Today was a lovely sunny day – at last! Despite a late start (my fault) Kevin hoisted me into the car and we set off to the Whitehall garden centre at Lacock, just past Chippenham. It was my first day out for ages and despite the rather bumpy terrain and sloping arrangement we made it to a different (i.e. not local) garden centre and bought a lovely purple and yellow Lupin (my choice) to pot in the garden and a black, wide leaved grass (Kevin’s choice) to replace the bluegrass that I chose last year and which is now looking a bit bedraggled. We also managed to get some mint and thyme herbs for Kevin to plant in our wooden herb garden arrangement.
It was lovely to just sit in the sunshine and we also took the opportunity to have a tea, chai spiced latte and a couple of portions of cake – just to make a day of it. We quickly popped in to get some foodstuffs on our return to Swindon and came home to find Charlie just rolling around on the paving slabs in the garden. I now have no excuse not to get my head down and do the work that is awaiting me – maybe tomorrow!
As a juxtaposition to my previous post on my WordPress ‘memory jar’ site – I have also had a number of pet rodents as I was growing up, from mice to gerbils to my pet rat “John” (the name gives you an idea of my age at this point) and finally hamsters whilst at college. John rat was one of my favourites and a rescue from my mother’s school, where he needed too much attention as his teeth would not grow straight and hence had to be cut regularly.
So yes, I love both rodents and their nemesis cats – who knew!
My current cat “Charlie” likes mice and rats – he doesn’t kill them and/or eat them he just likes to “play with them”. Although I love the sound of birdsong and birds in general, they just don’t have the intelligence of mice and rats. I am particularly impressed by the ‘clever’ ways that mice just seem to run rings around cats and how canny they can be. We’ve even had a mouse (caught by a previous cat) who managed to hide underneath his food bowl – now that’s smart!
The problem with Charlie is that far from removing mice from our home, we’ve had to resort to mouse traps, because he is forever losing them. So unlike my parent’s cats in France where they really noticed the increase in mouse population upon the death of the last of their 2 cats, we have the opposite problem. I can’t help thinking that we have more mice than we would have if we didn’t have a cat.
Photo by Acharaporn Kamornboonyarush on Pexels.com
This prompt is not really appropriate for me “right now”, as despite what the clock in the picture shows it is past midnight, I’ve had my chocolate biscuits and “Sleepy Tea” and now my final tasks are scrubbing my teeth before going off to bed to sleep with the cat. It’s been a long day today and I will enjoy snuggling up under the duvet to keep warm while the weather is still too cold for me. I’m looking forward to a long sleep – something at which I am very good!
Probably the less said about Christmas 2019, the better. We were due to visit my parents in France for about a week staggering Christmas and the New Year. However, having arrived very late (about midnight French time), we were fine but looking forward to a well-deserved sleep … and that’s where the problems started. I (Debra) woke up in the morning of Christmas Eve stiff as a board and my back was ‘killing me’. I spent the day intermittently moping around either sitting in a chair watching TV or lying down on my side in bed. I was dreading waking up the next day, but hoping that by rearranging pillows etc, that my back would be much better – it wasn’t!
Kevin managed to get me downstairs for breakfast using the stair climber and we had the ‘usual’ breakfast of scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, toast and bucks fizz (or in my case predominantly orange juice with just a little ‘champagne’ to provide the fizz). We then all decanted to the living room upstairs, so stair climber again for me and opened cards and the few presents that Kevin and I had brought with us, my parents having announced at the end of November that they weren’t proposing to ‘do presents’ this year as there was nothing that they wanted (despite having asked for something in October/early November that they had seen on eBay) and saying “we didn’t mind, did we?”. As it happened, there was nothing particularly affordable (i.e. only big things that we were buying ourselves anyway) that we wanted either, BUT we had bought them a book about 60 years of the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that we had bought them at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in October! I had also pestered Kevin to take me to a couple of local ‘Christmas fairs’ at which we had bought a couple of items. We got each other a single book from Amazon but that was it. Merry Christmas everyone …
You’d have thought that nothing else could go wrong, but unfortunately Kevin managed to mis-judge the number of steps between the upper ground floor (our bedroom + lounge) and lower ground floor (main living area + kitchen) of my parents house and sprain his ankle meaning that he was hobbling around and not too sure of his lifting and balance, which is kind of important when he is having to transfer me around. Fortunately, the pharmacy was open on the 26th December and as my mother was going up there, she managed to get a foot brace, which at least helped stabilise Kevin’s foot although the transfers were still caused a bit of consternation for both of us. At this point, we agreed to see if there was a way to shorten our stay and find a suitable ferry sailing to return to the UK early.
