Aw Diddums

Today I was alarmed to discover that one of my older posts on WordPress had a list of four links at the foot of it. The list was headed ‘possibly related posts’. The first link was to one of my own posts; the other three was to posts by blogs I didn’t even know. I saw it as a type of advertising spam, and I didn’t want it.

Investigating, I found that some bloggers were reporting a rise in the number of trolls visiting their blogs, as well as bloggers whose views were radically opposed to their own. Some of the links led to inappropriate sites, and there was nothing to point to the fact that the poster wasn’t endorsing these places. A quick look in my stats showed that I was receiving referrals from sites I didn’t think had any interest in my blog… turns out they had my posts in their ‘possibly related links’.

The good news is that I could opt out – and I did. I wish I’d known earlier it was happening, as I wasn’t seeing any of those links at the foot of recent posts. I won’t be receiving any of the traffic generated by this exercise, but I was happy enough the way I was before.

Meanwhile, the latest ScribeFire update still wasn’t working for me; in particular I was getting login errors when I tried to reconnect it with my blog… so I downgraded to the version I was happy with. It’s like going home.

Elephant Paints Self Portrait (You Tube video)

Snopes on Elephant Painting

Wikipedia on Elephant Intelligence (Interesting read. I notice dolphins are mentioned a lot as well!)

Elephant ’self-portrait’ on show (BBC News, 21 July 2006)

And, while we’re at it, a You Tube video of Dolphins playing bubble rings. I want to play this too.

Last night I dreamed I was a nervous wreck. My cat had just died and my life was on rocky ground. I went to the local school during the night, when it was empty of all staff and pupils, and pinned my cat’s best show rosettes on the padded back of a school chair. (Since when were school chairs padded?) I also typed a couple of sheets about my unhappy experiences, and pinned them alongside the rosettes.

They stayed there for a few months and became quite a feature of the school. The teachers and schoolchildren were talking about them and hadn’t taken them down. I wondered if they kept so many chairs in the school that they didn’t have to use that one, or if there was a girl who would perch gently, half turned, so she wouldn’t squash the rosettes.

One day I realized I was feeling better; the experiences I wrote about were in my past and I didn’t want them hanging in full view any more. If I cared at all about the cat I had lost, I should get the rosettes back before the school itself took them down. All of a sudden I was filled with a sense of urgency – I had to get out there that night, before it was too late.

After waking up, it occurred to me the essays in the dream represented my blog.

I am still (very slowly) going through old blog posts and deleting many which have passed their date of usefulness. It’s true I posted them when I needed to, or when they were part of an ongoing story, but they don’t have to be up there forever. When I’ve finished editing those, I’ll start on the newer ones here. Editing is something we should always keep in mind as bloggers or site owners… though sometimes we get tired and just let things slide.

I also have desktop wallpapers ‘out there’ that I don’t like any more! They will be coming down eventually as well.

As for the cats’ rosettes… I don’t know what to do with them. I said I would go through them and keep all the best, and I did.. but there are still too many. I’m waiting to lose interest but I haven’t yet, because of the cats who won them. There’s a rosette pinned on the cork board behind this computer – Best of Breed. Could be Sharky’s, could be Thor’s. I noticed the other day some toothmarks at the bottom of its trailing ribbons – probably courtesy of Delilah. At first I was sad and annoyed, then shrugged it off. The cats never cared. One day I won’t either.

PS It’s one of those days (in a minor way) when one thing going wrong leads you straight into another thing going wrong…

ScribeFire had a fresh update which at first seemed OK, then it started telling me it couldn’t or wouldn’t delete my notes. I wasn’t sure what was up with that, but it didn’t seem too terrible, so I left it. Doubtless it would be sorted in the next update.

I typed out a fresh post which it allowed me to save only once, but that wasn’t a disaster either, as it wasn’t forgetting anything I typed into it.

“B-b-b-but I’m addicted to hitting ’save’!” I grumbled, feeling lost. That seems a weird objection, but it’s true. Saving every little change is as routine as making coffee. Hunting for the save button and not finding it makes me hesitate. In fact I nearly hit the ‘Clear Content’ button instead, as it was over in that corner.

