Brycian Worlds

Over the past few days I’ve been involved with Bryce 3D software again…

I’ve always loved the idea of creating and controlling my own world. It’s frustrating, though, when you have something on hand that looks good… it was rendering fine in the practice runs, but you make it even better by putting in a light here, a tree there, and vamp up the materials with reflections and transparency where needed… then you come up with a good lighting scheme with the right atmospherics, colours, and maybe a rainbow, or a handful of stars. The scene looks positively magical so that you start plotting to move in… and it takes forever to render!

It probably all slowed down when you increased the reflections and added a radial light (or two).

Perhaps it’s a message that you can’t just create a world of your own and explore it when the urge takes you… everything you do has a cost. The more glamour you add, the slower and more impossible it is. If you made everything ash-grey with no particular lighting effects, you could move in tonight.

But what I want to do is see how everything looks from every angle under every possible kind of lighting, using all materials and colour schemes! Instead, I sit watching the picture change, oh so slowly, from the last permutation to the new one. Further possibilities lie ahead — as yet unexplored, even though my mind already races ahead with them. Eventually I’ll get tired and find something else to do, forgetting about my plans for my new world.

My last two journal entries (edited!):

??

Can’t even remember the day of the week! Ohhhh.

Bryce can be frustrating — every time you try to do something perfectly straightforward, it never seems to work — and after lots of tinkering, you discover that you forgot a vital step, or the preview was just very slow refreshing and you couldn’t see your changes right away. And clicking on some bits is not very good, as they just wink at you, and the box of options you wanted flashes on and off — till finally it stabilizes. I think it sometimes has trouble deciding whether we’re in Bryce or on the desktop. And some things just never do what you expect, and there seems no reason for it.

But when it works, and when it looks good, it’s very nice.

I’m trying to put a light on inside my house, but I can’t tell yet whether or not it’s on! Perhaps that’s a good description of me. Someone’s home, but no light is on.

?? Tuesday? Not sure.

My ’scaly tenants’ (very nice tenants!) are taking my house again… good news!

In Bryce I’m rendering a little house for Stargazer the dragon. Stargazer’s going to live in it (rent-free) when it’s fully rendered, as Mum told him all magic houses have more space inside than outside. I’m doing it at 1920 x 1200. When I went to bed, it was 33% of the way through anti-aliasing.

The next day (today) we went to town. At the time we went out, Stargazer’s house had reached 42%. “That’s ridiculous!” Mum cried, and I said I’ve been reading a lot about how slow Bryce is compared to other 3D software.

As I write this post (near bedtime), it has reached 55%. I think Stargazer’s losing the will to live.

Stargazer waits...

No More Beeps and Dings

I’ve mentioned before how many of my conversations with family and friends are written down due to my hearing loss. The ‘conversational notepad’ I’m holding just now is finished. It started life 14 years ago as a shorthand notebook at work, and there are notes in it from when I was learning about Windows 95, including the following in my handwriting:

“This is a politically correct book — we aren’t ‘disabled’, we are ‘physically challenged’! Can ask for a visual display of a warning rather than beeps and dings.”

“To correct wavy words, click right mouse button on them.”

It appears to have remained mostly blank thereafter; it came home with me when the office was closed down. Eventually the written conversations kicked in…

Me: “Those schoolboys weren’t going to let us have any walking room.”
Mum: “They are very inward looking and not taught to consider old ladies any more. Bet they don’t even let teachers go through doors first.”
Me: “Teachers have probably learned to wait till after the kids have gone into class.”

Mum: “When Granny and Granpa bought our house in Edinburgh 1934, it cost them £630. They were still paying off a mortgage in 1948 or so — maybe later.”
Me: “If I’d lived in Beatrix Potter’s time, I could have had half of the Lake District.”

Me: “Energy Performance Cert (EPC) doesn’t sound like rocket science — you could look around a house and figure it out for yourself. They look at whether it’s double-glazed, has gas central heating and insulation. We have to pay over £125 for it (I do, I mean).”
Mum: “How will they stop people selling houses if they fail it? Buyers have to put in their own updated CH etc.”

Mum: “I could hear a mobile but it is Norman — chap in the corner. They are talking about the poor state of town these days. Shops closed etc.”
Me: “Shops we don’t need, to replace ones we did need. The chain stores don’t seem to like us (the ones who take over the failing shops). They won’t move in.”
Mum: “The one 2 shops up is already selling at half price. The one with the horrible bags and wellies in.”

