Alice checks out her new bed ....

When you gotta go .....

Alice likes a bit of peace and quiet to perform her ablutions .

She is particularly bad in the countryside . She finds all those noises scary , just when she is lowering her backside to the ground and a crow shouts at her or some such and whap! Her tail is down and constipation threatens .

Last friday we were making the most of the last day of the camper van , out walking near Low Newton and the heavy mob thundered up , the fence between us a bit too femur for my liking and Alice was completely unable to do her worst .

She suffered the journey home with a tortured expression until safely back home and onto her own turf .

I have friends who are exactly the same ... take them away from the sanctuary of their own powder room and they are hopeless .

Not for them a life on the road . Mind you having explored many and varied a campsite lavatory in my day , I can tell you , even campsite bogs these days are mostly posh . And thats official .

Fire in the Head . And cats maiow .

Sorry mega fire in the head again .
Normal service will be resumed , sometime soon I hope .
Meantime I'm trying to order Migraine Defense from the internet but the website is for some peculiar reason giving me one of those Error messages . At the minute that's about all I am . A great big Error Message . With Flames coming out of it . And cats miaowing ......
Tomorrow will be better . It has to be .

Ms CatCalls writes an e mail in French

I turn to blogging as light relief .

Saturday morning sees us up at six am , D to return the camper van to York or its environs and me to walk the dog and conduct a counselling session . ( I don't advertise this as one of my services but if asked will oblige .... and it is something I love doing ) .

I fiddle about until the appointed time , trying to get Alice out for her walk ( she is in holiday lazy greyhound mode and prefers to keep her head under the cushion ) , and I finally leave the house in a mad rush . My car is in York , and as I manage to set off the alarm system on D's car my mobile starts , and a nurse from our local hospital informs me that I am needed on one of the wards . I am confused . Moi ? The alarm is driving me mad , the car is refusing to start , the clock is ticking on so I ask her to call me back as she is making no sense ...

It transpires( after two hours of trying to trace which ward called me ) that one of my former CatCalls people has been admitted to hospital the previous night in an emergency after a fall and needs surgery . Furthermore , nightmare , she has no friends or relatives in the northeast , having lived in France for the previous x years , has has to leave her three beloved cats locked in her house and could I help , like now , as she is going into surgery imminently ?

I scan my brain for what can and can't be cancelled ... most can be postponed till tomorrow and I head up to the hospital , manage to find a parking space ( a good omen under the cirumstances )
and finally locate M flat out in a hospital gown , under the influence of morphine and expecing to go down to theatre and trying to remain cheerful despite the shock and her anxiety about her feline friends at home and whether they are safely indoors after the ambulance incident etc .

We make a list of what she needs and what the cats will want . M as ever is far more concerned for her cats but I try as diplomatically as someone as I can to point out that she will in time require "stuff " and that a hospital gown per se will not suffice once she becomes a little more mobile . We finally agree that I will bring in some underwear , toiletries etc and that a work e mail needs to be mailed asap . ( This is all quite surreal . We have only met once before , and I am advising her about the most personal of things .)

Thus it is that I find myself ferreting for pants , and then , get this , writing an e mail , business style , in French , no less , to explain why a piece of work will not be arriving from Madame on time . I can tell you , that took my mind off the court report that had been starting to occupy my mind this weekend as I gear up for the DayJob again . It also occurred to me as I typed in to Google " Translate English to French " and came up with a little square box to help me do same that a Google " Write your Court Report Software " wouldn't come amiss , for those Monday mornings when the brain just isn't in the groove yet . I guess its out there ? I'm probably just looking in the wrong place .
Anybody ?

Meanwhile , when I returned to the hospital to deliver her things and let her know cats are safe and so on , M was still in theatre . I will keep you posted . I think again of how lucky I am to be surrounded by friends and quite a few family members living nearby should I need help .
How scary to find yourself alone .

The Graveyard .

The church

The graveyard in front of the parsonage .

I wish it were possible to capture in a single shot just how many graves are packed into that graveyard , all piled up and squashed on top of each other . And its also not possible to get in a picture that the graveyard is situated right in front of the parsonage . Imagine waking up every morning and looking out onto all those graves . I know cemetaries and graves can be very peaceful and restful . Situated behind a house , and set in well cut lawns , where you can wander with flowers and sit and read , or ponder life and its vagaries , I would agree . But not this . Not this mass and pile of stone and slabs and well , death and reminders of mortality , in front of you every single day .

The Brontes themselves are buried in the church rather than here .

And yet visiting the parsonage and Haworth itself is anything but dispiriting . I would return tomorrow . Happily spend a week renting one of the cottages that overlooks the graveyard , just to see how it feels . Wierd or what ?

The Bronte Parsonage