Me Nervous ?

Nah ! Look at my teeth ......

Swans and Geese at Bolam Lake Northumberland

Windy walk this afternoon .

The wind makes Alice nervous and she glances repeatedly from side to side like Private Somebody or Other ( Marbles Moment ) from Dad's Army played by Ian Lavender .

Equally tall and skinny and usually with a piece of greenery sticking out of his hat , just so like Alice out on a walk on new territory . She glances round , checks on D and me , licks her lips as if her mouth is dry and if approached by anything bigger than a squirrel presses herself between us until the Danger is safely passed .

On "her" beach of course its a different story . She 's full of herself , assuming there are no boxer dogs about , and charges at anything and everything , full of gusto and sometimes rushing at little teddy bear type dogs as if there was no tomorrow , rolling them over and pushing them around . Most of them love her and like to chase her , snapping at her ankles until she gets too rough .

But bring out that wind and put her in a different field and she's a different animal .

What is that man's name ...?

The day CatCaller learns to inject insulin

I don't usually refuse anything much and consequently find myself doing all sorts in the name of cat minding . Most tasks are fairly obvious , and its some of those I would never have thought of that I enjoy the most . One of my longest standing families have a wonderful garden known to us as the fairytale garden and numerous bird feeders all of which have to be replenished on a daily basis . This is idyllic in Summer but even in Winter as I slip about across the flagstones as the wind chases me and the watchful cats , its still a source of some joy just to be doing something I wouldn't normally be doing at home .
This morning was learning how to inject a diabetic cat with insulin . I had felt fine with this until just a few seconds before the insulin , the syringe , the needle and the list of instructions loomed large before my eyes at nine thirty . Then suddenly it hit me . Not only had I to follow the directions to get the right amount of drug into the syringe with no air in there and then catch the cat ,by then lurking in the bedroom , I then had to somehow jab the cat with the needle in the right place . And , the poor cat had to have eaten something prior to this assault . And poor lamb she had never met me before . After a quick chat we adjourned to the kitchen and I learn how to roll the insulin gently rather than shake it . A quick break in the proceedings . I need to remove a few layers . I do the rolling and then pick up the syringe , eyeing up the needle . Another false start . This is going to call for my glasses lest I draw up an air bubble or the wrong amount of stuff. J , who is showing me the ropes , is very patient and calm . I'm not sure how I would be in her shoes .
Suffice to say the insulin is soon drawn up , air bubbles expelled , and the syringe is all ready . Now , where is Puss ? We find her in the bedroom . She is exactly the cat I wanted when we got our Kitty . A black and white cat with little white paws and white whiskers . Cute and gentle and not too wriggly given that she is being chased by an incompetent attempting to conceal a needle in her hand , tension starting to mount although the overall feeling still being that once I was close enough the deed would be done in seconds . As indeed it is . Lifting the skin , angling the needle and that was it . J had made everything easy by giving very clear instructions and seems pleased with how things had gone . Puss seems happy it is done and bears no grudges setting up a loud purring and later bringing me her toy ball with a yowl as if she is delivering a fresh mouse .
CatCaller learns a new skill ... not bad for an hour on a Saturday morning in February....

The Queen and her Left hand Man ( Who's Your Friend Ma'am ?)

Click to enlarge .

Can't help wondering if this is a genuine photograph or a bit of clever airbrushing ? Any thoughts ?

What causes recurring dreams ?
Mine is of a huge old house , well known to me in the dreamtime though not somewhere my waking self recognises though I can recall it perfectly when I wake and could reproduce it in a design or drawing if I had those skills . Mostly its a sense of a house , a feeling of a place , a sense of texture and rich details . Its a place I seem to return time and again , often when I have or have had headaches . It doesn't make me better , but there 's something about it .
The rooms are on many levels and I spend time wandering up and down the levels , sometimes on staircases with wide stairs , sometimes using glass escalators which move with great speed . At the top of the house on one occasion I found a roof terrace , with a coffee bar open to the sky with Mexican colours and palm trees . Yet we were bang in the middle of Linskill Terrace , North Shields . How about that for detail and surrealism . You would have to know North Shields to make sense ( or not ) of that . The roof terrace was hosting some kind of open air party under the stars and everyone was there , happy and relaxed . There was a shiny coffee machine right in the middle of proceedings , making all the right espresso noises . No escalator or grand staircase that night , just a simple stair way down the back of the building and off to a field where someone ( but not me ) was keeping some red hens and some white chickens .
That was one particular version of the house .
It comes in many guises .
Early this morning the version was more traditional . The one where I am staying in someone else s home and I am wandering round looking for my room and aware that there are a variety of rooms I could sleep in and each with a bathroom nearby . There are no bathrooms en suite . The house is too old and unreconstructed for that . The bathrooms have doors but many of them also have heavy brocaded curtains pulled back with tie backs adding to the sense of drama and grandeur .And always as I wander this sense that I have been here before , and indeed , as I pass along a particular hall , that I have slept in these rooms many times , and that I am not chosing a room in which to spend a night , but that these are all my rooms and I can sleep in any one of them , and that there are friends who will sleep in the rest of the rooms .
Where do these dreams come from ?