Mum: “Joy says do you like ’spooky’ movies?”
Me: “Depends on the kind. And if they have a happy ending.”
Mum (referring to 3 other women at the table with us): “They don’t like films where nasty things happen to animals.”
Me: “Westerns have hurt horses etc. I always pretend they’re just stunned.”
Mum: “I hated Watership Down.”
Me: “The bunnies were more like people than bunnies — complete with Nazi regime. It was a kind of bunny war film.”

Mum: “I hope I’m right in thinking the banks will still come out ahead of the game. Everyone needs banks. You can’t keep all your money in a stocking under the bed forever.”

Me: “The reason I was vexed in the bank was I was hoping it’d be quiet.”
Mum: “It was. The trouble was, only 2 tellers.”
Me: “There’s nothing a queue-hater can do, then — they’re determined we shall stand in them, otherwise they start to fret that they’re overstaffed. But if we weren’t held back so much, we’d have more time in which to zoom around and spend, spend, spend.”

Me: “Very weak hot chocolate, you’d like it. Not me!”
Mum: “We should have swapped. The smoothie needs a very hard ’suck’ to get it up.”

Me: “I’ve had ‘O Shenandoah’ in my head for 3 days.”
Mum: “My mother used to sing that endlessly. That and Mamma’s Little Baby Loves Shortening Bread. Maybe you have a ghost in your head. It would explain a lot.”
Me: “I’ve not heard of that one?”
Mum: “If Granny knew I was irritated by a song she sang it all the more.”
Me: “She’d giggle — ‘hee hee hee’.”

Me: “Thought it’d be nice to go in the £1 Shop again as I only stayed long enough to be suckered by the perfume.”
Mum: “Eau de Sewage?”
Me: “Eau de Moola (£1).”

Me (concerning proposals that all cat owners should provide plenty of clean cat litter trays in the house, preferably one tray per cat)… “I gave my 4 cats 4 trays — and they ignored at least 2, maybe 3.”
E (my sister): “Where am I going to put 10 trays? Plus 1 for each kitten?”
Me: “Delilah [my young girl cat] could have me court-martialled for ignoring her when I’m working and she’s bored.”

Me (explaining why I was giggling over the newspaper): “He overtook straight into the face of oncoming police.”

Me: “Saw a fridge magnet saying ’some days you’re the pigeon, some days the statue.’ I think most days we’re both.”

Me (having got one of Mum’s friends to list all her favourite perfumes): “I honestly thought Kirsty was wearing Pure Poison, not J’Adore — but maybe she is, and didn’t see it as a major perfume in her arsenal.”

Mum: “That girl works as a waitress/cleaner at [Censored] Cafe. She does occasionally throw tantrums, though.”
Me: “Maybe I should steal her job — but then I’d throw tantrums too.”

Me: “It’s no wonder people buy from the internet — the shops don’t stock what we want. It’s funny how there’s never a graphics tablet on display or even in the store.”
Mum: “We could emigrate to Mombasa.”
Me: “And live behind wrought-iron gates.”

Me: “Why do Megasales in this town fail to deliver? Like [Censored] has huge posters saying ‘huge price cuts on fragrances’, and you go in and find the same tired group with the same prices on. Maybe with high rates they can’t afford real megasales.”
Mum: “There will be more closures.”

Me (when Mum finally came back from a coffee machine in the corner of the outpatients clinic): “Were you brewing it yourself?”
Mum: “I hadn’t pressed the right buttons. A person could starve to death in this technological age.”
Me (pointing at a locked glass cabinet with crisps etc): “Get a heavy chair and smash the glass.”
Mum: “I think they should call it the www room. Waiting and waiting and waiting still.”

Me: “I think your art classes were better than mine. They didn’t teach us about contrast, just said ‘here’s an object… draw it.’”
Mum: “I met your art teacher. He was a lazy sod.”
Then she added: “I took Higher Art. I was offered a place at Art College.”
Me: “I was told Art made people poor and to avoid it.”

Mum: “She read her gas meter and got the total reduced to £360. She doesn’t have to pay it — it will be carried over. She says she didn’t sleep a wink for worrying about it.”
Me: “Maybe she should look into switching gas — though they all say they’re bringing prices down… when it’s summer and we’ve turned our heating off.”
Mum: “Unfortunately she did — to a fixed price programme. Now gas is coming down she is tied in.”
Me: “They tried to get me to fix prices — I didn’t realize it meant paying more if it went down… but I was too lazy to bother. Actually I was angry with them for mucking people about. Fix all our prices or fix no-one’s.”

Mum: “I was annoyed by a car hooting behind me as we came down towards the road junction. I thought they were hooting at me. I think only at a friend walking but it could cause an accident as you lose concentration. It says in the Highway Code that you only hoot to warn.”

