Entertaining and vaccinating

It’s been quite busy week. College started back on Monday. Fortunately we don’t have any students to teach yet – they’re still applying and enrolling – but we’ve just moved to a new office with half the number of filing cabinets and no shelves instead of lots of shelves. So there has been much unpacking of resources and much attempting to rationalise these and arrange them into less space than before. It’s quite hard to make folders smaller.

Last term, we were allowed some choice as to which room we would like for this new office. We chose one with a nicer outlook than our old one, but the crucial thing was that it was rather bigger. It was four windows wide instead of three windows wide plus an alcove. It’s unusual for things to get better rather than worse in the world of the public sector, so we were all excited about this extra space and made great plans for it. Then one day we passed the room that was to be ours, and workmen were stripping it out… and building a new wall which cut the room down to three-window width. So it’s actually smaller than our previous one.

It would have been quite funny if it hadn’t been so annoying.

At home, we’ve had Daughter 2’s aspiring-actor boyfriend staying for some weeks (he lives down south) while he rehearsed for the play he’s now performing in during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. (This is more or less the only work, or as I tend to think of it “work”, he’s done this year – and I mean work of any variety, not just acting. Don’t get me started on this subject. Hmm.) Anyway, he’s been occupying our only spare room, Daughter 1’s former bedroom. Then last Friday, five of Daughter 2’s friends arrived to stay (two boys in Daughter 2’s room, which has one of those pull-out beds under the bed) while the three girls plus Daughter 2 slept, sleepover-style, on mattresses in the sitting room.

The friends departed on Sunday and then on Monday, aspiring-actor boyfriend’s parents arrived for a few days, to see Edinburgh and his play. They slept in Daughter 2’s room while she camped on her brother’s floor. Then, to add to the complications, my niece came on Tuesday to stay till Friday – yesterday. She actually slept at my mother’s, but was around here quite a bit. On Thursday, aspiring-actor boyfriend’s parents departed, and since it was my niece’s last night in Edinburgh, we had my mother and my aunt down to a meal.

So, while this has all been quite fun, I haven’t exactly been idle, which explains why I haven’t been doing a lot of blog activity.

This morning we took Cassie and Sirius to have their second injections. We don’t yet possess a cat-carrying basket, but when I took them for the first injections, I just put them in a slightly see-through plastic crate with a lid that folds down in two halves. No great problem. This time, husband was around to help, so we got a kitten each and put them into the crate. Or at least, that was the idea. We actually picked up a kitten each and these took one look at the crate and suddenly turned into squirming furry dervishes with fourteen legs between them, each of these legs kicking out in a different direction and not at all conducive to going into a box. No sooner had one kitten been crammed into the box and the lid slammed shut, than we had to retrieve the other one from behind a sofa (not an easy task – they move fast) and then we had to open the lid again to insert the second, whereupon the first shot out faster than the speed of light and zoomed into some other inaccessible corner. I had no idea they were so strong. I thought they were little fluffy toy-type things, not steely-muscled warriors armed with a thousand tiny, sharp claws.

At last we managed to force Sirius into the box when Cassie was already in it, and fell back, exhausted and sweating. Then we looked triumphantly through the sides of the box to savour our victory. One kitten only. We were amazed. We were so sure that, during our incarceration of Sirius, Cassie couldn’t possibly have escaped. We were there! We would have seen her! But we looked sideways, and there she was in the kitchen, poised for further flight.

We won eventually and the deed was done. The strange thing was that, at the vet’s, they behaved like little fluffy angels. You want to extract one kitten for the vet to stick a nasty needle into him? Certainly. I’ll just sit here in this box. You want to put him back in while the same happens to me? No problem. Now I should go back in the box? Of course. Home again, they went calmly to sleep. Husband and I drank coffee from quivering mugs and wondered if a sedative would help the next time. For us, I mean.

A cat-nap for Daughter 2 and the start of a new term

Ah well, back to the chalk face this morning. Or to be more accurate, the interactive whiteboard-face. I don’t want to say anything critical about the college - not that I think the senior management read my blog every morning but still, I need the salary – but we will be using some new rooms this session and these have been equipped with interactive whiteboards. These aren’t new devices, but our college hasn’t had many up till now and I’ve never had to use one. Yet.

