A few events from my morning

I had some friends for coffee this morning. Before they arrived, my little furry cannonballs and I had our usual sort of playtime. Would you like to see some of the things we did? First look at the picture above and then the other pictures.

How did that happen?

All in one piece.

Not even chipped.

Who? Us?


Some time later...

The tiger creeps along the tree-branch...

And back again.

Still, it certainly beats working.

From a well-wisher

Dear Isabelle,

I’ve read in your blog that your son is trying to persuade you to get a kitten. I feel as if I’m your friend, having read your blog for some time now, so I feel I should warn you: don’t!

Kittens are very cute, but they’re basically mini-tigers. This means that they like to climb. They will climb: bookcases, sofas, shelving units, stairs (and banisters), walls (or at least try to), curtains, ironing boards, lab coats, your husband’s suits when he’s trying to press them, your husband when he’s trying to press his suits – the list is endless. They walk along tables, window sills, chests of drawers and worksurfaces, including the cooker hob.

They try to eat plants, fish oil capsules (these burst satisfactorily and make nice greasy slidey bits on the kitchen floor), cereal from bowls left unwarily on tables and, from time to time, they'll do their best to eat each other. Once you let them outside they will no doubt try to consume the local wildlife (though not the slugs and snails that you have in copious and unwanted amounts in the garden). They will make no attempt to eat worming tablets or the expensive new food you’ve just bought them. They have little sharp claws which they like to keep that way, which means that your wooden furniture, your upholstered furniture and your wallpaper are just as attractive for this purpose as the scratching post you will buy them.

So remember: your son loves you whether you buy him kittens or not. Be strong! Resist his blandishments!

With best wishes,

A Fellow-Blogger

Spot the kitten

Dear Fellow-Blogger (and I’ve noticed that many bloggers are cat-slaves – I’m sure there’s a sociological study to be done there),

Thank you so much for the helpful, and entirely correct, email that you sent me some weeks ago. Unfortunately, by some strange and unaccountable glich in cyberspace, your email didn’t reach me until today. What a pity that no other cat-owning bloggers tried to convey to me the complete and horrible truth about this life-changing decision, because, believe it or not, we actually did get – not one kitten, but two! Yes, how stupid can anyone be?

They’re behaving exactly as you predicted. I was trying to tire them out this morning (wow, doesn’t this remind you of being the mother of a toddler?) by letting them run up and down the stairs while – in theory – I sat half-way up reading the paper. But you try concentrating on even the Sunday Times Review section when a kitten is tight-rope-walking along the top banister. He got to the end of the level bit and was then faced with an ornamental wooden acorn. He attempted to circumnavigate this, but the next bit of banister slopes down to the landing, so he decided against it. He then turned round – delicately maneouvering (stop changing my spelling, Word – I WANT to spell it that way; I’m British) his four little feet round in a circle – went back to the chest of drawers whence he’d started – and then did it again.

Anyone want to adopt a couple of kittens? I do wonder if I could harvest their energy in some ecological way to provide us with electricity. A little wheel, like a hamster, perhaps… Anyway, thanks for your helpful and well-meaning advice. Alas, too late!

Best wishes, Isabelle.

The message from Fellow Blogger isn't a real email, of course - it's the one you should all have sent me. Why didn't you? And to any of you considering kitten-acquistion: you have been warned.

Above is Daughter 2. She's very fond of our kittens. So am I, really. Most of the time. And I'm fantastically fond of her. She's such a darling. (As is Daughter 1, of course.)

Son and his friends

Son has been away being a student in a hospital at some distance. He has now returned. The cats were pleased to see him.

Cassie sat on his shoulders and Sirius washed his hair. Affectionate and helpful at the same time. Awww.

Small cats helping Mr Life

Mr Life decides to stop playing with the cats and start getting the newly painted room back to rights.

Small cats decide to hold him back.

Ah! Shelves to play with!

