Yeah! That's me OK.

You Are Gonzo the Great

"Is something burning in here? Oh, it's just me." You're a total nutball who will do anything for attention. The first to take a dare, you'll pull almost any stunt. You're one weird looking creature, but your chickens don't mind!

The Muppet Personality Test

I couldn't have asked for a better muppet self. (If I'd been given Miss Piggy you can be sure I'd have skulked quietly away.)

Well, I could have asked for better descriptions; I mean, "Total nutball?" I think not.
"First to take a dare?" I bet you I wouldn't.
"One weird-looking creature?" The reason I don't post a photo of myself is that I'm, uhm, too good to be true. But that's only temporary, it's a phase I'm going through.

And what makes them think that I keep chickens? I have packs of chicken soup, does that count? I have cats, cats and chickens aren't noted for co-existance.

(Actually, if anyone out there has information to the contrary, I'd like to hear it, because I do have a secret hankering to keep a few hens in a run, but I really don't know how the cats would take it. I suspect after a few days I'd start finding chickens inside the house, together with the rabbits and mice and voles that one of the cats insists on smuggling through the cat-flap. Alive, I might add. I spend a lot of time hunting them down and taking them back outside again. It's good exercise, and it keeps my coat glossy).

Me, artistically abnormal? I should Rococco.

Off with her Head

When I was growing up, we always had a cat. We only ever had one at a time, always neutered or spayed, and mostly with strange names. Shostakovitch, for example, ( a composer), or Kishou, (a maiden from a Gilbert and Sullivan piece), or Thotmes (an egyptian ruler). We never had a cat-flap, the cat usually let us know if it wanted to be let out by meowing, or to be let in by jumping up on a windowsill and scratching on the glass. I slept in one of the two attic bedrooms, where the warm air rose during the evening, and the cat would always come and sleep on my bed after dark. It was reassuring to wake suddenly during the night from some dream and reach out to stroke the weight that pressed on the coverlet. If the cat hadn't started up, then the sudden noise must have been in the dream, not in the house.

I now have three cats, and a catflap. One of them refuses to use the flap and insists that she be let in and out by the door, as if she were human. Two of them like to try and sleep on the bed, but because I now do not sleep alone, there is less room, and my partner has complained several times about being squashed out of the bed by a persistent pressure from whichever cat it was that snuggled up against her. With winter and the need to shut the doors in the place to keep the draughts down, the cats lost their easy access to and from the bedroom.

I started smuggling one of them into the bedroom with me recently, because I still remember the childhood reassurance of reaching out in the darkness and finding a warm bundle of fur to touch, and this cat is happy sleeping on the top edge of the pillow, touching the top of my head, so my partner is unlikely to complain about being levered out from under the covers. On the coldest nights during the recent snows the green-eyed tabby cat actually wrapped herself around the top of my head, as if to stop the goblins from stealing my brains while I slept.

Unfortunately, this same cat can be rather clumsy getting on and off the bed, and once or twice walked across my partner's face, so I try to make sure that she stays on my pillow. What my partner doesn't get woken up by won't enrage her. I sleep fitfully on the Sunday night when I have to go to bed early in order to get up at 3 the next morning, and during one of the brief periods of wakefulness I glanced to my left. In the moonlight I could see the dark bulk of the cat, curled up on my partner's pillow. I reached out both arms and tried to pick her up to switch her back to my own pillow. Luckily I realised my mistake in time and stopped short of wrenching my partner's head from her neck. The green-eyed tabby was still on my pillow, watching me with a curious expression on her face.

The warm weather is coming back, and I can soon sleep with the window kept open, and the cats can come and go as they please. And this is my last Monday morning on which I have to get up at 3 and drive from Wiltshire to Lincolnshire, so I will be able to have a normal night like most of the other people. The Sopwith Camel is coming home. The war will soon be over. Eleven eleven eleven is near.

Bye-bye beside the Bay

I felt terrible about not having seen Hazel for one last time before she died. At the same time, I was relieved, because it meant my last memory of her was of a cheerful person enjoying the view in her almost-completed home. I heard that she was having a hard time with the chemotherapy, and sent her a couple of texts, and then one Friday morning, as I set off home, there came a text message from my youngest brother preparing me for bad news.

I also felt terrible about missing her funeral, but at the same time, I felt relieved, because the church and civic ceremonies I have sat through previously had accentuated the feeling of loss but not offered any real comfort or helped me to accept the parting.

I was glad, therefore, that I made it back for her memorial and found it an unstructured event, not planned according to any set pattern but following her wish that all those who missed her should meet in a hotel by Studland Bay and go down by the water's edge to say goodbye. It was the first time I had visited the sea in more than 2 years. It was a bright but cold March day, the first promise that spring was with us once again.

We squeezed into the largest room the hotel had available, people whom I hadn't seen for nearly fifteen years in some cases, to find some display boards with photos everywhere, and a slideshow of more photos and odd video clips playing on a big flatscreen. I hovered around in the entrance corridor close to the door, marginalised by the need to find the toilets earlier on, and heard rather than saw the people who expressed their tributes. Her eldest brother gave a perfect imitation of one of her mannerisms that for a second gave me a bright mental picture of her there in front of me, and I had to shake myself and blink several times.

