Which I thought meant New Year’s Eve, and takes place this year in 2009, but there is a poster in our local Co-op proclaiming Hogmanay 2010.
For pedantry’s sake (and I could be wrong), let me wish you all a great Hogmanay (2009), and a Happy New Year (2010) …
I’m making an effort these days to contribute to the excellent blipFoto website. To-day’s blip may look sort of familiar to anyone who remembers the Make Poverty History rally in Edinburgh. And if you look back through my blips you may catch glimpses of our feline adoptees …
There were originally two goldfish, called “Alfred”, and “The Cakes” – my father’s family are from the south of England, where a certain culinary disaster involving the king of Wessex is well remembered. Additionally, Alfred was pure gold, while The Cakes had some black splodges …
Good point, Agatha – I have a vivid childhood memory of a goldfish called “The Cakes” …
Or Bubble and Squeak, or, the latest idea, Cagney and Lacey. Over this weekend, we’ve been visiting Lothian Cat Rescue, with a view to replacing ‘the cat’, who still visits, by the way … As ever, things don’t always work out the way you expect, and we find ourselves the proud owners of two cats, who do have given names, but for whom I’d like to choose stage names. I’m not allowed to call them Palkia and Dialga (because they fight), and perhaps Spitfire and Hurricane is a bit over the top.
They have contrasting characters – Cagney (for now) has been hyperactively exploring the house, while Lacey has been hiding – I guess that we have to give them time to get to know us …
Tractor Girl’s post has reminded me (and others, clearly) of the Make Poverty History march in Edinburgh, 2005 (incidentally, the only time that I have met TG ‘in real life’). My wristband has adorned this teddy bear (which normally resides in the bathroom) since …
In other news, ‘the cat’ paid us a visit this morning. A bittersweet occasion, particularly when I tried to stroke him, and he sank his teeth into my forearm …
Someone left a message yesterday on our answering machine, concerning ‘our’ cat. When wife returned the call, she was told that ‘our’ cat is, actually, someone else’s cat, and that he turned up on this person’s doorstep the day he ‘disappeared’. From this lady’s perspective, he had been missing for seven months.
What is slightly surprising is that the lady who phoned lives barely three hundred yards away from us.
So, altogether now, “I’m going to wash that cat right out of my hair …”
Not far from the place from which this photo was taken is a house which we once thought about buying. I was in Cockenzie yesterday afternoon, and think that it is quite an attractive village, but it’s difficult not to be conscious of the looming presence of the neighbouring power station …
Many thanks for the comments! I should add that I have been influenced by two events – my ongoing reading of “The Curious Incident …”, and listening to a Radio 4 programme on Tuesday evening about Adults with Autism, which Maggi Dawn alerted me to. My reactions to the programme were mixed – some aspects resonated, while others didn’t apply (to myself).
By the way, I see that Maggi now has a page on faceBook, and I appear to be her solitary fan, which can’t be right …
I’m currently trying to read “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time“, which is a curious experience. The narrator is an autistic boy, with all sorts of consequences for how the book progresses.
One of the manifestations of my autism is a lack of identity. I’ve often noticed a tendency in myself to adopt the mannerisms of a person I’m with. And this extends to picking up ideas of how to behave from books – with sometimes embarrassing consequences – I used to think that Gabriel Oak’s slavish devotion to Bathsheba Everdene (“Far from the Madding Crowd”) was an appropriate way to express romantic love …
When the character is like me (the real me, which I’ve managed to conceal for so many years), I feel that I’m becoming a caricature of myself. Nowadays, I tend to read novels in small chunks, so will probably manage to finish, but it’s hard going …