Up we go.

Up a bit more.

Spoil sport!

I think if I s-t-r-e-t-c-h I can just about jump up there. (Click on this to enlarge it - I think it's really funny.)

Very tired after all that fun.

(By the way, I wasn't - I really wasn't - talking about any of my regular blogpals - none of you is that lady whose grammar I mentioned! She's lovely, but she's not you. As I'm sure you know. You all write beautifully and I know I don't always.)

Blogging thoughts and some flowers from my garden

I regularly read 45 blogs. By “regularly”, I mean every few days – some more often. Is this a large number, I wonder, compared to other people?

On the whole, I comment every time I read. Sometimes I have something to say – though wouldn’t claim that my comments contain deep philosophical insights which will clarify the lives of the bloggers – but often it just seems polite to indicate my presence. I get the impression that most people feel, like me, that you shouldn’t (even metaphorically) go looking at other people’s diaries without telling them – even though they leave the diaries lying around with a notice saying “Read me!”

There are one or two blogs – in fact I think actually two – that I don’t often comment on, the reason being that their writers never respond. One of them gets hardly any comments, so I imagine that she doesn't comment on others’ blogs, writes just for herself and is happy with that. She has a tendency to say things without explanation (“Collected A from the airport” – who’s A? Why?). The only reason that I keep only an occasional eye on her is that I actually knew her in the past and I’m faintly curious about her. I emailed her when I first came across her blog and she didn’t respond, which seems odd to me (I can never resist replying to emails that aren’t offering to extend my penis) but there you are. The other one gets comments from many people, so I suppose she can’t respond to everyone and knows that she has lots of readers anyway.

Communication is more fun on a two-way basis. Yet I do still leave comments with a couple of bloggers who never respond. Why? Hmm. Just because I like their blogs, I suppose.

It interests me to see what sort of posts will elicit comments. There’s one blog I read that is, in one sense, not at all well written. Grammatically, it’s really not good. (I don’t mean just the occasional slip, though I’m tempted to ask some of you really good writers to reconsider your use of the word “it’s”. Quite a few people have got it wrong recently, though I’m sure it’s just a typo. Sorry to be teacherish, and yes, I’m quite sure I make mistakes too.) Anyway, this lady is very nice and unfailingly positive and cheerful, with the result that her blog is very heartwarming and the oddness of the writing doesn’t matter at all. And she gets lots and lots of comments, far more than I do, none of them (quite rightly) mentioning her grammar. What does that really matter, after all?

Reading all those blogs and commenting on them is quite time-consuming, and I do often wonder if it’s a justifiable use of time. Guilt, guilt... .I’m at the stage of trying not to be tempted to investigate any more because there are so many good ones out there with huge archives of fascinating reading. The daughter of one of my father’s colleagues has just, very sadly, died suddenly at my age – 57 – and it’s made me think. I’ve always imagined that when I retire, I’m going to do all the things I haven’t had time for up till now. I wonder if she thought the same.

But on the other hand, I do really love getting little glimpses of other lives and places and the whole communication thing with people I’d never otherwise come across is such fun. In terms of pleasure, it’s a good use of time.

Still, it would be nice to get the odd clue about the Persons from Salford, Dublin, Malta and so on who often log on and then silently and mysteriously slip away again. Hello, hello, hello.


By the way...

“it’s” and “its”.

“It’s” with an apostrophe is always short for “it is” or “it has”, not “belonging to it”, which is “its”. Pronouns don’t take apostrophes even when possessive: my, your, his, her, its, our, your, their / mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, yours, theirs. The only exception is “one’s”. Sorry again – I know you know this really. And it’s so easy to spot other people’s mistakes and blithely ignore one’s own – this applies just as well to me as to anyone else. Please do tell me about mine and save me from embarrassment!

Kittens? What kittens?

Scenes from our Saturday

Sirius where he possibly deserves to be.

Cassie with her adoring slave.

