Aw Diddums

Mum has been looking through china, glass and pottery, saying “I had no idea I had so much stuff.” I blame that for last night’s dream.

In the dream we were travelling, leaving our home abroad. En route, we spent the night on a Pacific island. There was the sound of a helicopter during the night… I was asleep and dreaming about this helicopter. The people in it leaned over to have a close look at the island as they passed above. Dawn came, and I woke with a groan, thinking I better get ready and come out for breakfast and fruit juice, as the people in the helicopter would probably have arrived. I knew they were looking for me, expecting me to mind their small dog for them… I didn’t want to, but there was no help for it.

I was surprised to find we had no visitors… the helicopter had gone. During their search for their errant pet-minder, they’d been looking for signs near the main building of anybody having arrived there with all their baggage, such as vehicles parked all over the place, but had seen nothing. The island looked quiet and uninhabited. Not being found was a nice feeling.

Kristin, a friend, was sitting on the sofa in the sitting room, and I showed her three treasures Mum had packed in her personal suitcase. They were so important to her that she didn’t want them to travel separately. They were three furry bricks, including a talking one.

The chatterer had a glass screen set in the top so that I could read the words it spoke… which was nice. All it said, though, was a captcha-type code (individual to the brick), followed by “If you would like to guess my name, please move me after the code is given. When you move me just the right way, I will tell you my name.”

It was a kind of puzzle, worse in some ways than Rubik’s Cube. Ever since the 1960s, when this brick was made, lots of people had wasted hours shoogling the brick around, hoping it would unlock the secret of its name. Very few succeeded.

There’s no such thing, of course… it was just Mum’s dream brick.

I thought I better put all three back in the suitcase, otherwise I would be blamed if they were left behind. I scooted off to fetch the bricks from Kristin, thinking she was still on the sofa, and in her place was a woman I didn’t recognize. I flashed her a polite smile, anyway, trying not to look surprised, then realized it was my sister. She had been outside and suddenly seized up like a rusty robot, unable to move. People had to trundle her back indoors to sit down. She was still able to tell me about it, though, and turned her head slightly to look at me.

Time for bed again, I think…

Footpath disappearing into dark trees

Pete is probably wondering what happened to the photos I said I would put here one day when he was photoless… it was the day I went out myself and took some pictures, just by chance. I sat down to look through them and they weren’t too awful, but then things started happening (just ordinary everyday things not worth blogging about) and I didn’t have time to put them up that day.

And so it went on over the next few days… a mixture of being busy doing other things or feeling too sleepy.

But today I spruced up two of the pictures… they’re not exciting or significant in any way, but they’re part of my everyday backdrop. There are no birds or butterflies, but I noticed a blurry spot which was either a bee or a hoverfly. I couldn’t see it clearly enough to make it out… maybe it was hoping I would blog about it.

Anyway, the first photo is of a little path up the side of a small hill. I used to go this way to work. I had a light summer coat which was a lovely fresh red, and it had a hood. I didn’t meet any wolves though…. not then.

The second picture is where I DID meet wolves, or should I say, on two separate occasions here, Thundercloud and I were set upon by those unleashed hounds from hell. It’s from the wrong viewpoint (this is actually the route the hounds from hell were taking when they spotted us… we were coming down at right angles to this). Maybe if I do another Diddums Tour with my camera, I can go to the very spot where… (distant sound of ferocious baying)…. oh, wait a minute.

Dog pack trail

I’ve gone a little quiet, I know – I’m following more Photoshop tutorials. It’s great when I find ones I can use in Photoshop Elements 2.0. So many other Photoshoppers seem able to afford the top applications.

On Wednesday night I had a dream…. it cast a slight shade, a transparent gradient, over my day. The closer we got to bedtime, the bluer the cast of my mood.

In the dream, I went to tea with one of my cat clients, doing my best to make pleasant conversation, but she cocked a sardonic eyebrow at me. I was relieved when one of her cats shot off to the end of the garden, and a terrible caterwauling arose. It seemed her cat was picking on one of my cats, Lucky. Lucky died years back, before I started this blog.

