Ithacat and Nellen’s Rampaging Knickers

Everything went well with the Incredible Cat Transfer.  The drop-dead gorgeous vet had done all the paperwork perfectly.  He looked kind of disappointed when I turned up.  He said everyone had fallen in love with the kitty during the two weeks she was with him including his own daughter.  He could have given her away a hundred times.  Ironic, really.  Never mind.  Once I have a plan, I try to carry it through and I had already paid for her ticket.  Her pathetic little scrap of a body got transported all alone on a separate plane from ours.  It was terrifying handing her over to the cargo people.  We were truly wuzzed that she would get on the wrong plane and end up in Dubai and starve to death.

We decided to call her Ithaca.  Alfie has amended this to Ithacat.  She freaked out big time when she first met the dogs, but is already chasing them off Bashi’s bed with a crazy sideways four-pronged leap and spiked-up tail.  She is exploring the house and garden.  You should have seen Fattipus’ face when he looked up from his food and saw her on my shoulder.  He is used to seeing Kiki the grey parrot on my shoulder, so he did a double-take and thought he was losing his mind.   Like ‘shit, I swear that parrot is starting to look very much like a cat.’  They will definitely be great friends once he has recovered from thinking his food has been spiked.

Now, very important.  Fred thinks we found Ithacat in the garden.  Yes.  So please be slightly careful if you meet him not to mention the fact she came over from Greece.  I have obviously hidden the box festooned with labels such as  ‘live cat’ which could have been a bit of a giveaway.

Adventures of the Gin Club part 3  is up.  Beware, as Gwanny has branded it quite rightly as ‘far too rude this week.’

During the week I went camping with Janet and lots of friends from long ago, Annie, Nellen, Chrissy, Simon.  We were on a deserted beach in Norfolk.  Big, glossy seals keep popping their heads up and watching you with their shiny black googly eyes as you swim. You can’t help being worried they are going to bite you on the bum.  It’s wild. Nellen has been there a while and has decided it is a nudist beach.  She left her knickers on the sand and went in for a swim.  When she came out of the water, her knickers had gone!  Janet’s dog, Bug, had taken them and was trundling about, delighted with his find.  Would he give them back?  Would he fuck!  He knew he was being a naughty boy but he didn’t care.  He tossed them up in the air casually, pretending he was going to let her have them, and then rampaged off again.  We will have this hilarious image of naked Nellen chasing Bug around the beach til the day we die and now so will you.  I gift it you!

Read Full Post »

Adventures of the Gin Club Part 2

Hi guys.  I am in a smokey internet caff in Lefkas town.  The gin and tonics are phenomenally strong here.  As I’ve impressed upon you before, the Greeks have no concept of shots.  They just upend the bottle and conduct a zillion conversations while your gin is being poured.  Then put in a wisp of tonic at the top as a teensy afterthought.

We have a little decrepit kitty here.  She is a dark grey.  I found her trotting along the road, mewing, blind, the last day I was here with Janet.  Took her to an extremely handsome and lovely vet, who cured her eyes and agreed to keep her for two weeks until I returned.  Look, you don’t have to say it:  I know I’m daft.  And that this is not the way to save the world.  But seriously, could you have left her to defend herself while her twitching innards were pecked out by magpies?  We have called her Ithaki which is Ithaka in Greek.  *whisper* Don’t tell Fred Obv, and definitely not Gwanny, but I am thinking of bringing her home with me. 

Anyway, thought I’d just give you a brief update.  Got a text from the guy at the paper, saying that Adventures of the Gin Club part 1 had had well over 500 unique viewers and that he was very pleased since this was ‘unheard of’ for their website.  So seeing as how readers of the blog were probably mainly responsible for that stunning flurry, I thought I’d better give you the link to Part 2. or he might think it was a one-off and fire me before I’ve really got going, which would be a shame as I have plenty of plans for thrilling Gin Club outings:  Mellow Jazz at the Rhodes, Vinyl-swapping at the Half-Moon, the Beer Festival at the Legion.  Can’t wait, and will be sure to take a pad of paper with me so the Gin Club themselves can write their own history.  Yeah, like, I’m thinkin, why should I do all the hard graft?  Lazy buggers think I’m going to write the blinkin score to their life.  Hunh!

The Beaut (the reconstructed boob, for new readers) is doing much, much better, almost a year on from her creation.  I swim in one of my heavy-duty sports bras so she does not flobble about.  (Yeah, Triumph really does have a bra for the way you are.)  I can say, hand on heart, I do not notice anything now, like, not a thing.  I can lie happily on my right side, for an hour or so at a time.  I can even lie, for about twenty minutes at a time, on my front, if I use both arms and two pillows in a gently supporting role.  I can do every yoga pose that I could do before including shoulder stands.  Oh thank you thank you, Miss Benyon sigh with admiration and joy if only I could see you if only for a minute.

