Aha mes amis, I write from a beautiful, sunny, France - where I have been let loose for a couple of days in the company of my choir-cohort Tim in an attempt to sort out something sensible for the choir summer tour. And before anybody starts jumping up and down imagining I am actually leading a life of leisure here, I would point out that choir tours are immensely complicated things to organise and Tim most closely resembles Gengis Khan when he is in 'sort-out mode'. So all fun and games it is most certainly NOT.
That having been said, Tim's capacity for sampling the good things which Burgundy has to offer is pretty legendary... les escargots are already running for cover and several vignerons are probably rubbing their hands with glee as news of his arrival hits their credit-crunched French ears.
Me? I am just happy to be here in the sunshine, dipping into the odd bottle of Chablis and taking the mickey out of Tim (aka Shrek) when he gets into his whip cracking stride.
For those interested, some quick updates:
1. The Kittens are fine, growing madly and even Little Shane is skipping around and beginning to look less like a refugee. They have been left in the nagged-into-compliance Hands of Troll for the week I'm in France: he has been given copious instructions on their every need so he should be OK. My pal Tracey is going to keep an eye on him anyway, just in case! I do understand, however, that as soon as my back was turned he and Baby Troll hit the local curry house, where they are both regulars, and thus known and loved. I am pretending I Do Not Know About This...
2. The Henry, vile object that it is, was indeed put in the skip as no communication was forthcoming from Troll on the subject within the deadline. However, the naughty Skip Man didn't turn up in time to take the thing away so the Henry was duly rescued by Troll on his return. We are going to go to Comet when I get back from France so I think things are now on a fairly even keel... we can but hope.
Right... I can hear the wriggling of the Tim as he starts to get his maps, pens, phone, and verbal whip into shape for our sortie into Darkest Nevers today in an attempt to get the Cathedral authorities to understand the thing they most want in the world is for our choir to sing there... more later...
Saturday, 13 June 2009
Friday, 5 June 2009
Doing a Proper Job
Apologies to my regular readership for the lack of communication in recent days... blame it on sleep deprivation turning me into something closely resembling an opera-singing zombie. I have but a hazy recollection of the past week or so, and I suspect I may JUST have been somewhat irrational from time to time, but this will doubtless merely have added fuel to the villagers' perception of me as Being A Bit Strange - so nothing much lost there then. Despite some hairy moments (including once having to put Little Shane in one of the cooler Aga ovens to keep him alive) The Kittens are all fine, so I am putting a mental two fingers up at the Fat Vet's worst predictions. They are now quite tubby little blobs and are eating by themselves - a ghastly mess of kitten food squelched up with kitten milk into a disgusting stinky slop, but the stench is a small price to pay for getting a decent night's sleep IMHO. Job well done.
However, kitten related chatter is not the point of my blogging today. I am ANGRY... read on.
As regular readers of my ramblings will know (blogs passim) I absolutely, utterly, and completely detest housework. In my opinion I am not going to be on my deathbed wishing I'd done more cleaning, so for me that is excuse enough to spend as little time on it as possible and instead do things which give me, or others, joy. However, this regularly brings me into conflict with Troll, who, as I do not have a job as such, regards it as incumbent on me to spend my time ensuring the place is scrubbed to within an inch of its life. It doesn't matter how many times 'in your dreams, pal' hits his eardrums. It doesn't matter how miserable it makes me to spend what is, for me, valuable time awake cleaning things which are going to require the same doing tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that... it doesn't matter that deep down he knows he is as unremittingly untidy as me. No, it is My Job and I am a Slattern, Pikey, Dirty and a Bad Housewife if everything isn't gleaming. [At this point I think it is not a low blow to point out that at the Algerian Autistic Man Camp the only things Troll actually has to do for himself are get out of bed, wash himself and put his clothes on - they have magic things called cleaners, chefs and laundresses to deal with everything else. But of course, the fact these things are conspicuously lacking from my life is down to it being My Fault for being a Feckless Musician rather than an Upright and Responsible Scientist, isn't it??].
However, every so often, when the chaos gets more than even I can deal with, I do accept, albeit reluctantly, the necessity of doing the 'clean and tidy' routine. And, being brought up in the Stalinist regime established by my grandmother, I DO THINGS PROPERLY. In the case of cleaning, this means getting everything off the shelves, worktops etc and scrubbing the said shelves or worktops thoroughly. It means all the woodwork is washed down, including the tops of doors. It means wiping evidence of Mini's grubby fingers from paintwork and dusting on the top of cupboards and dressers. In short, once I've boxed up my distaste for the task sufficiently to actually get on with it, the said task is done to the degree where the Chief Medical Officer could happily perform open heart surgery in the space without the thought of MRSA even crossing his mind. Because, according to the Grandmother Code 'it is not worth doing a job at all if you don't do it properly'.
Now, given Troll's frequent ranting on the subject of cleanliness, you'd think he'd understand the concept of Doing Things Properly, wouldn't you? Not a bit of it - because, to put it simply, it follows that if he understood the philosophy he would have to do it too. And here is where we find the mismatch between what comes out of Troll's mouth regarding this issue and what the man actually DOES himself. Granted, if you walked into a room which had been 'Trolled', initially you'd think 'Oh this is nice'. However, spend more than 5 minutes in the same room and you start to notice things; viz. those items which have not been put away at all but merely piled, admittedly in a Very Neat Pile, in a corner; or, despite their often unaesthetic appearance, on a windowsill for everybody to see when the look in; or, as a last resort, against the wall. You notice the skirting board crevices are still harbouring the dust which you know was there a few days ago. You look up and see the spiders haven't been rendered homeless. Move something on a worktop, and you find the space underneath the item isn't quite as pristine as the open bit you could see before you moved it, nor is the bit of shelf underneath the book you've just taken out very nice either, however gleaming the rest of the shelf might be. There's a little grey ring at the extreme edge of the floor all around the room because the mop won't QUITE make it all the way to the skirting board. Get the picture? Good - because it DRIVES ME NUTS.
Frankly, were it not for the time spent lecturing me on my manifold sins and deficiencies, I'd be extremely grateful for him doing anything in the way of helping with the housework burden: unfortunately, having been forced to listen to the said litany of manifold sins etc., I am not in the mood to cut Troll any slack and to me, this half-doing of tasks is worse than not doing them at all because aside from being sloppy, and in a strange way dishonest, it just screams hypocrisy. Despite the many discussions on this issue over the years, Troll is no further towards understanding my point of view and I don't expect that to change any time soon; he firmly believes doing the minimum to give an illusion of cleanliness is quite sufficient thank you very much. Grrrrrr. And Aaaaargh.
A quite separate, but equally infuriating, issue is that of what has gradually come to be termed 'Tiddly Tiddly Poke Poke'. This, gentle readers, is not a quaint Victorian parlour game enjoyed at Chateau Angevin, but rather my term for the Troll demeanour whenever something manual is called for. In case people haven't twigged, Troll is Very Tall; were he to stop slouching he would be around 6'5"- 6'6" (we aren't quite sure because the ruler at the doctor's isn't tall enough to measure him properly - the nurse has to stand on a chair and use a ruler on top of it when he has medicals). I am around 5'8" - quite tall for a woman, but obviously dwarfed when standing next to Troll. If you were asked which of the two of us would use the smaller, fiddly, pokey motions if handed a manual task, given our respective sizes, you'd think it would be ME, wouldn't you? Think again - most of the things I do are are done in 'broad brush' motion - it is TROLL whose movements are small and delicate. Tiddly Tiddly Poke Poke.