I rescued him by picking him up and carrying him back to my seat. He seemed surprised at first, then clung closely to me, purring deeply. I could feel it vibrating through my heart. He seemed to be saying “it’s such a long time since you last held me.” I was bemused to realize it myself, and couldn’t think why such a distance had grown between us.

Later in the dream I discovered I had a huge aquarium at the back of my upstairs sitting room. It contained three large fish, about 40 cm long: two sharks and a human diver. I had to carry one of the fish to another part of the house in a red plastic bucket. I could have picked any of the three – the diver, the slim pretty shark, or the strong, sturdy, moody shark… I picked the moody one. He was the most likely to bite, but I felt he would be better able to deal with being removed from the tank. After scooping him out, I was annoyed to find there was no water in the bucket – I had to dash off to get some before I could put him in.

We were possibly showing him to a visitor, after which I returned him to the tank… he was slightly limp, but recovered quickly. Nobody had been bitten.

Sharky… I wonder if there’s a connection. Cats who have passed on… one of them missing me, and the other swimming moodily in a tank.

And then thinking how people are here one day and gone the next. Dad working abroad, making a life for himself and his family – and now it’s just us. And the baby mouse… I rescued him from the cats. At first I thought he was dead, and Samson was pinning him down with one claw, but when I got closer, the little thing was shaking. His legs were so thin and crumpled under him that one looked broken, but he was just weak. I took him straight outside with some crumbs. I don’t like wearing my nice pink slippers outside, but for the mouse’s sake, I trekked them across wet grass and placed him in a snug corner near the shed. He hobbled and wobbled slowly under the shed… Not convinced he will have survived, but maybe he found a nest of leaves and slept himself to recovery.

Mum accused Samson of nibbling the top off a muffin, but I said I gave it to the mouse.

I was in Photoshop Elements painting a light bulb in a lamp, when a song came into my head… one of Melanie’s most ’sobbing’ melodies. It might have been Candles in the Rain but I’m not sure; it’s years since I’ve played her music. It wasn’t Ruby Tuesday; I would recognize it as soon as it came up.

The Photoshop tutorial was absorbing, but while working on it, I remembered a stray comment from one of the 30 or 40 others who have already followed it. She said she decided to do it because there was nothing else to do, and she was feeling sad, longing for some human contact. I became aware in my mind of all the others tracing the same lines – some quickly, some slowly, some happily, others less so.

I’d like a nice pink gradient tomorrow, please, and a different song.

Interesting page on handling dogs in public. I particularly liked the tip at the foot of the page – Keeping a Safe Distance, and a Pet Owner’s Peeve.

Horrible, horrible graphic. I just can’t get it to look right.

You might be wondering what nightmares I’ve been having now, but this was real.

I was wandering along with Thundercloud (Golden Labrador Retriever) and a black Labrador shot past me like a bullet. It was the first I knew they were there: the pack had arrived. They raced around whooping like Indians in a Western – because of the way they run around I’m never successful at counting just how many there are. At least two black dogs and one brown boxer with white markings. Maybe a smaller brown dog, possibly a third black dog, but I’m not sure. One black dog was behind me and I saw two ahead of me, but I don’t know if the one behind me had gone past again while I was struggling with Thundercloud.

This time the two men walking them were a lot closer on their heels and ran to catch them.

Last time we contended with this crew, they stood in a ring and barked loudly and aggressively, but this time they were moving fast and seemed more inclined to jump at Thundercloud rather than bark. They were going for her throat, but the men were there and beating them off.

I remember feeling pure anger – I fixed on the boxer in front of me and if it had bitten Thundercloud I would probably have turned on it – even though I know I would have come off worst.

It makes me wonder if I should continue to walk Thundercloud in this area. When I got back home, I opened the door thinking “well… we returned without a toothmark again! Third time lucky!”