Kittens helping with washing.

One new sofa as I like to see it.

Other new sofa. Can you see a kitten?

Such fun to play with the new sofas! See the kitten just about to have a nice scratch!

Hide and seek - such a good game. (Taken through a doorway, hence the funny-shaped photo.)

A nice trailing cloth and exciting flexes underneath this table.

On Monday night, we're going to have to take all this furniture out of the room again because the painter's coming on Tuesday. Ah, it's my planning ability that makes this household run like clockwork.

New sofas and garden envy

Nearly two-thirds of my six-week holiday from teaching has flown in and yes, I know, I know: six weeks is a long time. But I need more!

Today was the first day this week when I didn’t have to take my mum somewhere (hairdresser, chiropodist, hearing aid place) and wasn’t frantically restoring order in the garden in between times, so I went up town to try to find curtain material and paint for our smaller living room. This is the room for which we ordered new sofas about a month before we decided to get the kittens. Yes, I know, I know: dumb. The sofas have now arrived: a pale, bluey-green fabric with a nice loose weave… about to become looser, I greatly fear. Currently they’re in our larger sitting room, the one the kittens aren’t allowed in; so that room is somewhat full. Next week we’re getting the smaller room painted – yes, I know, I know: we should have done this before the sofas arrived. We also ought to have chosen a new carpet. I’m normally quite efficient, but the trouble with holidays is that I believe I’ll be able to do a million things during them and then they’re not long enough. Also I think I switch my brain off.

Never mind: here are some more pictures from our holiday in the Borders. Above is a general view of the countryside near the cottage.


This is a beautiful geranium in the gardens of Alnwick Castle in Northumberland (over the border in England).

The gardens have been made slightly Disneyesque – lots of ingenious water features and so on. This is me, taking a photo of my mother and husband reflected in a cylinder with water pouring down it.

Here we have some genuinely free-range hens in one of several such farms near our cottage. I found these greatly cheering. I had suspected that “free-range” meant that the hens were wandering around in a shed but these ones had quite a big field, though interestingly you can see that they clearly prefer to do their pecking pretty near home. A bit like me.

Here are another couple of views of the garden at Floors Castle.

Daughter 2 was once in an expensive clothes shop with her friend Anna, and Anna stretched out her arms towards a particularly desirable garment and said, “Want! Need!”

When I think of that garden, I know what she meant. My little patch is very nice in its way, but not quite so splendid. Also my house. Ah well. Think of having to hire and fire all those servants. What a bother that would be. And they don't have my nice pale green sofas.

Son ironing his lab coat

Kittens just love to help.

The next time you see a medical student ...

with lots of little holes in his lab coat...

you'll know why.

There have been terrible floods in midland England. Thousands of people are marooned in their houses with no water or electricity supply. Here, it's been the best day of the summer: day-long sunshine. It's been so weird, seeing news reports of towns that have turned into islands, while the sun beats down on Edinburgh.

Much sympathy to anyone affected by these strange and awful events.

Holiday in the Borders

We're back. This was our cottage. We had a very nice time.

This was the view from our sitting room window. We are now quite expert in the habits of sheep.

This was our one sunny day - we visited Melrose Abbey.

This is the garden at Floors Castle. I want it. Do you think it's too late to marry into the aristocracy?

Back in due course.

(The kittens (left in the charge of Daughter 2, her aspiring actor boyfriend and Son) missed us, of course. They've now learnt to run along the work surfaces in the kitchen. Lack of discipline in our absence, that's the problem.)

PS - I've been catching up with blogs written by people who commented while I've been away, and for some reason I can't manage to comment in return on some: Aunty Evil, Meggie, Rosemary Grace and Connie so far. Others have been fine. So hello and thanks for the comments, you four. I remember this happened once before and I found a cunning way round it, but senile decay has set in and I can't remember what this was. Any suggestions, anyone?