In case anyone doesn’t know what an interactive whiteboard is – and I apologise for my possibly inaccurate description here – it’s a big white computer screen up on the wall. You can’t write on it with chalk or with a whiteboard marker but you can “write” on it with special doofers that look like pens (just to lull technophobes like me into a false sense of security) but which are actually… well, what are they, I wonder? Sort of sensors or something.

Anyway, you can “write” something on this screen and it comes up as wobbly writing. (If you rest your hand on the board to help guide the pen, the screen picks up the movement of your hand and you get smudges.) Then you can do some magic on your laptop and the wobbles turn into print. Theoretically. You can also bring along notes or a Powerpoint presentation or whatever, saved on a memory stick, and then make this appear on the screen (just like with any computer) but then you can move things around the screen with your hands, or draw circles round certain items, or add handwritten notes or arrows or wiggly lines to what’s on the screen. Or at least, I've seen this done.

You find me somewhat vague here because though I did go to a workshop last term on how to use these things, I’ve now forgotten the details, such as how actually to do it. Ok, it’s not so much the details as the fundamentals that I’ve forgotten. I’m really not good with technology.

Should the boards not work – either because they develop a fault or because the operative (eg me) is too dim to remember which buttons to press, the following procedure must be followed. The operative must return to her workroom - a walk of two or three minutes - must sign on to a computer and then must enter a request for assistance on the intranet by filling in a form with full details of the problem. A computer service person will then attend within two or three hours. Meanwhile, back in the classroom… .

Can you see any tiny flaws in this system? I suppose it’s maybe a way to make sure that even the dimmest lecturer (eg me) learns pretty quickly to concentrate on getting the button-pressing right.

Meanwhile, I think I’d better carry a flip-chart with me at all times.

Must stay calm, must stay calm… Think of (whiskers on) kittens.

Think of the Botanic Gardens.

Think of (raindrops on) roses.

Think of retirement.

Totally unfeline post

Today you’re not getting a word out of me about the kittens or the two plants that they knocked off the kitchen shelf while I was out this morning having coffee with friends and mourning the end of the holidays. (One pot broken, one cracked, lots of compost scattered far and wide, while my friends and I had coffee sitting on a balcony in South Queensferry, overlooking the water, thinking that we could do this sort of thing every day if we didn’t have to work.)

I don’t want to become a kitten bore, so I won’t mention how utterly sweet they are in the evenings, when they lie on my husband’s lap and snooze away, purring fluffily and preventing him from doing anything useful. And I certainly won’t tell you about how much they like their new cat litter. They kick bits of it out of the litter tray and chase this around the kitchen floor – you don’t want to know that, do you?

No, today I’ll show you some pictures of my garden. As I’ve said before, it’s quite small but I’ve made it labour-intensive by concentrating on herbaceous plants, and also by making extra little flower beds here and there. This summer the weather has tended to be cool and damp, which hasn’t encouraged blooming, so it’s not looked its best. (Oh, look at these fine examples of the use of “it’s” and “its”.)

However, one minor excitement is a recent small expansion of the garden round the side of the house. When we moved here eighteen years ago (“I’ll stay five years,” I said, “and then I want a bigger garden”) there was a nasty cracked concrete area round the side of the house, and since we couldn’t afford to have this removed, we put up a shed between it and the back garden and pretended that the bit at the side didn’t exist.

In the course of time, the shed started falling gently to bits, and one day this spring Son was in a demolishing mood and offered to remove it. This left the nasty cracked concrete once again visible, made worse by odd remnants of shed material and various items left sitting around which had been in the shed and now were on their way to the tip.

I had been spending most of my free time since September visiting my father in hospital so hadn’t done the usual spring tidy-up. Then he died and the subsequent arrangements and emotions then took up our time and thoughts, so that the ex-shed area grew weeds on the nasty cracked concrete – making it all look much worse than it had when the shed was in situ.

Bear in mind that it was early spring at this point. There are lots of spring bulbs in the garden, but not visible from this angle. Dear me, how horrible this looks!

Eventually we got a chap to come and remove the tree that had grown up in the middle of the iron fence between us and the neighbours, to dig up the concrete, put up a fence and put down grass and paving slabs. And here, with a bit of planting, is how it looks now.

I know this must look feeble in the extreme to those who live in big American or Australian houses with lots of land, but you have to remember that we live in a wee country, in a city where land is very very expensive. So it’s a very tiny paradise, but it’s ours. And sometimes the sun shines.

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.