Despite the rather muted Christmas day, Boxing Day was much more jolly because an English couple that my parents have known for a few years now (and despite the fact that they had stayed up very late the previous evening) were coming over for late lunch / early dinner and they had got much more into the Christmas spirit – Pixie come Santa outfit for the lady included ! I’m afraid that I got a bit tired over lunch / dinner and departed quite early thereafter to go and have a lie down. This meant that I ended up asleep and didn’t say goodbye to our guests. However, once much revived after my sleep in the evening I logged in to my computer and confirmed that there was an alternative sailing that we could take back to the UK on 27th December. So in the morning of the 27th, Kevin contacted the ferry company and managed to move our booking to the sailing that afternoon (at about 4.30 p.m.) with only a small cost penalty. We contacted the people who were coming in to look after Charlie and let them know that we would be home early and so their services would be foreshortened. I have to admit that I was looking forward to sleeping in our adjustable bed to see if I could sort out my back quickly and Kevin assured me that his ankle had improved enough to drive and so at about 3 p.m. we set off to the port with picnic of various foodstuffs that we had not finished from previous meals. The weather in France for our journey back to the port was horrible – very windy, wet and foggy. However, when we got back to Portsmouth much later that evening the weather was good and we had a clear journey back home to be greeted by Charlie, who had had a wonderful time (judging by the photo evidence below).
Kevin’s family (Mum, Dad & Sister) visited us just after New Year and that was really quite enjoyable and much more usual. We all had lots of presents to exchange with one another and although the dinner was not up to Kevin’s usual high standard (not his fault – the stuffed Goose was rubbish!) I’m afraid I had a quick kip after the early afternoon meal, but managed to make it down for ‘Tea’ where I like almost everyone else wasn’t really up to eating much more. Charlie decided to be a real “star” and made himself very noticeable throughout the day, even rubbing around Kevin’s father (who really doesn’t like cats very much!)
Somewhere in the middle of my last post (primarily about the Cheltenham Literature Festival), I mentioned that first thing in the morning on Thursday, 10 October, we had our new 2-seater sofa + 2 matching chairs delivered. Charlie has already walked round and under them repeatedly, but will only sit on one of the chairs (well actually an old, folded blanket quickly unloaded from our car!)
Stairs – BEFORE
Stairs – AFTER
So, what else did we do at the end of October? Well immediately after the Festival had finished, we had the carpet fitter in to lay carpet down our stairs and also covering the upper landing (if you look closely at the photo above, you can see that since the stairs were renovated we had still not had them carpeted) and since Charlie loves to chase his tail at the top of the stairs, tumble all way to the bottom and then return to the top to do the whole thing again … We decided that just this area i.e. upper landing & stairs would be carpeted, both for reasons of sound isolation and more importantly (or so Kevin likes to tell) for safety reasons for Charlie.
Unusually, I had to make an emergency appointment at the dentist because my back teeth on the left-hand side were giving me toothache. Not the usual constant, dull pain but every so often a sharp, electric shock, which was only exacerbated by my electric toothbrush. We had to see a different dentist to normal, who assured me that my teeth looked very good although there was some swelling of my gums in the place indicated – so he gave me some antibiotics and all seemed fine for a couple of days – before the whole shenanigans started again. So off we went to the dentist again (this time to see my normal dentist), who confirmed that my teeth & gums looked fine, but he could see some striations indicating that I was ‘grinding my teeth’ – perhaps that was it, but I don’t recall consciously ‘grinding my teeth’ – I’m obviously just becoming a hypochondriac!
At some time during this period, Kevin took up the last remaining carpet upstairs (in our guest bedroom) and fitted yet more bamboo flooring, this time coloured as dark wood to fit in better with the surroundings. I also did lots and lots of webinars to make sure that I fulfilled my professional CPD requirement (including watching a live stream of a discussion about “Brexit Readiness”. Luckily, it won’t affect me too much as most of my work is Patent related, but those relying on trademarks particularly will have a real headache! For me, it will only affect my ability to file EU Registered Designs, but we’ll see …
My monstrosity of a huge power wheelchair (that I haven’t used and is not practical) was serviced during October and at the time, Kevin took the opportunity to explain that it was really not what was required – so at the start of December, wheelchair services came to take it away (hooray), which freed up some space and started Kevin’s general sorting out and getting rid of loads of unwanted items on Gumtree. So, this period has been pretty boring really and more and more depressing as the November announcement of a December General Election approached. I stopped watching the news & ignored much of the vitriol spewed on Twitter and Facebook, it really was pretty hateful and upsetting that supposedly ‘normal’ human beings have the capacity to be so nasty to each other, but that’s for the next post and I will finish this with some more pictures of Charlie luxuriating on his ‘special’, new carpet.
