Blogger Beta

I've done the move there are some nice looking tools that have been added. Makes it far easier for the complete amateur to fiddle about with their blog. I've now got to add all my old bits again.

Diary Of A Nobody

This fine fine comic novel has been published on t'internet. I strongly suggest that it is required reading by all bloggers and now it is in super trendy electronic form there is no excuse for not doing so.

Found via Gordon.

While I'm at it, another book that I would strongly recommend to anybody is Cold Comfort Farm it's a masterly comic piece from the 1930s which as the plot develops, (girl meets disorganised and melodramatic farm and farmers. Girl organises farm and farmers into rational beings with nothing more to aid her than good sense and a slender ankle), sends up royally the heaving bosoms, gloom and misery and "fear of forrin" that occurred with monotonous regularity in the works of the likes of Thomas Hardy and DH Lawrence.

The Second Hand Club

I was single for about two years in my late twenties, by the beginning of the second year my friends started to worry that I would never meet a suitable man and would become a shrivelled up old prune with 50 cats and a pipe. So they started to "take me in hand" this comprised of making me drink rum and cokes instead of pints and us all going to the Second Hand Night at one of the hotels in a near by town.

Second Hand Night was wasn't called that by its promoters, no they called it something like "Connections" or "Cupid's" You had to be single and over twenty five.

It was awful.

The smell of desperation and unsubtle aftershave would hit you as you entered. For many people there it must have felt like the last chance to meet someone, in the Lavs there would be gaggles of thirty something forty something divorcees slapping on the slap and tweaking their outfits, discussing unsatisfactory exes and the lack of talent without.

The dance floor was circled by men supping their pints as they scanned the gloom for fresh meat to pounce on. Once on the dance floor it was really hard to get off because the watching men would surround the area, to get to the bar or the loos you had to push past them never knowing if they would try to cop a feel.

To make it worse my friends would insist that I had to try to chat up at least one man. There was no one there who I would have touched with a barge pole. So they would give me a choice of one out of three targets and make me talk to him. It was hell, I'm not good at small talk, they didn't want to talk to a brunette in black, drinking pints, when there was a small bubbly blonde behind me gurning like an idiot and looking like fun (Wee Jock who was engaged, happily so, to the man how is now her husband.)

I didn't really want to talk to Gary from accounts from the big company on the trading estate who fancied himself as a bit of a mobile DJ and thought that the birdie song and a Beatles megamix was the acme of sophisticated entertainment at a wedding. For fucks sake he hadn't even heard of the Pixies! It was disastrous I didn't learn how to do "small talk" and "pretend flirting" I just learnt that I hated provincial second hand men nights with a passion.

My friends said that I was too picky I said no I wasn't. It was just that I had my own set of criteria that had to be met and these blokes weren't doing it. They also said that my drinking pints (I could cope with about 3 rum and cokes before saying sod this and reverting back to the bitter) and wearing black all the time would put people off. I said that I couldn't fake "girly" for very long and I wasn't prepared to pretend in order to trap a bloke.

In the end they gave up, but only after I had blown out a "nice young man" from the Rugby Club because of the small detail that he had a girlfriend. I think they decided that I could do it if I wanted to but I was just too fussy.

So what if I am, I've found it pays to be because you get the best results in the end ;)

kitty

I've just spoken to my mum She had just spoken to the vet. We had agreed earlier that if there was something that could be done for her that would work quickly and with the minimum of invasive intervention then we would go with that, however if there wasn't then the kindest thing for Kitty would be to put her to sleep. The vet thought she had congestive heart failure and that she hadn't long anyways, so as we agreed mum has asked the vet to put Kitty to sleep. It is honestly the kindest thing, the poor cat hated vet treatment so much that she has had to be given oxygen before when going to the vet for routine things. It would have been cruel to put her thru more when the outcome was so doubtful.

Edited for sense 23:09 10/9/06

Poorly Ill Cat

Si and I have just been over to my Mum's returning the cat to her, I'd been looking after her since Wednesday as Mum went up to Preston for a cousin's wedding.

The cat - Kitty has been rather a trial Wednesday night she was fine, demanding food and hiding under my bed as is her wont on the first night being dropped off. Kitty has an overactive thyroid and she tends to throw up the food that has her medicine in it so it's pretty hard to treat her condition. Because of this Mum tends to feed her on demand and she is still very skinny.

Thursday morning I put food out for her and head off to work, knowing that when I get back she will be starving and a tad cross with me because I would be late, a semi formal semi work do. However what I found when I got back was a flat that stunk of cat shit, no sign of kitty but I could hear her. She was making a dreadful wailing sound and chocking noises as if she was trying to sick up something caught in her throat. I found her in my living room hiding behind the sofa in a pitiful state, she had been sick on the carpet once and suffered from diarrhoea a few times I could follow her path round the living room by the increasing runnyness of the mess. She it didn't look like she was chocking on anything but her breathing was awful, and when I picked her up she was shaking.

I don't have a car so there was almost no way I could have got her to the emergency vet fortunately Mum hadn't set off and she was able to come over to take Kitty to the vets. She was not in a good way the vet, a rugged good looking Australian chap, put her in an oxygen tent because of her breathing difficulties and said that he would like to keep her in over night, he blamed the state she was in on her hyperthyroidism and said there could well be underlying heart problems which would have been made worse. What caused it? Could be anything a cold or an upset tummy. They would then transfer her to her regular vets the next day to continue the treatment.

We left Kitty at the vets along with a multitude of phone numbers for them to contact us with, the vets decided to use my mobile number. My mobile was on silent all during the day and I didn't think to look at it.

The emergency vet had handed Kitty over to her normal vets saying that they thought that she was still a poorly little animal and shouldn't go home that night, her normal vets said that they had taken blood and were running some tests. So I called them, they said I could take her home. So when Simon got here we did, I wish we hadn't to be honest she still was not at all well, She barely ate a thing and spent almost all her time under the bed listlessly almost in a stupor although she did totter out for some water and food last night..

So this morning we took her back to Mum's, she showed more interest in her surroundings on the way to the car than she had on Friday but she is most definitely still not herself. I find it sad it very hard to see her looking so poorly, although she is not suffering so badly that the kindest thing would be to put her down by a long chalk, I am not good with serious illness I've decided, I can not do the strong supportive rock act. Not for human nor pet and it's more than a bit embarrassing, I've always been easily effected by emotion unfortunately I'm not growing out of it. I'm not wishing to be cold and emotionless I just wish I didn't cry so easily.

Here is a picture of Kitty last year healthy and not complete skin and bones.


*Update* 6:45pm My mum has just rung she is taking Kitty back to the emergency vets as she really isn't happy with how the cat is doing. She still hasn't eaten and she couldn't make it up the stairs with out help. We'll see how she does.

Personally I Would Have Said The Equal Pay Act 1970

Jane says:
R4 is trying to convince us that Greenham Common was feminism's finest moment.

Becky says:
Yeah, that's ridiculous. Madam Cholet was the only female one in it!

Rumours Of My Disappearance Hadn't Even Started...

I've just not had anything to blog recently :-|

Little things have struck me as being blog worthy but when I've sat down to write them the urge goes, or someone else has written about it in a more entertaining/knowledgeable/intelligent way.

I've not taken any interesting photos to bung up on flickr, at this rate my membership of the interweb generation will be revoked.

Gah or is it Meh?