' Love me, love my dog'.
Bernard of Clairvaux, allegedly. Feast Day : August 20th
I loathe August. In the Northern hemisphere, August is and has always been a completely pointless month. It rains, all day, every day and/or it's infernally hot, made worse by clouds of evil unseen creatures, possibly midges.
I'm not absolutely sure. They might be the Furies...
The other nasties are called clegs and their bite can mean death. Avoid.
And Bernard ?
Not many people did love him, including everybody called Peter Abelard and someone called Arnold. I wouldn't know about the dog, let alone what he was called.
Dogs, including of course, St Bernards, have an extraordinarily powerful sense of smell. Unkind critics of St Bernard have suggested that the St reeked of vomit. (this isn't why he was made a St. The 'odour of sanctity' wasn't vomit . Something else, allegedly. Ketosis ? Sickly sweet, like acid drops, but definitely not sicky.)
Luckily, it isn't August, it's February 7th, freezing nicely,blue skies, bright sun, and I'm studying ornithology... Through a glass, darkly, because the staff haven't cleaned the windows.
No idea why they're so worried. The calories in a firecrest or a wren aren't worth the effort.
The snow is deep, crisp, but no longer even because so many happy people and even happier dogs are enjoying it. Almost every kind of dog. No St Bernard's so far, with or without the brandy. Administering brandy to casualties in the snow is frowned on by Health and Safety and Mountain Rescue.
Why not ask the casualty ? If conscious, surely they should have a say in this ? People who have accidents on snowy mountains are obviously far too intelligent to care about Elf & Safety.
As for the argument that they might have a fracture and might
need an anaesthetic, consider the time line...
When did you last wait in A & E ?
NB. This is a true story and could happen to anyone, on any nearby High Street.
First, slip/trip up on snowy mountain.... One second ?
Land heavily, frequently onto rocks... Instantaneous ?
If conscious, register severe pain.... Ditto...
If unconscious, no brandy or other liquid would be administered, even by an eager and willing St Bernard
Summon Mountain Rescue
Depending on precisely where you slipped, somebody might need to re-climb whichever mountain, just to get a signal. Which is why only barking mad people or dogs climb snowy hills on their own.
Wait for Mountain Rescue.
And wait
And wait...
Mountain Rescue Land Rovers do their best, but they can't climb hills...
This is why Rescue helicopters whirr about mountains on fine sunny days,
exercising...
To cut a longish and possibly boring story short, rescuing broken people from snowy mountains takes ages, even, in this case, till 4 in the morning....
On the whole, I might just shut my eyes and pray for a St Bernard.
(dog, not saint)
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
MagnifiCat
My Early Life
Sorry... My fault, as usual, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa....
My early life seems to have gone awol.
Thinking this over, it's clearly some kind of avoidant behaviour.
I don't want to say any more at all. Separation from my mother came so pitifully early.
Old pain ? Not exactly. Somebody said, a long time ago, you can't step into the same river twice...
Which is a very silly and almost meaningless statement. Think about it...
Same river as what ? Last year ? Three seconds ago ? If you can't step into it twice, neither can anyone else and it never is the same river.
So he was wrong. Philosophers often are. They have fancy names,live in Cloud Cuckoo Land,write in Ancient Greek/gobbledegook... People think their idiotic pronouncements must be true, because a philosopher said it.
More things in heaven and earth, I'd say, and, since this is my life, nobody else's, I'll decide how many things are necessary...
Leaving my mother, never seeing her again... Of course it changed my life, and no, I can't move on. CBT therapy, the latest happy pills, pulling myself together and whatever the global shrink industry comes up with next. All are different ways of telling lies, making therapists rich and famous.
The truth is infinitely cheaper and deeply unpopular, because it won't make anyone rich or cure my sadness.
Fact :
My mother's health was failing, skin and bone, weight absolutely falling off her, despite all the Whiskas, sardines, pilchards, line-caught dolphin-adoring tuna and free-range chicken she could eat.
She had cancer. Inoperable... The man asked, the vet said it would be cruel...
No chemo...No losing her beautiful fur. No 'lines' going anywhere, in or out.
No agonising about opium eating. Dying of cancer, morphine's for pain relief.
She died, the day after we were taken away.
Baby weight ? Listen to me, you fat slobby bone-idle whinging human mothers... THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BABY WEIGHT.
None of this obscene, gloopy, wobbling adipose tissue is attached to the baby.
