from Buckinghamshire to spend the weekend with us. Both branches of the family, Northern and Southern, appear to be well at present. Consequently like many people we have decided to go ahead with the visit as it might be the last chance we have for a while. (Although personally I am determined to travel to his house for his daughter’s birthday in February.) Mind you, he is of the opinion that even if the Prime mInister were to decide at the last minute to cancel Christmas nobody would take any notice of his instructions. Maybe so!

Interviews on radio and television news programmes show people largely of the opinion that mask wearing is a good thing and that they should minimise socialising so that they can actually have Christmas with the family. But there is a definite view that Christmas must go ahead. Pub, restaurant and hotel owners and managers are going berserk as bookings are being cancelled right left and centre. If Christmas is uncertain for them, so is their whole future in many cases! 

My son and family will take lateral flow tests tonight just to be on the safe side. Heaven help us if he decides not to come; the collection of Christmas presents is too big to post. As it is they will have to be sneaked into the car without the almost 8 year old seeing them, just in case she really does still believe in Santa. Every year she writes very nice thank you letters, no doubt cajoled into doing so by her parents, but so far still appears to accept that we all either send gifts for Santa to deliver or instruct him on what to provide on our behalf. If the latter is the case, Santa must be very good at forging everyone’s signature for the Christmas labels on the parcels. 

University students are about to make their way homewards, if they haven’t already done so. There are fears that this mass migration - about a million students moving around the country - will fuel the spread of the virus as the number of Covid cases on some campuses has risen sharply. They have been urged to take a Covid test before leaving university and another before returning to campus. Will they do so? That remains to be seen. 

This is apparently the new normal.

I’ve just pushed a baby buggy round the village. My Fitbit has registered an unusually low step count for that circuit. No doubt it regards pram pushing as a form of outdoor cycling and measures progress accordingly. It’s something to do with the vibrations and rhythm and other such things.

The buggy contained our smallest grandchild who was deposited at our house at about 7.45 this morning. He’ll be collected some time after 1.00pm. So he’s run around, eating breakfast on the hoof, for a good part of the morning and then he fell asleep as we trundled round the village. 

It’s quite fascinating watching small children play, even, perhaps especially, if you have to join in the fun. He happily spent about half an hour putting all the red and yellow tokens in the Connect 4 game structure and releasing them with a clatter, over and over again. And he has just discovered the joys of hide and seek. This involves his standing in a perfectly visible corner of the room while I move around the room asking if he is under the sofa, behind the Christmas tree, and so on until I “suddenly” find him. He then tells me it is my turn to “hide” while he trundles round saying! “Door? No. Tree? No. Plant? No.” He is always delighted to find me and will happily repeat the procedure ad nauseam. The rear light on my bicycle is another source of entertainment. He finds all buttons and dials fascinating and this morning discovered to on-off switch on my rear light, taking it through regular flashing, intermittent flashing, simply red and switched off again and again and again….

My tree, which lives in a pot in the garden for most of the year, has come inside. It is now adorned with lights and awaits the arrival of elves, aka small granddaughters and possible one larger granddaughter, to put more decorations on it. The larger granddaughter, granddaughter number 2, gave me instructions to “de-bug” the tree before it came in. I duly removed fallen leaves from other larger and deciduous trees, and gave it a cursory check for spiders’ nests and the like. It then stood for a day or so in the kitchen. 

This morning I have captured and removed two spiders which I found crawling across the living room rug. Have they come from the tree? Or is it just coincidence?  

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Sunshine for a change. Getting things done. Covid pass thoughts. And Brexit thoughts.

For the last few days we have had no horizons. Or rather, the horizons have closed in on us. Today they’re back! I cycled to the Wednesday market under a rather overcast sky but by the time I was on my home the sun was breaking through. By midday the sky was mostly blue and so we set off to walk up Lark Hill. The weather’s not been fit for that trek for the last couple of weeks but today was fine. 

The forecast seems to be good for the next few days. Hopefully it will stay fine for the weekend when the southern branch of the family - son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter - plan to come for a pre-Christmas visit. My brother-in-law is proposing a chippy hike on Friday, which sounds like a good idea provided I have finished the list of tasks I have set myself. 