OK – Charlie here … silly servants didn’t post this in time & instead went downstairs to do something called “celebrating the New Year” – it was very noisy and full of bangs, which were a bit frightening! I DO LOVE MY NEW CARPET …
As I am still trying to catch up on all that’s happened to date, I will miss April 2019 in its entirety – I can’t remember back that far and my calendar doesn’t have anything interesting to note. So, let’s roll on May 2019 …
The first thing of note is that as usual, we attended lots of concerts at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. I know that we really enjoyed it and my calendar lists all the events that we attended (including Soweto Kinch, Abdullah Ibrahim, a double piano act with Nicki Yeoh & Zoe Rahman and Omar Sosa amongst others), but we have no pictures and I have to be honest and admit that I cannot remember the details – except that it was GREAT!
We voted in the European Elections & I saw my MS nurse for my usual six monthly review.
… And then, at the end of May, we went to visit my parents in France for our birthdays (30th May) and to attend “Jazz sous les pommiers“, which just happened to coincide with our birthdays this year. Having looked through their brochure, we couldn’t find anything that particularly inspired, except for 2 concerts that just happened to be scheduled for the early afternoon and evening of 30 May 2019. Both concerts I would categorise more as ‘world music’ than Jazz, particularly the first one – “Le mystère des voix bulgares (Bulgarie)“. This was a real treat, because I had first heard the group many years previously (although their composition has obviously changed over the years).
Le mystère des voix Bulgares (Bulgarie)
Young soloist in beautiful national dress
2 singers linking arms & more national dress
The singing was impressive and as I remembered. It was lovely to see a group obviously enjoying singing together, smiling, glancing at each other and holding hands / linking arms. A truly wonderful experience.
After a drink in the sunshine (augmented by some chips bought by my mother from an adjacent stall), we went for a wheel / walk around Coutances to see what other free events were taking place. Finally, we set off to look for a restaurant that was serving food (dinner) a bit early i.e. about 6 p.m., so that we would be ready for our evening event with Rabih Abou Khalil and his group in the theatre at 7:15 p.m.. This was closer to Jazz, although the musicians came from all over the world (Libya, Portugal, Italy, Turkey and the USA).
We had all thoroughly enjoyed our day out & Kevin and I had a great birthday and came away with two T-shirts to mark the occasion! Now all that was left was for Kevin to drive the one-hour or so journey back to my parent’s house.
We stayed with my parents until 4th June (to try and avoid the forthcoming celebrations scheduled for 6th June to celebrate 75 years since the Normandy landings during the Second World War). I should explain that we were due to catch the ferry from Caen – Portsmouth and as Caen and its environs were of significant importance, we knew that there would be a lot of traffic (even including parades with tanks!)
Display in the main area of the Ferry: Mont St Michel
As usual, our cat Charlie had been royally looked after by his regular visitors from ‘Home Loving Cats’, who had even provided a new and extremely enjoyable toy!
So, having arrived back from France and unpacked the car, Kevin spent the next couple of days dismantling and taking down all the Christmas decorations (closely supervised by Charlie – of course).
Charlie the supervisor / manager
“I am not sleeping on the job – this is hard work!”
We spent the next couple of weeks just catching up with all the usual, run-of-the-mill activities – Yoga & Gym at the local MS Therapy Centre, Hair cut and gel nail polish removed (much to my relief, as my fingernails are literally as “tough as nails” and were starting to dig into my hands every time I made a fist).
I had my first visit of 2019 to our house, from a potential inventor – as usual, he was very enthusiastic about his idea but unfortunately it was not something with which I could help him obtain useful Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). However, we did have a very pleasant chat about his concept, what Intellectual Property (IP) would be generated automatically and what (if he ever decided to do anything more in the future) he might like to think about regarding how to obtain any IPR, whether it would be useful for him or whether he just preferred to ‘tinker’ with ideas that were of benefit to him and him alone in carrying out his work / odd jobs. Still, it eased me back into thinking about work and what I needed to catch up on.
Yes, we celebrated Christmas 2018 (with both our parents on 25 & 26 December) in England – where Christmas is the bigger celebration – and we celebrated New Year 2019 with my parents in France – where New Year is the bigger celebration. However, that is not really the reason for our two centre celebrations, it’s much more mundane than that – the simple reason was that I had a regular medical appointment which just happened to fall in the middle of the two celebrations and the NHS nurse providing the service required no matter what was working during this period and if she was required to work, we felt that it was only right that we should make the effort to attend the appointment.
CHRISTMAS 2018:
Christmas lights (outside)
Christmas stars (upstairs)
All went without a hitch, with my parents arriving from France in the evening of 22 December and departing in the morning of 27 December (the day of my medical appointment), Kevin’s family spending Boxing Day with us all, meaning that we get the chance to use our large table at the rear of our huge living room and here are some photos from our traditional English Christmas.