Holiday ploys

My husband has been on holiday this week so we’ve had a few outings. He took the photos, since I never remember to bring a camera. On Monday we went to Newhailes House, a National Trust property. It’s a smallish mansion house, built in 1690 and extended a hundred years or so later. It was occupied by the same family (and its descendants) from 1710 till 1997, and they did very little redecoration in the last hundred and fifty years. When the National Trust took it over, with lots of the family furniture, possessions and pictures, the necessary repairs were done but it wasn’t restored it to its original state of smartness. It’s quite an interesting point – do we want to see it approximately as it was when first decorated, or as it was when the last owner lived in it: a bit scruffy and with some twentieth century alterations? Which is the truer version of the house?

I occasionally wonder this about people too. Which version of you is the real you? The six-year-old you? The sixteen/twenty-six/thirty-six/forty-six/fifty-six/ etc you? I thought about this quite a lot while watching my father in his last, sad days. Was that really him? Or was he more the brilliant and brave young man who won the George Medal for bomb disposal in the war, or the young, powerful Dad I remember carrying me upstairs to bed?

On Wednesday we went to Malleny, a lovely garden on the outskirts of Edinburgh, again owned now by the National Trust.

On Thursday we visited my husband’s aunt and uncle, who are lovely people. They’re both retired doctors and they live in a village in Fife, to the north of here. Their large house is absolutely beautiful: built in 1880, in stunning gardens and with a view over the water to Edinburgh. They took us in their new S-type Jaguar car – I've just Googled this and it costs more than my gross annnual salary – to a club in St Andrews where members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club can take visitors. It’s in a building which has been converted from an old golf club factory, and is really luxurious – fine panelling, squashy armchairs, big windows overlooking the 18th hole and the golden beach and the sea – and we sat gazing out at the scene and the milling throng below, as we ate a delicious lunch served by solicitous waitresses.

Ah yes, I could get used to living like that.

Our son – all going well – starts as a doctor next year, and in his first job he’ll earn more per annum than I do now, after teaching since 1973. Yes, I think doctors should be well paid, and yes, medicine is a very important and responsible job, but I do sometimes wonder why teachers get paid so much less than lots of other professions.

I know, I know. I get six weeks’ summer holidays, two weeks at Christmas and Easter and a week in October. No evenings to speak of, though – lots of marking.

My husband and I are off this afternoon for a week in a cottage near Selkirk in the Scottish Borders for a week, taking my mum, and I’m not packed yet, so – I must go. Have a good week. Sorry I haven't commented much on others' blogs - too busy gardening in the long light evenings.

(There - I've done a whole post without mentioning kittens.

Oops. Oh well. Here they are.)

Getting trained

The day that we got the kittens, we went up to the supermarket to buy equipment for them: a bed, a scratching post (so that they wouldn’t scratch the furniture – ha!), some toys, some dishes, a litter tray, some litter, some food…

We didn’t buy anything else, and the lady behind us in the queue noticed the exclusively feline nature of our purchases. She enquired about our cats, told us about hers and said as farewell, “Don’t worry. They’ll soon get you trained.”

Nonsense.

Training cats not to walk on tables - part 2:

a) Cassie and Sirius are now getting used to us waggling a finger at them in reprimand if they walk on a table, and therefore this is becoming less effective. (Well, it was never actually effective; but at least they noticed.) So we’ve moved on to waggling a finger and saying “No!”.

What they now do is to glance over their shoulders, like people in audience participation shows who’re being picked out by the host – “Who do you mean? Not me, surely?” - and, finding no other cat behind them, they gaze at us in innocent puzzlement and continue on their way.

b) Today they started climbing the dining room curtains. Very bad. But we were cunning. We hooked up the (floor length) curtains on to the table. So now there’s a nice soft bit of curtain on the table for the kittens to walk on, instead of nasty cold, slippery wood.

Oh yes, we’re getting these kittens trained.