I love how she sighs

Especially when her sigh lasts a full minute .

I am multi tasking in the sitting room , post coffee in cafe 22 with Debbie , which means I am reading the Times , trying to do the Codeword , and keeping my eye on GoogleReader at the same time , watching what the blogs are saying , as befits a very windy and very lazy Friday afternoon , with the occasional foray onto Facebook to reply to messages from one of my nieces .

Suddenly a whole host of people much younger than me have noticed that I am there and messages are appearing faster than I know how to deal with them. Its much more complex than say aol messaging or dare I say Blogging .

I'm also psyching myself up to this afternoon's newish CatCall with three delightful cats and a complicated arramengment of fish cooking and roast chicken carving . Or should that be arrangement ?

I sit there , doing what I do , the cats all dozing upstairs on the water bed , apart from Kitty who still favours the middle of the landing for her own brand of cockroaching , Alice the rescue greyhound at full stretch on the sofa having pulled two cushions over her face and a tartan fleece over her person , and a mobile goes off , rock style , next door .

D falls over himself to answer it as usual , some inbuilt terror of missing a call which I fail to grasp with my own one in five rule on answering phones ( one in five chance it will be for me so four out of five times I leave it .... usually works fine ) .

He starts an intense conversation of a business nature with a local solicitor and I try to concentrate on my own affairs whilst blocking out his conversation . Difficult . Loud voice . Much repetition . Etc . My codeword is sticky and the Times is boring . Etc . He is at the start of the conversation again and re repeating . I do that too .

Alice sits up slightly , her peace disturbed and one of her cushions lands on the floor . She raises herself and stares at the floor . Then at me . She looks at the door . At the voice . Presumably breaching the peace . She stays silent but glances at me and I smile at her . The voice continues , then states , in summing up , ..if that all makes sense . Silence . " Oh No " says the voice . Hello . We understand the voice is cross , irritated , has lost his signal and been cut off possibly at some point a while back , possibly even before the first repetitions .

I hold my breath and do my utmost not to snigger unhelpfully . It is a banana skin moment .

Alice has no such qualms . She sits up , lies down again , readjusts her fleece and her remaining cushion and sighs for a full minute .

I kidd you not .

Today the head is mostly green

And when the feeling in the head is green , its hard to write . Yesterday the feeling in the head was also mostly green . It started out that way at 4 am . Bad sign . When that happens , regular readers of this blog will know I usually take pills and sleep till it passes . And sleep , and don't do anything else . Yesterday , the sleeping went on and on , and one pill led into another , until I'd gone onto the final stage of the neurologist's recommended list ( as carried around in my bag, somewhat crumpled now ), and the greeness did fade a bit and was overtaken by the open blood vessel feeling which is more pale yellow and involves a wonderful muscle relaxed feeling and complete spaced outness which is pure bliss when all expectations of continuing with what passes for normal life have been let go . Once the worrying stage is through which involves concern about all that should be being achieved , what is being missed , when will it all be caught up , then its time to start the story telling in my head . Sometimes the relaxation stories involve summer fields with butterflies and streams and green things and flowing water . Sometimes its the beaches of Costa Rica with the noise of monkeys and parrots in the background . As the images and the sounds mingle with the effect of the drugs I find myself letting go and dozing off and the pounding in the head lessens as I sleep .

Today The head was green again . Sometimes green changes to flaming red , shotting out of the top of the head , but the green persisted . I took pills at 5 am and went back to sleep to dream of a Day Job seminar and sitting at a table and having to run off to a bathroom in an old house where I used to live to be sick . The sickness went on and on . I woke and slept on and off , got up to go out and feed cats on auto pilot , luckily a house where I know the routine like the back of my hand so all was well . Back to bed and three of my cats all joining in purring and singing and trying to keep their squabbles to themselves .
A new CatCall late afternoon where I did everything very slowly and carefully , walking as if I was wearing a big padded snowsuit . Two of the new cats were thrilled to see me but one was alarmed and hurried off to watch me from above . A quick walk with Alice on a new windy beach , which she didnt much like . She seems to associate new places with being abandoned or left behind and looks hastily from side to side every few minutes , constantly checking that we are still there .
I am slipping back towards sleep .
I hope you are all better than me .....