Ten months later - the Fairie Queene is in residence

I can't believe that time has vanished so quickly with this new resident at Coneysthorpe. She is a delight, and now has a number of new nicknames which reflect her purrsonality! Due to her ability to zoom around the house and use the living room like a velodrome, I called her the Manic Marshmallow. This was to be hotly followed by the Flying Kransky (due to her large sausage shape - it didn't take long for her skinny body to transform!)

It took our Senior Catizen a while to warm to her. She thought he was MARVELLOUS and wanted to play all the time. She apparently didn't know he had a Gold Card and bus pass and needed lots of Grandpa naps. But just recently he has started to lolop around after her and play gently, so there is life in the old lad yet. He has also started to steal her sleeping places during the day, becoming a squatter in her basket and igloo, but she's very understanding.

Unfortunately she is terrified of any visitors, so none of our friends have met her yet. When we first adopted her, she managed to get under our bed and hide. Now she is fat, we are considering keeping a crowbar close to hand, as she finds it VERY difficult to squeeze under! Her markings are getting darker as she grows and she is a real charmer with us both. Her favourite toy is the bottle top of our locally produced lemonade, and her favourite way to get a cuddle is to flop down in front of you and show off the rather copious belly - no modesty at all.

The arrival of the Fairie Queen

For weeks, we didn't know whether we should get another cat. I looked around at local rescues and nothing seemed to fit us. But our big soppy boy was moping, and so were we. We've never been a one cat household before.

I saw a photo of a young cat, rescued from a colony over in a town 80kms away. After a few weeks of  discussion, we decided to go and check her out - we could visit human friends on the way, so the trip didn't seem too extravagant.

She is a lovely wee thing - very skittish and skinny, but then she'd lived wild for the first months of her life. Her markings are the pavement special variety. Not much aristocratic heritage to be seen, but her bluish coloured eyes suggest an oriental touch somewhere in the ancestry and sweetness seems to ooze out of her. We decided to take a chance. 

She was delivered to us today by the lovely lady who runs the sanctuary. We've made a small room for her at the end of our long hallway, so that she can get used to the smells and noises of the house, and the big soppy boy - Mango. When she came out of her cage she checked out the room and wove in and out of our legs. Apparently, she is quite a maternal wee thing, and I foresee a role reversal taking place, with her taking care of the soppy lad, rather than the other way around.

An hour prior to her arrival, said silly ginger got beaten up by the neighbour's cat, so we had to lock him in another room to calm him down. I'm now covered in his fur as a wrangled him into the spare bedroom.

We live in the middle of a cat soap opera.

The new Fairie Queen is to be called Vienna, because she looks like a milky coffee when she is curled up. Her rescue name was Bonnie. Mango brought us a live mouse just after midnight last night, so I predict this new twosome could develop into prohibition rodent eradication partnership - shades of Bonnie and Clyde.

More to follow.

Cumin

It has been nearly 5 weeks without the cat who changed my life. 

Cumin was my soul cat, a whimsical sweet little madam of ginger floof and attitude.

I tried to write about her earlier, but for some reason got locked out of this blog.  Now I am sat trying to focus on writing about her I find the wounds and sadness run very deep indeed. If I'm honest, I've pushed all the crying and sadness down into a place that I don't want to revisit. Now I just feel numb.

People may scoff at the love I had for her. She was "only" a cat I can hear some people thinking. Not true. She was the ultimate bundle of fun, and ridiculousness, sensitive to a fault and so incredibly beautiful. For a Pavement Special, she was heartbreakingly gorgeous. Her unusual colouring had so many compliments, people crooned at how soft she was and laughed at her chirrup as she greeted all and sundry. She was little Miss Congeniality with guests, but never overstayed her welcome. Like a well bred aristocrat she said enough to make you feel at home, then went about her business - and there was a lot of it.

She was chief cicada and moth wrangler and collected leaves from our magnolia tree every afternoon at 3pm with predictable regularity.  Her kittenhood was full of silly little escapades, which included running up a 20ft tall cabbage tree (ask me how we got her down). She was the love of the ages of our elderly cat Otto, who, after a few days of being terrified of her, fell head over paws and took care of her for the rest of his life.

