Tuesday, July 31, 2012

A weery drudje rite (chiz, chiz)

Well, I'm well under the cosh... (Caution: This post includes middle-aged bloke whingeing)

The Small Object of Desire is out with her mates again, having coffee and cakes and a gossip while I'm left behind cat-sitting again. Cat-sitting at Railway Cuttings mostly involves being sat on by The Cat I Do Not Have, in between its being asleep and its eating. It saves going out for a romp* in the garden for three o'clock in the morning and the moment the breakfast toast is just starting to singe. Yelling at the door for me to let her back in is saved for four o'clock in the morning and the moment we're trying to leave for work at the latest possible moment because it takes The Small Object of desire about four hours to wake up enough to be safe to drive. Tonight I had to rescue the silly pillock† from the wash-house roof (because it's raining and it didn't want to get its feet wet). Stone me, what a life...

The Small Object of desire has been abandoning me to wanton Fate quite a bit lately. The other day it was to go to a Johnny Morrissey concert, the local stop in his I Opened Chester Zoo You Know Tour. She was there amongst the crowd waving their Linda MacCartney vegetarian sausages, which he made speak a quirky commentary with a series of unlikely voices from the corner of his mouth. He's a game old bird and she came home happy with her "Surly Brute From Stretford" T-shirt so all ended well.

Me, I'm just pootling along. There's a phenomenal load of stuff going on at work at the moment, to silly deadlines, so I'm pretty much crashed and burned before I get through the doorway. Which may pass as half an excuse for the state of both house and garden. Somewhere out there there's about six pounds of boysenberries to pick, once I force my way past the roses, geraniums and boysenberry runners. Much to my surprise, and probably due to the vile weather, the gooseberry bush hasn't been ravaged by sawfly this year and we got a pound or so off safely. The downside to the sawfly leaving the leaves alone is that I forget that the bush has inch-and-a-half-long thorns (that's forty six kilometres in the new money), which gave me the opportunity to teach the new goldfinches a few new words in basic Anglo-Saxon.

And aside from all, next to nothing's been happening lately.


* "Going out for a romp." As in: "I'll just scrape my shoe on your doorstep, I trod in a romp on my way here."
† The cat, not The Small Object of Desire. She hardly ever gets stuck on rooves these days.

12 comments:

Macy said...

You're babysitting the cat??

I think if you review the situation you'll find that the cat's babysitting you.

When it can be bothered....

Unknown said...

Call me Dr. Grumpity disbeliever, but I need photographs of said wash house roof, Morrisy concert ticket-stub, T-shirt and roses, geraniums and boysenberry runners. Otherwise I'm tending to think that maybe you're making all this up.

Pat said...

I always think of you when i can't remember a flower's name. Do your ears burn?

Gadjo Dilo said...

Yes, I'm as worried as Wendy: Tony Hancock Syndrome appears to have further tightened it's vice-like grip, and Johnny Morrissey appears to be a footballer - are you maybe confusing him with Steven Patrick Morrissey and/or Johnny Marr? Great to hear you again though :-)

libby said...

Being sat on by a cat is a universal excuse I find.....in our house, when asked to do something or find something the response is very often 'I'd love to but I can't move I'm being sat on by a cat'........relish those moments...use them to meditate....

Ms Scarlet said...

Things you would do well to invest in:

A cat flap.

A cat litter tray.

An industrial strimmer.

Sx

Nota Bene said...

Gooseberry's...all the rage this year, perhaps the sawflies knew

Kim Velk said...

I hope he's still selling a few of those T-shirts when he gets to Vermont - if he holds up that long. (Fingers crossed.) Glad to know you are taking such tender care of the cat you don't have...

Zig said...

Catflap - as Sx had already advised, in the wash house roof if necessary.

Kevin Musgrove said...

Macy: I am master in my own house. I have the spider under the sofa's permission to say so.

Wendy: It is, of course, all an illusion...

Pat: Thank you dear. Not since The Small Object of Desire stopped smoking.

Ta Gadjo, somebody in the house doesn't like it when I sing the theme to "Animal Magic" when she's playing "Spring-heeled Jim."

libby: That's somebody else's excuse in our house.

Scarlet: dangerously practical:

(a) Under negotiation. The back door's the obvious place for it except that the cat's a bit thick and probably wouldn't find it and I'm not sure it can be trusted in the kitchen without my turning the gas off.

(b) We have established that the purpose of the cat litter tray is for the cat to make a racket hurling Fuller's earth all over the hall until I give in, get up and let it out of the house.

(c) This may be an option when the cat moults into its Winter coat.

Nota Bene: I bet the sawflies are all off sunning themselves in Ibiza or something.

Hi Kim! Tell him I said you could have a discount on the price of the T-shirt. :-)

Zig: This idea has some merit...

Indigo Roth said...

Hey Kevin, Indigo here, a newbie. But a magnificent noob, at that. Intrigued by your profile; did they capture the immortal Shaw/Attlee team-up as a "moving picture"? Uncle Jericho told me about it; he had bootleg Polaroids, the scamp. As for cat-sitting... *sigh* Oooh, if you also have a rottweiler and a large box, you could re-run Schrodinger's famous thought experiment? Just a thought. Indigo

Kevin Musgrove said...

Hello and welcome Indigo! The immortal Shaw/Attlee combo featured in a series of Viewmaster slides depicting a tense head-to-head against Hughie Green and Monica Rose in a scout hut in Chippingham.