Monkey Dog

We can't decide what it is with Alice .

For weeks she will be perfectly housetrained and sleep soundly till mid morning so long as she is wrapped like a mummy in a series of fleece blankets and has the sofa to herself and is tucked up with her monkey .

Then Ping , it all goes pear shaped and she starts tippy tappy to the top of the stairs as far as the stair gate and whine whine till I wake ( D's tinnitus mitigates against any overnight hearing of Dogs or Car Alarms or indeed anything needing attention , though he does respond very rapidly to a prod and is very happy to go and deal ... ) and go down and see what she wants . back on the sofa , Alice is by this time usually making it clear that she has been disturbed and wants tucking back in with monkey and the blanket . Pearl the Senior Birman is often sitting primly on the chair , back turned , and one wonders if she has tweaked the blanket away as Alice sleeps . Who knows ? Pearl gives nothing away .

But occasionally there is a double pear and sometimes even a Mr Whippy and Alice has not come either to have her blanket replaced or to ask to go out but to inform the Responsible Adult that the carpet is wet or worse , she can't abide the smell from the chocolate log in front of the tv . Horrors... the heart sinks and the clean up operation begins . ....

Then the inevitable trudge back up to bed and the stupid pointless internal dialogue .... why is she doing this ? Why does she mostly ask to be out but not this time ? Why does she need three poos in one day ? Why come and get us after she has been but not before ? Blah Blah ....

Energy Champions

Humorous e mail from friend about the university she works in having lost money via investment in Icebank . As a result they are appointing Energy Champions to save money .... tunring off lights etc .
My dad was the self appointed energy champion in our home when I was growing up . You might have had one too, if you're as old as me . It involved the lights being turned off as you were coming down the stairs and usually invoked a flurry of yells from my mother threatening to kill him if we or she tripped in the dark and broke our necks . It never made a blind (oops) bit of difference , he still felt the pennies saved were more crucial than the health and safety issues . As our lavvy light was outside the actual bog as well if you were sitting brooding in there he would often turn the lights off whilst you were on the pot , thus necessitating finishing the job in pitch dark . So it never phases me when there's a power cut , it just reminds me of the olden days ... fumbling for the bog roll and so on . Thanks Dad for that .

I had to go to an interminable school meeting last night . There were power point presentations last night where the handouts on the chairs bore no resemblance to the presentations on the screen , throwing me into a right state of turmoil , thinking mine had been stapled together wrongly . Nat had refused to accompany me , having bigger fish to fry , in a bottle of cider , possibly . The meeting involved much jargon such as learning portals ( what ? ) , targets , key stage this and tier that and by the end I was stuffed . When they announced your student should be revising two and a half hours ( per day ? per week ? ) I know it was all over . The teachers were all very jolly and made some important points about citizenship and attendance and things I can relate to so all was not lost ....