When we moved to the countryside, she managed to round up almost every mouse and rat in 1km radius. She became the team leader of our ginger male and tabby male rodent murder squad. She deposited mice in our shoes and slippers and guarded a stoat in our walk in wardrobe which Mango had brought in the night before.

At night, she would hop on my bedside table and wriggle into bed with me, curling up on my tummy as I slept on my side. When I became ill with a heart problem, she never left my side after I was released from hospital. 

As a kitten, she slept in an empty drawer in our spare bedroom. Later when we moved, she requisitioned the same drawer, even though it was now full of my husband's socks. Possession is after all, nine tenths of the law.

She became ill at the beginning of this year. She was losing weight. We put it down to her age. She was treated for a problem with her thyroid, and this was successful. But her heart was not working well and she got horrible asthma. We tried treatment but she got thinner and thinner and watching her trying to breath was awful. She stopped eating. It was time for her to leave. 

A friend of ours dug a grave for her next to Otto. My husband and I were recovering from COVID and I could hardly breath with the grief. Since that time I am numb. Our ginger boy is moping and sad and stress grooming. We didn't initially want to get another cat. We are not getting any younger, but our 8kg ginger moggy has lost weight and doesn't know what to do with himself. We have to get him a friend and I'll have to learn how to be a kitten mum again.

Fourteen and a half years vanished like the blink of an eye dear Cumin. I don't know if we ever reunite with our departed animal friends, but I know I will feel your wonderful presence with me until I depart this earth. Please help me raise the next kitten. I'll need your help with that.

 

Ruppin - aka Shy Boy or The Terrified Tabby

Who will now beg for my last corner of toast?

Who will snore gently between us both at night?

Who will tap my leg to ask if he may jump on my knee?

Who will sense when my heart starts to race and purr slowly to slow it down?

Who will shadow me at the washing line and guard me from dive bombing swallows?

Who will come for walks with me round the garden, always a few paces behind and stop like we are playing statues?

Who will turn up at tea time, ravenous for food, just as we have started to eat?

Who will fall asleep in front of my iMac screen when I'm trying to watch Youtube?

Who will sit on my keyboard and refuse to budge?

Who will play tag with me from the agapanthus?

You were a sweet, gentle soul, needy, sometimes weird.

Wherever loved pets go when they die, I hope you are appreciated there, because you deserve everything and more.

Know that my heart is broken now you are gone.

Ruppin was killed by a vehicle on our country road, sometime on Friday 8th September. We had been visiting friends and spotted him lying in the road just as we were about to turn into our driveway on our return. I suspect he'd been in pursuit of a rabbit and a car had hit him. He was a slight cat, so the driver probably thought he'd hit a rabbit and continued driving.

I jumped out of the car just in case he was still alive, but he was very still with his head thrown back. In the light of the headlights I could see he wasn't breathing. But when I picked him up he was still limp, but not warm. There wasn't a mark on him, just a small amount of blood coming out of one eye. I sobbed all the way down the driveway.

We put him on a cushion inside a basket on the verandah and I covered him with his favourite cardigan of mine. Mango, our large ginger boy was very distressed. In fact he was running close to him on the roadside when we found him. Both cats sniffed his lifeless body. Cumin was upset I could tell.

We buried him on Saturday morning inside a copse on our property, opposite the windows of our study. He is lying wrapped in a warm blanket shroud next to our old boy Otto. As I started to dig his grave, I disturbed a plump rabbit. So the boys will always have "company".

We are both devastated and in shock. In the last 12 months, he had become a bit of a house cat. We were used to him eating his breakfast after sleeping on our bed all night. Habitually he wouldn't re appear until tea time - whatever the weather, he was out in it. He was a loner. But then he started to stay at home after breakfast. He would sleep in my old chair or curl up inside the office curtains. He'd be there all day. So he was showing all of his 11 years. After I had radiation therapy, I was frequently sat in our lazy boy chair dozing. He sat with me all the time, and slept close to me on the bed at night.