One of those tasks was sending Christmas cards, which I finished writing and addressing yesterday and successfully posted during my trip to Uppermill this morning. I have one stamp left over. Maybe I’ll follow a friend’s suggestion and send a card to Julian Assange in his prison cell, a way of letting him know people are thinking of him.

I’ve just received the first of this year’s “round robins”, those letters sent to everyone people know telling us things we don’t fully understand about members of the family we barely know. No doubt more will follow! Some friends of ours don’t write round robins, they just make Christmas cards of photos of the family. That way all their friends keep track of how people have changed over the year and who has been added to the family. I am not sufficiently organised or IT skilful to do such a thing. 

Now, here’s a little moan about packaging. Why do manufacturers of thick liquid stuff - shampoo, conditioner, mayonnaise, the list goes on - put their product in plastic bottle with a sort of nozzle top ? Even more, why do these bottles have sort of “shoulders” that trap the last bit of the product? That last bit is often quite substantial but not very get-at-able. Shampoo and conditioner can be diluted so that the last bit can flow into the nozzle top but who wants diluted mayonnaise? Of course, I am aware that I could just buy things like mayonnaise in jars with a screw top and spoon the stuff out!

The new variant of coronavirus is now so prevalent that the African countries added to the red list have now been removed. Some friends of mine Re up in arms about it. Dire consequences of the spread of the virus are forecast but so far nobody has cancelled Christmas and quote a large number of MPs are still opposed to covid passes. Here’s a comment from someone or other on Facebook: 

“It is ironic that the same Tory MPs who voted against covid passes (because its facist) for England also voted for Voter ID requirements for non existent voter fraud, extra customs checks on the border (i.e 79 pages for each lorry load of fish), visa entry into the EU and removal of the freedom to work, travel, and live in 26 other countries to name but a few of the many ironies of this appalling government.”

My friend Colin commented the other day that he won’t be able to take certain food items back to Galicia with him because of Brexit-related restrictions on what can be taken from the UK to the EU. Now I find that our habit of taking what we call “emergency chocolate” with us when we travel, because our chocolate contains dairy produce. Then there’s a sneaky cost increase as well:

“British travellers planning a getaway to an EU country will be forced to pay a new fee to enter the bloc starting next year.

At some point in 2022, non-EU residents will have to pay approximately £5 to enter the eurozone and fill out a new application form before they travel.”

Hey ho! Another unexpected consequence of Brexit!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Unexpected correspondence. And getting around on the bus again.

I live in the North West of England. This is the start of an email I received yesterday from the Labour Party:

“Hi Anthea,

My name is ……………. and I am the Acting Regional Director for West Midlands Labour. You might think it’s a bit odd that I am emailing you, given that you don’t live in the West Midlands, but I have a huge favour to ask you.

This Thursday there is a parliamentary by-election in North Shropshire. This by-election was caused by the resignation of Owen Patterson over the second jobs scandal.

I am emailing to ask if you can come over and give us a hand for a few hours on the day, to help us by delivering leaflets or knocking on doors. If you can’t make it over, you can join the national phonebank to remind voters to come out and vote Labour.”

The writer is not wrong to say that I might think it a bit odd. Don’t they have members in North Shropshire to call on? Goodness, I’m afraid I don’t even go knocking on doors in our own neck of the woods, let alone going over to a place I’ve never been to. What the writer doesn’t know is that I’m getting more than a little disenchanted with the whole business.

I suspect they are feeling a shortfall of campaigners as more and more people give up their membership of the party. As a rule I would say that the Tories don’t have problems of that nature but just at the moment a lot of their longstanding members are giving out rumblings of discontent. We are certainly living in interesting times.

I’m just letting them get on with it and hoping that the whole Covid thing doesn’t erupt any further. However, despite supposed reassurances that the new variant is perhaps not as previous ones, there is still a strong chance of the hospitals being overwhelmed. We’ll just quietly continue with our Christmas stuff and hope it doesn’t get cancelled on us.