Later on (after I turned off the computer so a guy could bring Sky to my delighted old analogue TV), I tried to post something, but discovered Scribefire had forgotten where my blog was. I clicked around, looking to see if there was a list of blogs from which Aw Diddums had accidentally been deselected, but couldn’t see anything, so started to remind it via the ‘launch wizard’. I got as far as being asked for my password and was spooked enough to cancel without answering. It didn’t make sense that it had forgotten the first time; I would rather wait it out. My imagination was running riot again, with the squeaky little voice whispering “it could be a haaaaaaaacker!!” Aw shush.

Gradually it occurred to me there was nothing stopping me from using my own blog’s dashboard, so I toddled over there, pasted my blog post, and looked at the list of categories. I read it over three or four times before realizing (panicking) that Agoraphobia wasn’t there. Had some haaaaacker been tinkering with my blog?

THEN I noticed the small print beside the list of categories. It said, ‘Most Used’. Underneath that was a link to ‘All Categories’. OH!

When you’re not expecting to be presented with an abridged list, it wastes your time while you scroll up and down looking for the thing that isn’t there. Agoraphobia should have been right at the top, alphabetically… it would have suited me to have the whole list there. I notice this time it’s still on the ‘All Categories’ tab – probably ‘Most Used’ is the default when you’ve not been on the site for a while, or when you’ve been doing most of your posting via ScribeFire. I hope ScribeFire feels better soon. It’s gone a little bit haywire and I miss it.

Today I said to Mum I’m so bored with the town here I want to go somewhere else for a while.
“Where?” she asked.
“Anywhere but London.”
“Of course, NOT London!” (glares at me as though to say “that wasn’t even on the menu.”)

“We could take the train to Xxx…” she suggested.
“I don’t like trains.”

I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere, then…

My local Spar has a short stretch of Poland in the corner. None of the goods on that rack are labelled in English, though I was able to figure out from a Spar tab that one of the items was a bottle of banana and carrot juice. Somehow they didn’t tell me about the apple.

I wanted it, and an uneasy feeling stirred in me – would I be allowed to buy it, seeing as I wasn’t Polish??

Mentally I slapped my wrist – well, of course! I worry about the silliest things. If you dig deep enough in my mind, you will probably discover a squeaky voice insisting that though they would be prepared to sell me the banan marchew jabłko sok, it would only be in exchange for foreign currency. I would stand panicking beside the till, saying “but all my money is British,” and everyone would look at me as though I had crawled out of a sock.

I deal with a constant mass of squirming worries because of the need to consider before I get to the counter what the potential problems are. Bitter experience has taught me that it’s worth calculating the various scenarios which could have arisen (sometimes in the last few minutes) which I might not have known about due to being deaf. It can be of surprising benefit to allow my imagination to run riot.

If I arrive at the counter unprepared, I’m quite likely to be stuck in a bog of befuddlement with people waving their hands and speaking gibberish (yes, I know it’s my own language), holding up the queue while I receive the ‘crawled out of a sock’ stares I mentioned earlier. Another reason why I avoid all queues (or at least long queues) if at all possible.

Forgive the wild-eyed rambling.

If I like the juice, I might try a packet of Polish biscuits next time – if they’ll let me.

I’m reading Dean Koontz books again – the last one (One Door Away from Heaven) was as unputdownable as Brother Odd. I won’t give away the plot. Odd things annoyed me slightly, but not enough to spoil it for me (except somewhat at the end, but we can always change the ending in our minds).

Near the beginning, a mention of Ghost Riders in the Sky was inspired. The tune that came into my head was the Shadows’ version, Riders in the Sky. It was one of my favourites when I was a teenager, and it greatly added to the novel’s atmosphere: power, speed, technology, hope, vigour, love of life… and an underlying menace. Perfect.

The main annoyance I had with the book was that the print disappeared into the crease. It was too big a book to be constantly pushing the pages back… quite a strain on the hands. Though I call it ‘unputdownable’, sometimes I had no choice. Sensible people would probably just break the spine but I can’t bear the thought! I’m sure the pages would have started to fall out.

It’s impossible to blog with an insane kitten jabbing her claws into your armpit. Samson has run off into the night, so Delilah has latched onto me. I placed her in her comfortable cot downstairs and came up to bed, but even as I went, my back was stiff… as I expected, there was a ferocious drumming of paws and she shot past me up the stairs, her tail held high. She didn’t want to sleep alone.

I’m worried she’ll sink her teeth through the downie into my feet, she pounces so enthusiastically. Furthermore, I have hopes that she won’t bite my nose off while I sleep, or shave my hair, or something of the kind. No wonder Samson skedaddled.