More plans for the summer include camping in Norfolk at a campsite where they don’t mind if the dogs wander about having fun and you can have fires, and camping, again with dogs and probably little Ithaki too, in a field near Weymouth on the coastal path.  By then the weather may well have broken, but who cares?  Chloe, Tabby and Alfie will come back from their travels and then we’re all going to a festival, whoopee, exciting.  Duncan will be at said festival so maybe more Wesley of the Wing-Mirror stories will write themselves during that time.  Am also composing a children’s book, which is The Melody Blog told through the eyes of Toccata, Melody’s friend. 

So, see you soon, friends.  Enjoy your summer.  Eat lots of things that are good for you. Raw beetroot is particularly good.  Hey, listen to this:  since being in Greece, Tabby has found that her need for insulin has dropped ten-fold.  She’s only had to inject about seven times!  What do you make of that?  I have been reading this book called ’97 Ways to Lower Your Blood Sugar Naturally,’ and we are determined to carry on this work on re-stimulating the pancreas to produce beta cells again when she gets back, with a special diet called Tree of Life.  So, in blates born-again mode (but do I care?  No, I’m so out of my face on pure gin, tzatziki and peaceful hours of snorkelling) :  let’s banish disease from our lives with information,  love and enlightenment.

Read Full Post »

Working Link to Adventures of the Gin Club!

For those of you who receive blog posts by email, sorry but the link I gave to the Adventures of the Gin Club doesn’t work.

Here is a proper link to Adventures of the Gin Club.

Read Full Post »

Adventures of the Gin Club and Motherfuckin Spiders.

So, several things have been going on!

Firstly, ‘The Adventures of the Gin Club‘ is up and running on the local Observer’s website.  This is jolly exciting.  Reading it again I realised how very rude it is, oops too late now!

I got away for a week to Greece with my friend Janet.  We had a wonderful time, swimming, exploring, and saying ‘It’s all about me!  It’s all about us!’  We did yoga for abs! from a video of a lovely stretchy chap called Rod the Bod. Well, we call him that.  He’s actually called Rodney Yee.  Had an adventure with a spider called Anansi at a deserted monastery. How did we know he was called Anansi?  He just looked like an Anansi, alright?

He obviously wanted to hitch a lift to the beach and came along in our car.  Janet and I had a bit of a mutual screaming fit when he first surfaced on my leg in all his enormity.  We stalled the car scrambling to get out and jumped about in the street flapping our tops.  Anansi ran off and hid in the engine.  We drove quite a bit further in terrified mode then he crawled out onto Janet’s bag.  We screamed and stalled and flapped again and threw the bag far away.  Seriously though these spiders have spherical bodies the size of your hand and spin web like guitar strings.

I am working with my friend Duncan on his fabulous stories about a spider called Wesley of the Wing Mirror.  The other day I went with Grampa to a party, in his car.  There was the most fabulous Wesley of the Wing Mirror sitting on a glorious web stretching from the mirror to my window.  ‘Oh, wow, we have to stop and get a picture of this for Duncan,’ I said.

‘Och, doon’t worry! When we get there we’ll get a picture,’ said Grampa.

I anxiously watched Wesley going Wheeeeee! in the wind just like he does in the story, waving his hairy tentacles in delight.  Unfortunately my mind wandered for a moment.  ‘God, it’s hot,’ I exclaimed and wound down the window.  Oh bollox, Wesley’s web was ripped out of its mooring and Wez himself went flying off into the street.  Hashtag Big Aargh moment.  (Did I do that Hashtag thing right?  I haven’t quite got it yet.  Do advise pray.)

Wouldn’t it be marvellous if we could get Gwanny doing hashtags?  She would for sure do it ALL WRONG.  I still have strong memories from about forty years ago of my brother Pete trying to get her to sing ‘Why can’t I be-e a teenager in love?’  correctly.  Every time she tried she got it ALL WRONG.  Every way you could get it wrong, she got it wrong.  Pete never gave up though.  He is still trying to get her to sing it right.  Just that one line.  I know, he’s very odd.

Bizarrely, Pete and Penel are both in Australia.  They even met up over there.  Far out, man.

Fred has gone off to Greece with David and eight lads.  They slept on a Cretan beach last night.  Chloe and Tabs headed off to Greece as well.  I am going (again!  woohoo, it’s all about me!) with Bash and her fwend Olivia on Sunday.

In more news:  my flute pupil Ruby got 95% in her Grade 8 flute exam.  In the Syrinx, which is the ancient pipe of Pan, by Debussy, our absolute fave, there is one blank bar where it just says ‘Be still.  Contain your joy.  Listen.’  We practised that bar a lot.   At the end of the piece the examiner just sat back in her chair and said ‘Wow!’  Hashtag goosebumps.  (see, not convinced I’ve entirely got it.)  I am obv insanely proud of Ruby and maybe will ask her to perform it to Youtube so you can get Hashtag Goosebumps too.  Hashtag Contain your Joy.

Read Full Post »