The night after he died, I caught my husband standing by the side of our bed crying. He looked at me and pointed to his side of bed "he should be here, this is his place" It was a routine. I always go to bed first and read. Within seconds, Ruppin would jump on the bed and sit just below Simon's pillow and start washing himself. Then he would go to sleep. Every evening, Simon would mumble to him "you have to move now", and would assist him by lifting up the duvet and gently rolling him towards the centre of the bed. Ruppin loved it and never resisted. We would then both go to sleep with an elongated tabby between us like a slug of tobacco.

So now we are four. Two gingers and two old codgers, missing our wide eyed tabby.

Bless you, wherever you are. You will always be missed.

Post Radiation Therapy

I am two months "the other side" of the radiation therapy for my brain tumour, and thankfully am feeling a lot more normal than I did immediately after the treatment. I was put on a course of very strong steroids which made me hyper awake and permanently tired simultaneously. The only positive, aside from them reducing the swelling on my brain, was that for the first time in many years I didn't have pains in my knees. Sadly that has worn off and I'm back to my creaky self again.This was us a few days before we headed north to the hospital in Auckland.

Next week I have a follow up appointment in Wellington, as my care has been transferred to a radiologist who is a former colleague of the radiologist I was treated by in Auckland.

I have had little energy to do anything since early June, and unfortunately caught a terrible cough and chest infection 3 weeks ago which I have just recovered from, so not much to report in terms of activities. So here are a few photos from my very small life down a country road in rural NZ.

One of our paddock tenants defrosting early morning

The Daily Leaf being supplied at 3.30pm each afternoon by senior ginger.

The morning serenade by the thrush.

Junior Ginger watching various garden activities on the deck outside the kitchen.

Fernando one of our pheasants eating breakfast on the driveway.

Accidentally leaving the light on in the cherry tree!

Kereru season.

Rosella Squadron

Health Update 2

The year has vanished. Tomorrow it will be June. In mid June I am going to Auckland for 5 days of radiotherapy to try and stop a brain tumour from growing any bigger. I was diagnosed 2 years ago,  but have been on a "watch and wait" regime. The MRI I had in March suggested I needed intervention. Nothing more to report at this stage, but here are a few more photos from the last 3 months to show that life has gone on quietly.

A visit to friends on the S. Island

The table ready for Passover

Enjoying watching our wild rabbit family

Visiting the National Army Museum

Enjoying my new dungarees.

Collecting

When I was a small girl, we had a very glamorous neighbour. Her name was Phyllis, and I used to love to visit her bungalow. The reason was mostly because she would allow me to look at all her jewellery and sort out her earrings into pairs. I would have been about 5 years old.

She seemed very old to me at the time, although looking back through adult eyes, I'd say she was about 40. Her living situation was odd, as she lived with her husband and her ex husband. Of course that didn't mean anything to me then, but it makes me raise my eyebrows now. But it was the swinging 60s and Phyllis was attractive. She wore short skirts, chain smoked and rolled her heavily made up eyes,  batting the mascara laden lashes on a regular basis.

Her legacy was giving me a passion for sparkly things. I loved rooting through mum's jewellery box too, but it wasn't as large or as exciting as Phyllis'. Mum was modest in all things sartorial, and she certainly didn't have the funds to splash out on the latest Trifari brooch or earrings.

Today, I was putting away recently acquired brooches (one from a local market, the other from a charity shop), and I remembered Phyllis. She would have approved of many of the items in the box, especially the blingtastic ones. But the ones which are the most meaningful to me are those which belonged to mum, or that I bought on holidays or were given to me by friends.  Condita memorias

Health update

Since my post in December, there have been other health issues emerging, so I think I did the right thing by stepping back from being employed. It has taken the stress out of endless appointments and rushing up and down to the capital for procedures.

I am still waiting to see how the year develops. I am currently awaiting the results of a biopsy, which will determine the way forward. 

Thank you for dropping in to the blog occasionally. I hope to add a few recent photos to keep things fresh this year.

Holy Water

 I'm having a "holy moment".