Saw this in the paper yesterday: blind woman refused access to her pension.

It makes me want to stop the world and get off.

Mum was tempted by an offer of four trial months of free Sky TV (after £75 initial set-up, delivery of Sky box and installation of mini-dish). So now we have a dish on our house too.

It’s been enjoyable so far, though it’s shocking how little is subtitled, including programmes which are subtitled sometimes, and other times not. They must do something about that, as it seems such a waste of energy and resources.

We have seen The Colour of Magic amongst other things, very good.

A few days after the Sky box was installed, we tried to watch a DVD. Nothing happened… I suspected the DVD was playing but not showing up on the TV screen. I crawled behind the TV and changed the Scart cables around – the Sky guy had placed them so that they both ran from the TV. I put the DVD player in the middle, taking both cables so that the TV had one and the Sky box had the other.

The DVD sprang to life on the TV screen (already part of the way through).

After watching the film, we tried to watch Sky again, and this time Sky wasn’t responding. Again I crawled behind the TV and switched the cables round to Plan C… this time I discovered that it mattered which Scart socket you used! I thought it didn’t matter, but it does. The Sky box has one socket for the TV and another for the video or DVD player, so this time I put the Sky box in the middle, with one cable running to the TV and the other to the DVD player. The sockets on the other units matter as well, but I swapped the Scarts round till I figured out which ones worked.

This time we could watch Sky, and we could also watch a DVD if we switched off the Sky box first. But the Sky picture was green!!

“You’ve lost all the red,” said Mum, accusingly. After a little head-scratching, I crawled behind the TV again and discovered that one of the Scart cables wasn’t as well pushed in as I thought; pushing it all the way in was all that was needed to restore ‘normal’ colour to the TV screen…

We now have a TV set-up we can continue to use.

The excitement wasn’t entirely over, as Mum got a letter saying they were going to start debiting her account at the end of the month… she phoned and said she’s barely even started the four-month trial period she was promised, and they said they accidentally sent out letters saying they would, but they weren’t going to, and Mum’s money is safe for now.

Funny how it’s never easy.

Tonight I watched Changing Lanes starring Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman (if I remembered their names correctly! Did I? A miracle, then; I never seem to remember names now). I would say it was a Tom and Jerry film for grown-ups, and it was screwing me up just watching it… but by the end I was able to say, “good stuff – I like it!” Probably more than I liked Tom and Jerry (which was ‘not much’).

I decided the lawyer was Tom, while Doyle was Jerry.

Every time Ben Affleck (the ‘lawyer’) got that panicky, cornered look on his face and said “yes, this is what I need for my life to continue to run smoothly!” your stomach lurched… good acting, really.

My ‘maternal kitten’ Delilah was watching children on the TV again… this time she latched onto the sons of Doyle (Morgan’s character). She heard them screaming and crying, and was all motherly concern. Just in case they would like to know.

For no clear reason, the song in my head has changed to Here Comes the Sun.

Little darling, it seems the ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun
It’s alright

It’s both sunny and icy, and Delilah (kitten) is unsure of the wisdom of venturing outdoors – I’d say she had perfect sense. However, I feel as though I’m cast in the role of singing “little darling”…

A little while back I said there was something particularly sweet about Delilah – Mum said the girl at the vet was saying how lovely she was. I said they wouldn’t have said that about Samson, and Mum laughed at the thought. Samson is all round-eyed tom… young, gangling, cautious and shy, but definitely a (neutered) tom.

There’s something motherly about Delilah, though still a kitten with sharp claws – an oxymoron, almost. (I’m starting to lose all faith in the existence of oxymorons, but that’s for another blog post). Delilah’s not sure about going outside, but Samson let himself out before I was quite ready… just like Sharky did. He seemed to be getting on fine, and didn’t run off anywhere, so I relaxed. Watching them milling about at suppertime, I said to Mum “it occurred to me I shouldn’t worry about them running away – it’s more likely we will never get rid of them!”

Later that night when it got dark, we were watching TV. I glimpsed Samson moving stealthily in the darkness of the hall. A couple of times his eyes turned towards us, shining like lamps. It put me in mind of Sharky disappearing one night quite soon after we got here. We didn’t know if he knew his way back, and left the doors open till he finally came back. It got chilly and we put our coats on. On that occasion, Sharky had moved about in the hall just the same way, flashing his eyes.