But for whom?

Noontime naps were due
To kittens’ early rising
Now I sleep alone

Caedes comments came
Following silence: “great pic!”
Site must have asked them

Won’t always oblige;
Sure they were happy to find
My picture pretty

Broke a toe again
By stumbling over a shoe
No one’s fault but mine

Aw diddums, earache!
Whole jaw of tooth pain would be
Much preferable…

Brought it to its knees
With efficacious drops of
T.C.P. magic

Dog ran after cat
Ancient leather collar broke
Thank goodness for walls

Took kitten for walk
Came an icy springtime wind
She trembled and cried

My stories seem dull;
Wondered if these condensed lines
Would make sense at all

No cause for concern –
Overnight this will not be
A blog of haikus

It was fine this morning and last night, but this afternoon is very blustery. It seems to be a ’strong breeze’ (”umbrella use becomes difficult”) with frequent gusts of ’strong gale’ (”twigs broken from trees, cars veer on road, light structural damage”).

There’s even a large tree down by the local footpath, roots gaping, which isn’t supposed to happen till you have a ‘whole gale or storm’…. but one can get a bit too hung up on the printed word!

After lunch I meant to walk Thundercloud early (around 2pm), but got distracted when I discovered that my posts have stopped showing up in any of my tags. I didn’t have that problem earlier in the week, so it was puzzling. I spent a little time looking at the FAQ and the Help Forum, then decided (approaching 3pm) that I better walk that dog.

When I got outside, I found a heap of rubble lying on the steps. I looked round, and up at the long, sloping roof. There seemed to be a section of ridge tiles missing. I informed Mum, who had been out till about 1pm; there had been nothing lying on the steps when she got back.
“I thought I heard a crash,” she said.

It would have been extremely bad timing if I had gone out when I meant to, and managed to get myself struck by those tiles as they came down… but I can’t help wondering if the WordPress tags saved me from a nasty headache, or worse.

Mum went to advise one of her neighbours not to go out tonight – she was delighted to have an excuse to stay home! “I saw a woman blown down outside Morrisons,” said Mum.

I didn’t spend much time walking Thundercloud, as some strong winds were whistling down people’s driveways. When I switched to the more sheltered footpath, there were large twigs strewn everywhere, along with that uprooted tree. I went out on the top of the hill (it’s a good place to avoid other dog-walkers as you can usually see them coming) but when I stepped out from the shelter of somebody’s tall garden hedge, the wind was so bad that even Thundercloud was staggering.

“I’ve had enough of this,” she said, turning tail. “I’m going home!”
After a quick glance around to make sure there wasn’t a tornado in the offing, I was very pleased to follow in her pawsteps.

A guiding light that shines in the night
Heaven’s gift to me
You are so beautiful to me

It’s been in my head the past couple of days.

Sharky wasn’t improving as rapidly as we hoped and we took him back to the vet. He was kept overnight on a drip and returned to me today… along with renal cat kibble and tablets.

He seems brighter – his eyes have cleared.

There was black ice today; looks like tomorrow will be the same. At least it’s not raining any more. The rain yesterday did excuse me from walking Thundercloud, which I was grateful for. I felt shell-shocked about Sharky, having just left him at the vet, and though I could have accepted a dog walk if the day had been bright, I couldn’t face one in the lashing sleet. I would have caught whatever Marianne got in Sense and Sensibility. A case of the fainting Willoughbies.

Last night there was nothing on TV so while Mum watched something, I was reading Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. In it was a chapter about someone very ill achieving her greatest wish. I’d been feeling numb up to that point, but that was just too much – and I hadn’t even finished the story. Mum was in the next chair and I didn’t want to get all teary and whimpery while she was there. Escaping quietly was a huge struggle. Upstairs I hid in my dark cubby hole and mopped my eyes, which just got wet again.

When I returned to the book and finished the chapter, there was a twist to the story that made me giggle – it wasn’t at all what I thought it was.

But I was so tired.