Now, perhaps I should be more tolerant on this issue, but there is something in me which can't help but be irritated by the sight of such a large man fiddling around like a ditsy little girlie. I honestly couldn't tell you precisely WHAT annoys me so much - perhaps it is just the extreme mismatch, perhaps it is just the low-level scratching sounds it makes - but annoy me it does. I absolutely refuse to be in the same room when Troll Attempts Toast, as the sight of the butter being delicately jabbed onto the toast is enough to give me apoplexy - 'Tiddly Tiddly Poke Poke'. Similarly, the spectacle of Troll gently dabbing at worktops when he 'cleans' them is like nails down a blackboard to me; 'PUT SOME FLIPPING ELBOW GREASE INTO IT, MAN' is my usual bellow. Bewildered stares ensue - you have to feel sorry for the guy on some levels. Unsurprisingly, given this, our respective choice of appliances are poles apart - for example, on the rare occasions Troll tries ironing, he prefers a light, shaped, iron and diddles it around on the clothes - 'Tiddly Tiddly Poke Poke'. I take the view that the alternative name for ironing is 'pressing', get the heaviest iron I can lay my hands on and press the living daylights out of the garment. You get the picture...
Anyway, all the above came to a head this morning when, following my second decent night's sleep (as The Kittens can now be left overnight with a bowl of slop and will not starve) I decided I no longer had an excuse for just leaving everything to go to hell in a handcart and decided to attack the utility room for starters and the kitchen as the main course. Now, as I am sure you can all understand, ten days or so of Mini tramping in and out of the kitchen door from the farmyard, doing various craft activities and generally being the grubby little urchin he is, had left its mark on the floors and walls. The Kittens are not pristine little individuals either, nor are the rest of our cats. In my general tiredness I have tended to just shove things where there is space for them rather than put them where they should be. I have also, perforce, had to cook various meals to keep Mini and I alive. It all adds up to a Bit of a Mess Really. So, after a bit of thrashing around putting things away where they should be, scrubbing worktops and handbasins and bowls and shelves and anything else which didn't run away and wiping down walls and tiles it was the turn of the floor. And here we come to the stumbling point.
Some time ago, my Dyson vacuum cleaner finally gave up the ghost and died on me so my method of dealing with floor detritus has been to sweep up with a broom and dustpan-and-brush, and then get down on my hands and knees and give the whole lot a good old scrub with some soap and hot water. However, the notion of Being On The Floor And Using A Scrubbing Brush wasn't one which appealed to Troll so he, at some point, scampered off to the shops and came back with a particularly unappealing specimen of vacuum cleaner called 'The Henry'. Having tried to use it once, found it was uniquely adapted to Troll's 'Tiddly Tiddly Poke Poke' method of working - and therefore deeply unsuitable for me - I shrugged, and abandoned the thing, continuing to use my trusty old broom. Troll, however, loves the hideous item; so I've just let him get on with it and done my best to turn a blind eye to the aforementioned 'grey ring around the room' on the basis it keeps him happy. And a Happy Troll is a Quiet Troll - which can only be a good thing.
Today, however, was different - Mini for some arcane reasons known only to himself had pinched my broom and I tracked it down to the orchard. (I suspect it had been used to torment our gander, Marcel, who hates Mini with a passion). It thus needed to be soaked in a bucket of soap-and-hot-water itself and could not be used for the job in hand - I was forced to contemplate The Henry. And contemplate it I did... despite having changed the bag (back to the Dark Ages after the lovely Dyson bagless system) - a job I HATE - and spent double the amount of time hoovering the utility room I used to take with the Dyson, when it came to the hands-and-knees-and-scrub routine I still discovered bits it had left - I did a better job with my broom and dustpan-and-brush, frankly. In addition, the pole-things you hold when you shove the brush bit around aren't adjustable. So, with the extra pole in place the length was perfect for a 6'5" Troll but far from perfect for a 5'8" ME. Take the spare pole out and I resembled one of Snow White's dwarves picking away at the coal face. Furthermore, it makes a truly horrid highpitched WHINE which offends my conservatoire-trained ears like little else. Hissy fits all round.
Unsurprisingly, at the end of this fiasco I was absolutely screaming with rage. If I am actually in the mood to DO a job I hate, I don't think it is unreasonable to expect the tools on hand to Do The Job Properly. And The Henry does not fall into that category. I have, therefore, emailed Troll with my ultimatum: he has until the close of play today to agree IN WRITING (ie. with no possibility of weaseling out of it by dint of saying 'I didn't say that') to take me to Comet the day after he returns next week, where we will purchase a lovely new Dyson for me. If he does NOT agree to this, I am flinging The Henry into the skip and ringing up the skip company to come and take it away, thus rendering Henry-salvage impossible. And then it will be back to the broom and dustpan-and-brush regime for poor old Troll. 'Tiddly Tiddly Poke Poke' that, my friend. As an added extra I have also made him aware I want him to undertake IN WRITING he is not EVER going to go out and buy appliances I have to use too without my being there also.
So guys... watch this space. The clock is ticking and I can hear the siren call of the skip wending its way towards The Henry. Will Troll save it? Will I have the satisfaction of hearing it crunch into the junk already in there when the Troll email doesn't arrive in time? Will I have to clamber in to rescue it if the email arrives late? Only time will tell....
However, kitten related chatter is not the point of my blogging today. I am ANGRY... read on.
As regular readers of my ramblings will know (blogs passim) I absolutely, utterly, and completely detest housework. In my opinion I am not going to be on my deathbed wishing I'd done more cleaning, so for me that is excuse enough to spend as little time on it as possible and instead do things which give me, or others, joy. However, this regularly brings me into conflict with Troll, who, as I do not have a job as such, regards it as incumbent on me to spend my time ensuring the place is scrubbed to within an inch of its life. It doesn't matter how many times 'in your dreams, pal' hits his eardrums. It doesn't matter how miserable it makes me to spend what is, for me, valuable time awake cleaning things which are going to require the same doing tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that... it doesn't matter that deep down he knows he is as unremittingly untidy as me. No, it is My Job and I am a Slattern, Pikey, Dirty and a Bad Housewife if everything isn't gleaming. [At this point I think it is not a low blow to point out that at the Algerian Autistic Man Camp the only things Troll actually has to do for himself are get out of bed, wash himself and put his clothes on - they have magic things called cleaners, chefs and laundresses to deal with everything else. But of course, the fact these things are conspicuously lacking from my life is down to it being My Fault for being a Feckless Musician rather than an Upright and Responsible Scientist, isn't it??].
However, every so often, when the chaos gets more than even I can deal with, I do accept, albeit reluctantly, the necessity of doing the 'clean and tidy' routine. And, being brought up in the Stalinist regime established by my grandmother, I DO THINGS PROPERLY. In the case of cleaning, this means getting everything off the shelves, worktops etc and scrubbing the said shelves or worktops thoroughly. It means all the woodwork is washed down, including the tops of doors. It means wiping evidence of Mini's grubby fingers from paintwork and dusting on the top of cupboards and dressers. In short, once I've boxed up my distaste for the task sufficiently to actually get on with it, the said task is done to the degree where the Chief Medical Officer could happily perform open heart surgery in the space without the thought of MRSA even crossing his mind. Because, according to the Grandmother Code 'it is not worth doing a job at all if you don't do it properly'.