We didn't manage to have our water filters changed last year, (our water comes from our roof and goes through a series of filters). The new filters are 12 months overdue and are just being changed now. It was entirely our oversight - the company did send us a reminder, but last year was a bit of a pickle for me, so I overlooked it.

Mr Filter said "You must be proud. Most people have to change these after 6 months, they don't even make it to one year. Yours have lasted two." It reminded me of the children of Israel's shoes in the desert, and how they didn't wear out.

I believe the Almighty has looked after our water supply in our days of stress, and I am very, very grateful.

Premature retirement

This is mostly a "holding pattern" type post. Yesterday I retired. I am 61 years old next week, so it was premature, and risky in this current financial climate.

However, last week I underwent a heart procedure (thank God it went well) and I am living with the unknowns of brain tumour. So, I made the decision to step back and let my body and brain have a break. I don't know what the future holds and honestly, that makes me grip bits of furniture a bit too tightly when I think about it. 

I am a great believer in making space for opportunities. My "space" comes with fish hooks, as I have some physical limitations, but that isn't going to stop me waiting to see what opportunities present themselves.

A case of watch this space. Meanwhile, I think I might take to baking a bit more.

My first kitchen

We are half way through having our kitchen painted, by a professional. I learned early in our marriage that DIY was not my husband's strong point, and that because we both had quite strong views on how things should be done, it would be better to leave it to professionals than to be shouting at each other for days.

Thankfully, we are in agreement about colours and styles, which is interesting given there is a 12 year age difference.

Our kitchen has a very sunny aspect - it's a bit like being in a greenhouse in the summer. This has governed our colour choice for the walls, which needed to absorb light as much as possible. A dark dove grey has been chosen which will be a lovely contrast to the white of all the woodwork.

So different to my first kitchen. In 1988 I bought a Victorian terrace house and the priority when I moved in was to paint the kitchen. Actually it was to strip the wood first, as it had been marinaded in curry  smells and a thin layer of ghee for many years. My dad and I took to it with a blow lamp - no sandpaper would shift the coating. It took ages and the kitchen was only 4' x 8'.

I had set my heart on the colours of the Italian flag for the kitchen: white paintwork with green accents for the doors and red accessories. It was the tomato coloured iron trivet that dictated the palate - and hey, it was the '80s.  When it came to choosing the green, I had a temporary, wine induced "wobble" and went for a green more akin to Granny Smiths apples. It turned out to be an inspired choice, as anyone who ventured into the kitchen (sideways, comme un crabe) laughed at the shade. Laughter from a the kitchen is always a good sign.

Today it wasn't the colours that slammed me in reverse back to the 1980's, it was the smell. As soon as the paint was dry in my little Victorian house, I invited a friend for dinner. I had fallen deeply in love and I couldn't believe he would want to spend time with me eating my food. I served an exotic 3 cheese flan, and he gave me a bouquet of flowers which thankfully covered up the smell of the paint.

It was a relationship that didn't last sadly. It was years before I fell out of love, but he cheated on me and that smell of the paint yesterday made me cry; 34 years vanished and I was stood in the kitchen and felt abandonment all over again. 

What a difference 24 hours makes. Sat in the study with my faithful and wonderful husband of 18 years we eat pasta (the kitchen is still smelly) and that lost love in the apple green kitchen is but a memory, put to rest for good.

Parlez vous Francais?

I follow a trader on a local online auction site who sells vintage books (now there's a surprise). This morning I was sent a link to a book which immediately threw my senses back almost half a century. It was a small book to teach French to young people. 

I remember clearly my first week at secondary school seeing on my timetable the word "French" followed by "Language labs." I was beside myself with excitement that first week, putting on headphones and learning how to say "Breakfast is ready." Useful stuff! I still recall the smells and sounds of thirty eleven year olds rewinding the practice tapes and repeating over and over "Je m'appelle....." We were all given a French name; mine was Claudette. I was disappointed, I so wanted to be called Marie-Noelle or Romilly or something a bit more romantic. Claudette sounded to me like she would be a scullery maid with bad knees.