The next morning we received ‘more optimistic’ news from the vet over the phone, but I was still bushed and rather moody. We met my sister in a coffee shop in town, and (having struggled to find somewhere to put my shopping trolley) I whipped the conversational notebook out.

Me: ♦♦This is ridiculous – there should be more room – you wonder what happened to the DDA.
Mum: ♦The DDA?
Me: ♦♦Disability Discrimination Act.

Pause while the girl came and served our coffee and hot chocolate.

Me: ♦♦I think the only coffee I like now is mocha – everything else tastes like liquid sawdust.
Mum: ♦You often drink liquid sawdust?
Me: ♦♦Here and in Starbucks.
Mum: ♦Is everything wrong this morning? Chilblains? Headache? Blue-tinted specs?
Me: ♦♦Non-pink clothes and sickly 10-year-old cats. And horrible TV with the same shows over and over.
Mum: ♦What’s that about pink clothes? You’ve lost me.
Me: ♦♦I think something red was washed with them and turned them muddy.
Mum: ♦Red with pink means pinker.
Me: ♦♦Not rust red.
Mum: ♦Big Sister says would we like a trip to Fuddyduddytown?
Me: ♦♦I suppose – Fuddyduddytown is not my numero uno town. How can Thingy live there?
Mum: ♦People get stuck in places. It’s not the worst. Remember Yobtown?
Me: ♦♦Not really. When did we go there? I remember Thingyside Leisure Centre as being stuck in a bubble of stark. Probably because they wouldn’t let them build it anywhere nice (can’t blame them).
Mum: ♦Yobtown had most of the shops at either end of the town boarded up. Graffiti everywhere.
Me (distracted): That dark photo of the poppy… it’s like a puddle of thick paint that my eyes have got stuck in. When I pull them away with a *squelch*, it leaves that pattern there.

You get the picture. I shouldn’t blog in this sort of humour.

Yet more motherly moments…

Whenever it rains hard, there’s a Very Big Puddle that stretches from one side of the road to the other. I was so deep in thought when walking Thundercloud that I only noticed it was there when we were right on the lip of it, with two cars poised to barrel though.

“Uh oh,” I said, and stopped dead. Thundercloud looked apprehensive as well.
Fortunately the cars tiptoed gently through, and the puddle did no more than ripple.

At home I said, “I expect it was because of Thundercloud. ‘We can’t get the nice dog all wet.’”
“Absolutely,” said Mum. “If it had only been you, they have roared through it.”

Boxing Day Crisis – my cat Sharky came along and sat on me, stared intently into my face, and started to heave ominously. ‘Hyuk-hyuk-hyuk…’

Not wanting a hairball in my face, I picked him up and hastened to the back door… which was locked! With the cat still hyukking in my arms, I wrestled with the key in the lock, praying it wouldn’t stick. Finally got the door open and pushed Sharky half outside, where he obligingly brought up a small puddle of grass and foam.

Sigh. I think he does it to bully me. It’s his way of saying “I was so hungry I had to eat grass.” There is dry cat kibble both upstairs and downstairs for snacks – Mum called him Oliver Twist only the night before, when he got some turkey out of her at bedtime and then a foil pouch of meat out of me.

Leaving the kitchen, I grumbled “the back door always seems to be LOCKED!” and stumped off upstairs to wash my hands and check myself for any damp patches.
When I returned downstairs, Mum seemed genuinely puzzled, enquiring “what was all THAT about?”

When I explained, she laughed and said, “ohhhh, I see. I should nominate you for the Olympics.”

After a moment she chortled again, saying, “it certainly woke you up. There won’t be any more of that noisy yawning.”
My littlest teddy bear yawned very loudly at that point, and Mum glared…

Some of the TV was so boring it led to some real whimpering gapes from me… I couldn’t help it. The only two things that engaged my attention on Boxing Day were Garfield and… actually, that was about it. When watching the other things, I kept oozing away to sort out some of the stuff in my cubby hole.