Now, given Troll's frequent ranting on the subject of cleanliness, you'd think he'd understand the concept of Doing Things Properly, wouldn't you? Not a bit of it - because, to put it simply, it follows that if he understood the philosophy he would have to do it too. And here is where we find the mismatch between what comes out of Troll's mouth regarding this issue and what the man actually DOES himself. Granted, if you walked into a room which had been 'Trolled', initially you'd think 'Oh this is nice'. However, spend more than 5 minutes in the same room and you start to notice things; viz. those items which have not been put away at all but merely piled, admittedly in a Very Neat Pile, in a corner; or, despite their often unaesthetic appearance, on a windowsill for everybody to see when the look in; or, as a last resort, against the wall. You notice the skirting board crevices are still harbouring the dust which you know was there a few days ago. You look up and see the spiders haven't been rendered homeless. Move something on a worktop, and you find the space underneath the item isn't quite as pristine as the open bit you could see before you moved it, nor is the bit of shelf underneath the book you've just taken out very nice either, however gleaming the rest of the shelf might be. There's a little grey ring at the extreme edge of the floor all around the room because the mop won't QUITE make it all the way to the skirting board. Get the picture? Good - because it DRIVES ME NUTS.
Frankly, were it not for the time spent lecturing me on my manifold sins and deficiencies, I'd be extremely grateful for him doing anything in the way of helping with the housework burden: unfortunately, having been forced to listen to the said litany of manifold sins etc., I am not in the mood to cut Troll any slack and to me, this half-doing of tasks is worse than not doing them at all because aside from being sloppy, and in a strange way dishonest, it just screams hypocrisy. Despite the many discussions on this issue over the years, Troll is no further towards understanding my point of view and I don't expect that to change any time soon; he firmly believes doing the minimum to give an illusion of cleanliness is quite sufficient thank you very much. Grrrrrr. And Aaaaargh.
A quite separate, but equally infuriating, issue is that of what has gradually come to be termed 'Tiddly Tiddly Poke Poke'. This, gentle readers, is not a quaint Victorian parlour game enjoyed at Chateau Angevin, but rather my term for the Troll demeanour whenever something manual is called for. In case people haven't twigged, Troll is Very Tall; were he to stop slouching he would be around 6'5"- 6'6" (we aren't quite sure because the ruler at the doctor's isn't tall enough to measure him properly - the nurse has to stand on a chair and use a ruler on top of it when he has medicals). I am around 5'8" - quite tall for a woman, but obviously dwarfed when standing next to Troll. If you were asked which of the two of us would use the smaller, fiddly, pokey motions if handed a manual task, given our respective sizes, you'd think it would be ME, wouldn't you? Think again - most of the things I do are are done in 'broad brush' motion - it is TROLL whose movements are small and delicate. Tiddly Tiddly Poke Poke.
Now, perhaps I should be more tolerant on this issue, but there is something in me which can't help but be irritated by the sight of such a large man fiddling around like a ditsy little girlie. I honestly couldn't tell you precisely WHAT annoys me so much - perhaps it is just the extreme mismatch, perhaps it is just the low-level scratching sounds it makes - but annoy me it does. I absolutely refuse to be in the same room when Troll Attempts Toast, as the sight of the butter being delicately jabbed onto the toast is enough to give me apoplexy - 'Tiddly Tiddly Poke Poke'. Similarly, the spectacle of Troll gently dabbing at worktops when he 'cleans' them is like nails down a blackboard to me; 'PUT SOME FLIPPING ELBOW GREASE INTO IT, MAN' is my usual bellow. Bewildered stares ensue - you have to feel sorry for the guy on some levels. Unsurprisingly, given this, our respective choice of appliances are poles apart - for example, on the rare occasions Troll tries ironing, he prefers a light, shaped, iron and diddles it around on the clothes - 'Tiddly Tiddly Poke Poke'. I take the view that the alternative name for ironing is 'pressing', get the heaviest iron I can lay my hands on and press the living daylights out of the garment. You get the picture...
Anyway, all the above came to a head this morning when, following my second decent night's sleep (as The Kittens can now be left overnight with a bowl of slop and will not starve) I decided I no longer had an excuse for just leaving everything to go to hell in a handcart and decided to attack the utility room for starters and the kitchen as the main course. Now, as I am sure you can all understand, ten days or so of Mini tramping in and out of the kitchen door from the farmyard, doing various craft activities and generally being the grubby little urchin he is, had left its mark on the floors and walls. The Kittens are not pristine little individuals either, nor are the rest of our cats. In my general tiredness I have tended to just shove things where there is space for them rather than put them where they should be. I have also, perforce, had to cook various meals to keep Mini and I alive. It all adds up to a Bit of a Mess Really. So, after a bit of thrashing around putting things away where they should be, scrubbing worktops and handbasins and bowls and shelves and anything else which didn't run away and wiping down walls and tiles it was the turn of the floor. And here we come to the stumbling point.
Some time ago, my Dyson vacuum cleaner finally gave up the ghost and died on me so my method of dealing with floor detritus has been to sweep up with a broom and dustpan-and-brush, and then get down on my hands and knees and give the whole lot a good old scrub with some soap and hot water. However, the notion of Being On The Floor And Using A Scrubbing Brush wasn't one which appealed to Troll so he, at some point, scampered off to the shops and came back with a particularly unappealing specimen of vacuum cleaner called 'The Henry'. Having tried to use it once, found it was uniquely adapted to Troll's 'Tiddly Tiddly Poke Poke' method of working - and therefore deeply unsuitable for me - I shrugged, and abandoned the thing, continuing to use my trusty old broom. Troll, however, loves the hideous item; so I've just let him get on with it and done my best to turn a blind eye to the aforementioned 'grey ring around the room' on the basis it keeps him happy. And a Happy Troll is a Quiet Troll - which can only be a good thing.
Today, however, was different - Mini for some arcane reasons known only to himself had pinched my broom and I tracked it down to the orchard. (I suspect it had been used to torment our gander, Marcel, who hates Mini with a passion). It thus needed to be soaked in a bucket of soap-and-hot-water itself and could not be used for the job in hand - I was forced to contemplate The Henry. And contemplate it I did... despite having changed the bag (back to the Dark Ages after the lovely Dyson bagless system) - a job I HATE - and spent double the amount of time hoovering the utility room I used to take with the Dyson, when it came to the hands-and-knees-and-scrub routine I still discovered bits it had left - I did a better job with my broom and dustpan-and-brush, frankly. In addition, the pole-things you hold when you shove the brush bit around aren't adjustable. So, with the extra pole in place the length was perfect for a 6'5" Troll but far from perfect for a 5'8" ME. Take the spare pole out and I resembled one of Snow White's dwarves picking away at the coal face. Furthermore, it makes a truly horrid highpitched WHINE which offends my conservatoire-trained ears like little else. Hissy fits all round.