I’ve been out and about this morning, picking up some essentials from the supermarket. Unlike yesterday, the buses seem to be following their normal route today but my bus did get stuck in a queue of traffic leaving Uppermill, a hold-up caused by roadworks traffic lights changing from red to green to red to green at approximately five second intervals. It’s a wonder we didn’t have a road rage incident.

On the whole the buses seem to be fairly empty - those who can do so must be using their cars - apart from at school transport times. Most people are complying with the mask wearing rules, apart that is from a number the aforementioned school kids. But even then, most of them have accepted mask wearing as a new normal.

We’ll see how it goes. Now I have Christmas present to wrap.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Shopping. And travel panics.

 I went shopping with my middle granddaughter (18 years old) this morning. She wanted to get a chain repaired on a necklace belonging to her mother. This was a necklace her mother’s fiancé had given her and which she wore non-stop … until her one year old (now two years old) grabbed it and pulled and snapped the chain. Planning her Christmas presents, my granddaughter decided to have the chain fixed. It’s not any old necklace but a Tiffany necklace. Tiffany describe themselves as “Jewellery creations of timeless beauty & superlative craftsmanship since 1837” and their stuff is not cheap.  My granddaughter had to make an appointment to see someone in their “outlet” in Selfridge’s in Manchester. No simply turning up! The trouble is she doesn’t know Manchester very well so I volunteered to go with her to help he find her destination. 

We arrived in Manchester early so that we could have time to do various other things before heading for the Tiffany outlet. Eventually we made our way to the jewellery place. They could repair the chain, they said, but it would be mid-January by the time it came back. So they suggested a replacement chain. Besides, if the wearer had been wearing the necklace for about eight years the chain would doubtless have stretched and would probably need replacing. Goodness! I never knew silver chains could stretch! I think it’s a ploy to persuade people to spend more money. 

My granddaughter opted to buy a new chain. It was rather more expensive than she has planned but she has been working for quite a few months now and is feeling generous. Besides, she has only one mother, she told me. Quite so! I think she’s enjoying being able to spend, as an old friend of mine used to say, like a wild gipsy!

Anyway, when I set off to meet her this morning I caught the bus down at the crossroads and texted her to say I was en route. When I looked up I realised the bus was not following its normal route. Minor panic! Had I got on the Oldham bus instead of the Ashton bus? Fortunately this was not so. One of the roads was closed and the bus was following a diversion. Phew! 

Returning home later, we thought the diversion must be over and done with as the bus headed for Uppermill. But no, there it turned round and followed a different diversion, giving me another minor panic! Was it even going to Delph? Or would we find ourselves half way to Oldham. But all was well. 

So we ended up at my house, laden with gifts for one and all, for hot chocolate with marshmallows for her and coffee for me.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Things that might or might not happen.

It’s all very quiet in our neck of the woods. I ran in the drizzle this morning. Actually it was not so much drizzle as the cloud having come down to our level. The horizon was very limited. 

Later we walked out in the hope of catching a glimmer of sunshine. It was there for a while but didn’t stay long. So it goes. 

Then I came across this piece of news:

“On Sunday (Dec. 12), five planets, two large asteroids, and the Moon will align in the night sky. Visible around the world.

Venus 

Saturn 

Jupiter 

Neptune

Uranus 

The dwarf planet Ceres, asteroid Pallas and the Moon will settle nearby. 

Look for the celestial objects right after sunset. Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, and the Moon will be visible to the naked eye. 

A pair of binoculars or a small telescope will help you to see the dimmer Neptune, Uranus, Ceres, and Pallas.”

So all sorts of celestial bodies will be seen in the sky tonight. Not here they won’t be! Not unless the cloud cover shifts. It happens all the time: red moon, giant moon, lunar eclipse, meteor showers - the clouds always move in so that we can’t see them from our house! I feel discriminated against.

Here’s something else that’s not going to happen. The British Council will be stripped of its role in running the Turing student exchange scheme after it was undercut by outsourcing firm Capita. The Turing student exchange is supposed to replace the Erasmus scheme, enabling our students to go and study abroad. The British Council has been around forever, organising school exchanges and opportunities for students to travel. But now it’s being run by Capita, no doubt with the idea of making a profit! We shall see how that goes. 