Me: “I think lettuce is an odd thing for people to eat.”
Mum: “Good for us. We can’t digest grass.”
Me: “We can — through cows.”
Mum: “But they need 2 stomachs to cope with it.”

Two Wimmen Mumping Around

DAMP

Rainy Day

A while back I decided to be extra specially careful not to spend (like most other people, apart from those so insanely rich they have lost all sense of reality). The reason (if one was needed) being that my tenants had spotted damp in the house, and wanted it checked out. £50 call-out fee, and more to come?

The weeks went by and we heard nothing more, so we went to ask the letting agents about it. They said the damp inspector had waded in for a look, and it was just condensation on a wall. He was preparing a letter to the tenants with advice on how to reduce it.

Well, that’s a relief, though annoying too! Paying £50 for a wee bit of condensation! Mum pointed out the weather has been so cool and clammy that nothing we hang outside has been drying. We were cracking jokes about returning the new whirligig to the store as it’s ‘not fit for purpose’. Maybe the tenants (said Mum) were drying nappies and baby clothes on the radiators… and when they saw the condensation, they were worrying on the baby’s behalf.

In this weather there isn’t any other way they can get their things dry; my washing machine is not a dryer. Fingers crossed nothing else goes wrong.

NOBODY ELSE IS SPENDING MONEY EITHER

Dog Prize

Months ago we decided to sell a few things (not poor quality things, but not our best things either) at the local auction. They never wrote to us about how we’d done, so we went in today to ask… they gave Mum a cheque for about £75, mostly £1 or £2 per lot (£1 would buy you a middling bar of Aero chocolate), £19 for some pottery, £6 for a ‘pendant lampshade’ and £17 for ‘a wedding present’ – china. All rather sad, really. Two bags of my toys went for £2… one of them was a huge dog I won at the teddy bear show two years ago, but I didn’t have room for it in my house, and there’s even less room now that I’m squeezed in with Mum. £2 is pathetic… the big dog was surely £20 new; even the lightweight laundry hampers I put the toys in were £3 to £4 each. I was only trying to keep the dog white and clean, but remind me not to do that again.

I suppose if nobody else wants or has room for these things, the items’ value will reflect that, no matter what they cost to produce or what they cost when they were new. A black hole in the world’s resources… unwanted junk.

One lot didn’t sell at all (some of Mum’s bric-a-brac), and I said “what happened to it?” Mum said “they probably chucked it out.” Well, it was just rubbish presumably, but I was still surprised. I assumed if things didn’t sell, they contacted you to collect them. I also thought we would be contacted a lot sooner… it’s as though they wanted to save themselves the cost of the stamp, and hoped we would forget so they could keep the money. Not very confidence-inspiring. It also occurred to me to wonder how we could be sure everything was there; they could have sold a few things privately that we wouldn’t notice. They tell us ‘tray of china,’ ‘tray of glass’, but that doesn’t confirm exactly what was there.

It’s irritating watching shows with advice about how we should go to specialist auctions and dealers’ show rooms… all we’ve got is that sad little place that doesn’t even have a website.

I’m not sure I’d have the energy to sell things on eBay… maybe it would pay better, though. A friend tells me eBay has made PayPal a required payment option, which doesn’t sound very attractive.

FALLING APART

Falling Apart

We headed off to town and Mum said “I’ll put the cheque in the bank,” and I said “do you think it’ll still be standing?”
“Hrm,” said Mum.
It looked just the same as ever when we got there. I went next door to look at computer magazines but didn’t buy any – not because of damp but because of fuzziness. I was rocking on my feet and needed sugar, quick – last thing I wanted to do was stand in the queue and buy anything, even sweets. Fortunately Mum came in and got some mints, then we went and gobbled some paninis and salad in a little French place that not many people seem to know about. Or I thought that was why it was quiet…

It smelled of pee, either because we were near the toilets or because the cloth used to wipe the table had turned sour. I wrote in my conversation pad “it reeks”, assuming Mum would know what I meant, and she said out loud (loudly) “reeks? Of what?”
I hate it when she does that… you write something you wanted to remain discreet, and she repeats it out loud so everyone knows what I wrote… and the worst part of it is she doesn’t do it as a joke; she just doesn’t realize I didn’t want it announced on a loudhailer.

She couldn’t smell anything, she said, but (she said) didn’t I notice the old man in Sue Ryder’s?
“No,” I wrote, “what old man? Didn’t see him.”
“Didn’t need to see him, you could smell him,” scrawled Mum.

Oh. Funny how she notices some smells and I notice others, and it never seems to be the same ones. Though now I remember thinking one of the charity shops was smelling particularly musty – I thought it was the stock!