Unsurprisingly, at the end of this fiasco I was absolutely screaming with rage. If I am actually in the mood to DO a job I hate, I don't think it is unreasonable to expect the tools on hand to Do The Job Properly. And The Henry does not fall into that category. I have, therefore, emailed Troll with my ultimatum: he has until the close of play today to agree IN WRITING (ie. with no possibility of weaseling out of it by dint of saying 'I didn't say that') to take me to Comet the day after he returns next week, where we will purchase a lovely new Dyson for me. If he does NOT agree to this, I am flinging The Henry into the skip and ringing up the skip company to come and take it away, thus rendering Henry-salvage impossible. And then it will be back to the broom and dustpan-and-brush regime for poor old Troll. 'Tiddly Tiddly Poke Poke' that, my friend. As an added extra I have also made him aware I want him to undertake IN WRITING he is not EVER going to go out and buy appliances I have to use too without my being there also.
So guys... watch this space. The clock is ticking and I can hear the siren call of the skip wending its way towards The Henry. Will Troll save it? Will I have the satisfaction of hearing it crunch into the junk already in there when the Troll email doesn't arrive in time? Will I have to clamber in to rescue it if the email arrives late? Only time will tell....
Saturday, 23 May 2009
Kitten saga - Day 3
Well, the kittens are all still with us! The little ginger boy (called Little Shane by Mini) is the most fragile and I still think he is likely to kark it at any moment, but the two little black girls (Stumpy and Genevieve) seem, touchwood, to be pulling along. Whether I will make it is another story... I am utterly knackered, having been feeding, toileting and generally acting as surrogate mum to the little dears every two hours round the clock. Thank GOD for Teapigs Morning Glory, McVities digestives and that emergency staple of every stressed out human - toast.
Unsurprisingly, given the fact they probably haven't had much to eat since they were born - and certainly nothing at all in the day before they came to me - the sudden upgrade in nutrition gave all the kittens the runs initially. Apart from being messy and smelly for me to deal with (bear in mind for those who aren't familiar with very young kittens, their mother has to stimulate them - ie. lick their bottoms - to make them pee and poo and therefore I am having to do my best to simulate this by means of a damp piece of kitchen roll applied to their rear ends), this is quite worrying as it is enough to kill very little, very weak, kittens. So off they went down the local vet. Now, I conduct a bit of a guerilla war with our vets because they annoy me. As we are in a rural location they make it quite obvious they regard sheep, cattle and pigs as the Higher Calling of the Vet, and they only condescend to admit domestic pets across their hallowed portals because they know these are the critters which pay for their bread and butter. One of the miserable so-and-sos I have semi-brought round (mostly because he is Welsh and we can therefore 'talk rugby') but the Other plainly regards me as a proto-Mad-Old-Cat-Woman and therefore a sub-species of the human race. Unfortunately it was The Other who was on duty yesterday.
He was plainly horrified by my new escapade, but graciously permitted himself to actually touch the kittens and decided to give Little Shane some antibiotics. To do this entailed a franctic scamper around the back office as he plainly doesn't have a clue where anything is - that's for the untermensch veterinary nurses to organise isn't it? - and eventually had to ask the said veterinary nurse where the antibiotic of choice was. She, good girl, questioned his use of it; to which he responded 'Oh it's just an orphan kitten, it will probably die anyway'. He must think I'm deaf, or the partition walls are somehow soundproofed, because there was absolutely no attempt to moderate his voice or be at all discreet about what he was saying... I will leave it to my readership to imagine just how flipping cross that made me. I contemplated giving him a piece of my mind, but common sense prevailed and I came to the rapid conclusion there wouldn't be any point. He's far too old and his head is far too far up his rectum for even one of my tongue-lashings to have any effect - I did, however make do with giving him a classic Angevin Death Stare when he re-emerged and then insisted he look at Little Shane's paws.
Little Shane only has two toes on both his front paws, and one of his back paws is turned in a very odd way. The vet was absolutely horrified and made no effort to stop himself recoiling - 'this kitten is INBRED' he intoned - I honestly don't think he could have been any more shocked if I'd announced I was a cannibalistic necrophiliac with a particular interest in fat middle-aged veterinary surgeons. 'Ah right, shall I put him in the gas chamber now, then?' I sweetly enquired, and for once had the satisfaction of seeing him lost for a response. Mumbling something about coming back in a couple of days if there had been no improvement, he scurried off... I suspect to give himself a full body detox following his encounter with me and my unclean, defective charges. Again, I'll leave it to my readerships' imaginations to guess at what I was thinking but, as a clue, the words 'tosser', and 'WHAT a' wouldn't be far off the mark.
All the above has made me very angry and even more determined to do the best I possibly can to keep these little scraps alive, if only to prove to the bigoted greaseball at the surgery down the road that he is not omniescent. Getting home, and going through the 'feed-toilet-clean-change hot water bottle' routine again, I then turned to the internet for assistance. And found a body of comment which suggested that mixing the formula milk up with Dioralyte or similar seemed to work for kitten with the trots. Two feeds of this later (ie. about 3am) and all three were looking a lot perkier and have continued to improve throughout today. God bless the internet, people who are caring enough to share their experience and expertise via it, and the makers of off-the-counter medicines. Sure, if they survive, the kittens might develop a taste for raspberry flavoured concoctions, but that in my view is a small price to pay.
St Gertrude of Nivelles, I have discovered, is the patroness of cats and cat lovers and therefore has been added to the Pester List. She must be well sick of me by now - let's hope the old girl pulls her finger out and gives these kittens a helping hand. She could, whilst she's at it, give Scumbag at the Surgery a dose of something unpleasant - as penance for his arrogance, of course ;-) ...
Unsurprisingly, given the fact they probably haven't had much to eat since they were born - and certainly nothing at all in the day before they came to me - the sudden upgrade in nutrition gave all the kittens the runs initially. Apart from being messy and smelly for me to deal with (bear in mind for those who aren't familiar with very young kittens, their mother has to stimulate them - ie. lick their bottoms - to make them pee and poo and therefore I am having to do my best to simulate this by means of a damp piece of kitchen roll applied to their rear ends), this is quite worrying as it is enough to kill very little, very weak, kittens. So off they went down the local vet. Now, I conduct a bit of a guerilla war with our vets because they annoy me. As we are in a rural location they make it quite obvious they regard sheep, cattle and pigs as the Higher Calling of the Vet, and they only condescend to admit domestic pets across their hallowed portals because they know these are the critters which pay for their bread and butter. One of the miserable so-and-sos I have semi-brought round (mostly because he is Welsh and we can therefore 'talk rugby') but the Other plainly regards me as a proto-Mad-Old-Cat-Woman and therefore a sub-species of the human race. Unfortunately it was The Other who was on duty yesterday.
He was plainly horrified by my new escapade, but graciously permitted himself to actually touch the kittens and decided to give Little Shane some antibiotics. To do this entailed a franctic scamper around the back office as he plainly doesn't have a clue where anything is - that's for the untermensch veterinary nurses to organise isn't it? - and eventually had to ask the said veterinary nurse where the antibiotic of choice was. She, good girl, questioned his use of it; to which he responded 'Oh it's just an orphan kitten, it will probably die anyway'. He must think I'm deaf, or the partition walls are somehow soundproofed, because there was absolutely no attempt to moderate his voice or be at all discreet about what he was saying... I will leave it to my readership to imagine just how flipping cross that made me. I contemplated giving him a piece of my mind, but common sense prevailed and I came to the rapid conclusion there wouldn't be any point. He's far too old and his head is far too far up his rectum for even one of my tongue-lashings to have any effect - I did, however make do with giving him a classic Angevin Death Stare when he re-emerged and then insisted he look at Little Shane's paws.