During a commercial break, I left the room and came upon Delilah, sitting in the middle of the hallway. “Delilah says her boyfriend is missing,” I said. I didn’t look round to see if he was there or not, and hadn’t known he had left the house… but I knew what Delilah was saying.

“No, he’s not – he’s right there!” said Mum, pointing at his bed.
“Oh,” I said, mentally kicking myself for reading something into the body language of cats that hadn’t been there, but when we reached Samson’s bed, we found it empty.

We did the leaving-doors-open-wearing-coats thing. He was gone till the early hours of the morning, and Delilah was very worried and upset. Every time we took a walk around outside, she peeked out as well, and stared into the dark with sorrowful eyes.

I took her to watch the film with me – it was Jewel of the Nile. The girl in the film was imprisoned by her mortal enemy, who told her “your man is dead.” She gasped in shock and said “no, he’s not! He wouldn’t die without telling me!” We looked at Delilah, and smiled.

Now, every time Samson comes back from somewhere, Delilah grabs him round the neck and says “come here, I have to check that you’re all in one piece.” Mum complained once that Delilah wouldn’t let her out the front door… she parked herself in front of it and scowled.

We were discussing where Samson went to that night, as we thought maybe something happened to make him think twice about going out the next day. “He can’t tell us,” shrugged Mum.
“If anybody could tell us, it would be Delilah,” I said, and we giggled at the thought. That girl makes her feelings known. Wouldn’t you be glad to have her in your corner?

Got up early this morning – there seemed to be no reason to lie around, as I was just

• too hot
• dreaming about desktop wallpaper every time I dropped off
• struggling with tinnitus and other thoughts

While still lying there, I was being driven mad by a plodding, depressing tune that was in my head along with a monotonous roaring house noise. “I don’t have to put up with it,” I thought, “I can take control of my own head. I will listen to whatever I choose to.” I rejected the plodding tune and threw open the doors of my mind to the world of music… what else will come wandering in?

It was The Entertainer. Wouldn’t you just know it? But there’s something special about The Entertainer – hush just a minute.

Last night Mum got a phone call and said “that was Maria… Charles has died.”
Charles and his wife Rosemary lived in a house down the road from us in Edinburgh… Maria was their daughter, and there was a son called Allan. They were related to us, enough that I could call Charles and Rosemary ‘uncle and aunt’.

They loved dogs, cats, gardening, long walks by the beach, baking, and sewing. They took my sister and me on a short holiday to their but and ben – there was a caravan close by and my cousin Allan liked to sit in it and read – maybe he slept there too, while the rest of us were in the cottage.

It was on this trip we were first introduced to flying saucer sweets – Uncle Charles stopped the car and went out to a small local shoppie, and when he came back, he had a paper bag with these strange sweets. “What do we do with these?”
“Why, eat them, of course!”

We went to the farm near by for fresh milk and baths. The baths were lovely and hot, but came out of the taps a strange yellowy brown. I was told this was normal – must have been peat or something! We had cream and sugar with our porridge in the morning, and at night I was in the bottom of the bunk while my lovely older cousin Maria (with her long hair unpinned and loose) dozed on the top. I bothered her with things like Old Macdonald Had a Farm, Ee I Ee I O!, but she never snapped at me, just sounded sleepier and sleepier…

My sister (older than me by three years) got so homesick that Uncle Charles had to drive her home, but I was enjoying myself and stayed.

I don’t know if perhaps there were two or three trips to this cottage, all confused in my mind into one. I’m not even sure if the flying saucers were courtesy of Uncle Charles or my grandparents. I seem to remember my grandmother with us when I found the rabbit’s tail. She said she saw it but didn’t want to pick it up, but Aunt Rosemary said “it’s lucky”.

Aunt Rosemary loved baking, and I still have some of her recipes. She made me copy them down when I was about to go to university. I wasn’t much of a baker and didn’t know what all the fuss was about, but I’m glad of them now.

In the aftermath of my father’s funeral, my mother and I went down the road to have coffee with Aunt Rosemary. She liked to sew and had a couple of rag dolls sitting on the sofa – I picked one up and smiled. Something about that must have touched Aunt Rosemary, because when we went back up the road, she said “please keep the doll”.

Some time later, Aunt Rosemary was killed by a lorry. She was waiting at the bus stop and was hit by the lorry’s wing mirror. Imagine… the very last thing you would expect. Bright and bobbish in the morning, full of plans. And then her family being phoned at work… it must have been terrible for Charles and the others.