DAY ENDS

Mumpy

So, exciting day… squeezed Mum’s money out of the auctioneer’s grasp, discovered The Rising Damp was just an expensive damp squib, felt our bank all over to make sure it was still there, had fuzzy spells, refused to buy things, exchanged malodorous tales and ate mozzarella paninis in a little French place.

At night, football was on instead of Grumpy Old Women, so we watched Desperate Housewives instead.

High Adventure in the High Street

A friend said once, “Only you could make a simple shopping expedition sound like a tale of derring do and adventure.” It sounds like a compliment but was probably another way of saying I prattle.

In town today, looking at a super-shiny PC laptop in Currys:

Mum: you could get this as a kind of backup.
Me (not sucked in): hmm.
Mum: on the other hand, as it’s a laptop you would probably take it to bed with you. So we better not.
Me: “I wouldn’t! I don’t do that with the Mac.”

It struck me afterwards (it’s always afterwards) that I managed to rattle it off the way I described in Yam Artiklit… “Idoont do that wivver mak!”

Later on we were in Argos. “Look, there’s an iMac in here,” I said, pointing at the catalogue. “Where?” asked Mum, surprised. “There… but it’s just the smallest one. I would need to go at least one step up.”
Mum read out loud: “20 inch screen.”
“Ah,” I said, “but it only has one gigagigagigabyte memory.”
I’m always doing that. Once I begin a word like that, I can never stop, and it’s machine-gun fast.

I… must… slow… down.

I don’t think my best friend at university was much inspiration to change; I remember her as a speed-speaker. I complained to the speech therapist that she had me reading things out slower than most people actually talk, and she said essentially I had to learn to walk before I could run. It makes me think of a funny cartoon strip featured by Thomas… I’m not that good at ‘learning to walk’ if I find it too tedious or am used to doing things a different way…. I’m too set in my usual routine.

But I’m rambling… the real story was our going shopping. (!)

I think I can tell Grandad I’ve discovered where the internet crowd have vanished to… they’re all in Costa, drinking coffee and dangling babies on their knees. I wondered why there seemed to be so many more babies than usual, then noticed a sign next to the loo: ‘baby changing facilities’. I thought that explained it till I realized they were all over the place in town as well… prams, pushchairs, toddlers, some of them running around the library. Is this normal and did I tune them out before? Is there some reason why…? Is there some sort of baby conference going on in the area? Or is it just that town is full of holidaymakers out with their children? There seemed to be a higher proportion of them than usual, but maybe Mum knows what is going on; she’s more ‘on the ball’ in social matters than I am. A year or two ago I said “it’s so busy this weekend; last weekend the town centre was echoing and empty!” And she said something like “oh, it’s the (Big City) Holiday… they all come over here from over there.”

Maybe it was the same thing today. I didn’t make a note of it in my calendar.

In Costa I had to bag a table, so I went to the back and looked around, and the only tables left were little round ones in the middle with two chairs each. My sister was meeting us, so we needed at least three chairs. I was a bit stuck and looked around, and met the eye of a guy in his 30s or 40s who was sitting at one of the big tables… he had four chairs and was all on his own, spreading out his newspaper.

I’ve noticed people doing that before, and I can’t believe their lack of forethought and consideration. Geez.

I chose one of the small tables in the middle (normally I loathe them with a passion because my agoraphobia makes it hard to sit out in more exposed areas!) but I’ve not been bothered by it so much recently… also it seemed to be the table closest to other tables which meant some people had vacant chairs in the vicinity which we could nab.

I think it’s interesting that it’s not just me who doesn’t like the tables in the middle of the room – I’ve observed in all sorts of places that they’re always the last to be taken. I remember a meeting at work where everybody was expected to stand in a ring to hear a director announcing unpleasant news. Everybody who came in tried to duck behind the people already there, though the people already there were standing back, expecting the others to go out in front. It wasn’t just me who didn’t want to; nobody wanted to. There must be some kind of deep-rooted instinct that says to get our backs against a wall.

Mum used to say the reason I didn’t like to be out in the middle of a pedestrian precinct (rather than walking closer to the shops) was that my ancestors had left me with an ancient fear that a dragon would swoop from the sky… those people who were out in the open, furthest from sanctuary, would be its main targets.

Har.

There is danger in the shadows too. I often see articles about falling masonry in old towns and cities. I have a long-standing joke with a cat client about it; she was going on one of her frequent trips and I said “look out for falling masonry,” and now it’s mentioned every time she goes away and again when she comes back. One time she had gone away, and it was a particularly windy day, I had to go out and walk the dog. I was late leaving the house as I was involved in sorting out something blog-related on the computer, and when I got out there, there was a heap of rubble on our steps. A roof tile had come down. I calculated that it had come down at some point during the previous couple of hours, possibly around the time I would normally be heading out to walk the dog. Mum said she heard a crash but didn’t know what it was.