Little Shane only has two toes on both his front paws, and one of his back paws is turned in a very odd way. The vet was absolutely horrified and made no effort to stop himself recoiling - 'this kitten is INBRED' he intoned - I honestly don't think he could have been any more shocked if I'd announced I was a cannibalistic necrophiliac with a particular interest in fat middle-aged veterinary surgeons. 'Ah right, shall I put him in the gas chamber now, then?' I sweetly enquired, and for once had the satisfaction of seeing him lost for a response. Mumbling something about coming back in a couple of days if there had been no improvement, he scurried off... I suspect to give himself a full body detox following his encounter with me and my unclean, defective charges. Again, I'll leave it to my readerships' imaginations to guess at what I was thinking but, as a clue, the words 'tosser', and 'WHAT a' wouldn't be far off the mark.
All the above has made me very angry and even more determined to do the best I possibly can to keep these little scraps alive, if only to prove to the bigoted greaseball at the surgery down the road that he is not omniescent. Getting home, and going through the 'feed-toilet-clean-change hot water bottle' routine again, I then turned to the internet for assistance. And found a body of comment which suggested that mixing the formula milk up with Dioralyte or similar seemed to work for kitten with the trots. Two feeds of this later (ie. about 3am) and all three were looking a lot perkier and have continued to improve throughout today. God bless the internet, people who are caring enough to share their experience and expertise via it, and the makers of off-the-counter medicines. Sure, if they survive, the kittens might develop a taste for raspberry flavoured concoctions, but that in my view is a small price to pay.
St Gertrude of Nivelles, I have discovered, is the patroness of cats and cat lovers and therefore has been added to the Pester List. She must be well sick of me by now - let's hope the old girl pulls her finger out and gives these kittens a helping hand. She could, whilst she's at it, give Scumbag at the Surgery a dose of something unpleasant - as penance for his arrogance, of course ;-) ...
Thursday, 21 May 2009
Three Little Kittens have lost their mittens...
Actually, I've never understood that nursery rhyme. There's doubtless some arcane reason it was created, and - knowing the vagaries of British history - that reason probably involves monarchical naughtiness, plague, or the persecution of religious minorities. What other reasons could you have for inventing a childrens' song???
Anyway, to get back to the point of today's slice of La Vie Angevin, we have acquired, at least for the moment, three little kittens. Chicken Boy James is currently looking after somebody's menagerie whilst they are on holiday and has some cautionary tales to tell about it too: we will not mention the 26 horses, or the 'anorexic pigs' but we will comment that people really SHOULD NOT acquire a substantial number of animals and then not look after them properly. More specifically given today's topic, it seems there are quite a few semi-feral cats down there who persist in popping out kittens, most of which either expire when their mothers find themselves too malnourished to produce milk for them, or when they form the basis of rat-supper. Now, there really is no excuse for this - the Blue Cross and various other charities are quite happy to offer discount or even free speying and neutering of cats and therefore it seems to me this person is either too lazy or too ignorant to do anything about the sad lives her cats are leading. And that makes me cross, but there is little *I* can do about this without landing James and his family in a great deal of trouble as they will undoubtedly be suspects as regards the source of any reports made to the authorities about this situation. So I am between a rock and hard place on this one.
James came round yesterday evening quite distressed about the whole kitten situation as it seems the latest new mother is bone-thin and has no milk... he thus had to deal with the other animals to the accompanying sound of hungry, mewling kittens, which is enough to upset anybody. Now perhaps I am a soft touch, but I did not like to think about this situation too much - there's a big difference in my moral code between knowing these things go on - in which case you can do very little about it other than make contributions to the relevant charities - and having a specific case in front of your nose - in which case I would never forgive myself if I didn't do SOMETHING. So, I suggested if the babies managed to survive the night and evade the rats, he should bring them to me and we'd see what whether we could save them.
Come the morning and a tub of pathetic scraps of life land in my kitchen; and make no mistake, these little creatures are in big trouble. They are tiny little things, skin and bone, one of them has a gungy eye and another has but a stump of a tail as the rest has obviously been a rat-snack. Having obtained a tub of cat-milk-replacement from the vet, I have been syringing 2-3ml down the babies' throats every two hours or so and making sure they are operating correctly at the other end as well. Their eyes have been cleaned up and they have been installed with a hot water bottle, fluffy towel and one of Mini's teddies in a basket next to the Aga and we can but hope they have the tenacity to pull through as I can do no more for them... my readership are politely requested to pester the daylights out of St Francis and St Antony or whatever household deities they possess in the interim... naturally I'll let everybody know how they get on.
Anyway, to get back to the point of today's slice of La Vie Angevin, we have acquired, at least for the moment, three little kittens. Chicken Boy James is currently looking after somebody's menagerie whilst they are on holiday and has some cautionary tales to tell about it too: we will not mention the 26 horses, or the 'anorexic pigs' but we will comment that people really SHOULD NOT acquire a substantial number of animals and then not look after them properly. More specifically given today's topic, it seems there are quite a few semi-feral cats down there who persist in popping out kittens, most of which either expire when their mothers find themselves too malnourished to produce milk for them, or when they form the basis of rat-supper. Now, there really is no excuse for this - the Blue Cross and various other charities are quite happy to offer discount or even free speying and neutering of cats and therefore it seems to me this person is either too lazy or too ignorant to do anything about the sad lives her cats are leading. And that makes me cross, but there is little *I* can do about this without landing James and his family in a great deal of trouble as they will undoubtedly be suspects as regards the source of any reports made to the authorities about this situation. So I am between a rock and hard place on this one.
James came round yesterday evening quite distressed about the whole kitten situation as it seems the latest new mother is bone-thin and has no milk... he thus had to deal with the other animals to the accompanying sound of hungry, mewling kittens, which is enough to upset anybody. Now perhaps I am a soft touch, but I did not like to think about this situation too much - there's a big difference in my moral code between knowing these things go on - in which case you can do very little about it other than make contributions to the relevant charities - and having a specific case in front of your nose - in which case I would never forgive myself if I didn't do SOMETHING. So, I suggested if the babies managed to survive the night and evade the rats, he should bring them to me and we'd see what whether we could save them.
Come the morning and a tub of pathetic scraps of life land in my kitchen; and make no mistake, these little creatures are in big trouble. They are tiny little things, skin and bone, one of them has a gungy eye and another has but a stump of a tail as the rest has obviously been a rat-snack. Having obtained a tub of cat-milk-replacement from the vet, I have been syringing 2-3ml down the babies' throats every two hours or so and making sure they are operating correctly at the other end as well. Their eyes have been cleaned up and they have been installed with a hot water bottle, fluffy towel and one of Mini's teddies in a basket next to the Aga and we can but hope they have the tenacity to pull through as I can do no more for them... my readership are politely requested to pester the daylights out of St Francis and St Antony or whatever household deities they possess in the interim... naturally I'll let everybody know how they get on.
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
One of those days
Well, it's gone 11pm and I'm sitting here with a large glass of red (Bouzy Rouge 1998 in case you are interested) because, frankly, it's either that or go and admit myself to the local mental hospital.
Everything was OK until about 3pm, when I received a very odd telephone call:
Caller: Hi, it's Muppet from LocalRipOff Fuels here, may I speak to Mini Angevin?
Me: Erm... WHY do you want to speak to Mini Angevin?