I completed a What Lord of the Rings Character Are You? questionnaire. In one that doesn’t exist any more, I was Pippin, but when I did the above different one, it said I was Frodo.

I told Mum this, and at first she was bewildered (despite having read the book and seen all the films). “Frodo? Which one is Frodo??”
“The one with the Ring!”
“Oh, THAT hobbit, I remember now.”
Short pause. Then…
“You’re definitely a Frodo, I quite agree. Frodo was the mournful one.”

Big Sister has her moments as well. She bought Mum an iPod for Christmas, and we were sitting in the coffee shop (having left Mum coughing and sneezing at home) discussing in my notepad what else we were were going to get. Sister said, “I’m thinking of getting an iTunes card - either £15 or £25?”
I said “I suppose you will have to download something the first time, to show her what to do.”
She took the pen and scored out ‘you’, replacing it with ‘you’.

A day or two ago, Mum said “we should start taking down the Christmas decorations bit by bit – it’s easier than taking them all down in one fell swoop.”

I began with the bears on the stairs… a lot of them lost the little sparkling pieces they were holding in their paws. The tinsel draped on mirrors and other surfaces by the stairs came down too, till I had a respectable pile of garlands waiting to be put away.

At tea time I walked Thundercloud. It was freezing but not too bad, till all of a sudden I got this feeling deep in my bones that the temperature had that very second stepped beyond the line of what was acceptable, freeze-wise, and the gathering clouds and general light was just somehow… not good any more. The dog and I were going back home. Now. And we wished we weren’t quite that far away.

When we got back to N’s house, I let Thundercloud rush in for her tea. Mum was coming out, and we walked home together.

A wet snowflake went SPLAT…. intolerable. As a hint to walk faster, I said to Mum “it’s starting to snow.” Her pace didn’t change, and the steadily increasing snowflakes melted and splotched on my glasses. I hate having to view the world through a blurry screen of waterdrops, which was why I wanted to hurry.

A little further along, Mum slowed right down till she had almost stopped, and said “I invited N. to tea. I thought it would be nice to do it now while the house is bright and cheerful with all the decorations.”
“OK, fine,” I said.

(I thought to myself, “couldn’t you have told me that when we were inside, warm, and dry? Why are we slowing down on a freezing, blowy and snowy road to discuss this? And guess who will be replacing all the tinsel that got taken down because you said it would be a good idea to start taking it down now?”)

Since we were walking slowly through the wet snow anyway, I decided to get my own conversational mileage out of it. “When I was walking Thundercloud, I found it was warmer in the woods than on the road.”
Silence while Mum looked off in completely the other direction.
“Did you hear…?”
Looks round innocently – “what?”
“I sai…”, I began, only to be immediately interrupted by a definite nod of her head. “Yes, it’s always colder on the road.” Then she went ahead up the driveway – the conversation was at an end.

Yeah… (shivers).

We finally got inside and looked out, and the slush was belting down in the gathering darkness.

I went upstairs to clear up a few odds and ends, and Sharky came along, stared gauntly at his food bowl, and announced in clear, ringing tones that he was a very sick cat and his supper should have been waiting for him already.

Well, cat, we were standing outside in the snowstorm talking about how cold it was on the road. Somebody has to do it…

Well I did ask for this. “More rain, please” I begged, as I watched the grass go yellow and the duck pond disappearing. Only two days ago I passed the pond to check its progress, and it was still drawing away from the rim. The mud at the bottom was exposed, and there was a Stella Artois bottle stuck in it, neck first. I thought of wading out to get it but didn’t want to get muddy – I would probably slip and fall straight into what was left of the pond, and then die of some obscure scummy disease. Why must people drop their rubbish? They do it out of sheer spite now, but maybe one day they’ll stop and look around, and realize they live here too.

Or perhaps they’ll never realize it. They will forever imagine they live in someone else’s world.