So it was lucky for my cat client that her petsitter didn’t get hit by falling masonry! That would have been too ironic. Gah. And I suppose there’s still time yet.

Today Mum insisted on diving into butchers and bakers and other such places, leaving me standing outside with the shopping trolleys, and at one point I looked up uneasily just to make sure there wasn’t some malignant gargoyle in the process of leaping off its ledge…

I don’t think I’m paranoid, but I’m convinced accidents are all around us waiting to happen. You don’t go out in the morning thinking “maybe I’ll be hit by a random brick,” but it happens.

My sister said one of her PC-aholic friends bought an iMac the other day to see what all the fuss is about. I asked if he liked it, and she said “very much. He’s keeping his PC as well, but only because he can’t afford another copy of Photoshop… and it has a top-notch monitor.”

Oh, I said, thinking about my own PC at home, with a little but heavy 17″ CRT monitor… the kind cats love to sit on so they can dangle their tails between you and your work/blog/fractals. There’s no Photoshop on my PC, but there’s an old copy of Paintshop Pro. It only has 128 megamegamegabytes of RAM, and takes hours to render fractals or 3D pictures. The original hard drive failed a while ago and it has a new one (larger even than the Mac’s hard drive) but it is still not well… it refuses to turn itself off. And if you force the issue by turning it off at the mains, it refuses to come on again the next morning.

I was going to hang onto my old PC when I get a new computer, for Windows XP. But I’m not sure it’s such a good idea really. To my sister I said “I don’t suppose your friend would swop PCs…”

Of course not! But there was no harm in trying. Sigh.

When we got home, there was a little excitement mixed with bad news; my agents visited my house and say the tenants are keeping it in good nick. They are very happy with it and want to renew their lease, but mentioned there seems to be a bit of damp and it should probably be looked at. Will cost £50 to get someone out to inspect it, and who knows what they will find… I shouldn’t be staring through shop windows at computers just yet. I better put that plan on the back burner for a bit. Again. (Or maybe I’ll get a cheap PC to tide me over as I’m really edgy about this one here).

Time for coffee now… actually, looking at the clock, it’s a bit later than I thought; I don’t know how long this post will stretch down the screen once I’ve published it! Here’s hoping you all stay safe… please keep an eye out for falling masonry.

Scaly Tenants Who Love Sunshine and Sky

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.

The Cat’s Pit of Gluttony

Life has changed recently for the following two reasons:

Sharky has CRF (chronic renal failure) and is very sick. It’s generally only recognized in cats when their kidney function is down to nearly 25%.

He’s been on the drip twice… when he went on the drip the second time, they said it looked really bad for him. My heart was thundering in my ears.

He seems to have rallied slightly and is eating more. It’s still not as much as he needs. I’ve tried him with:

• renal kibble from the vet, on its own or soaked in boiled water to release the flavours – he just goes ‘bleugh’.
• tuna – not a good idea, I know, but normally he loves it. Now he sniffs at it.
• milk – turned his head away.
• sardines – wouldn’t even look at it.
• Hi-Life Junior for kittens – Sharky ate a quarter of a pouch’s worth during the night then vomited it back up.
• Gourmet Solitaire, normally a treat – but now he licks the jelly and rejects the shrimp.
• Gourmet paté – that’s one of his favourite cat foods and he will still take a couple of teaspoonfuls of the beef or turkey flavours. The ocean fish flavour nearly stopped him considering it… your heart is constantly in your mouth in case you take a wrong turning and put him off.
• Sheba – normally likes it, but now just licks the gravy.
• Iams Select Bites in gravy for kittens – ditto.
• the cats’ usual cocktail of dry kibble – he accepted three tiny asterisk-shaped ones (the most expensive) and ignored the rest.
• boiled chicken, chopped in tiny bits. It’s the most successful so far, but I had to feed some of it by hand! I tried to get him to take the water it was boiled in, but he blew bubbles in it then turned away.

He is sitting downstairs with us now, which is very nice – for too long recently he was preferring to sleep on his own in the silence of the upstairs rooms. He has moved into my place on the sofa and I’ve been bumped down one seat. He has a dish of water on the table beside him, which makes a big difference, along with a few choice bowls of food (mostly ignored).

When I was having supper tonight, I got myself a bowl of fresh blueberries with cream. While I was settling down, Sharky got up and and slurped all the cream off the blueberries. I washed the blueberries and ate them anyway – they tasted very good.

