Put out the cat, and then put out the cat
Before I get on to the topic of the by-line, let me note that it is perishing cold. On the Met Office map for today the whole of NE Scotland has been a forbidding red (i.e. ‘weather warnings are in place’), though I am relieved to state on the whole nothing very apocalyptic had actually happened. It is not always thus. But cold there has been, by bucketfuls. All of which puts into focus the quiet heroism of Miss T’s Dad who came and helped the only odd job man in this entire quadrant of Scotland (or so it seems) to put the windows into the bothy. We attached ourselves to Sandy (the only odd job man)’s list in August. He has finally got around to us. It has been a terrific day. Between Sandy and Miss T’s Dad, one of the great double acts of the twenty-first century, and with the assistance of the Northern Gentleman, the bothy has been windowed and is well on the way also to having a door (door is there, but we have to get the concrete floor in, so not yet installed. But we have a doorcase). Suddenly, instead of looking like a hole in the ground into which we pour money, the Beastly Bothy has turned the corner to looking like a nice little house, with its windows and all. It really does look lovely, and our belief in it, which has wobbled a bit over the last three years, is re-established. It will be fine. The distance it has to go is infinitely less than the distance traversed to get it to its current seemliness.
Meanwhile, as already noted, it has been perishing cold, and one of the complications our operatives have faced is that the horrible foamy stuff (a sort of foaming Superglue) which you use to establish a weathertight bond between the raw stone of the window embrasure and the wooden frame has been sulky and badly behaved because it’s cold. And Miss Kit has also been sulky and badly behaved because she’s cold. After a classic episode of being a prize nuisance with theories about Typing for Cats, she retreated huffily to her redoubt to the left of the keyboard, drew herself up to her full height (like an Egyptian statue), shut her eyes, and basked in the heat of the halogen desklamp. Unfortunately her full height is surprisingly high. After a while I became aware that the top of her flat little skull was beginning to emit greyish-white smoke. I smacked her across the head, putting out the incipient conflagration but inevitably giving rise to mutual misunderstandings since the insulating capabilities of fur ensured that she was not, at that moment, aware that she had a problem. As the Northern Gentleman observed, it gave a somewhat individual flavour to the idea of ‘putting the cat out’.