Down on the sand beneath the low cliffs at the western edge of Studland bay, another brother found some tinder and half-burnt logs at the barbecue site and soon had a driftwood fire burning. I watched my mother taking this doubly hard, because she too has been diagnosed with an inoperable condition and knew that she had only a limited time left, but we had all assumed that Hazel was going to be alright, she was young and strong and loved life so dearly it was unthinkable that she should lose the battle so soon. I noticed that our sisters-in law tended to form a tight-knit community, as though the men in my family were particularly tricky to live with and therefore notes needed to be exchanged and methods of handling us shared amongst them. And now they are one less.

We wrote messages on notes which my youngest brother was going to put into a bottle and carry to Scotland, to be cast into the sea off the West coast, together with her ashes, so that all her memories and remains could be back in the land that she came from. I didn't read what my partner had written, just flipped the sheet over and put my own scrawled words on the back. A basket of dried flowers and heather sprigs was passed around, from which we picked whatever caught our individual fancies, and then went down to the whispering water to throw them into the narrow margin between the wet and the dry, and I was able to say out loud 'Goodbye Hazel' with no inhibitions of a church-like echo to fling the quiver in my voice back in my ears. Appropriately, a large white ship put out to sea from Poole Harbour.




I will still miss her, I will still find myself mentioning both of their names when now I should only say one, and I still feel that it was so cruel that she should go this way, but I do at least feel that I have said goodbye properly.

The photos that follow have no captions or explanations, they are random images that mean something to me

Yet Another Soft Touch

I went to the auctions to get another television, the strange colours from the Daewoo had been seriously messing with my brain. This is the same auction house from where I got the collection of memories I blogged about last year. There were a couple of lots I was interested in, the first containing two televisions with stands, the second, almost at the end, was a single Sony Trinitron with a video recorder. I didn't want to bid on the first lot, because I didn't want the bother of disposing of the second television, so I let them pass and waited for the Sony. If only I had bid for the pair then and left, I wouldn't be facing yet another ethical dilemna.



I wasn't really following the auctioneer's descriptions, until I heard him telling of a house-clearance where every wall, shelf, ledge, sofa, and carpet was covered with soft toys. I looked across to where one of the porters was holding up an albino Rupert. No-one else seemed to want them, and I started to think how sad it was that someone's memories were once again going into the rubbish skip. In a mad moment, I stuck my hand up and bought 8 plastic bin-bags full of cuddly toys. Later on, I got the Sony Trinitron I had gone there for in the first place.

I found somewhere in the store to toss the eight rubbish sacks, and trotted past them a few times carying other stuff around, but I kept thinking about them, jumbled higgledy-piggledy in the corner. They had been used to looking out at each other, being loved by somebody, and now they were shut up in the dark. For what sin? Their owner had died, and that meant that they should be shut up for ever? I could almost hear thier plaintive wails, and convinced myself that they might go mouldy if they were left in the plastic. At least, I think it was I who put that thought into my head.



This is pretty much how they started coming out of the bags into the light, in clusters and collections,



in pairs



or singly,



some too modern for me to recognise,



and some old enough for me to say 'I had one of these!'. I'm not allowed to actually tell you what this one is, because of political-correctness. If you really must know, email me.



I picked my way through all of the bags, posing one or two of them for the camera before finding room to perch them amongst the car-spares.



I am going to have to re-invent myself over the next few months in order to find homes for all of them. As I was sticking up my hand in the auction, something in my head was telling me that there should be a rescue centre for much-loved toys who had outlived their owners. I was able to sleep that night, knowing that the toys were once more back out in the air, free to chatter amongst each other. One day they will all be re-housed with people who will be able to love them again. And hopefully, the lady to whom they previously belonged will also rest peacefully now her beloved toys are not going to be forgotten.

Yes I know, I'm as soft as the toys, aren't I?

Yet another Wishlist Note

I want to

• Lose more weight
• Get fit enough to stay fit
• Keep the weight off
• Keep my hair on
• Get out more
• See more of the friends I already have
• Make some new friends
• Not live in fear of poverty and deprivation
• Write stories and books and get them published
• Learn to draw and paint again

You'll notice I haven't said that I want to win the lottery. Apart from the odd daydream, I don't want to win an obscene amount. I don't want to be filthy-rich, I'm happy being slightly-grubby-poor. I already know that if I were to win such a large amount I would become a hoarder, pre-occupied with defending my trove against robbers and cadgers and con-men. Do you see how invidious wealth is? I'm contemplating becoming the monster sleeping on his pile of gold even before I've got the treasure. The Ring-cycle was right; whoever steals the gold from the light of the world and buries it away is cursed to be unhappy forever. (See 'Das Rheingold', for those of you who're wondering what I'm on about).

I know this about myself, because I sat down once and wrote down what happened to me after I won 5 million pounds on the lottery. I was brutally frank about how I would react to different situations. As I considered what I would do with the money, where I would move to, whether I would tell all or some or nobody at all, I began to realise that my motives behind all the decisions I penned were greedy and secretive. I saw that I would become obsessed with protecting the money from thieves and con-men and government tax regimes. I would end up a miser, always scuttling off down a long dark corridor past security devices to check once again that the fortune was secure, that no cunning thief had made off with 'my precious' pile. The shock of discovering that I had such motives inside me made me delete the story from the computer before I had reached the inevitable conclusion, where I spent the remaining money on a team of lawyers to fight the team of lawyers that my seperating partner had hired to claim her rightful half-and-more that she felt entitled to. Only the memory of it remains.

And I don't buy lottery tickets anymore. But I do pick up copper and silver coins in the car-parks, and I do still think 'See a penny, pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck'.

Better to be happy with a picked-up penny found than a fantasy fortune.