He’s looking quite bright today – he’s been running about a little, and there’s a bleary smile on his face.

I said to Mum I wondered if he got as much of a fright as the rest of us did. When the vet nurse was saying that it was looking very bad for him, I stared right through the cat in a glazed way, simply trying to cope, then realized he was looking at my face with anxiety, as though to say “I’m here…. look, it’s me, Sharky! You can see me, can’t you?” Maybe he’s had enough sense to realize if he doesn’t eat and drink more, he’ll be leaving this world quicker than he meant to.

I emailed the vets asking for a copy of his bloodwork so that I can see what to avoid feeding him, saying that I was interested in doing what I could to balance his bloods, and the vet nurse replied to say that she’s prepared two new sets of pills for him (a phosphate binder and an appetite stimulant). We rushed off to get those as soon as I found the email. He’s got a respectable pile of medication now – three different things a day. He’s taking after Mum.

My house is signed up with a letting and management agent. Finally! The agents took a look round it yesterday and seemed to like it. Mum said the boss was wandering round saying “this is a very good little flat!” It’s not a flat, it’s a bungalow, but I suppose it has that bright, compact, self-contained atmosphere. Before he even left, he said he had a couple in mind for it, with a baby. I’m not sure they’ll find it roomy enough for a cot (the single bed can’t be folded up and put away), but maybe they’ll make do.

I said the tenants can use the loft for storage, and can keep one or two cats (but no dogs – the garden isn’t enclosed).

All that is quite exciting. I’ve been looking out the instructions for oven, dishwasher, washing machine etc. I took the laptop downstairs and polished off my inventory, feeding Sharky by hand at odd moments. Last night I was typing a long email to a friend and jumped up twice in the middle of it to attend to him. I can remember a time when I would have allowed nothing to interrupt my chain of thought…

Going downstairs to give him his medication now.

The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon

In a bid to appease the Twelfth Night tree spirits, we dismantled our Christmas tree and decorations last night (though, looking at this page, we were probably 24 hours too late).

Sorting through a box of Christmassy stuff, I found a mound of gift tags collected from previous years. Most of them were addressed to me from Mum (and in excellent condition) so I gave them back to her for reuse.

I kept a few she won’t be able to reuse:

• To Diddums, love from Fusspot (Siamese cat who died)
• … purrs from Lucky (another dead cat)
• … from Joker (a deceased Rex cat of Mum’s)
• To Diddumsville from Mumsville (our houses exchanging gifts, as they do…)

I removed my blog’s Christmas theme while I was at it. It was too pale for me, so it was a relief to take it down. I know I’ve said I don’t like grey sites normally, but I like this new theme, which has colour in it as well. Mostly because it’s easier on the eye than a largely white blog would be.

The font is also more interesting – something about the one in the Christmas theme made me yawn…

While ditching a cardboard box used for storing tinsel, I realized it affected my inventory. I’d described something as a ’standard lamp’ (which came out of this box) but apparently it’s a ‘twin floor spotlight’. Ah.

My house is not the only one in the process of changing occupants – one of my elderly neighbours died a few months ago, so her house has been receiving new tenants. Yesterday we spotted something new on it – a black satellite dish! I was a little horrified but shouldn’t have been surprised – a large number of houses in this area have similar dishes. I don’t notice any on the houses in Mum’s area – she suggests the dishes are ‘invisible’ because the houses are bigger.

I hope my own new tenants won’t be clamouring for a dish.

Hey diddle diddle
The cat and the fiddle
The cow jumped over the moon
The little dog laughed to see such sport
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

I suddenly had this thought that if I’d sold my house, it would have a dish too by now. Why should it worry me? It wouldn’t be my house any more. Must satellite dishes be black? They stick out like a sore thumb on these houses. Talking of spoons, I must look out a serving spoon – one of the more important kitchen utensils…

Writing an Inventory for Diddumsville

Inventories cost money, so I’ve been ‘inventorizing’ my house myself. It’s trickier than it sounds.

It’s amazing how many things I think of in general terms, such as ‘the small black knife’. What kind of knife is it? A fruit knife? How did I know it was a fruit knife? I’m not even sure I’m right. I just used it for everything, including hacking bits off neeps if the big knives caused too much trouble and my knuckles started bleeding with the strain.

Mum said they don’t want us to list all the cutlery and kitchen utensils in exhaustive detail, but I’m doing one for myself, just so I know what’s there and what might still be needed. (Should I provide an ice cream scoop? There’s a plastic one in Woolworth for 69p. And what’s the name of that cake bowl scraper-outer? I don’t have an apple corer either… but I never used one. Forget it).