When I went out to join my own family abroad, I was the last one to fly out. I went on the plane alone when I was six, but it was Uncle Charles who drove me to the airport. I was so excited I couldn’t believe we had to wait for him to come home from work and then have his supper.
I remember looking at him as he drank his tea, and he caught my eye, made a resigned but amused gesture, and got up out of his chair.

I went on the plane with a shiny red handbag – inside was a small pink bottle of rosemary oil perfume (and it still smells good!!), a bag of barley sweets (to stop my ears popping) and a book – Bottersnikes and Gumbles. But that’s the start of another story.

All this kindness over the years… but when Mum said “Charles is dead,” the thing that came first to my mind was when I arrived too early at school. It was a frosty cold winter morning, and my breath steamed in the air. The school was still closed, no other children were about, and the janitor wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I wandered round the school building rather forlornly, then spotted Uncle Charles moving books around in one of the classrooms – he was a teacher there. I tapped on the window, and when he saw me, he smiled and let me in. It was warm and peaceful, and I was grateful.

It seemed more than just a coincidence that The Entertainer was the song that came in when I opened the door for it this morning. Aunt Rosemary played it on the piano – I had never heard it before, and I thought it was wonderful and cheerful and fun. Just like Charles and Rosemary themselves.

This still isn’t the blog post I was planning, but when I found the TV Creature Survey by Pete from Thequacksoflife, I wondered which animal characters from film in general I would place as my top ten. This is my list (in order of importance):

1. The Angry Beavers
2. Scrat (from The Ice Age)
3. Puss in Boots (from Shrek)
4. Hammy the squirrel (from Over the Hedge)
5. Sid the sloth (from The Ice Age)
6. The Wombles (if I had to pick one, it would be Orinoco… or possibly Wellington)
7. Salem (black cat from Sabrina the Witch)
8. Kaa the python (from Disney’s The Jungle Book)
9. The Pink Panther
10. Black Beauty (from the old TV series)

I love Winnie the Pooh when safe between the covers of his book, but I can’t stand the TV versions… very dull. That’s why he’s not on this list.

I have a Disney print (a find from a charity shop, carefully attached to my cork board) of Shere Khan throttling Kaa with one lazy fist. You’d have to see it to appreciate the humour of their expressions, but I bought it because it reminded me of my relationship with my sister. Our Chinese Zodiac animals are Tiger (sister) and Snake (me).

Looking at it just now, I see a photo of Sharky on the board too – it has swung loose and slipped round to rest on top of Kaa in the picture… maybe he’s still trying to protect me!

I had another blog post in mind for tonight but wasn’t feeling particularly chirpy… it will keep for tomorrow. I thought I had been getting on OK with a particular crowd (nothing to do with blogging), then realized some of them would talk to the ‘usual’ people while leaving me out, no matter how often my name came up in the conversation. There seemed no particular reason for it, and maybe there really wasn’t one; it was just habit. I know people communicate in different ways and probably aren’t thinking about it that hard.

I realized today that the same crowd talk to each other on another site… could well be why they feel they all know each other, whereas I’m not one of the merry band. It’s just sheer coincidence that I turned up there anyway.

Goodness, I do know that people have different conversational habits and needs and sometimes don’t realize how they are coming across; the other night I spent an hour or two designing a silly 3D kitchen for my sister (using daft graphics as textures and patterns) because I thought it would make her laugh. Her email response was: “too modern”. I know she probably laughed anyway, and it’s her habit to make the short, dry understatement; she’s known for it. We make jokes about how “quite nice” is high praise coming from her. It’s just that sometimes I need evidence of that laugh… or a watery smile would do.

There’s nothing worse than being demanding or pushing for attention, but sometimes being patient and accepting gets very hard… why did it come in mind that someone blogged today (or recently) about patience being active rather than passive? I think it was a post for BlogFriday’s word ‘active’, come to think of it. It’s a state of mind that has to be kept in place despite all wobbles.

I wound up in a fit of the doldrums and trailed off to watch my TV at the back of the room, Delilah purring on my lap. We watched Celebrity Come Dine with Me, Cotton Wool Kids, and something about Chinese schoolchildren slaving away for their exams. There were some very young kids in the programme and Delilah turned round and stared. I think she would have batted cat toys around for them if they had been in the room.