For three years I continued to learn French three periods a week and still recall that excitement of donning huge plastic headphones and imitating the accent of our French assistant Madamoiselle Rumney.

I discovered quickly that language learning wasn't my strong point, and unlike many of my school friends I didn't go to France on holiday each summer so had no opportunity to practice. I found grammar perplexing and difficult. I swopped to learning Spanish (supposedly easier). I learned that for 5 years - or at least I tried to. Then there was the language assistant challenge in my final 2 years of Spanish -  we didn't have one. There were only two of us left studying it by that point and the other girl was very talented. She danced flamenco in Spanish. I dragged my language skills behind me like a satchel with a broken strap. The lack of a language assistant meant that every Wednesday after school we caught a bus to the next city to meet up with a Spanish assistant from another school. We sat in the bus station cafe and spoke to her in Spanish, or at least my friend did. I just coughed - Maria chain smoked Gitanes cigarettes.

Not willing to admit my inadequacy at linguistics I went on to have embarrassing and inaccurate conversations in Afrikaans (lived in S. Africa), German (lived in Austria), and Arabic (lived in the Middle East). 

But here's the thing - I understood conversations in every country I have ever lived in. I pick up vocabulary quickly and can usually get the general drift of a conversation. I even did it this in Hebrew after a few weeks. But the moment I open my mouth, my memory cells paralyse, my teeth glue together and grammar tumbles like a badly constructed scaffold outside a dodgy building. I'm wondering if there isn't a name for this kind of handicap? But this morning when I opened my email, I felt like that 11 year old again and wanted to repeat to myself "Le petit dejeuner et pret."

Blackbird and thyme.

 Our songster decided to have a rest next to the thyme.

Driving over lemons

Coming from wet and cold Yorkshire, I would never have imagined that I would have a surfeit of lemons in the middle of winter. I read Carol Drinkwater's book entitled "Driving over lemons" many years ago, and envied her the challenge of using so much citrus fruit from her trees.

Our tree went berserk this year, despite being planted in the wrong place. It's the excess rain - they love being rained on. So here I am, wondering what to do with them all.  They are ugly, in a way that only their mother could love, but delicious and juicy.

There are only so many lemon drizzle cakes you can make.........or perhaps not. 

Arthur

I inherited a lot of family postcards from the Edwardian era, which were largely correspondence between my grandmother and her sisters and brothers. As is often the case, there were a number of mystery cards, either because I had no context for them, or because I simply didn't know enough about my grandma's life at that time. Also, the mystery cards could have come from my grandmother, her siblings, my great grandmother or my great Uncle, as all their effects ended up with my father and later with me. 

Tonight, courtesy of a WW1 website called "A Street Near You" I was able to finally put a history to a photo. 

This postcard said simply "Arthur" and on the reverse "Remembrance" and the date he died, a month before the end of the War.

Arthur was a similar age to my grandmother's eldest brother Bill. They would have grown up together in the village.  Both worked as gardeners on large estates, Bill in Canada, and Arthur for Stapleton Park, whose grounds and gardens were designed by Capability Brown. Bill signed up to go to France with the Canadian Regiment, but was never deployed, Arthur joined the Durham Light Infantry as a Lance Corporal and died in France.

I cannot imagine the devastation caused by his death in such a small village. Three young men were lost from the tightly knit community. A hundred years later on I find it so sad as I look at this young man with so much promise.

RIP Arthur Etty, son of Alice and Thomas Etty. 

Forever with the Lord

Royal Funeral

 Grief caught me today, as I watched a coffin draped with a Standard.

My own father's coffin was draped with his Squadron's standard and his service medals. He wasn't a Duke, or a Lord, but he was a father.

And today a father was mourned, by his children who walked. No matter the titles and wealth and position and the history of millennia. They were fighting back tears as children do when they know they will not hear that voice again, hear that laugh.

So grief grips us by the hand and we walk, so reluctant, wanting to run back in time.

Grief is an eternal companion, sometimes with the iron grip of memory, other times just a sad reflection in an old mirror looking behind.

But we walk and we walk on.

Waiting for the rain.