It was damp and cool yesterday, but today when I set off to walk Thundercloud, I only got about 5 minutes away from my house when the heavens opened. I was warned by some very large spots of rain and dug out my umbrella from my wheelie bag. By the time the umbrella was open, the rain was slashing down in a fury, and the wind tried to bash the metal frame against my face and twist it out of shape. It cut sideways and got me wet anyway, so I turned round and hurried home. I don’t mind rain normally, but I had no particular desire to experience that all the way to Thundercloud’s house and back, with the dog walk itself in the middle.

So, no dog walk.

I imagine the mysterious character I saw today had not the slightest idea of ending up in a blog – though any of us could be featuring in half a dozen blogs, unawares.

When I went to walk the dog, Mum accompanied me, saying she had to visit N for a quick blether. N’s car was out of the garage, with a girl sitting cross-legged in the open boot, vacuuming it. We gave her a friendly glance in case she looked up, but she was hunched over and didn’t look up.

I fetched the dog while Mum flopped in an armchair. When I passed the car again, the girl still didn’t look up. She was dressed in black with long sleeves. Long, curly, rich brown hair tumbled over her shoulders.

It was quite cool and windy up on the hill – after 45 minutes of marching around telling myself I’m bold and happy and not agoraphobic any more, I returned to N’s, thinking “well, the car’s probably back in the garage by now.”

It wasn’t. This time the unknown girl was hoovering the back seat, and still managed not to catch my eye.

I went in and the dog burst into the sitting room ahead of me. N invited me to stay for tea – they must have been waiting for me, so I sat down. About 25 minutes later we left. The girl outside was still hoovering the back seat of the car, not looking up for an instant.

It was surreal.

I waited till we were most of the way home before saying “how long has she been hoovering that car?”
“Must be over an hour now,” said Mum.
“Odd. Who IS she?”
“One of M’s brothers from next door,” said Mum.

Uneasy traveller

On Friday we went back to the NHS audiologist, which was not a satisfactory expedition. I get travel-sick just going to the next village, and here we were going to the next town. My stomach was lurching unhappily by the time we got there. If you want to be alert for your appointment you have to lay off the travel pills. It seems mad to have to leave the local town when all you’re doing is having hearing aids reviewed.

My sister has finished with the reviews now, but I have to go back next week as the computer went phut! More travel sickness and agoraphobic lurchings through the hospital. What a delightful plan.

No such thing as perfection

I’m realizing these hearing aids will never be crystal clear. They were worse instead of better when the audiologist adjusted them last time, and that’s what I was trying to get them to change away from today. It’s strangely hard to get it right. You’re sitting in a small booth with someone you’re not used to, who says “does that sound better? Can you hear what I’m saying?”

The answer that comes to mind is a jumble of: “yes, I hear you, but we’re two people sitting in a small booth, you’re speaking distinctly and I’m looking at your face – chances are I would hear (or guess) what you said anyway. And it has no bearing on whether I’ll hear certain sounds or tones better.”

Instead, you say rather weakly, “I hear your voice but I don’t know if it’s better.”
You really don’t. You won’t know till you get home and realize you hear something you’ve never heard before, or no longer hear something that used to be clear (like a beep).

When you’re at the optician’s, you can make a direct comparison between one lens and another. “Is this better… or this? Is this better… or this?”
At the audiologist’s, it’s not like that. It’s simply “does this sound better now – can you hear my voice?”
Well yes – but your voice sounded much the same last time. I simply can’t tell.

You feel worried (having already experienced a bad decision) that one setting is better than the other and you will plump for the wrong one. You hesitate and the audiologist shuffles impatiently. She has other patients and is running late. But you face another queasy trip to the hospital if you get it wrong.

Before I even got there, I decided to have the aids set back to the way they were originally; I was hearing worse at home after she changed them. Unfortunately that didn’t get done, and I have to go back next week because of her wretched computer breaking down.