Caller: Well he rang our office earlier to order some fuel oil and said he'd sent us an email, but I handle the email orders and I'm afraid I haven't received it. I was ringing to find out how much oil he wanted to order?
Me: Mini Angevin is 7.
Caller: OH...
(call terminated soon after with expressions of apology on my part and expressions of both hilarity and bewilderment on the part of Muppet)
Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I should have seen this one coming. When Mini is allowed to watch TV he absolutely adores adverts, especially the sort of cheesy, crappy ones which car insurance companies etc love to churn out to torture the rest of us. Forget the 'naughty ads' aimed at children which the Government are, apparently, in the process of clamping down upon; the lure of McDonalds is as nothing in the Perverse World of Mini when up against the bedazzlement offered by the likes of GoCompare.com. Forget Ronald McDonald and the Happy Meal - it's Carol Voderman and the concept of refinancing which push the buttons all the way as far as Mini is concerned. He can quote, word for word, quite a few of the bigger offenders (with telephone numbers) and this, believe me, is not because he has been sat in front of the TV all day; it's a classic case of being able to learn something easily if your imagination has been captured by it. Although quite WHY car insurance jingles, Brylcreamed men in cheap crimpelene suits fronting LoanShark Inc. and anything involving Yakult are so enthralling beats me - but that's perhaps the basis of another blog sometime.
Anyway, this peculiar little trait of his has recently broadened into avid perusal of the Yellow Pages. He'll happily spend ages trawling through them, a habit I have done nothing to discourage because it COULD form the basis of A Topic For Discussion if he starts asking questions about something he's found in there. Nothing's wasted in the world of a home-edder. What I think must have happened this afternoon is that he stumbled across the page entitled 'Oil Companies' and, knowing Troll works for an 'oil company', started having a closer look. In the aforementioned Perverse World of Mini, 'looking' invariably leads to more tangible and tactile forms of exploration and, because one of his more endearing (if often dangerous) traits is his love of 'helping', he probably thought ordering some oil for us would be something which would earn him major brownie points. That, and the widdle-inducing excitement of a dirty great tanker turning up in the yard, of course.
I am SLIGHTLY comforted by the thought that no contract instigated by a seven-year-old is legally binding. However, it does beggar the question, what else has the little monster been arranging when my back's been turned? I shudder in horror when I think of the number of credit card company letters addressed to Mini which have appeared over the years in our postbox... OK - they COULD have been just idiots getting their data mixed up, but after today one does have to wonder....
There was also the occasion on which some oleaginous little creep rang up on the understanding his company had been contacted by somebody from our household who said they had been injured in an accident through no fault of their own recently and had expressed interest in employing the services of said company in the pursuit of compensation. As I absolutely DESPISE this sort of ambulance-chasing, imported American activity I sent him away with a flea in his ear, and put the whole incident down, again, to an instance of muppetry in the creep's communications' department. Now I am not so sure I didn't do them an injustice ....
However, before anybody thinks this was the end of the Adventures of Mini in BT-Land... it gets worse...
I went out for a bit of light relief to my quilt guild meeting this evening, leaving Mini in the tender care of Charlene - Chicken Boy James' elder sister and general no-nonsense, red-headed, object of Mini's intermittent lust. Charlene, being aware of the Oil Tanker Incident outlined above, took it upon herself to instigate further interrogation of Mini during my three hour absence and ascertained LocalRipOff Fuels are by far from being the only company to have been subjected to Mini's telephonic attentions. In fact, the little beast has today also rung FOUR removal companies to give them orders to come and remove himself, his toys, his 'fings' and the ghastly nit-ridden little girl from next door to France.
Well, at least I'll know what's happened when the removal lorries start turning up in the yard....
More Bouzy Rouge anybody???
Everything was OK until about 3pm, when I received a very odd telephone call:
Caller: Hi, it's Muppet from LocalRipOff Fuels here, may I speak to Mini Angevin?
Me: Erm... WHY do you want to speak to Mini Angevin?
Caller: Well he rang our office earlier to order some fuel oil and said he'd sent us an email, but I handle the email orders and I'm afraid I haven't received it. I was ringing to find out how much oil he wanted to order?
Me: Mini Angevin is 7.
Caller: OH...
(call terminated soon after with expressions of apology on my part and expressions of both hilarity and bewilderment on the part of Muppet)
Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I should have seen this one coming. When Mini is allowed to watch TV he absolutely adores adverts, especially the sort of cheesy, crappy ones which car insurance companies etc love to churn out to torture the rest of us. Forget the 'naughty ads' aimed at children which the Government are, apparently, in the process of clamping down upon; the lure of McDonalds is as nothing in the Perverse World of Mini when up against the bedazzlement offered by the likes of GoCompare.com. Forget Ronald McDonald and the Happy Meal - it's Carol Voderman and the concept of refinancing which push the buttons all the way as far as Mini is concerned. He can quote, word for word, quite a few of the bigger offenders (with telephone numbers) and this, believe me, is not because he has been sat in front of the TV all day; it's a classic case of being able to learn something easily if your imagination has been captured by it. Although quite WHY car insurance jingles, Brylcreamed men in cheap crimpelene suits fronting LoanShark Inc. and anything involving Yakult are so enthralling beats me - but that's perhaps the basis of another blog sometime.
Anyway, this peculiar little trait of his has recently broadened into avid perusal of the Yellow Pages. He'll happily spend ages trawling through them, a habit I have done nothing to discourage because it COULD form the basis of A Topic For Discussion if he starts asking questions about something he's found in there. Nothing's wasted in the world of a home-edder. What I think must have happened this afternoon is that he stumbled across the page entitled 'Oil Companies' and, knowing Troll works for an 'oil company', started having a closer look. In the aforementioned Perverse World of Mini, 'looking' invariably leads to more tangible and tactile forms of exploration and, because one of his more endearing (if often dangerous) traits is his love of 'helping', he probably thought ordering some oil for us would be something which would earn him major brownie points. That, and the widdle-inducing excitement of a dirty great tanker turning up in the yard, of course.
I am SLIGHTLY comforted by the thought that no contract instigated by a seven-year-old is legally binding. However, it does beggar the question, what else has the little monster been arranging when my back's been turned? I shudder in horror when I think of the number of credit card company letters addressed to Mini which have appeared over the years in our postbox... OK - they COULD have been just idiots getting their data mixed up, but after today one does have to wonder....
There was also the occasion on which some oleaginous little creep rang up on the understanding his company had been contacted by somebody from our household who said they had been injured in an accident through no fault of their own recently and had expressed interest in employing the services of said company in the pursuit of compensation. As I absolutely DESPISE this sort of ambulance-chasing, imported American activity I sent him away with a flea in his ear, and put the whole incident down, again, to an instance of muppetry in the creep's communications' department. Now I am not so sure I didn't do them an injustice ....
However, before anybody thinks this was the end of the Adventures of Mini in BT-Land... it gets worse...
I went out for a bit of light relief to my quilt guild meeting this evening, leaving Mini in the tender care of Charlene - Chicken Boy James' elder sister and general no-nonsense, red-headed, object of Mini's intermittent lust. Charlene, being aware of the Oil Tanker Incident outlined above, took it upon herself to instigate further interrogation of Mini during my three hour absence and ascertained LocalRipOff Fuels are by far from being the only company to have been subjected to Mini's telephonic attentions. In fact, the little beast has today also rung FOUR removal companies to give them orders to come and remove himself, his toys, his 'fings' and the ghastly nit-ridden little girl from next door to France.