Eventually I rose to check for messages on the new site. Earlier I’d seen someone’s name there, someone I liked normally but didn’t talk much to, and left a quick message saying “hi, it’s me from (the other site), just thought I would say hello.” I kept it short and casual as she probably wouldn’t want to be conversational. I checked my messages and there was one from her, saying “oh, great to see you here! (Hugs). What a surprise. Do you know X, Y, and Z are here too?”

And… I felt so much better! Well the sadness won’t go away just like that, especially as I now have a headache (aw diddums), but it was wonderful to be greeted so pleasantly! Tomorrow perspective will return – but has already made a start, sending me the estimated arrival time of its train. And then I will write the other blog post I was planning.

Just passing these along… hugs to anyone out there who needed a few.

One of my biggest pieces of news is something I keep forgetting to mention – there are tenants in my house.

They’ve been there quite a while already. So far things are going smoothly, except that my washing machine chose to break down the first time they used it. I felt like walking over there especially to kick it. I said to Mum I had visions of them pulling the washing machine out to change it and discovering crumbs and rotting food under it or down the side… the usual places you can’t clean. She said “but we washed the floor when we pulled the machine out to straighten the lino.”

Oh… we did? Well that was lucky, then. I hope it wasn’t us straightening the lino that busted it, but I suppose it doesn’t make a lot of difference, as it was me that paid for the new one anyway.

I think it’s much more likely it was failing already; sitting unused for several months may have caused something inside to dry up, shrink, crack, and give up completely. Or maybe it couldn’t stand the thought of never seeing me again, and committed hari kiri.

At one point we drove past the street my house is in… if you crane to see down to the far end, you can see it as you flash past. I felt nervous and didn’t even know why; it was that ‘gearing myself up for disagreement/rejection’ feeling; the knowledge they would want to arrange things differently. And why not? I wanted everything different from the way the previous occupant had it, and I don’t think it worried her that we planned, in her hearing, to install a new kitchen and a Ramsay ladder – she just grinned and nodded encouragingly.

All I was doing was obtaining a quick glimpse of my house in the distance, and my stomach was churning.

The blinds were pulled up out of sight, windows welcoming in the sunshine. When I lived there, I had the blinds down and slanted, partly to keep myself from being dazzled, and partly so people couldn’t see me quite so readily. It’s a quiet street, but not that quiet.

“They don’t like the colour of my blinds,” I moaned, and drooped.
Mum said, “don’t look. I never looked when we rented out the house in Aberdeen. Grandpa said once when we were in the area, “let’s drive past your house!” but I said no. He couldn’t understand why not; I said it was because I didn’t want to see it.”

“It’s not our home right now,” I nodded – “it’s other people’s.”
“Exactly.”

Much better not to look… I get paranoid enough about ridiculous things without also fretting about whether or not they like my blinds.

Before they even moved in, they asked if they could install a satellite dish. I had been expecting the question and promptly said yes. I didn’t want one on the house (it’s so small that a dish would probably cause it to keel over), but my elderly neighbour recently died, and the very next thing that happened was someone clapping a dish on her house. I knew then that my own house was a marked building. If tenant after tenant asked that question till I cracked, I might just as well allow the first tenants to have it. Maybe they’ll stay longer…

If they can afford Sky, I’m guessing they’ll have their own TV with them. They won’t want Mum’s ancient analogue TV with the tiny Pace Freeview box connected to it with a piece of sticking plaster. (No, it isn’t really, and I’m not saying it’s dangerous; we’ve just had a safety inspector checking everything… my meaning is that the TV was old enough not to have a Scart socket. No, I mean, it was so old it didn’t have a Scart socket. Sorry, it’s late and I’m rambling).

Anyway, I don’t blame them for a minute; I would be squeezing it into a cupboard too if I had my own TV with me.

It’s midnight, Mum’s gone to bed and there was a loud clatter… I jumped and turned my head, and there was Samson the kitten, sitting with his paw on the TV’s remote control. He had apparently knocked it off its perch and was staring at it intently, ears pricked.

“Ah,” I said, “you gave me a fright! Why do you always make loud noises at this time of night?”

Samson gave me a disappointed look and I couldn’t help smiling.
He squawked.
“Of course I love you,” I said.
He squawked again and then scratched his chin defiantly, as though to say “well OK, but sometimes it’s hard to tell.”

Maybe he didn’t say any of that…. it could be that he wants Sky TV too.