Summer time, and the living is easy…

As it’s summer and there are lots of people swarming all over, my agoraphobia has taken a slight hold again. The holidays ironically mean that I have extra pet minding to do. I’ve been looking after up to three pet households every day for the past three weeks. I have one more day to go (a dog walk) and then I’ll get two days off.

At the hospital it was one of those days with the same people stuck in the same waiting room chairs every time you glanced round. Wearisome. I was happy to escape, and as I buckled myself into the passenger seat of my sister’s car, I thought “now it’s straight sailing – she’ll drop me off at home and I can have lunch and a rest, surrounded by lacy pink curtains, loving cats and soft bears. Thus comforted and refreshed, I’ll head out to walk dog and feed guinea pigs, taking my wheelie bag with me for company. It will be a doddle.”

When I feel jittery about going out, I pull the wheelie thing around – it makes me feel better. Don’t laugh! It’s funny but also a dratted nuisance. I left it behind when we went to the hospital, as I had no intention of sitting in the corridor watching people falling over it.

Unfortunately, E stopped at Mum’s saying she had something to pick up. She would have taken me home after that, as it was still on her way, but I was now very close to both the dog and the guinea pigs. I knew I should stay and sort them out first – much more energy-efficient. No rest, lunch or bears for Diddums yet.

Stranded without my wheels

E waved goodbye and drove off. I walked and fed the animals and by that time Mum had come home. We had tea and lemon cake and watched shows about presenters making people auction family heirlooms from their attics that they didn’t want to auction just so they could blow the cash on holidays to mega cities in America. It made me cringe.

To my relief, Mum offered to drive me back. “You have some stuff to take home,” she said.
“Yes, please,” I said. “E stranded me here without my wheelie thing.”
Mum gave me a beady-eyed look but I just chuckled.

Again I buckled myself into a passenger seat, sighing with relief and thinking, “now it’s straight sailing. Home for a very late lunch, TV, purring cats and snuggly bears. I can’t wait!”
Backing the car out, Mum said “I’m going to Morrisons supermarket on the way. Anything you need?”
My shoulders drooped, and I groaned internally. Supermarkets are the bane of any self-respecting agoraphobic’s existence – especially on Friday afternoons in the summer.
“Yes,” I admitted reluctantly, “I need a few things.”

So we trotted around the heaving supermarket (myself firmly attached to a nice big wheelie trolley). There was one awkward moment when I had to take the empty trolley away and leave it in a trolley park, then cross the road back to the car.

Home!

Having arrived safely home, I put everything away, fed the cats, got my late lunch, and snuggled down with a huge pink bear to watch TV. After a while we had supper and continued to watch the TV. Normally I’m reading blogs and checking my emails every chance I get, but I felt I’d had enough of the rest of the world in any shape or form, and fell asleep.

When I woke up again it was 9pm and there was a cat sleeping on top of me, paws trailing. Big Brother was just starting. I haven’t been watching it but they mentioned evictions, so I stayed and watched. Maybe I wanted to see someone else squirming instead of me… just for a change. I didn’t know any of them from Adam, but looked the candidates over and said “I predict the two being evicted today are Mikey first and Susie second, in that order.” I was right.

But then I got cross over the Big Brother attitude that Susie should have joined the others in horsing around and getting drunk. They evicted her because she didn’t. I say, more power to her! She’s well out of it. Last but not least, one of the guys in the Diary Room said a very odd thing. “I feel cocooned in here – safe. I don’t really want to go home to the world out there.”

Wow. But I think so many of us must feel that way. Having just watched Grumpy Old Holidays where they agreed that the worst thing about holidays is other people, I just know we are not remotely alone…

Edit Feb 2008: Comments to this post when it was on Blogigo:

kateblogs wrote at Aug 6, 2006 at 14:27:
Yuk, Big Brother. The contestants really are a bunch of twits, and they are encouraged to demonstrate this at every opportunity. I suppose it boosts the viewing figures, but it would be nice to see a programme that applauded mature behaviour.