Well, at least I'll know what's happened when the removal lorries start turning up in the yard....
More Bouzy Rouge anybody???
Sunday, 17 May 2009
It's that time of year again...
... when Flipping Caravans start infesting the countryside. As I discovered yesterday when I attempted to do something as simple as nip the mile or so down the road into the village to get some milk, bread and comics for Mini and I (The Beano and both The Times and the Daily Mail respectively in case you are interested). It took pretty near a quarter of an hour to cover the distance; as firstly I had to wait as a procession of the grotesque things passed my driveway, and then attempt to join the queue of hapless ordinary motorists which had formed behind them. Had it not been raining when I started, I would have reversed back up the drive when I first clapped eyes on the caravan procession and walked down instead, but I am NOT getting wet, not even for the necessary pint of Angevin morning tea.
Not only were the things, out of necessity I suppose, crawling along, but they also had periodic episodes of slamming the brakes on: presumably as they saw the traffic islands narrowing the road opposite the village green and - shock! horror! - as the near-senile occupants encountered the 'wiggly bit' a bit further on and panic set in. So you can see a journey which normally takes a couple of minutes was lengthened to over seven times that length of time by the lunatic traffic laws which permit these obscene vehicles to trundle around uninhibited at any time of the day or night. It probably won't take my clever readership long to intuit that, by some miracle, were I to become Minister for Transport the very first thing I would do would be to ban caravan traffic between the hours of 6am and 10pm; thus ensuring that firstly their deranged owners didn't annoy the rest of the population in daylight hours and secondly a fair number of them would be taken out by the drunk drivers pouring out of the pubs after 10pm and the knackered commuters on the roads before 6am. The Caravan Club would also be deemed a terrorist organisation on the grounds that their members regularly cause far more chaos on the nation's roads than they could if they merely put bombs on a few motorways. Perhaps I should write and suggest this to Geoff Hoon (the guy apparently 'in charge' of transport)... but on second thoughts he is just the sort of crazed lunatic who would own a caravan himself, so perhaps not.
Please note, I do NOT include motorhomes in this tirade. They can work up to a decent speed, aren't a liability to reverse and as far as I can see, are driven by your more on-the-ball sort of 'tourer'.
Whilst on the subject of caravans, has anybody else noticed the ludicrous names the things have? Presumably these are dished out by the manufacturers in a vain attempt to make the them sound exciting? Because, let's face it names such as 'Hideous Lump of Metal', 'Mobile OAP Home', or 'Please Pass Because My Underpowered Car Can't Do More Than 35mph With This Thing Stuck To It', whilst true, are not going to have the things rolling off the forecourt like hot Ferraris, are they? I have also noted that the names which do find their way onto caravans fall into three broad categories (I surmise to cater to three aspirational groups who are delusional enough to even consider purchasing one):
1. Names like 'Swift', 'Sprite, and 'Ranger'. Presumably these are meant to falsely tempt the potential buyers into imagining they'll be merrily speeding on their way to their glorified-picnic-area-of-choice? Because let's face it, by no criteria could a caravan be called 'swift'; a large cubic lump of metal, however mobile it might be, bears about as much similarity to a sprite as a dung heap; and people who buy the things tend to only range as far as the stocks of Tena-Lady they can carry with them will last.
2. Names such as 'Charisma', 'Senator', 'Challenger', 'Conqueror' and 'Buccaneer' which I suspect are there to appeal to the male side of the caravan-purchasing equation who would rather imagine they are closer to a variety of aging Clint-Eastwood-style Marlboro Man, than to the crimpelene-slacks-wearing individuals they actually are. This, I would suggest, is rather sadder than category 1. WAKE UP GUYS - in the very purchase of the Flipping Caravan you are placing yourself firmly in a group where Foggy and Compo would feel comfortable and, no matter what piratical name you give your rusting heap of junk, it's going to have about as much swash and buckle as a can of mushy peas. Captain Jack Sparrow you are NOT, far less Jonny Depp - in any incarnation.
3. 'SMUG' names, like 'Applause', 'Accolade', 'Pageant' and 'Ovation'. Now, this is a bit of a more subtle approach and one which I suspect is designed to appeal
A) to those who feel they will get 'value for money' from their tin can and therefore deserve some credit for their financial perspicacity. YOU ARE DELUDED my little caravan-loving pals, if you imagine for one minute that is the case. For starters, the cost of the things is astronomical; bearing in mind the average age of a caravanner in the UK and the dwindling number of years they can reasonably expect to be able to drive a car and caravan safely, they could probably go on at least one luxury holiday a year, and several mini-breaks, for the same amount of dosh. Then we have the increased fuel consumption to add as their poor little cars try to drag the thing along the roads; the nightly cost of berths in the picnic-areas-laughingly-described-as-caravan-parks (having done some quick research these are NOT cheap!), and the cost of gas, batteries and other consumables in the tincan itself. Add on the insurance charges for the caravan, the cost of maintaining it, and the higher fares on ferries etc if you daringly venture out of the UK and it's painting a pretty grim picture. So no 'Applause' for you, my poppets.
B) Alternatively, it occurs to me the smug name could be attempting to appeal to those who, in buying their own little home on wheels, could be giving themselves a massive pat on the back for thus cleverly avoiding the necessity of interacting overmuch with the locals should they venture out of Britain. I can just imagine them congratulating themselves on being able to have their Own Cups Of Tea with their Own Ghastly Culinary Concoctions lovingly created on their Own Little Stoves in their Own Little Mobile Shack. And thus avoiding the Horrors Of Foreign Food and Foreign People. In which case, you do indeed get an ovation, comrades - as I see the back of your metal box thump off the ferry on the other side of the Channel and thus out of MY country. The UK can do without this sort of bigotry, which has made it the laughing stock of Europe and held us back for too long. I hope your camping gaz appliance blows you and your flipping meat-and-two-veg to a place far further away than Europe...
Roll on the day when the rule of law finally breaks down and it will no longer be an offence to fit missiles to the front of one's car. Because me and whatever incarnation of the Aquatic Passat I'm driving then will be out there... be very scared, caravan owners, because I will be watching you....
Not only were the things, out of necessity I suppose, crawling along, but they also had periodic episodes of slamming the brakes on: presumably as they saw the traffic islands narrowing the road opposite the village green and - shock! horror! - as the near-senile occupants encountered the 'wiggly bit' a bit further on and panic set in. So you can see a journey which normally takes a couple of minutes was lengthened to over seven times that length of time by the lunatic traffic laws which permit these obscene vehicles to trundle around uninhibited at any time of the day or night. It probably won't take my clever readership long to intuit that, by some miracle, were I to become Minister for Transport the very first thing I would do would be to ban caravan traffic between the hours of 6am and 10pm; thus ensuring that firstly their deranged owners didn't annoy the rest of the population in daylight hours and secondly a fair number of them would be taken out by the drunk drivers pouring out of the pubs after 10pm and the knackered commuters on the roads before 6am. The Caravan Club would also be deemed a terrorist organisation on the grounds that their members regularly cause far more chaos on the nation's roads than they could if they merely put bombs on a few motorways. Perhaps I should write and suggest this to Geoff Hoon (the guy apparently 'in charge' of transport)... but on second thoughts he is just the sort of crazed lunatic who would own a caravan himself, so perhaps not.