What kind of glasses are these? Whisky glasses, tumblers, drinking glasses, hi-ball glasses? What ARE hi-ball glasses? Can you get tumblers in different sizes? I thought tumblers were tall. Should I provide wine glasses, or at least sherry glasses? What about a beer glass?

(Oh, an ash tray! Not sure where that came from as I’ve never smoked. I don’t want to encourage smoking by tenants or their guests, so I’m taking it away).

Then there’s the thing I’ve got hanging on the wall inside a cupboard. It has little plastic drawers in it for tacks, screws, fuses, hooks and anything else tiny but useful that you don’t want rolling around who-knows-where. What’s that called? It’s not a toolbox, exactly. And ’storage box’ is rather general. Surely it has the sort of name that would let people know immediately what you’re talking about? A picture-hook storage cabinet??

I notice that someone else put ‘pillowcase protectors’ on her inventory. Shouldn’t it be ‘pillow protectors’? We have ‘mattress protectors’, so ‘pillowcase protectors’ sounds a bit odd. Next time I’m in a shop I’ll look and see what was written on the packet. I’m going for ‘pillow protectors’ meanwhile. I should buy more while I’m at it; I only have two.

Then there’s the whirligig in the garden – should be listed as being stored in the Garden Shed. It’s not officially known as a whirligig, though I’ve called it that for years. It’s a …. rotary dryer! Oh wait a minute, I’ll just check on the Argos site. Nope, it’s a rotary airer. Perhaps a rotary dryer is something else… on the other hand there’s a rotary dryer on Amazon for £120.99.

There’s also a rotary washing line… for £163. Geeee – I must get on with this inventory and stop wasting time.

Do I list the hot water tank in the cupboard?? It sounds a bit strange – “I have one hot water tank – please just check in there to make sure nobody packed it in their suitcase, or left two by accident.” I suppose stranger things have happened, but it would be like saying “there’s a bath in the bathroom and a radiator in the bedroom”… I should just miss it out. But what about the Ramsay ladder into the loft; do we list that…? It wasn’t there when I bought the house. The previous occupiers probably used that dreadful wooden ladder, and tried to avoid going up there as much as possible. It’s my Ramsay ladder and I’m proud of it.

Mum keeps saying the loft is not for the use of the tenants, which I find strange. I took everything out of the loft anyway. Why shouldn’t they store stuff up there? I bet they will, whether or not they’re supposed to. I wouldn’t cry about it (unless they fell through the ceiling).

What’s the difference between this rake and that rake? One is a garden rake and the other (the one resembling Death’s bony hand) is a ‘lawn rake’, according to Mum. Oh… And what do I put under Cat House? There’s nothing in it – no cats, no nothing.

I’ve not finished this inventory yet… or perhaps it’s not finished with me.

They Don’t Make ‘Em the Way They Used To

It’s awful working on a house. The more you do, the more needs to be done. If you start out just freshening the hall, the other rooms look dingy in comparison and you end up doing them as well. Then you decide it would be a good idea to have a lock on the inner porch door, and the new door handle exposes a patch of unvarnished wood. Or you put one of those draught-excluding brush strips along the bottom of the kitchen door (to keep the slugs out) and that needs to be painted because it’s raw wood. Or maybe we’ll just let the slugs varnish it.

And so it goes on.

We were going to keep my hall lino, but one thing led to another, and we ended up chucking it out. We’ve been looking at carpets and linos, tending towards lino again. We were in the carpet shop yesterday (the one where I left my notepad behind) and I was expecting a lovely time browsing around for some exciting brand new flooring… instead, the selection of carpets was incredibly dull. You could have cream, sand, coffee or chocolate. Or chocolate, coffee, sand or cream. Plain or speckled. Maybe a pinkish mushroom if you’re lucky. I got very excited when I spotted a flash of green, but closer inspection revealed it to be a carpet’s backing. Sad times when the backing looks better than the carpet.

I didn’t say anything to Mum, but she turned round and said exactly what I’d been thinking. “What a boring selection! In fact I would hardly even call it a choice! The thing is…. this is what sells.”

I found myself getting angry at the thought… that I would have to buy carpet that I find boring simply because it’s what everybody else likes.

“It’s the fault of all those property programmes,” I said. “They keep drumming into people, almost as a religion, that everything has to be neutral.”

What happened to the pale blues and golds? The gentle floral designs? Something nice and modern and muted, but not plain beige?

I did read a couple of housekeeping magazines recently saying that “pattern is back”. The wallpaper vendors seem to have understood that – suddenly there’s a rash of those black and white floral papers and curtains – but the carpet people are lagging behind the times. Unless it’s a case of getting plain carpets to offset the fancy wallpaper – that’s possible, I suppose. But they still only have them in various shades of mud.