Those series that get people to sell their stuff, I wonder if the participants feel any regret when they get back from the holiday. Some of the things they sell obviously have sentimental value, I don’t think I could flog something like that for such a trivial reason.

Oh, and you have my sympathies. I suffer from travel sickness too. Some days I can get into the nearest town without feeling ill, but others, well, suffice it to say I’m feeling pretty green around the gills by the time I arrive LOL

Diddums wrote at Aug 7, 2006 at 01:27 o\clock:
I know I would regret the sale of family heirlooms and such – I would want at least to think hard about what I was doing, and reinvest the capital or something… I know I say some rude things about banks, but I do sound like my father’s daughter sometimes!

Ah ha, another bad traveller – it’s funny how it comes in waves. I wonder if you also find that if you feel ill on the outward journey, you’ll probably feel as right as rain when you return, even if there is a lapse of a couple of weeks? I’m not sure if there are lingering effects from the travel pills, or if it has nothing to do with that.

Mood: Lazy
Listening to: Humming buzz and slight whine (tinnitus?)

“They say we are never more than ten feet from a rat” said my mother to her friends, and they all went ‘bleuch!’

The conversation came up because they had all been talking about their fears, and rats figured well at the top. She did not hate rats as much as they do, and wondered why rats should cause more horror than things like heights, crowds, fire, enclosed spaces, deep water etc. Perhaps, as she said, it’s just that ‘we are never more than ten feet from a rat’ whereas most of the other things can generally be avoided.

I would rather deal with a hundred rats than climb a small mountain, face a raging fire, get stuck in a lift or make a public speech. I suppose I couldn’t be a pet minder otherwise – possibly Ace Ventura Pet Detective would disagree, saying any pet minder worth her salt would take all of the above things in her stride.

Mum told me about her friends’ conversation one day when I told her I had been coming home along a busy road (the sort lorries whizz along because they think they’ve left the residential area – which they have not). I was passing a car dealership and there was a narrow grassy verge alongside the pavement, and when I looked down, there was a rat sitting on the grass, almost at my feet. It was stuffing something in its mouth and then, without even bothering to look at me, whisked quietly off into its little burrow.

There you are – that’s confidence worth having. I envy the little soul.

Another thing I was thinking about – they say people on their own talk to themselves, but it’s not true. If you put ‘bugs’ in my house and listened, you would hear the following:

In bedroom, late at night: (Strangled shriek). “GET out of my bed! No, don’t wriggle under the quilt. My bed is MINE. Get your own.”

In kitchen, turning on the light: “Ohh… you’ll catch it if the cats see you eating their food. Don’t you waggle your horns at me, madam. Nobody invited you here.”

In hall: “Oh my! Look at you go! You’re Speedy Gonzales with 8 legs. Just be careful where you go to in there, as I don’t want to squish you in the door. That would be a shame.”

A little while later, in the ‘office’: “don’t you DARE disconnect – I’ve not finished surfing yet. THANK you.”

Do I talk to myself? I don’t think so.

I was on the leafy conserved footpath, walking Thundercloud. Going round a sharp bend, I was thinking nervously, “what if there’s a bike? It could be ringing its bell madly and I wouldn’t hear it.” Crept cautiously round – nobody there.

We continued along the path, and after a while I realized if we kept going in that direction, it would be a long, very wide circle back home, and it was too hot and busy for that. It would be better to turn round and go back the way we came, though that’s conceding defeat in dog-walk terms.

Returning round the sharp bend, this time not thinking about it as we hadn’t met anyone along the path up till then… WHOOSH! Bike appears. Not so fast that we weren’t able to avoid each other, but it gave me a start. There’s no point snarking at anybody, though, as it just puts them on the defensive and they’re less likely to admit on any level that they were wrong. Instead, I gave the cyclist a quick smile and tugged Thundercloud out of the way. Yes, Thundercloud was just marching along in confident canine fashion as though nothing was speeding towards us – “nothing can happen to me, I’m Immortal Dog.”

I KNEW that would happen…