(Almost none, but if the human)baby has the sheer bad luck to belong to a woman wailing about her 'baby weight', watch this space)
How to prevent Baby Weight
Dead easy, no need for a book...
Have kittens (or a baby, I suppose, if you must, though they really are ugly and useless little things)
Feed kittens.(or baby, see above)
Feed kittens/baby again.And again.
Do this round the clock, day after day, week after week, until the kittens/baby don't want any more.
Baby weight ? Real mothers, cats or any other kind, end up bones (and fur) held together by skin.
This BABY WEIGHT nonsense really has to stop...
Shut up, stop telling lies, especially to yourself.
Women who've had a baby and are still FAT are just FAT because they have eaten too much.Blaming a helpless baby for your (disgusting, blubbery etc) WEIGHT is a LIE and nothing to do with the baby. Feed baby. Problem solved/never there in the first place.
On a mother cat, any remaining post-kitten FAT goes into kittens. Takes them from blind and mewling to enchanting and irresistible in six weeks flat.
House trained, articulate, independently mobile...
Which is more than you can say for the miserable puking, stinking and squawling human version at six weeks, six months, six years...
Things improve, briefly, then they turn into teenagers.
English isn't my first language. I don't know any printable words to describe 16 year old homo sapiens, either sex. Or 13, 14, or any age between ten and three and twenty..
Clue, just for interest.. Mother cats smack. Social workers can't stop us.
Sorry... My fault, as usual, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa....
My early life seems to have gone awol.
Thinking this over, it's clearly some kind of avoidant behaviour.
I don't want to say any more at all. Separation from my mother came so pitifully early.
Old pain ? Not exactly. Somebody said, a long time ago, you can't step into the same river twice...
Which is a very silly and almost meaningless statement. Think about it...
Same river as what ? Last year ? Three seconds ago ? If you can't step into it twice, neither can anyone else and it never is the same river.
So he was wrong. Philosophers often are. They have fancy names,live in Cloud Cuckoo Land,write in Ancient Greek/gobbledegook... People think their idiotic pronouncements must be true, because a philosopher said it.
More things in heaven and earth, I'd say, and, since this is my life, nobody else's, I'll decide how many things are necessary...
Leaving my mother, never seeing her again... Of course it changed my life, and no, I can't move on. CBT therapy, the latest happy pills, pulling myself together and whatever the global shrink industry comes up with next. All are different ways of telling lies, making therapists rich and famous.
The truth is infinitely cheaper and deeply unpopular, because it won't make anyone rich or cure my sadness.
Fact :
My mother's health was failing, skin and bone, weight absolutely falling off her, despite all the Whiskas, sardines, pilchards, line-caught dolphin-adoring tuna and free-range chicken she could eat.
She had cancer. Inoperable... The man asked, the vet said it would be cruel...
No chemo...No losing her beautiful fur. No 'lines' going anywhere, in or out.
No agonising about opium eating. Dying of cancer, morphine's for pain relief.
She died, the day after we were taken away.
Baby weight ? Listen to me, you fat slobby bone-idle whinging human mothers... THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BABY WEIGHT.
None of this obscene, gloopy, wobbling adipose tissue is attached to the baby.
(Almost none, but if the human)baby has the sheer bad luck to belong to a woman wailing about her 'baby weight', watch this space)
How to prevent Baby Weight
Dead easy, no need for a book...
Have kittens (or a baby, I suppose, if you must, though they really are ugly and useless little things)
Feed kittens.(or baby, see above)
Feed kittens/baby again.And again.
Do this round the clock, day after day, week after week, until the kittens/baby don't want any more.
Baby weight ? Real mothers, cats or any other kind, end up bones (and fur) held together by skin.
This BABY WEIGHT nonsense really has to stop...
Shut up, stop telling lies, especially to yourself.
Women who've had a baby and are still FAT are just FAT because they have eaten too much.Blaming a helpless baby for your (disgusting, blubbery etc) WEIGHT is a LIE and nothing to do with the baby. Feed baby. Problem solved/never there in the first place.
On a mother cat, any remaining post-kitten FAT goes into kittens. Takes them from blind and mewling to enchanting and irresistible in six weeks flat.
House trained, articulate, independently mobile...
Which is more than you can say for the miserable puking, stinking and squawling human version at six weeks, six months, six years...
Things improve, briefly, then they turn into teenagers.
English isn't my first language. I don't know any printable words to describe 16 year old homo sapiens, either sex. Or 13, 14, or any age between ten and three and twenty..
Clue, just for interest.. Mother cats smack. Social workers can't stop us.
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