Please note, I do NOT include motorhomes in this tirade. They can work up to a decent speed, aren't a liability to reverse and as far as I can see, are driven by your more on-the-ball sort of 'tourer'.
Whilst on the subject of caravans, has anybody else noticed the ludicrous names the things have? Presumably these are dished out by the manufacturers in a vain attempt to make the them sound exciting? Because, let's face it names such as 'Hideous Lump of Metal', 'Mobile OAP Home', or 'Please Pass Because My Underpowered Car Can't Do More Than 35mph With This Thing Stuck To It', whilst true, are not going to have the things rolling off the forecourt like hot Ferraris, are they? I have also noted that the names which do find their way onto caravans fall into three broad categories (I surmise to cater to three aspirational groups who are delusional enough to even consider purchasing one):
1. Names like 'Swift', 'Sprite, and 'Ranger'. Presumably these are meant to falsely tempt the potential buyers into imagining they'll be merrily speeding on their way to their glorified-picnic-area-of-choice? Because let's face it, by no criteria could a caravan be called 'swift'; a large cubic lump of metal, however mobile it might be, bears about as much similarity to a sprite as a dung heap; and people who buy the things tend to only range as far as the stocks of Tena-Lady they can carry with them will last.
2. Names such as 'Charisma', 'Senator', 'Challenger', 'Conqueror' and 'Buccaneer' which I suspect are there to appeal to the male side of the caravan-purchasing equation who would rather imagine they are closer to a variety of aging Clint-Eastwood-style Marlboro Man, than to the crimpelene-slacks-wearing individuals they actually are. This, I would suggest, is rather sadder than category 1. WAKE UP GUYS - in the very purchase of the Flipping Caravan you are placing yourself firmly in a group where Foggy and Compo would feel comfortable and, no matter what piratical name you give your rusting heap of junk, it's going to have about as much swash and buckle as a can of mushy peas. Captain Jack Sparrow you are NOT, far less Jonny Depp - in any incarnation.
3. 'SMUG' names, like 'Applause', 'Accolade', 'Pageant' and 'Ovation'. Now, this is a bit of a more subtle approach and one which I suspect is designed to appeal
A) to those who feel they will get 'value for money' from their tin can and therefore deserve some credit for their financial perspicacity. YOU ARE DELUDED my little caravan-loving pals, if you imagine for one minute that is the case. For starters, the cost of the things is astronomical; bearing in mind the average age of a caravanner in the UK and the dwindling number of years they can reasonably expect to be able to drive a car and caravan safely, they could probably go on at least one luxury holiday a year, and several mini-breaks, for the same amount of dosh. Then we have the increased fuel consumption to add as their poor little cars try to drag the thing along the roads; the nightly cost of berths in the picnic-areas-laughingly-described-as-caravan-parks (having done some quick research these are NOT cheap!), and the cost of gas, batteries and other consumables in the tincan itself. Add on the insurance charges for the caravan, the cost of maintaining it, and the higher fares on ferries etc if you daringly venture out of the UK and it's painting a pretty grim picture. So no 'Applause' for you, my poppets.
B) Alternatively, it occurs to me the smug name could be attempting to appeal to those who, in buying their own little home on wheels, could be giving themselves a massive pat on the back for thus cleverly avoiding the necessity of interacting overmuch with the locals should they venture out of Britain. I can just imagine them congratulating themselves on being able to have their Own Cups Of Tea with their Own Ghastly Culinary Concoctions lovingly created on their Own Little Stoves in their Own Little Mobile Shack. And thus avoiding the Horrors Of Foreign Food and Foreign People. In which case, you do indeed get an ovation, comrades - as I see the back of your metal box thump off the ferry on the other side of the Channel and thus out of MY country. The UK can do without this sort of bigotry, which has made it the laughing stock of Europe and held us back for too long. I hope your camping gaz appliance blows you and your flipping meat-and-two-veg to a place far further away than Europe...
Roll on the day when the rule of law finally breaks down and it will no longer be an offence to fit missiles to the front of one's car. Because me and whatever incarnation of the Aquatic Passat I'm driving then will be out there... be very scared, caravan owners, because I will be watching you....
Thursday, 14 May 2009
Labours of love...
The next time I start suggesting I add thin sashing to quilt blocks when I'm assembling them to make a quilt top, somebody tie me up and subject me to waterboarding or similar to make me mend my ways.
Sashing, for the initiated, is a term referring to bands of material you sew around the outside edges of quilt blocks when you have enough of the latter for whatever project happens to be the topic of the moment. They are usually all in the same fabric and thus both 'frame' the blocks and can also give a bit of unity to the design as a whole. As I'm sure my clever readership can work out, the narrower the bands, the more fiddly the work involved...
... a fact I should have remembered earlier on today, when I decided to add some narrow cream sashing to the 140 blocks which will eventually make the latest Chateau Angevin quilt. Narrow = 1 inch finished width in this case.
I started to question my sanity when I'd cut out what seemed like a billion 1.5 inch strips. I continued to do so as I chopped the said billion strips up a bit more so they were the same size length as my quilt blocks. But what really did push me over into teeth-gritting rage was the issue of pressing the seams ... ironing is not my fave task at the best of times and the sheer tedium of grappling with narrow bands of fabric which ALL seemed to want to go the opposite way to the way they should was enough to make me wonder whether it would be less annoying to just unpick the whole lot now and think of some other way to put the things together rather than persevere with this mad plan.
Unfortunately I am made of equal parts lunacy and stubbornness.... and truth be told what I have done so far looks really nice and really sets off the lovely fabric (Fig and Plum by Fig Tree Quilts for Moda) so it looks as if we could be in for several more days of grumpiness until I get this job done.
Somebody, somewhere send me a magnum of Aloxe Corton. Premier Cru if you are feeling generous (or guilty)....
Sashing, for the initiated, is a term referring to bands of material you sew around the outside edges of quilt blocks when you have enough of the latter for whatever project happens to be the topic of the moment. They are usually all in the same fabric and thus both 'frame' the blocks and can also give a bit of unity to the design as a whole. As I'm sure my clever readership can work out, the narrower the bands, the more fiddly the work involved...
... a fact I should have remembered earlier on today, when I decided to add some narrow cream sashing to the 140 blocks which will eventually make the latest Chateau Angevin quilt. Narrow = 1 inch finished width in this case.
I started to question my sanity when I'd cut out what seemed like a billion 1.5 inch strips. I continued to do so as I chopped the said billion strips up a bit more so they were the same size length as my quilt blocks. But what really did push me over into teeth-gritting rage was the issue of pressing the seams ... ironing is not my fave task at the best of times and the sheer tedium of grappling with narrow bands of fabric which ALL seemed to want to go the opposite way to the way they should was enough to make me wonder whether it would be less annoying to just unpick the whole lot now and think of some other way to put the things together rather than persevere with this mad plan.
Unfortunately I am made of equal parts lunacy and stubbornness.... and truth be told what I have done so far looks really nice and really sets off the lovely fabric (Fig and Plum by Fig Tree Quilts for Moda) so it looks as if we could be in for several more days of grumpiness until I get this job done.
Somebody, somewhere send me a magnum of Aloxe Corton. Premier Cru if you are feeling generous (or guilty)....
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