Christmas lights (indoors)
Christmas tree & presents
NEW YEAR 2019:
And now it was our turn to make the ferry crossing from Portsmouth to my parent’s house in France, which we did on 29 December (giving my parents a couple of days in which to prepare for our arrival – late). This also gave us time to drop off the key with “Home Loving Cats”, who were looking after Charlie whilst we were away (and so the only photos you’ll get during this period are those of Charlie).
New Year also went fairly smoothly, with us eating far too much and as the weather was not good, I have very few photos (i.e. none) to share. We left France for the return journey to the UK on 4 January 2019.
I’ve been told that my servant’s previous attempt to adopt a new cat were a failure – what an idiot! It’s brilliant here and yesterday was the first day that my personal door was opened – so I can now go in and out as I please, My castle is very pleasing and there’s loads of room inside and only a few days ago I was even given lots of my very own toys. There’s mumblings that I’m not as pretty as some and that my tail is far too short – have they seen themselves recently! I’m perfect and my tail is just the right length to chase, before rolling down the stairs. (In fact I’m quite good at rolling off lots of things and even when on the floor I like to roll about to let the servant’s tickle my tummy – they seem to like that.) Anyway goodbye for now, because I need to catch up on a bit more beauty sleep.
(BTW the servants like to call me “Charlie”, but my real title is God King Adolfus Splodgicus III)
Once the house had passed, we set off to the RSPCA, Bath Cats and dogs home to see about adopting a cat. Now Kevin’s extremely good with nervous and even feral cats, so we were very hopeful that with few requirements and confidence that we could handle anything (OK, probably a little overconfident and William soon brought us back down to earth !) we struggled through the traffic in Bath on Tuesday. Unfortunately, we found that although there were lots of Cats available for adoption, most had been “reserved” by one or two different people. However, there was one cat who had no “reservations”, was about the age that we were looking for (under 3), but was reported as having a nervous disposition. In fact, so nervous that we couldn’t see him anywhere in his enclosure. So Kevin went to see a member of staff who said that William was still available and let Kevin into the enclosure to see whether he could spot him.
Kevin found him quite easily hiding under a crocheted blanket on one of those cat pedestals, but having tried to coax him out of hiding, which he did for a brief while, he extricated himself from the enclosure and reported that he had never seen a cat so scared – it was literally shaking! William obviously didn’t like the cattery and who could blame him as there were people constantly passing up and down the corridor outside his enclosure. Anyway, to cut a long story short we were sure that he would be better outside the cattery and we hoped that we could increases his confidence a little once we had brought him home. So, into the cat basket he went (apparently with very little trouble) and off we went on the drive home expecting to have protestations from the back seat all the way from Bath to Swindon. Not a bit of it – he was silent and calm.
Now before I continue with our 5 day saga, this is the only ‘nice’ photo that we have of a beautiful ginger Tom called William.
As soon as we got home and Kevin has got me out of the car in my wheelchair, he went back to collect William in his cat basket. We then both retreated into the kitchen, leaving the door of the basket open – the first thing William did was to bound out of the cat basket and smashes face against the closed and locked cat flap. So Kevin moved the cat basket in front of the cat flap to avoid further incidents. Again we retreated to give William space to look around. However, are about 5 – 10 minutes, there was no sign of William in the lounge, but we knew he couldn’t have run past us in the kitchen/family room. Anyway, Kevin is not someone to give up and he eventually spotted William squeezed tightly underneath the dresser in our dining area, right tight in the corner. We decided that we needed to leave him alone, but Kevin built a ‘camera trap’ that we set up just above one of the many food and water bowls dotted around the house and facing towards the stairs. As well as hoping to witness his night time rambling, we also hoped that it might give us a clue about where to find him in the morning.
Now the next series of shots were all taken at night during the 4 nights that he spent with us, so the quality is a bit grainy – but he did do quite a lot of investigating between about 3 a.m. – 5 a.m. and we did think that we saw him drinking a little bit – BUT NO EATING!
Now the lack of eating ANYTHING was beginning to cause us some concern and by Saturday Kevin telephoned the Bath cats and dogs home to explain our concern and say that unfortunately we felt that it was only fair for us to return him to their care. Now William was a lovely cat, not aggressive at all (if anything he reversed into the tiniest gaps you can ever imagine. However, it became abundantly clear to us that he was not an indoor cat at all and spent most of his time trying to get outside. We reported this to the cats home when we returned him and suggested that his description needed enhancing – he wasn’t just a nervous cat, but he also needed to be outside.
He also taught us just how many hiding places there were in our house – he never returned to the same place twice once we had found him! The proof is in the photos.
bibbysmith 