The air this evening smells like Africa before a storm; that high tension state when the grass almost speaks to the cloud heavy sky and begs for rain. The grass is very, very dry, baked hard with no possibility for birds to feed. We have fire warnings in place, and we wait for the sky to crack. The smell will change first then the colour, then the light will sharpen and refocus through the haze. I wait for the moment. But I will miss the smell. The Smell that invites animals to scratch in the shadows, pause and listen, then scatter. I wait for the scattering at the first boom, the first hammer and flash. Then the metal roof will timpani and throw the drops to dance and white water will gutter in gutters and overflow and crash. Yes, tonight feels like the veld.

On the trail of the lonesome agapanthus

 

This is our first agapanthus of the season.  The weeping elm has grown into a massive bush and the rest of the garden is exploding. I wish we were brave enough to keep a goat, but with a vineyard next door, and the endless ways they find to escape, I'm not sure my nerves would be able to cope.

Grass

Tonight I smelled the scent of Africa. It was so brief, and died so quickly, it sat like a heavy weight around my feet. It was the grass cuttings I think, capturing the last moment of heat before sunset. It was that petal thin wisp of time when animals scuttle away with their young after grazing, or start to wake to hunt at dusk. That small moment of capturing an even smaller movement just beyond the eye arch, and wondering "friend or foe? Snake or mouse, leaf or frond?" When the minutes and seconds freeze and you are not sure whether to rouse yourself and shake them free, or be static with them, hoping for a glimpse of something as yet unknown. 

 I remember a midnight bush ride. Bouncing in the back of a vehicle, shining an arc lamp into the dense trees, stealing myself for a view of something other worldly. I got my wish when bush baby eyes stared back at me, and as the light beam passed, so did she. Legs scurried in the undergrowth. We heard them, so we stopped, turned down the light, and listened as the leaves crinkled with the dying heat, and somewhere a bird screeched. 

I miss Africa. I miss the hair on my arms rising to a primordial sound. I miss eating fruit from the trees and wondering if it will mean a night with tummy cramps or a night feeling exotic and far away from home and overwhelmingly free. Strangely, I miss the drums of settlements, of women walking along high ridges at dawn, making their way to fields and crops and hard labour for the day, yet singing an awake lullaby. 

 I remember the roadside markets at night, lit with kerosene lamps, making a road brighter than bright. Twinkly, like Christmas, but smelling of mangoes and bananas, and children running around free in the cool and dust, laughing, not noticing they were poor. 

So I am glad of the drying grass and the wink of the veld and the memory of a distant home.

Dusktide

We are on the cusp of spring and the days are longer. This evening, a rare trip to the supermarket alone prompted very strong memories. I seldom shop at night, but this evening I just wanted the quiet pace, the meandering without pressure.
I wasn't prepared for the effect of being in a car alone at dusk would have on me. When I lived for 7 years in a desert, this was the time I would go shopping. It was generally after a very busy and stressful day in the office. The grinding heat would have lost its edge and you could always smell the scent of some flower or plant as the temperature dropped and the ground sighed with relief.
One of the many delights of my desert life were the encounters with shop assistants. They were all unfailingly polite and friendly and it gave me the chance to make small talk - a luxury not really possible during working hours. My local supermarket had beautiful girls from mainland China at the tills. They wanted to practise their English on anyone who had the time to stop. The giving of change and packing of bags was slow and gently drawn out in order to make conversation. The Indian salesmen in the material souks were charming and funny and would tease and laugh. My local florist was Syrian and kept birds in cages all around his shop. He always had time to talk. The people were often intoxicating, as if from another world.
And there is something in that pause between day and night which triggers the deep emotions I so often felt, returning to an empty apartment, making a meal, checking on my neighbours then falling exhausted into my bed. It was a strange zone between sweet contentment and crushing loneliness. Delight in the ever changing variety of each day, followed by the brief interlude of a sensual dusk, the call from the mosque, and the swish of sand as it hurried across the road.
Tonight I am thankful for a brief return to the intensity of that time. But I am also grateful that tonight I don't fall into bed alone and the only sound of the night I hear is of our resident owl calling its mate.