Miss Kit was getting no better, and worryingly, becoming very withdrawn and not eating. So it was back to the vet this morning: she got her revenge in by peeing copiously all over my lap in the car. The vet checked her over once more and agreed with me that the most rational explanation was […]
There was one of those quintessentially country moments this morning. It was half past ten; we had an appointment in Aberdeen around noon, but no engagement before then. So it happened that nobody had precisely, within the usual meaning of the word, got up. Miss Kit’s general droopiness continues to give some cause for anxiety: […]
Just to add to the gaiety of nations, Miss Kit, this morning, woke up and as is her wont, waddled up the bed and subsided into my arms for a cuddle. Moments later, the purr was interrupted, she became strangely tense, there was a wheezy cough, and she remained tense as if she was trying […]
We have been around and about since the last blog: we took the Tropical Godfather down to his parents’, which is in Boroughbridge, via a night at Ford, a really lovely post-Ruskinian model village of the 1890s completely without subsequent buildings of any kind: it makes a strange, dreamy, timewarped place. We had a twilight […]
We had occasion to visit the Pink Castle yesterday, and Miss Best Friend came along for the ride. It was all looking very beautiful, pasque-flowers and azaleas and what have you, but when we got to the door of the castle, there was Miss Kit’s erstwhile Governess. She took one look at us, and […]
We have the Tropical Godfather with us at the moment: this is lovely in various respects, but it is particularly noteworthy that the weather has obliged. We have had perfect spring days; and we have the bulbs. One thing which really doesn’t happen in the tropics is spring flowers. Here in the north, daffodils, scillas […]
I had a minor accident at the weekend: I was cooking something with rice which needed topping up, put in a bit of water out of the kettle, and left the kettle on a back hob which was, I thought, cold. It wasn’t, and I melted the bottom out of the kettle, a plastic cordless […]
We found something highly suspicious in the draft for the Not Orton Anthology. Here is a late, fugitive, nay, perhaps, implausible, anecdotum from the pen of the late Robert Frost, who seems to have attended too many literary festivals as a sweet, white-haired old reliable codger …
Although I’d love to watch them die
I will not […]
It is Easter Sunday, so a certain amount of traditional conduct is generally thought in order. When the Professor has been ventriloquising Miss Best Friend, as he does from time to time, one comestible which features quite largely is Goosenargh Cakes, an obscure Lancastrian delicacy. Last night, we were discussing various oddities which pass for […]
The Apparitional Gamekeeper has taken us in hand. Again. He took it upon himself to organise the steps down to the wood — something which has, certainly, been on the job sheet. But there is the usual problem: that he tends to assume that all male members of the household are at his disposal as […]
The Man From Maryport and his trailhound departed southwards this morning, to the regret of all except, perhaps, Miss Kit, who never quite learned to love the dog Bendigo. But especially to the regret of Miss Best Friend, who has, in a rather puzzling way, been visibly swelling over the last week. It transpires that […]
Life with a trailhound continues to have its moments. Yesterday he added to the excitement by coming in with a small patch of skin missing from his chest - he must have run full tilt into something which spiked him. No great harm was done, and he has obviously forgotten all about it. His […]