Over in the United States, abortion is being banned in a worrying number of states. This will drive desperate women to take desperate measures. There has been an interesting legal development. In Texas the law now allows private citizens to prosecute anyone who helps a woman to have an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected. The Governor of California has responded by proposing a gun control law which would allow private citizens to prosecute those who sell and distribute weapons. 

“I am outraged by yesterday’s US Supreme Court decision upholding Texas’ ban on most abortion services,” Newsom wrote in a statement on Saturday. “But if states can now shield their laws from review by federal courts that compare assault weapons to the Swiss army knife, California will use that right to protect the lives of people where Texas used it.” 

“If the most efficient way to keep these destructive weapons off our streets is to add to the threat of private lawsuits, then that is all we should do,” he wrote.

So maybe something good could come out of something harmful.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone. 

Some more Michael Rosen stuff. And a culture clash of sorts in Sicily.

Here’s bit more Michael Rosen, just because it’s around: 

“Carrie, I may need you to come out of that maternity wing and tell the world that the walls and floors of Number 10 are sound proof. We heard nothing, right? Ever. OK?

Silentio troppo 

Boris”

“Dear Jack,

Urgent. I need to know super pronto that you’re going to carry the can on this.  No shilly-shallying: you’re the one holding the party popper, ok? Block. Neck. Yours. On.

Eat this memo.

Urino maximo in toga

Boris”

“Dear Rishi, Priti and Gove,

Where are you? I need you ramping it up on all news outlets, right now. Remember, I won you your jobs. You'd be howling at the moon if it wasn't for my immense joie de vivre, wit and common touch. Where are you? 

Turbo pus in centrum

Boris”

“Dear Major

Your sneering, jeering, leering face is having no effect on me. You can gather round you all the old grey grandees you like - Rifkind, Baker et al, but I am the rock of ages, the Acropolis of Westminister.

Putrescentia in corpus

Boris”

“Dear Truss

I know your game, don't you worry. Think you're keeping your nose clean by staying away from the hot lights? Don't believe it. If I fall, I'll bring the pillars of the temple down with me and pipsqueaks like you will be crushed in the debris.

Paranoia in cranium

Boris”

No further comment on the scandalous parties. Too busy organising our own more modest gatherings and discussing what different family members would like for Christmas. Much of this discussion goes on via text messages or has to be in code so that small ears don’t start to  flap and the owner of the ears stop believing in Christmas. 

Meanwhile, over in Sicily, a bishop has apologised to outraged parents after telling a bunch of children that Santa Claus does not exist. It seems that Bishop Antonio Stagliono wanted the children to think about the true meaning of Christmas and the story of Saint Nicholas who gave gifts to the poor and was persecuted by a Roman emperor. He explained to the children that our image of Santa Claus, aka Father Christmas, is much influenced by Coca Cola dressing him up in red for publicity purposes. This explanation took place in Noto, a really nice place that we have visited on more than one occasion, but never at Christmas.

Actually, I don’t think the Sicilian parents should worry too much. Even if the children doubt the reality of Father Christmas, they’ve still got “la befana”, the benevolent Christmas witch who supposedly brings presents Italian children on January sixth. One story goes that the three kings got lost on their way to Bethlehem and stopped to ask the old lady (witch!) the way. She didn’t know the way but she fed them some good food. They were so,impressed with her kindness that they invited her to go along with them. She turned down their offer, saying she was much too busy. Later she regretted her decision and decided to follow the kings, giving gifts to children along the way. Ever since then she has been responsible for the distribution of gifts to good children on Epihany. 

The name Befana may have originated from the Italian corruption of the Greek word, ἐπιφάνεια. It’s said that this word was possibly morphed and latinized into ‘Epifania’ or ‘Epiphaneia’, meaning ‘manifestation of the divinity’. Today, however, the word ‘befana’ is solely used when referring to a witch. 

But she’s a good witch so there’s nothing to worry about - apart from maybe Italian children expecting presents from Santa AND the befana.

And surely it’s possible to explain the idea of the Christmas spirit and the need to be generous and kind to everyone without taking the magic out of Christmas for children. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!