Things that slither in the night

I occasionally dry laundry in our living room on a wire framed airer. When the cats want to play hide and seek, it is a great place to swot from, especially if there are sheets hanging over it.

This morning my husband came into the kitchen where I was making breakfast holding up one of my nightdresses.

“Is there a reason why this was on the floor in my office?” It was one which had been on the airer last night.

Then I remembered, Otto had been trying to catch the spaghetti straps and play with them. He’d obviously succeeded and taken it with him into his favourite snooze space – hubbies office.

Our butch moggy has transmogrified into a Drag Queen!

Spring Fever

It has to be the official beginning of spring, because our small town is boasting it’s first duckling.

We have several small streams and rivers running through the valley from the hills. The one that meanders past our post office, has a tribe of mallard on it. The nesting rights for the mound in the centre of the stream go out to tender each year. This year the proud parents with the “Licence To Hatch” have a solitary ball of fluff sitting between them. If they had been Mandarin Ducks, I would have suspected a “One Egg Policy”.

In a few weeks, we will have cars screeching to a halt all over the town. Mother ducks tend to be a proud lot and take their progeny for walks across the Rugby pitch to the Fire Station, from the Swimming Baths to the secondary school and have been known to park themselves on the lawn outside one of the churches. As it sits on a busy roundabout, their quacking tends to go unnoticed, unless it is on a Sunday during prayers. Then parishioners can honestly sing about “All creatures great and small”

Watching the dawn

It would seem that whilst my Latin nouns relax and drink cappuccinos, I have the wakefulness of someone who drinks 10 espressos a day. It’s 4am and this is becoming a habit. Getting to the flower market at 6am yesterday was no problem. I had half prepared our evening meal by 5am.
If anyone has any suggestions for insomnia, I’m listening. Oh yes, and Cathy (mother of baby twins and a two year old), I think I know what your suggestion would be – smile.

Florium Vanishum

This morning I bumped into a course-mate at our local coffee emporium. I’d had a sleepless night reciting Latin botanicals in the early hours. Each time I woke up, I could only remember half of each word. Despite help from my friend to learn them, over a very large coffee, when it came to writing down said Latin in the test, half of each noun got up in protest and walked down the hill. I will have to re sit tomorrow.

Mademoiselle Chat is now eating like a donkey. Her aches and pains are being fixed and she is now on an expensive diet. Big brother wants to trough the same food (he would,) but we have to keep the food separate, the cats separate, and trust that a month after this cordon bleu diet, Mademoiselle will be pain free and “un-bunged”. I knew things were getting back to normal this evening when she jumped on my keyboard, kissed me on the nose, and proceeded to file my next set of Latin notes on the floor. Perhaps she can learn them for me for next Tuesday?
Tomorrow I have to be up at 5.30am to go the flower wholesaler. The whole class is having breakfast afterwards at the coffee emporium, where I will probably find a party of escaped Latin nouns drinking cappuccinos.

A perfect sensory day

It is said that smell is one of the most evocative memory stimulators. A whiff of perfume can bring events to mind that sit right back in childhood. Taste has a similar effect.

Texture can also stimulate the creative juices. Flowers, fabrics, woods, beads, certain foods (chocolate mousse, toasted nuts, mangos, crunchy lettuce with croutons). For me, the list goes on. I am blessed to have five senses filling my world with a crazy paradise.

My top five: marshmallows, a large cat purring, wood burning in the autumn air, the dawn chorus, bread baking, coffee percolating.

I have to say, the most sensuous things I have ever eaten are marshmallows. They are ordinary looking, but when they are fresh, there is nothing to compare with them. Toasted over an open fire they are spectacular. Then there’s that great start to the day; walking past a bakery as a sleepy village wakes up. You sniff the different loaves on the breeze as you pass the time of day with a neighbour out walking his dog. Yup, a moment of heaven.

So I guess the perfect day would be waking up to birdsong, with a large cat purring at the bottom of the bed, fresh bread bursting out of the bread machine, coffee spluttering on the stove, and roasting marshmallows over a bonfire in the evening (after doing a bit of gardening, in order to deserve it.)

What about yours?

Check ups

Not ever having had children, I’ve not had the stresses of childhood illnesses, accidents, dental appointments, nightmares etc.

However, I do have two spoiled animals. The boy needs dental treatment, and is constipated, the girl has fur balls and loves throwing up, usually on the expensive bits of floor in the house, the Afghan rugs. They are both currently on hunger strike as they have “gone off” the latest brand of cat food. Our Boy needs to diet anyway, but Her Ladyship doesn’t have any spare tyres to “spare”, so I’m concerned.

I have a feeling I will be spending a good whack of time and dollars at the vets this week. Her Ladyship goes tomorrow. We gave the new vet advance warning. Good to have a bottle of gin handy, either for Dutch courage, or to recover with after the Naughty Tortie appointment. Six months ago she took on a 6’4” vet and won. He has since left the country; the “New Vet” is his replacement. We are suspicious that vet turnover coincides with Cookie’s check ups.

A la recherche du temps perdu

I am a charity shop junkie. Second-hand Rose, that’s me. I buy four things, books, knitting wool, warm sweaters and tray cloths.

I miss tray cloths; odd, as I wasn’t raised with them at home. But we had a rather interesting neighbour when I was a child. She was a “Lady”. She had been widowed quite young and had the fortune of her late husband, who had made his money in the mills of Lancashire. Whether ethically or not, I can’t say, but our neighbour was of a different generation / time and class and I loved her and her big house. She was childless and I was allowed to visit her. I knocked on her door and would ask very politely if it was convenient to visit. I was always invited in and we would drink tea.

When you had a cup of tea at Mrs J’s home, it came on a tray, with large handles, a silver teapot and a tray cloth. This was usually starched linen with some kind of elegant decoration. The cup and saucer (no mugs in this household) were always china. She was remarkably trusting of the wide eyed seven year old who loved to drink out of the cups and ogle the pretty lace on the tray cloth.

People don’t use trays with tray cloths any more – except my friend Mrs B, who is a “Lady” too. I would love to see tray cloths make a come back. I have collected several in charity shops, which I suspect were discarded by surviving relatives when clearing out homes of departed loved ones. I like to think that many of them were made for “the bottom drawer” of a young woman about to be married. Most date from the 1930s or 1940s when home comforts were hard to come by, but embroidery skills were at their peak, so even the poorest girl could make something pretty for her new home. I can’t bear to see them tossed to one side, as if the hopes they embodied where trashed with them.

So I now have a drawer with a selection of cloths waiting for an appropriate 1940s tray, and a silver teapot is on my wish list for some birthday present in the future.