The choice of lino was much more interesting. But we’ll see.

Comments for this entry (during its previous existence on Blogigo):

1. Geosomin wrote at Oct 19, 2007 at 18:41: “It’s awful working on a house. The more you do, the more needs to be done. If you start out just freshening the hall, the other rooms look dingy in comparison and you end up doing them as well. “

I know…the few rooms left to fix up in our house are looking pretty hideous at the moment.

As for selection – I know what you mean. Finding stuff for our house, we’ve had to resort to catalog orders to get a lot of things…Apparently unless you want a variety of beiges or whatever tile trend happens to be “in” you’re out of luck. People kept suggesting neutral stuff for us, as it’d be good for resale…we’re not moving unless we get carried out on stretchers so we’re just picking what we like, world be damned. If others don’t like it they can go home.

The places I rented always meant more to me when they had bits of quirky personality to them and bits of colour. You’ll find the right rentors when they walk in and ooh and aah over your choices. Go for the colour and patterns I say…:)

2. Diddums wrote at Oct 20, 2007 at 03:10: We found a carpet site – Brinton’s – allowing customers to put carpet patterns in a ‘room view’ to get some idea what they would look like. They’re too expensive, I think, and I still didn’t quite find what I liked, but it was fun to play with for a while!

I think whoever takes on my house will find more than a few quirks in it – the bathroom is probably the quirkiest. Colourful flowery wallpaper and a silver lino… the lino’s rather cool, actually, but I can imagine people deciding the wallpaper is a bit too much for them. Too bad… it’s newish already and doesn’t need to be changed.

3. kateblogs wrote at Oct 20, 2007 at 12:15: I can’t bear that neutral look. I much prefer to see a bit of personality, and I certainly wouldn’t consider using it in my own home. I know the property programmes say neutral is best because it sells, but the vast majority of people who are redecorating are working on a house they intend to live in, so why does it matter if their choices add value or not. Anyhow, I may be an oddity, but neutral would not be a selling point for me, I would much rather see what a house looks like when it is actually lived in.

I suspect the same would be true for a lot of renters too – so many rented houses are bland and beige, so making your house look more individual and homely should make it more rentable – I’m not sure if that’s a word BTW LOL

4. Pacian wrote at Oct 20, 2007 at 17:19: I feel sorry for the salespeople who have to try and sell different shades of beige to so many different people. One wonders what their suicide rates are.

5. Diddums wrote at Oct 23, 2007 at 01:48: Oddly enough I saw a programme today – the couple were looking for a house to buy, and they stepped inside one and said “hmm – neutral!” Then the woman said “I want this room to be my pink room,” and started poring over books of patterned wallpaper for downstairs. :-0. It did look very plain as a neutrally redecorated house – nothing for the eye to dwell on.

About salesmen despairing of selling beige carpets – hopefully the patterned lino is keeping them clinging on. .

I Talk to the Trees

It was sunny and we had my blinds up at my house and were sitting on the Ercol suite, talking… a neighbour passed by, glancing in briefly, and smiled, as though he was glad there were still signs of life here.

Funny how my home still lays claim to me. I go inside and the door shuts. Peace steals over me like treacle. The house seems to be saying “rest and put your feet up. there’s nothing you must do; just bask in my stillness as you’ve always done.”

When the others are there and we’re painting or cleaning, we get on with the job at hand and talk to each other. Till once I stepped into the front porch to collect the post. As I straightened up, the trees outside swayed in a sudden roar of wind, while light and shadow raced across the grass. Something about it was peaceably familiar and pleasant, almost as though the house had spoken to me – it caught me off guard. I really was at home, not just standing in a house that I was getting ready for someone else.

I’ve taken to asking the house for its opinion. I got a leaflet through the letterbox about property investment being the best thing to do with money. Mum said it’s not as safe as the leaflet claims. I said “where does the expression ‘as safe as houses’ come from?”
Mum frowned and shook her head. “They’re not safe.”
“Well, I said, “I asked House if property is a good investment, and it said ‘of course it is.’” I waited for her to ask “what else would a house say?” but she didn’t.
“The tenants could make a terrible mess of everything,” said Mum. “You never know what they’ll be like.”
Silence filled the house.

Well I know. Life is a game – I might land on Go, or I might land on a Terrible Tenant square, or something worse.

Don’t slow down, don’t touch the ground,
You know what you will find;
That old grey man in tattered clothes
Following behind.

From ‘Don’t Slow Down’ by UB40